CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
3 1924 087 999 847 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924087999847 
 
WHARTON S ROGUISH PRESENT. 
 
THE 
 
 WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY 
 
 BY 
 
 GRACE AND PHILIP WHARTON 
 
 New Edition with a Preface 
 
 JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY, M.P. 
 
 And the original illustrations by 
 H. K. BROWNE AND JAMES GODWIN 
 
 TWO VOLS.— VOL. I. 
 
 New York 
 
 WORTHINGTON CO., 747 BROADWAY 
 
 V ' >: 
 
 1890 \> " '.C 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 Dear Mr. Augustin Daly, 
 
 May I write your name on the dedication page 
 of this new edition of an old and pleasant book in 
 token of our common interest in the people and the 
 periods of which it treats, and as a small proof of 
 oiir friendship ? 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 JUSTIN HUNTLY M'CARTHY. 
 
 London, yuly, i8go. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface to the Present Edition . . p. xi 
 
 Preface to the Second Edition . . p. xxv 
 
 Preface to the First Edition . . .p. xxix 
 
 GEORGE VILLIERS, SECOND DUKE OF BUCK- 
 INGHAM. 
 
 Signs of the Restoration. — Samuel Pepys in his Glory. — ^A Royal Company. — 
 Pepys 'ready to Weep."— The Playmate of Charles II.— George Villiers's 
 Inheritance. — ^Two Gallant Young Noblemen.- The Brave Francis Villiets. 
 — ^Ailer the Battle of Worcester. — Disguising the King. — ^Villieis in Hiding. 
 — He appears as a Mountebank. — Buckingham's Habits. — A Daring 
 Adventure. — Cromwell's Saintly Daughter. — ^VilUers and the Rabbi. — ^The 
 Buckingham Pictures and Estates. — York House. — Villiers returns to 
 England. — Poor Mary Fairfax. — Villiers in the Tower. — ^Abraham Cowley, 
 the Poet. — ^The Greatest Ornament of Whitehall. — Buckingham's Wit and 
 Beauty. ^Flecknoe's Opinion of Him. — His Duel with the Earl of Shrews- 
 bury. — ViUiers as a Poet. — ^As a Dramatist. — A Fearful Censure ! — Villiers's 
 Influence in Parhament. — A Scene in the Lords. — ^The Duke of Ormond 
 in Danger. — Colonel Blood's Outrages. — ^Wallingford House and Ham 
 House. — 'Madame Ellen." — ^The Cabal. — ^Villiers again in the Tower. — ^A 
 Change. — The Dtike of York's Theatre. — Buckingham and the Princess of 
 Orange. — His last Hours. — His Rehgion. — Death of Villiers. — The Duchess 
 of Buckingham. . , , . . . , p. i 
 
 COUNT DE GRAMMONT, ST. 
 LORD ROCHESTER. 
 
 EVREMOND, AND 
 
 De Grammont's Choice. — His Influence with Turenne. — The Church or the 
 Army? — ^An Adventure at Lyons. — A brilliant Idea. — De Grammont's 
 Generosity. — ^A Horse 'for the Cards.' — Knight-Cicisbeism. — De Gram- 
 mont's first Love. — His Witty Attacks on Mazarin. — Anne Lucie de la 
 Mothe Houdancourt. — Beset with Snares. — De Grammont's Visits to 
 England.— Charles II. — The Court of Charles 11. — Introduction of 
 Country-dances. — Norman Peculiarities. — St. Evremond, the Handsome 
 Norman. — ^The most Beautiful Woman in Europe. — Hortense Mancini's 
 Adventures. — ^Madame Mazarin's House at Chelsea. — ^Anecdote of Lord 
 Dorset — Lord Rochester in his Zenith. — His Courage and Wit— 
 
vi Contents. 
 
 Kocliesler's Pranks in the City. — Credulity, Past and Present — 'Dr, 
 Bendo,' and La Belle Jennings. — La Triste Heritiire. — Elizabeth, Coun- 
 tess of Rochester. — Retribution and Reformation. — Conversion. — Beaux 
 without Wit. — Little Jermyn. — An Incomparable Beauty. — Anthony 
 Hamilton, De Grammont's Biographer. — ^The Three Courts. — ' La Belle 
 Hamilton.' — Sir Peter Lely's Portrait of her.— The Household Deity of 
 Whitehall. — ^Who shall have the Caliche?— A Chaplain in Livery. — De 
 Grammont's Last Hours. — What might he not have been? . p. 4.1 
 
 BEAU FIELDING. 
 
 On Wits and Beaux. — Scotland Yard in Charles II.'s day. — Orlando of ' The 
 Tatler.' — Beau Fielding, Justice of the Peace. — ^Adonis in Search of a Wife. 
 — The Sham Widow. — ^Ways and Means. — Barbara Villiers, Lady Castle- 
 maine. — Quarrels with the King. — ^The Beau's Second Marriage, — ^The 
 Last Days of Fops and Beaux. . . , . . p. 80 
 
 OF CERTAIN CLUBS AND CLUB-WITS UNDER 
 
 ANNE. 
 
 The Origin of Clubs. — ^The Establishment of Coffee-houses. — ^The October Club. 
 —The Beef-steak Club.— Of certain other Clubs.r— The Kit-kat Club.— The 
 Romance of the Bowl. — ^The Toasts of the Kit-kat. — ^The Members of the 
 Klt-kat. — ^A good Wit, and a bad Architect. — ' Well-natured Garth.' — ^The 
 Poets of the Kit-kat. — Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax. — Chancellor 
 Somers. — Charles Sackville, Lord Dorset. — Less celebrated Wits. p. 91 
 
 WILLIAM CONGREVE. 
 
 When and where was he bom? — The Middle Temple. — Congreve finds his 
 Vocation. — ^Verses to Queen Mary. — ^The Tennis-court Theatre. — Congreve 
 abandons the Drama. — Jeremy Collier. — ^The Immorality of the Stage. — 
 Very improper Things. — Congreve's Writings. — Jeremy's 'Short Views.' — 
 Rival Theatres. — Dryden's Funeral. — A Tub-Preacher. — Horoscopic Pre- 
 dictions. — Dryden's Solicitude for his Son. — Congreve's Ambition. — ^Anec- 
 dote of Voltaire and Congreve. — The Profession of Maecenas. — Congreve's 
 Private Life. — ' Malbrook's' Daughter. — Congreve's Death and Burial. 
 
 p. 106 
 
 BEAU NASH. 
 
 The King of Bath. — Nash at Oxford. — ' My Boy Dick.' — Offers of Knighthood. 
 — Doing Penance at York. — Days of Folly. — ^A very Romantic Story. — 
 Sickness and CiviUzation. — Nash descends upon Bath. — Nash's Chef- 
 d'oeuvre, — The Ball. — Improvements in the Pump-room, &c. — ^A Public 
 Benefactor. — iLife at Bath in Nash's time. — A Compact with the Duke of 
 Beaufort. — Gaming at Bath. — Anecdotes of Nash. — 'Miss Sylvia.' — A 
 Generous Act. — Nash's Sun setting. — ^A Panegyric. — Nash's Funeral. — His 
 Characteristics. ....... p. 127 
 
 PHILIP, DUKE OF WHARTON. 
 
 Wharton's Ancestors.^— His Early Years. — Marriage at Sixteen. — ^Wharton takes 
 leave of his Tutor. — ^The Young Marquis and the Old Pretender. — Frolics 
 at Paris. — ^Zeal for the Orange Cause. — ^A Jacobite Hero. — The Trial of 
 Atterbuiy, — Wharton's Defence of the Bishop. — Hypocritical Signs of 
 
Contents. vii 
 
 Penitence. — Sir Robert Walpole duped. — Very Trying.— The Duke ol 
 Wliarton's 'Wliens.' — Military Glory at Gibraltar. — 'Uncle Horace." — 
 Wharton to ' Uncle Horace." — ^The Duke's Inlpudence. — High Treason. — 
 Wharton's Ready Wit. — Last Extremities. — Sad Days in Paris. — His Last 
 Journey to Spain. — His Death in a Bemardine Convent. , p. 148 
 
 LORD HERVEY. 
 
 George IL arriving from Hanover. — His Meeting with the Queen. — Lady 
 Suffolk. — Queen Caroline. — Sir Robert Walpole. — Lord Hervey. — ^A Set of 
 Fine Gentlemen. — ^An Eccentric Race. — Carr, Lord Hervey. — ^A Fragile 
 Boy. — Description of George H.'s Family.— Anne Brett. — ^A Bitter Cup. — 
 The Darling of the Family. — Evenings at St. James's. — Frederick, Prince 
 of Wales. — ^Amelia Sophia Walmoden. — Poor Queen Caroline ! — Moctumal 
 Diversions of Maids of Honour. — Neighbour George's Orange Chest. — 
 - Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. — Rivalry. — Hervey's Intimacy with Lady Mary. 
 — Relaxations of the Royal Household. — Bacon's Opinion of Twickenham. 
 —A Visit to Pope's Villa.— The Little Nightingale.— The Essence of Small 
 Talk. — Hervey's Affectation and Effeminacy. — Pope's Quarrel with Hervey 
 and Lady Mary. — Hervey's Duel with Pulteney. — ' The Death of Lord 
 Hervey ; a Drama.' — Queen Caroline's last Drawing-room. — Her illness 
 and Agony. — A Painful Scene. — The Truth discovered. — The Queen's 
 Dying Bequests. — The King's Temper. — ^Archbishop Potter is sent for. — 
 The Duty of Reconciliation. — The Death of Queen Caroline. — A Change in 
 Hervey's Life. — Lord Hervey's Death. — ^Want of Christianity. — ^Memoirs oi 
 his Ovm Time. ....... p. 170 
 
 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, FOURTH EARL OF 
 CHESTERFIELD. 
 
 The King of Table Wits. — -Early Years. — Hervey's Description of his Person. — 
 Resolutions and Pursuits. — Study of Oratory. — The Duties of an Am- 
 bassador. — King George IL's Opinion of his Chroniclers. — Life in the 
 Country. — Melusina, Countess of Walsingham. — George II. and his 
 Father's Will. — Dissolving Views, — Madame du Bouchet. — The Broad- 
 Bottomed Administration. — Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in Time of Peril. — 
 Reformation of the Calendar. — Chesterfield House. — Exclusiveness. — Re- 
 commending 'Johnson's Dictionary.' — 'Old Samuel,' to Chesterfield. — 
 Defensive Pride. — ^The Glass of Fashion. — Lord Scarborough's Friendship 
 for Chesterfield.^-The Death of Chesterfield's Son. — His Interest in his 
 Grandsons. — ' I must go and Rehearse my Funeral.' — Chesterfield's Will. — 
 What is a Friend ? — I^ Maniferes Nobles. — Letters to his Son. p. 210 
 
 THE ABBE SCARRON. 
 
 \n Eastern Allegory. — ^Who comes Here?— A Mad Freak and its Consequences. 
 — Making an Abb^ of him. — ^The May-Fair of Paris. — Scarron's Lament to 
 PeUisson. — ^The Office of the Queen's Patient. — ' Give me a Simple Bene- 
 fice.' — Scarron's Description of Himself — Improvidence and Servility. — 
 The Society at Scarron's. — ^The Witty Conversation. — Francoise D'Aubig- 
 n^'s D^but. — ^The Sad Story of La Belle Indienne. — Matrimonial Consider- 
 ations. — ' Scarron's Wife will live for ever.' — Petits Soupers. — Scarron's last 
 Moments. — ^A Lesson for Gay and Grave. ... p. ass 
 
^^1^ Contents. 
 
 FRANCOIS DUG DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT AND 
 THE DUG DE SAINT-SIMON. 
 
 Rank and Good Breeding. — ^The H6tel de Rochefoucault. — Racine and his 
 Plays. — La Rochoucault's Wit and Sensibility.— ^Saint-Simon's Youth — 
 Looking out for a Wife. — Saint-Simon's Court Life. — ^The History of Louise 
 de la ValliAre. — A mean Act of Louis Quatoiza — ^All has passed away. — 
 Saint-Simon's Memoirs of His Own Time. ... p. 353 
 
SUBJECTS OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 Volume I. 
 
 rAGB 
 
 WHARTON'S ROGUISH PRESENT ( Frontispiece J 
 
 VILLIERS IN DISGUISE— THE MEETING WITH HIS SISTER 14 
 
 DE GRAMMONT'S MEETING WITH LA BELLE HAMILTON 74 
 
 BEAU FIELDING AND THE SHAM WIDOW 85 
 
 A SCENE BEFORE KENSINGTON PALACE— GEORGE II. AND 
 
 QUEEN CAROLINE 172 
 
 POPE AT HIS VILLA— DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 194 
 
 A ROYAL ROBBER .. «I7 
 
 DR. JOHNSON AT LORD CHESTERFIELD'S 226 
 
 SCARRON AND THE WITS— FIRST APPEARANCE OF I-A 
 
 BELLE INDIENNE 347 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I^^HEN Grace and Philip Wharton found that thej 
 ^^Pl had pleased the world with their " Queens ol 
 Society," they very sensibly resolved to follov- 
 up their success with a companion work. Their first book 
 had been all about women ; the second book should be 
 all about men. Accordingly they set to wofk select- 
 ing certain types that pleased them ; they wrote a fresh 
 collection of pleasant essays and presented the reading 
 public with " Wits and Beaux of Society ". The one 
 book is as good as the other ; there is not a pin to choose 
 between them. There is the same bright easy, gossiping 
 style, the same pleasing rapidity. There is nothing 
 tedious, nothing dull anywhere. They do not profess 
 to have anything to do with the graver processes of 
 history — these entertaining volumes ; they seek rather to 
 amuse than to instruct, and they fulfil their purpose 
 excellently. There is instruction in them, but it comes 
 in by the way ; one is conscious of being entertained, 
 and it is only after the entertainment is over that one 
 finds that a fair amount of information has been thrown 
 in to boot. The Whartons have but old tales to tell, 
 but they tell them very well, and that is the first part of 
 their, business. 
 
 Looking over these articles is like looking over the 
 list of a good club. Men are companionable creatures ; 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 they love to get together and gossip. It is maintained, 
 and with reason, that they are londer of their own 
 society than women are. Men delight to breakfast 
 together, to take luncheon together, to dine together, to 
 sup together. They rejoice in clubs devoted exclusively 
 to their service, as much taboo to women as a trappist 
 monastery. Women are not quite so clannish. There 
 are not very many women's clubs in the world ; it is not 
 certain that those which do exist are very brilliant or 
 very entertaining. Women seldom give supper parties, 
 " all by themselves they " after the fashion of that 
 " grande dame de par le monde " of whom we have 
 spoken elsewhere. A woman's dinner-party may suc- 
 ceed now and then by way of a joke, but it is a joke 
 that is not often repeated. Have we not lately seen 
 how an institution with a graceful English name, started 
 in London for women and women only, has just so far 
 relaxed its rigid rule as to allow men upon its premises 
 between certain hours, and this relaxation we are told 
 has been conceded in consequence of the demand of 
 numerous ladies. Well, well, if men can on the whole 
 get on better without the society of women than women 
 can without the society of men it is no doubt because 
 they are rougher creatures, moulded of a coarser clay, 
 and are more entertained by eating and drinking, smok- 
 ing and the telling of tales than women are. 
 
 If all the men whom the Whartons labelled as wits 
 and beaux of society could be gathered together they 
 would make a most excellent club in the sense in which 
 a club was understood in the last century. Johnson 
 thought that he had praised a man highly when he 
 called bim a clubbable man, and so he had for those 
 days which dreamed not of vast caravanserai calling 
 
Preface. xiii 
 
 themselves clubs and having thousands of members on 
 their roll, the majority of whom do not know more than 
 perhaps ten of their fellow members from Adam. In 
 the sense that Dr. Johnson meant, all these wits and 
 beaux whom our Whartons have gathered together were 
 eminently clubbable. If some such necromancer could 
 come to us as he who in Tourguenieff's story conjures 
 up the shade of Julius Caesar ; and if in an obliging way 
 he could make these wits and beaux greet us : if such a 
 spiritualistic society as that described by Mr. Stockton 
 in one of his diverting stories could materialise them all for 
 our benefit : then one might count with confidence upon 
 some very delightful company and some very delightful 
 talk. For the people whom the Whartons have been 
 good enough to group together are people of the most 
 fascinating variety. They have wit in common and 
 goodfellowship, they were famous entertainers in their 
 time; they add to the gaiety of nations still. The 
 Whartons have given what would in America be called 
 a " Stag Party ". If we join it we shall find much enter- 
 tainment thereat. 
 
 Do people read Theodore Hook much nowadays? 
 Does the generation which loves to follow the trail with 
 Allan Quatermain, and to ride with a Splendid Spur, 
 does it call at all for the humours of the days of the 
 Regency ? Do those who have laughed over " The Wrong 
 Box," ever laugh over Jack Brag? Do the students of 
 Mr. Rudyard Kipling know anything of " Gilbert 
 Gurney ? " Somebody started the theory some time 
 ago, that this was not a laughter-loving generation, 
 that it lacked high spirits. It has been maintained 
 that if a writer appeared now, with the rollicking 
 good spirits, and reckless abandon of a Lever, he 
 
xiv Preface. 
 
 would scarcely win a warm welcome. We may be 
 permitted to doubt this conclusion ; we are as fond 
 of laughter as ever, as ready to laugh if somebody 
 will set us going. Mr. Stevenson prefers of late to 
 be thought grim in his fiction, but he has set the 
 sides shaking, both over that "Wrong Box" which 
 we spoke of, and in earlier days. We are ready to 
 laugh with Stockton from overseas, with our own 
 Anstey, with anybody who has the heart to be merry, 
 and the wit to make his mirth communicable. But, 
 it may be doubted if we read our Lever quite as much 
 as a wise doctor, who happened also to be a wise man 
 of letters, would recommend. And we may well fancy 
 that such a doctor dealing with a patient for whom 
 laughter was salutary — as for whom is it not salutary — 
 would exhibit Theodore Hook in rather large doses. 
 
 Undoubtedly the fun is a little old fashioned, but it is 
 none the worse for that. Those who share Mr. Hard- 
 castle's tastes for old wine and old books will not like 
 Theodore Hook any the less, because he does not happen 
 to be at all " Fin de Siecle". He is like Berowne in the 
 comedy, the merriest man — perhaps not always within 
 the limits of becoming mirth — to spend an hour's talk 
 withal. There is no better key to the age in which 
 Hook glittered, than Hook's own stories. The London 
 of that day — the London which is as dead and gone as 
 Nineveh or Karnak or Troy — lives with extraordinary 
 freshness in Theodore Hook's pages. And how enter- 
 taining those pages are. It is not always the greatest 
 writers who are the most mirth provoking, but how 
 much we owe to them. The man must have no mirth 
 in him if he fail to be tickled by the best of Labiche's 
 comedies, aye and the worst too, if such a term 
 
Preface. xv 
 
 can be applied to any of the enchanting series ; if he 
 refuse to unbend over " A Day's Journey and a Life's 
 Romance," if he cannot let himself go and enjoy himself 
 over Gilbert Gurney's river adventure. If the revival of 
 the Whartons' book were to serve no other purpose than 
 to send some laughter loving souls to the heady well- 
 spring of Theodore Hook's merriment, it would have 
 done the mirthful a good turn and deserved well of its 
 country. 
 
 There is scarcely a queerer, or scarcely a more pathetic 
 figure in the world than that of Beau Brummell. He 
 seems to belong to ancient history, he and his titanic 
 foppishness and his smart clothes and his smart sayings. 
 Yet is it but a little while since the last of his adorers, 
 the most devoted of his disciples passed away from the 
 earth. Over in Paris there lingered till the past year 
 a certain man of letters who was very brilliant and very 
 poor and very eccentric. So long as people study French 
 literature, and care to investigate the amount of high 
 artistic workmanship which goes into even its minor 
 productions, so long the name of Barbey D'Aurevilly 
 will have its niche — not a very large one, it is true — in 
 the temple. The author of that strange and beautiful 
 story " Le Chevalier des Touches," was a great devotee 
 of Brummell's. He was himself the " last of the 
 dandies ". All the money he had — and he had very little 
 of it — he spent in dandification. But he never moved 
 with the times. His foppishness was the foppishness 
 of his youth, and to the last he wandered through Paris 
 clad in the splendour of the days when young men were 
 " lions," and when the quarrel between classicism and 
 romanticism was vital. He wrote a book about Beau 
 Brummell and a very curious little book it is, with its 
 
scvi Preface. 
 
 odd earnest defence of dandyism, with its courageous 
 championship of the arts which men of letters so largely 
 affect to despise. 
 
 Poor Beau Brummell. After having played his small 
 part on life's stage, his thin shade still occasionally 
 wanders across the boards of the theatre. Blanchard 
 Jerrold wrote a play upon him, which was acted at the 
 Lyceum Theatre in 1859, when Emery played the title 
 role. Jerrold's play, which has for sub-title " The King 
 of Calais," treats of that period in Brummell's life in 
 which he had retired across the channel to live upon 
 black-mail and to drift into that Consulship at Caen 
 which he so queerly resigned, to end a poor madman, 
 trying to shave his own peruke. Jerrold's is a grim play ; 
 either it or a version on the same lines of Brummell's 
 fall is being played across the Atlantic at this very hour 
 by Mr. Mansfield whose study of the final decay and 
 idiotcy of the famous beau is said to rival the impressive- 
 ness of his Mr. Hyde. Beau Brummell is never likely 
 to be quite forgotten. Folly often brings with it a kind 
 of immortality. The fool who fired the Temple of 
 Ephesus has secured his place in history with Aristides 
 and Themistocles ; the fop who gave a kind of epic 
 dignity to neck-clothes, and who asked the famous 
 " Who's your fat friend ? " question, is remembered as 
 a figure of that age which includes the name of Sheridan 
 and the name of Burke. 
 
 Another and a no less famous Beau steps to salute us 
 from the pages of the Whartons. Beau Nash is an old 
 friend of ours in fiction, an old friend in the drama. 
 Our dear old Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel about 
 him yesterday ; to-day he figures in the pages of one of 
 the most attractive of Mr. Lewis Wingfield's attractive 
 
Preface. xvii 
 
 stories. He found his way on to the stage under the 
 care of Douglas Jerrold whose comedy of manners was 
 acted at the Haymarket in the midsummer of 1834. 
 There is a charm about these Beaux, these odd blossoms 
 of last century civilisation, the Brummells and the 
 Nashes and the Fieldings, so "high fantastical" in 
 their bearing, such living examples of the eternal 
 verities contained in the clothes' philosophy of Herr 
 Diogenes Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo. Their wigs 
 were more important than their wit ; the pattern of 
 their waistcoats more important than the composition 
 of their hearts ; all morals, all philosophy are absorbed 
 for them in the engrossing question of the fit of their 
 breeches. D'Artois is of their kin, French d'Artois 
 who helped to ruin the Old Order and failed to re-create 
 it as Charles the Tenth, d'Artois whom Mercier de- 
 scribes as being poured into his faultlessly fitting breeches 
 by the careful and united efforts of no less than four 
 valets de chambre. But the English dandies were better 
 than the Frenchman, for they did harm only to them- 
 selves, while he helped to ruin his cause, his party, and 
 his king. 
 
 As we turn the pages, we come to one name which 
 immediately if whimsically suggests poetry. The man 
 was, like Touchstone's Audrey, not poetical and yet a 
 great poet has been pleased to address him, very much 
 as Pindar might have addressed the Ancestral Hero 
 of some mighty tyrant. 
 
 Ah, George Bubb Dodington Lord Melcombe — no, 
 
 Yours was the wrong way ! — always understand, 
 
 Supposing that permissibly you planned 
 
 How statesmanship — ^your trade — in outward show 
 
 Might figure as inspired by simple zeal 
 
 Fox serving country, king, and commonweal, 
 
xviii Preface. 
 
 (Though service tire to death the body, teaze 
 The soul from out an o'ertasked patriot-drudge) 
 And yet should prove zeal's outward show agrees 
 In all respects — right reason being judge — 
 With inward care that while the statesman spends 
 Body and soul thus freely for the sake 
 Of public good, his private welfare take 
 No harm by such devotedness. 
 
 Thus Robert Browning in Robert Browning's penulti- 
 mate book, that " Parleyings with certain people of 
 importance in their day" which fell somewhat coldly 
 upon all save Browning fanatics, and which, when it 
 seemed to show that the poet's hand had palsied, served 
 only as the discordant prelude to the swan song of 
 "Asolando," the last and almost the greatest of his 
 glories. Perhaps only Browning would ever have 
 thought of undertaking a poetical parley with Bubb 
 Dodington. Dodington is now largely, and not unde- 
 servedly forgotten. His dinners and his dresses, his 
 poems and his pamphlets, his plays and his passions — 
 the wind has carried them all away. If Pope had not 
 nicknamed him Bubo, if Foote had not caricatured him 
 in " The Patron," if Churchill had not lampooned him 
 in " The Rosciad," he would scarcely have earned in his 
 own day the notoriety which the publication of his 
 "Diary "had in a manner preserved to later days. If 
 he was hardly worth a corner in the Whartons' picture- 
 gallery he was certainly scarcely deserving of the atten- 
 tion of Browning. Even his ineptitude was hardly 
 important enough to have twenty pages of Browning's 
 genius wasted upon it, twenty pages ending with the 
 sting about 
 
 The scoff 
 That greets your very name : folks see but one 
 fool more, as well as knave, in Dodington, 
 
Preface. xix 
 
 Dodington has been occasionally classed with Lord 
 Hervey but the classification is scarcely fair. With 
 all his faults— and he had them in abundance — Lord 
 Hervey was a better creature than Bubb Dodington. 
 If he was effeminate, he had convictions and could 
 stand by them. If Pope sneered at him as Sporus and 
 called him a curd of asses' milk, he has left behind him 
 some of the most brilliant memoirs ever penned. If he 
 had some faults in common with Dodington he was 
 endowed with virtues of which Dodington never 
 dreamed. 
 
 The name of Lord Chesterfield is in the air just 
 now. Within the last few months the curiosity of the 
 world has been stimulated and satisfied by the pubhca- 
 tion of some hitherto unknown letters by Lord Chester- 
 field. The pleasure which the student of history has 
 taken in this new find is just dimmed at this moment 
 by the death of Lord Carnarvon, whose care and 
 scholarship gave them to the world. They are indeed 
 a precious possession. A very eminent French critic, 
 M. Brunetiere, has inveighed lately with much justice 
 against the passion for raking together and bringing 
 out all manner of unpublished writings. He complains, 
 and complains with justice, that while the existing 
 classics of literature are left imperfectly edited, if not 
 ignored, the activity of students is devoted to 
 burrowing out all manner of unimportant material, 
 anything, everything, so long as it has not been known 
 beforehand to the world. The French critic protests 
 against the class of scholars who go into ecstacies over 
 a newly discovered washing list of Pascal or a bill from 
 Racine's perruquier. The complaint tells against us as 
 well on our side of the Channel. We hear a great deal 
 
XX Preface 
 
 about newly discovered fragments by this great writer 
 and that great writer, which are of no value whatever, 
 except that they happen to be new. But no such 
 stricture applies to the letters of Lord Chesterfield 
 which the late Lord Carnarvon so recently gave to the 
 world. They are a valuable addition to our knowledge 
 of the last century, a valuable addition to our know- 
 ledge of the man who wrote them. And knowledge 
 about Lord Chesterfield is always welcome. Few of 
 the famous figures of the last century have been more 
 misunderstood than he. The world is too ready to 
 remember Johnson's biting letter; too ready to re- 
 member the cruel caricatures of Lord Hervey. Even 
 the famous letters have been taken too much at John- 
 son's estimate, and Johnson's estimate was one-sided 
 and unfair. A man would not learn the highest life 
 from the Chesterfield letters ; they have little in com- 
 mon with the ethics of an A Kempis, a Jean Paul 
 Richter, or a John Stuart Mill. But they have their 
 value in their way, and if they contain some utterances 
 so unutterably foolish as those in which Lord Chester- 
 field expressed himself upon Greek literature, they 
 contain some very excellent maxims for the manage- 
 ment of social life. Nobody could become a penny the 
 worse for the study of Chesterfield; many might be- 
 come the better. They are not a whit more cynical 
 than, indeed they are not so cynical as, those letters of 
 Thackeray's to young Brown, which with all their 
 cleverness make us understand what Mr. Henley 
 means when in his " Views and Reviews " he describes 
 him as a "writer of genius who was innately and 
 irredeemably a Philistine". The letters of Lord 
 Chesterfield would not do much to make a man a 
 
Preface. xxi 
 
 hero, but there is Httle in literature more unheroic 
 than the letters to Mr. Thomas Brown the younger. 
 
 It is curious to contrast the comparative enthusiasm 
 with which the Whartons write about Horace Walpole 
 with the invective of Lord Macaulay. To the great 
 historian Walpole was the most eccentric, the most 
 artificial, the most capricious of men, who played in- 
 numerable parts and over-acted them all, a creature to 
 whom whatever was little seemed great and whatever 
 was great seemed little. To Macaulay he was a gentle- 
 man-usher at heart, a Republican whose Republicanism 
 like the courage of a bully or the love of a fribble was 
 only strong and ardent when there was no occasion for it, 
 a man who blended the faults of Grub Street with the 
 faults of St. James's Street, and who united to the 
 vanity, the jealousy and the irritability of a man of 
 letters, the affected superciliousness and apathy of a 
 man of ton. The Whartons over-praise Walpole where 
 Lord Macaulay under-rates him ; the truth lies between 
 the two. He was not in the lea.st an estimable or an 
 admirable figure, but he wrote admirable, indeed incom- 
 parable letters to which the world is indebted beyond 
 expression. If we can almost say that we know the 
 London of the last century as well as the London of to- 
 day it is largely to Horace Walpole's letters that our 
 knowledge is due. They can hardly be over-praised, 
 they can hardly be too often read by the lover of last cen- 
 tury London. Horace Walpole affected to despise men 
 of letters. It is his punishment that his fame depends 
 upon his letters, those letters which,.though their writer 
 was all unaware of it, are genuine literature, and almost 
 of the best. 
 
 We could linger over almost every page of the 
 
xxu Preface. 
 
 Whartons' volumes, for every page is full of pleasant 
 suggestions. The name of George Villiers, second 
 Duke of Buckingham brings up at once a picture of 
 perhaps the brilliantest and basest period in English 
 history. It brings up too memories of a fiction that is 
 even dearer than history, of that wonderful romance of 
 Dumas the Elder's, which Mr. Louis Stevenson has 
 placed among the half-dozen books that are dearest to 
 his heart, the " Vicomte de Bragelonne ". "Who that 
 has ever followed, breathless and enraptured, the final 
 fortunes of that gallant quadrilateral of musketeers will 
 forget the part which is played by George Villiers, Duke 
 of Buckingham, in that magnificent prose epic ? There 
 is little to be said for the real Villiers ; he was a profli- 
 gate and a scoundrel, and he did not show very heroic- 
 ally in his quarrel with the fiery young Ossory. It was 
 one thing to practically murder Lord Shrewsbury ; it 
 was quite another thing to risk the wrath and the deter- 
 mined right hand of the Duke of Ormonde's son. But 
 the Villiers of Dumas' fancy is a fairer figure and a finer 
 lover, and it is pleasant after reading the pages in which 
 the authors of these essays trace the career of Dryden's 
 epitome to turn to those volumes of the great French- 
 man, to read the account of the duel with de Wardes 
 and invoke a new blessing on the muse of fiction. 
 
 In some earlier volumes of the same great series we 
 meet with yet another figure who has his image in the 
 Wharton picture gallery. In that " crowded and sunny 
 field of life " — the words are Mr. Stevenson's, and they 
 apply to the whole musketeer epic — that " place busy as 
 a city, bright as a theatre, thronged with memorable 
 faces, and sounding with delightful speech," the Abbe 
 Scarron plays his part. It was here that many of us 
 
Preface. xxiii 
 
 met Scarron for the first time, and if we have got to 
 know him better since, we still remember with a thrill of 
 pleasure that first encounter when in the society of the 
 matchless Count de la Fere and the marvellous Aramis 
 we made our bow in company with the young Raoul to 
 the crippled wit and his illustrious companions. The 
 Whartons write brightly about Scarron, but their best 
 merit to my mind is that they at once prompt a desire 
 to go to that corner of the bookshelf where the eleven 
 volumes of the adventures of the immortal musketeers 
 repose, and taking down the first volume of " Vingt Ans 
 Apres " seek for the twenty-third chapter, where Scarron 
 receives society in his residence in the Rue des Tour- 
 nelles. There Scudery twirls his moustaches and trails 
 his enormous rapier and the Coadjutor exhibits his 
 silken " Fronde ". There the velvet eyes of Mademois- 
 elle d'Aubign6 smile and the beauty of Madame de 
 Chevreuse delights, and all the company make fun of 
 Mazarin and recite the verses of Voiture. 
 
 There are others of these wits and beaux with whom 
 we might like to linger ; but our space is running short ; 
 it is time to say good-bye. Congreve the dramatist and 
 gentleman, Rochefoucauld the wit, Saint-Simon the 
 king of memoir-writers, Rochester and St. Bvremond 
 and de Gramont, Selwyn and Sydney Smith and Sheri- 
 dan each in turn appeals to us to tarry a little longer. 
 But it is time to say good-bye to these shadows of the 
 past with whom we have spent some pleasant hours. 
 It is their duty now to offer some pleasant hours to 
 others. 
 
 Justin Huntly M 'Garth y. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 N revising this Publication, it has scarcely been found 
 necessary to recall a single opinion relative to the 
 subject of the Work. The general impressions of 
 characters adopted by the Authors have received little modifi- 
 cation from any remarks elicited by the appearance of ' The 
 Wits and Beaux of Society.' 
 
 It is scarcely to be expected that even our descendants will 
 know much more of the Wits and Beaux of former days than 
 we now do. The chests at Strawberry Hill are cleared of their 
 contents ; Horace Walpole's latest letters are before us ; Pepys 
 and Evelyn have thoroughly dramatized the days of Charles II. ; 
 Lord Hervey's Memoirs have laid bare the darkest secrets of 
 the Court in which he figures ; voluminous memoirs of the less 
 historic characters among the Wits and Beaux have been pub- 
 lished ; still it is possible that some long-disregarded treasury 
 of old letters, like that in the Gallery at Wotton, may come to 
 light From that precious deposit a housemaid — blotted for 
 ever be her name from memory's page — ^was purloining sheets 
 of yellow paper, with antiquated writing on them, to light her 
 fires with, when the late William Upcott came to the rescue, 
 
xxvi Preface to Second Edition. 
 
 and saved Evelyn's ' Diaiy' for a grateful world. It is just 
 possible that such a discovery may again be made, and that 
 the doings of George Villiers, or the exile life of Wharton, or 
 the inmost thoughts of other Wits and Beaux may be made to 
 appear in clearer lights than heretofore ; but it is much more 
 likely that the popular opinions about these witty, worthless 
 men are substantially true. 
 
 All that has been collected, therefore, to form this work — 
 and, as in the ' Queens of Society,' every known source has 
 been consulted — assumes a steriing value as being collected ; 
 and, should hereafter fresh materials be disinterred from any 
 old library closet in the homes of some one descendant of our 
 heroes, advantage will be gladly taken to improve, correct, and 
 complete the lives. 
 
 One thing must, in justice, be said : if they have been 
 written freely, fearlessly, they have been written without pas- 
 sion or prejudice. The writers, though not quite of the stamp 
 of persons who would never have ' dared to address' any of the 
 subjects of their biography, ' save with courtesy and obeisance,' 
 have no wish to 'trample on the graves' of such very amusing 
 personages as the ' Wits and Beaux of Society.' They have 
 even been lenient to their memory, hailing every good trait 
 gladly, and pointing out with no unsparing hand redeeming 
 virtues ; and it cannot certainly be said, in this instance, that 
 the good has been ' interred with the bones ' of the personages 
 herein described, although the evil men do, 'will live after 
 them.' 
 
 But whilst a biographer is bound to give the fair as well as 
 the dark side of his subject, he has still to remember that bio- 
 graphy is a trust, and that it should not be an eulogium. It is 
 his duty to reflect that in miny instances it must be regarded 
 even as a warning. 
 
 The moral conclusions of these lives of 'Wits and Beaux' 
 
Preface to Second Edition. xxvii 
 
 are, it is admitted, just : vice is censured ; folly rebuked ; un- 
 gentlemanly conduct, even in a beau of the highest polish, ex- 
 posed; irreligion finds no toleration under gentle names — 
 heartlessness no palliation from its being the way of the world. 
 There is here no separate code allowed for men who live in the 
 world, and for those who live out of it. The task of pourtray- 
 ing such characters as the ' Wits and Beaux of Society' is a 
 responsible one, ana does not involve the mere attempt to 
 amuse, or the mere desire to abuse, but requires truth and dis- 
 crimination ; as embracing just or unjust views of such charac- 
 ters, it may do much harm or much good. Nevertheless, in 
 spite of these obvious considerations there do exist worthy 
 persons, even in the present day, so unreasonable as to take 
 offence at the revival of old stories anent their defunct grand- 
 fathers, though those very stories were circulated by accredited 
 writers employed by the families themselves. Some individuals 
 are scandalized when a man who was habitually drunk, is 
 called a drunkard ; and ears polite cannot bear the application 
 of plain names to well-known delinquencies. 
 
 There is something fooUsh, but respectably foolish, in this 
 wish to shut out light which has been streaming for years over 
 these old tombs and memories. The flowers that are cast on 
 such graves cannot, however, cause us to forget the corruption 
 within and underneath. In consideration, nevertheless, of a 
 pardonable weakness, all expressions that can give pain, oi 
 which have been said to give pain, have been, in this Second 
 Edition, omitted ; and whenever a mis-statement has crept in, 
 care has been taken to amend the error. 
 

 ^3 
 
 ^^M 
 
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 I HE success of the 'Queens of Society' will have 
 pioneered the way for the ' Wits and Beaux :' with 
 whom, during the holiday time of their lives, these 
 fair ladies were so greatly associated. The ' Queens,' whether 
 all wits or not, must have been the cause of wit in others ; 
 their influence over dandyism is notorious : their power to make 
 or mar a man of fashion, almost historical. So far, a chronicle of 
 the sayings and doings of the ' Wits ' is worthy to serve as zpen- 
 dant to that of the ' Queens :' happy would it be for society if the 
 annals of the former could more closely resemble the biography 
 of the latter. But it may not be so : men are subject to 
 temptations, to failures, to delinquencies, to calamities, of which 
 women can scarcely dream, and which they can only lament 
 and pity. 
 
 Our ' Wits,' too — to separate them from the ' Beaux ' — ^were 
 men who often took an active part in the stirring events of 
 their day: they assumed to be statesmen, though, too fre- 
 quently, they were only politicians. They were brave and 
 
XXX Preface to First Edition. 
 
 loyal : indeed, in the time of the Stuarts, all the Wits were 
 Cavaliers, as well as the Beaux. One hears of no repartee 
 among Cromwell's followers ; no dash, no merriment, in Fair- 
 fax's staff; eloquence, indeed, but no wit in the Parliamen- 
 tarians ; and, in truth, in the second Charles's time, the king 
 might have headed the lists of the Wits himself — such a capital 
 man as his Majesty is known to have been for a wet evening 
 or a dull Sunday ; such a famous teller of a story — such a 
 perfect diner-out : no wonder that in his reign we had George 
 Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham of that family, ' man- 
 kind's epitome,' who had every pretension to every accom- 
 plishment combined in himself No wonder we could attract 
 De Grammont and Saint Evremond to our court ; and own, 
 somewhat to our discredit be it allowed, Rochester and Beau 
 Fielding. Every reign has had its wits, but those in Charles's 
 time were so numerous as to distinguish the era by an especial 
 brilliancy. Nor let it be supposed that these annals do not 
 contain a moral application. They show how little the spark- 
 ■ing attributes herein pourtrayed conferred happiness; how far 
 more the rare, though certainly real touches of genuine feel- 
 ing and strong affection, which appear here and there even in 
 the lives of the most thoughtless ' Wits and Beaux,' elevate 
 the character in youth, or console the spirit in age. They 
 prove how wise has been that change in society which now re- 
 pudiates the ' Wit ' as a distinct class ; and requires general in- 
 telligences as a compensation for lost repartees, or long obsolete 
 practical jokes. 
 
 ' Men are not all evil :' so in the life of George Villiers, we 
 find him kind-hearted, and free from hypocrisy. His old 
 servants — and the fact speaks in extenuation of one of our 
 wildest Wits and Beaux — loved him faithfully. De Grammont, 
 we all own, has little to redeem him except his good-nature ; 
 P.ochester's latest days were almost hallowed by his penitence. 
 
Preface to First Edition. xxxi 
 
 Chesterfield is saved by his kindness to the Irish, and his 
 affection for his son. Horace Walpole had human affections, 
 though a most inhuman pen : and Wharton was famous for his 
 good-humour. 
 
 The periods most abounding in the Wit and the Beau have, 
 of course, been those most exempt from wars, and rumours 
 of wars. The Restoration; the early period of the Augustan 
 age ; the commencement of the Hanoverian dynasty, — have 
 all been enlivened by Wits and Beaux, who came to light like 
 mushrooms after a storm of rain, as soon as the political hori- 
 zon was clear. We have Congreve, who affected to be the 
 Beau as well as the Wit ; Lord Hervey, more of the courtier 
 than the Beau — a Wit by inheritance — a peer, assisted into 
 a pre-eminent position by royal preference, and consequent 
 prestige ; and all these men were the offspring of the particular 
 state of the times in which they figured : at earlier periods, 
 they would have been deemed effeminate; in later ones, 
 absurd. 
 
 Then the scene shifts : intellect had marched forward gigan- 
 tically : the world is grown exacting, disputatious, critical, and 
 such men as Horace Walpole and Brinsley Sheridan appear ; 
 the characteristics of wit which adorned that age being well 
 diluted by the feebler talents of Selwyn and Hook. 
 
 Of these, and others, ' table traits,' and other traits, are here 
 given : brief chronicles of tkeir life's stage, over which a cur 
 tain has so long been dropped, are supplied carefully from well 
 established sources : it is with characters, not with literary 
 history, that we deai ; and do our best to make the portrai- 
 tures life-like, and to bring forward old memories, which, with- 
 out the stamp of antiquity, might be suffered to pass into 
 obscurity. 
 
 Your Wit and your Beau, be he French or English, is no 
 mediieval personage : the aristocracy of the present day rank 
 
 b 
 
xxxii Preface to First Edition. 
 
 among his immediate descendants : he is a creature of a 
 modern and an artificial age ; and with his career are 
 mingled many features of civilized life, manners, habits, and 
 traces of family history which are still, it is beheved, interesting 
 to the majority of English readers, as they have long been to 
 
 Grace and Philip Whartom 
 
 Otloier, i860. 
 
THE 
 
 WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY. 
 
 GEORGE VILLIERS, SECOND DUKE OF 
 BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 Signs of the Restoration. — Samuel Pepys in his Glory. — A Royal Company. — 
 Pepys 'ready to Weep.'— The Playmate of Charles II. — George Villiers's 
 Inheritance. — ^Two Gallant Young Noblemen. — ^The Brave Francis VilMers. 
 — ^After the Battle of Worcester. — Disguising the King. — VilUers in Hiding. 
 — He appears as a Mountebank. — Buckingham's Habits. — A Daring 
 Adventure.^Cromwell's Saintly Daughter. — ^VUliers and the Rabbi. — ^The 
 Buckingham Pictures and Estates. —York House. — Villiers returns to 
 England. — Poor Mary Fairfax. — ^Villiers in the Tower. — ^Abraham Cowley, 
 the Poet. — The Greatest Ornament of Whitehall. — Buckingham's Wit and 
 Beauty. — Flecknoe's Opinion of Him. — His Duel with the Earl of Shrews- 
 bury. — Villiers as a Poet. — ^As a Dramatist. — ^A Fearful Censure ! — ^ViUiers's 
 Influence in Parliament. — ^A Scene in the Lords. — ^The Duke of Ormond 
 in Danger. — Colonel Blood's Outrages. — Wallingford House and Ham 
 House. — 'Madame Ellen.' — ^The Cabal. — ^ViUiers again in the Tower. — ^A 
 Change. — ^The Duke of York's Theatre. — Buckingham and the Princess of 
 Orange. — His last Hours. — HisRehgion. — Death of Villiers. — The Duchess 
 of Buckingham. 
 
 AMUEL PEPYS, the weather-glass of his time, hails 
 the first glimpse of the Restoration of Charles IL 
 in his usual quaint terms and vulgar sycophancy. 
 ' To Westminster Hall,' says he; 'where I heard how the 
 Parliament had this day dissolved themselves, and did pass 
 very cheerfully through the Hall, and the Speaker without his 
 mace. The whole Hall was joyful thereat, as well as them- 
 selves ; and now they begin to talk loud of the king.' And 
 the evening was closed, he further tells us, with a large bonfire 
 in the Exchange, and people called out, ' God bless King 
 Charles !' 
 This was in March 1660; and during that spring Pepys was 
 
 I 
 
2 Signs of the Restoration. 
 
 noting down how he did not think it possible that my 'Lord 
 Protector,' Richard Cromwell, should come into power again; 
 how there were great hopes of the king's arrival ; how Monk, 
 the Restorer, was feasted at Mercers' Hall (Pepys's own 
 especial) ; how it was resolved that a treaty be offered to the 
 king, privately ; how he resolved to go to sea with ' my lord :' 
 and how, while they lay at Gravesend, the great affair which 
 brought back Charles Stuart was virtually accomplished. Then^ 
 with various parentheses, inimitable in their way, Pepys carries 
 on his narative. He has left his father's ' cutting-room ' to 
 take care of itself; and finds his cabin little, though his bed is 
 convenient, but is certain, as he rides at anchor with ' my lord,' 
 in the ship, that the king ' must of necessity come in,' and the 
 vessel sails round and anchors in Lee Roads. ' To the castles 
 about Deal, where our fleet' (our fleet, the saucy son of a 
 tailor !) 'lay and anchored ; great was the shoot of guns from 
 the castles, and ships, and our answers.' Glorious Samuel ! in 
 his element, to be" sure. 
 
 Then the wind grew high : he began to be ' dizzy, and 
 squeamish ;' nevertheless employed ' Lord's Day ' in looking 
 through the lieutenant's glass at two good merchantmen, and 
 the women in them ; ' being pretty handsome ;' then in the 
 afternoon he first saw Calais, and was pleased, though it was at 
 a great distance. All eyes were looking across the Channel 
 just then — for the king was at Flushing; and, though the 
 ' Fanatiques ' still held their heads up high, and_ the Cavaliers 
 also talked high on the other side, the cause that Pepys was 
 bound to, still gained ground. 
 
 Then 'they begin to speak freely of King Charles;' 
 churches in the City, Samuel declares, were setting up his 
 arms ; merchant-ships — more important in those days — ^were 
 hanging out his colours. He hears, too, how the Mercers' 
 Company were making a statue of his gracious Majesty to 
 set up in the Exchange. Ah ! Pepys's heart is merry : he has 
 forty shillings (some shabby perquisite) given him by Captain 
 Cowes of the 'Paragon;' and 'my lord ' in the evening 'falls 
 to singing' a song upon the Rump to the tune of tlie 
 ' Blacksmith.' 
 
Samuel Pepys in his Glory. 3 
 
 The hopes of the Cavalier party are hourly increasing, and 
 those of Pepys we may be sure also ; for Pirn, the tailor, 
 spends a morning in his cabin ' putting a great many ribbons 
 to a sail.' And the king is to be brought over suddenly, ' my 
 lord' tells him: and indeed it looks like it, for the, sailors are 
 drinking Charles's health in the streets of Deal, on their knees; 
 ' which, methinks,' says Pepys, ' is a little too much ;' and 
 ' methinks ' so, worthy Master Pepys, also. 
 
 Then how the news of the Parliamentary vote of the king's 
 declaration was received ! Pepys becomes eloquent. 
 
 ' He that can fancy a fleet (like ours) in her pride, with 
 pendants loose, guns roaring, caps flying, and the loud " Vive 
 le Roi !" echoed from one ship's company to another ; he, and 
 he only, can apprehend the joy this enclosed vote was received 
 with, or the blessing he thought himself possessed of that 
 bore it.' 
 
 Next, orders come for ' my lord ' to sail forthwith to the 
 king ; and the painters and tailors set to work, Pepys super- 
 intending, 'cutting out some pieces of yellow cloth in the 
 fashion of a crown and C. R. ; and putting it upon a fine 
 sheet ' — and that is to supersede the States' arms, and is 
 finished and set up. And the next day, on May 14, the 
 Hague is seen plainly by us, ' my lord going up in his night- 
 gown into the cuddy.' 
 
 And then they land at the Hague ; some ' nasty Dutch- 
 men' come on board to offer their boats, and get money, 
 which Pepys does not like ; and in time they find themselves 
 in the Hague, ' a most neat place in all respects :' salute the 
 Queen of Bohemia and the Prince of Orange — -afterwards 
 William III. — and find at their place of supper nothing but a 
 ' sallet ' and two or three bones of mutton provided for ten 
 of us, ' which was very strange. Nevertheless, on they sail, 
 having returned to the fleet, to Schevelling : and, on the 23rd 
 of the month, go to meet the king; who, 'on getting into the 
 boat, did kiss my lord with much affection.' And ' extraor- 
 dinary press of good company,' and great mirth all day, 
 announced the Restoration. Nevertheless Charles's clothes 
 
4 A Royal Company, 
 
 had not been, till this time, Master Pepys is assured, worth 
 forty shillings — and he, as a connoisseur, was scandalized at 
 the fact. 
 
 And now, before we proceed, let us ask who worthy Samuel 
 Pepys was, that he should pass such stringent comments on 
 men and manners ? His origin was lowly, although his family 
 ancient ; his father having followed, until the Restoration, the 
 calling of a tailor. Pepys, vulgar as he was, had nevertheless 
 received an university education ; first entering Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, as a sizar. To our wonder we find him marrying 
 furtively and independently ; and his wife, at fifteen, was glad 
 with her husband to take up an abode in the house of a 
 relative, Sir Edward Montagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, the 
 'my lord' undei whose shadow Samuel Pepys dwelt in rever- 
 ence. By this nobleman's influence Pepys for ever left the 
 ' cutting-room ;' he acted first as secretary, (always as toad- 
 eater, one would fancy), then became a clerk in the Admiralty ; 
 and as such went, after the Restoration, to live in Seething 
 Lane, in the parish of St. Olave, Hart Street — and in St. Olave 
 his mortal part was ultimately deposited. 
 
 So much for Pepys. See him now, in his full-buttoned wig, 
 and best cambric neckerchief, looking out for the king and his 
 suit, who are coming on board the ' Nazeby.' 
 
 ' Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the linning 
 stockings on, and wide canons that I bought the other day 
 at the Hague.' So began he the day. ' All day nothing but 
 lords and persons of honour on board, that we were exceeding 
 full. Dined in great deal of state, the royalle company by 
 themselves in the coache, which was a blessed sight to see.' 
 This royal company consisted of Charles, the Dukes of York 
 and Gloucester, his brothers, the Queen of Bohemia, the Prin- 
 cess Royal, the Prince of Orange, afterwards William IH. — all 
 of whose hands Pepys kissed, after dinner. The King and 
 Duke of York changed the names of the ships. The 'Rumpers,' 
 as Pepys calls the Parliamentarians, had given one the name 
 of the ' Nazeby ;' and that was now christened the ' Charles :' 
 • Ricliard ' was changed into ' James.' The ' Speaker ' into 
 ' Mary,' the ' Lambert,' was ' Henrietta,' and so on. How 
 
Pepys ' Ready to Weep' t, 
 
 merry the king must have been whilst he thus turned the 
 Roundheads, as it were, off the ocean ; and how he walked 
 here and there, up and down, (quite contrary to what Samuel 
 Pepys ' expected,') and fell into discourse of his escape from 
 Worcester, and made Samuel ' ready to weep ' to hear of his 
 travelling four days and three nights on foot, up to his knees 
 in dirt, with ' nothing but a green coat and a pair of breeches 
 on,' (worse and worse, thought Pepys,) and a pair of country 
 shoes that made his feet sore ; and how, at one place he wasi 
 made to drink by the servants, to show he was not a Rouna 
 head ; and how, at another place — and Charles, the best teller 
 of a story in his own dominions, may here have softened his 
 tone — tlie master of the house, an innkeeper, as the king was 
 standing by the fire, witli his hands on the back of a chair, 
 kneeled down and kissed his hand ' privately,' saying he coulrf 
 not ask him who he was, but bid ' God blesB him, where he 
 was going !' 
 
 Then, rallying after this touch of pathos, Charles took hi* 
 hearers over to Fecamp, in France— thence to Rouen, where, 
 he said, in his easy, irresistible way, ' I looked so poor tha» 
 the people went into the rooms before I went away, to see if I 
 had not stolen something or other.' 
 
 With what reverence and sympathy did our Peyys listen ; bu . 
 he was forced to hurry off to get Lord Berkeley a bed; and 
 with ' much ado ' (as one may believe) he did get 'him to 
 bed with My Lord Middlesex;' so, after seeing these two 
 peers of the realm in that dignified predicament — two in a 
 bed — ' to my cabin again,' where the company were still talk- 
 ing of the king's difficulties, and how his Majesty was fain to 
 eat a piece of bread and cheese out of -a poor body's pocket ; 
 and, at a Catholic house, how he lay a good while ' in the 
 Priest's Hole, for privacy.' 
 
 In all these hairbreadth escapes — of which the king spoke 
 with infinite humour and good feeling — one name was per- 
 petually introduced : — George— George Villieis, Villers, as 
 the ro)'al narrator called him ; for the name was so pronounced 
 farinerly. And wnM lie might ; for George Villiers had been 
 liis playmate, classfdlow, nay, bedfellow sometimes, in priests' 
 
6 The Playmate of Charles II. 
 
 holes ; tneir names, their haunts, their hearts, were all assimj 
 lated; and misfortune had bound them closely to each other. 
 To George Villiers let us now return ; he is waiting for his 
 royal master on the other side of the Channel — in England. 
 And a strange character have we to deal with : — 
 
 ' A man so various, that he seemed to be 
 Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
 Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
 Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; 
 But, in the course of one revolving moon, 
 Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.'* 
 
 Such was George Villiers : the Alcibiades of that age. Let 
 us trace one of the most romantic, and brilliant, and unsatis 
 factory lives that has ever been written. 
 
 George Villiers was bom at Wallingford House, in the parish 
 of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, on the 30th January, 1627. The 
 Admiralty now stands on the site of the mansion in which he 
 first saw the light. His father was George Villiers, the fa- 
 vourite of James I. and of Charles I. ; his mother, the Lady 
 Katherine Manners, daughter and heiress of Francis, Earl of 
 Rutland. Scarcely was he a year old, when the assassination 
 of his father, by Felton, threw the affairs of his family into 
 confusion. His mother, after the Duke of Buckingham's 
 death, gave birth to a son, Francis ; who was subsequently, 
 savagely killed by the Roundheads, near Kingston. Then the 
 Duchess of Buckingham very shortly married again, and uniting 
 herself to Randolph Macdonald, Earl of Antrim, became a 
 rigid Catholic. She was therefore lost to her children, or 
 rather, they were lost to her ; for King Charles I., who had 
 promised to be a ' husband to her, and a father to her children,' 
 removed them from her charge, and educated them with the 
 royal princes. 
 
 The youthful peer soon gave indications of genius ; and all 
 that a careful education could do, was directed to improve his 
 natural capacity under private tutors. He went to Cambridge; 
 and thence, under the care of a preceptor named Aylesbury, 
 travelled into France. He was accompanied by his young. 
 
 * Diyden. 
 
George Villiers's Inheritance. 9 
 
 handsome, fine-spirited brother, Francis ; and this was the sun- 
 shine of his life. His father had indeed left him, as his biogra- 
 pher Brian Fairfax expresses it, 'the greatest name in England ; 
 his mother, the greatest estate of any subject.' With this in- 
 heritance there had also descended to him the wonderful beauty, 
 the matchless grace, of his ill-fated father. Great abilities, cou- 
 rage, fascination of manners, were also his \ but he had not 
 been endowed with firmness of character, and was at once 
 energetic and versatile. Even at this age, the qualities which 
 became his ruin were clearly discoverable. 
 
 George Villiers was recalled to England by the troubles which 
 drove the king to Oxford, and which converted that academical 
 city into a garrison, its under-graduates into soldiers, its ancient 
 halls into barrack-rooms. Villiers was on this occasion entered 
 at Christ Church : the youth's best feelings were aroused, and 
 his loyalty was engaged to one to whom his father owed so 
 much. He was now a young man of twenty-one years of age 
 — able to act for himself; and he went heart and soul into the 
 cause of his sovereign. Never was there a gayer, a more pre- 
 possessing Cavalier. He could charm even a Roundhead. 
 The harsh and Presbyterian-minded Bishop Burnet, has told us 
 that ' he was a man of a noble presence ; had a great liveliness 
 of wit, and a peculiar faculty of turning everything into ridicule, 
 with bold figures and natural descriptions.' How invaluable 
 he must have been in the Common-rooms at Oxford, then turned 
 into guard-rooms, his eye upon some unlucky volunteer Don, 
 who had put off his clerkly costume for a buff jacket, and could 
 not manage his drill. Irresistible as his exterior is declared to 
 have been, the original mind of Villiers was even far more in- 
 fluential. De Grammont tells us, ' he was extremely handsome, 
 but still thought himself much more so than he really was ; 
 although he had a great deal of discernment, yet his vanities 
 made him mistake some civihties as intended for his person 
 which were only bestowed on his wit and drollery.' 
 
 But this very vanity, so unpleasant in an old man, is only 
 amusing in a younger wit. Whilst thus a gallant of the court 
 and camp, the young nobleman proved himself to be no less 
 brave than witty. Juvenile as he was, with a brother still 
 
8 Two Gallant Young Noblemen. 
 
 younger, they fought on the royalist side at Lichfield, in the 
 storming of the Cathedral Close. For thus allowing their lives 
 to be endangered, their mother blamed Lord Gerard, one of the 
 Duke's guardians ; whilst the Parliament seized the pretext of 
 confiscating their estates, which were afterwards returned to 
 them, on account of their being under age at the time of con- 
 fiscation. The youths were then placed under the care of the 
 Earl of Northumberland, by whose permission they travelled in 
 France and Italy, where they appeared — their estates having 
 been restored — ^with princely magnificence. Nevertheless, on 
 liearing of the imprisonment of Charles I. in tlie Isle of Wight, 
 the gallant youths returned to England and joined the army 
 under the Earl of Holland, who was defeated near Nonsuch, in 
 Surrey. 
 
 A sad episode in the annals of these eventful times is pre- 
 sented in the fate of the handsome, brave Francis Villiers. His 
 murder, for one can call it by no other name, shows how keenly 
 the personal feelings of the Roundheads were engaged in this 
 national quarrel. Under most circumstances. Englishmen would 
 have spared the youth, and respected the gallantry of the free 
 young soldier, who, planting himself against an oak-tree which 
 grew in the road, refused to ask for quarter, but defended him- 
 self against several assailants. But the name of Villiers was 
 hateful in Puritan ears. ' Hew them down, root and branch I' 
 was the sentiment that actuated the soldiery. His very loveli- 
 ness exasperated their vengeance. At last, ' with nine wounds 
 on his beautiful face and body,' says Fairfax, ' he was slain.' 
 ' The oak-tree,' writes the devoted servant, ' is his monument,' 
 and the letters of F. V. were cut in it in his day. His body 
 was conveyed by water to Vork House, and was entombed with 
 that of his father, in the Chapel of Henry VII. , 
 
 His brother fled towards St. Neot's, where he encountered a 
 strange kind of peril. Tobias Rustat attended him ; and was 
 with him in the rising in Kent for King Charles I., wherein the 
 Duke was engaged ; and they, being put to the flight, the Duke's 
 helmet, by a brush under a tree, was turned upon his back, and 
 tied so fast with a string under his throat, ' that without the pre- 
 
After the Battle of Worcester. ^ 
 
 sent help of T. R.,' writes Fairfax, 'it had undoubtedly choked 
 him, as I have credibly heard.'* 
 
 Whilst at St. Neot's, the house in which Villiers had taken 
 refuge was surrounded with soldiers. He had a stout heart, and 
 a dexterous hand ; he took his resolution ; rushed out upon his 
 foes, killed the officer in command, galloped off and joined the 
 Prince in the Downs. 
 
 The sad story of Charles I. was played out ; but Villiers re- 
 mained stanch, and was permitted to return and to accompany 
 Prince Charles into Scotland. Then came the battle of Wor- 
 cester in 1651 : there Charles II. showed himself a worthy de- 
 scendant of Jamt.s IV. of Scotland. He resolved to conquer 
 or die : with desperate gallantry the English Cavaliers and the 
 Scotch Highlanders seconded the monarch's valiant onslaught on 
 Cromwell's horse, and the invincible Life Guards were almost 
 driven back by the shock. But they were not seconded; 
 Charles 11. had his horse twice shot under him, but, nothing 
 daunted, he was the last to tear himself away from the field, and 
 then only upon the solicitations of his friends. 
 
 Charles retired to Kidderminster that evening. The Duke 
 of Buckingham, the gallant Lord Derby, Wilmot, afterwards 
 Earl of Rochester, and some others, rode near him. They were 
 followed by a small body of horse. Disconsolately they rode 
 on northwards, a faithful band of sixty being resolved to escort 
 his Majesty to Scotland. At length they halted on Kinver 
 Heath, near Kidderminster : their guide having lost the way. 
 In this extremity Lord Derby said that he had been received 
 kindly at an old house in a secluded woody country, between 
 Tong Castle and Brewood, on the borders of Staifordshire. It 
 was named ' Boscobel,' he said ; and that word has henceforth 
 conjured up to the mind's eye the remembrance of a band of 
 tired heroes, riding through woody glades to an ancient house, 
 where shelter was given to the woni-out horses and scarcely less 
 harassed riders. 
 
 * The day after the battle at Kingston, the Duke's estates were confiscated. 
 (8th July, 1648.) — Nichol's History of Leicestershire, iii. 213 ; who also says that 
 the Duke offered marriage to one of the daughters of Cromwell, but was re- 
 fused. He went abroad in 1648, but returned with Charles II. to Scotland in 
 1650, and again escaped to France after the battle of Worcester, 1651 The sale 
 of the pictures would seem to have commenced during his first exile. 
 
\0 Disguising the King. 
 
 But not so rapidly did they in reality proceed. A Catholic 
 family, named Giffard, were living at White-Ladies, about 
 twenty six miles from Worcester. This was only about half a 
 mile from Boscobel : it had been a convent of Cistercian nuns, 
 whose long white cloaks of old had once been seen, ghost-like, 
 amid forest glades or on hillock green. The White-Ladies had 
 other memories to grace it besides those of holy vestals, or of 
 unholy Cavaliers. From the time of the Tudors, a respectable 
 family named Somers had owned the White-Ladies, and inha- 
 bited it since its white-garbed tenants had been turned out, and 
 the place secularized. ' Somers's House,' as it was called, 
 (though more happily, the old name has been restored,) had 
 received Queen Elizabeth on her progress. The richly culti- 
 vated old conventual gardens had supplied the Queen with 
 some famous pears, and, in the fulness of her approval of the 
 fmit, she had added them to the City arms. At that time one 
 of these vaunted pear-trees stood securely in the market-place of 
 Worcester. 
 
 At the White-Ladies, Charles rested for half an hour ; and 
 here he left his garters, waistcoat, and other garments, to avoid 
 discovery, ere he proceeded. They were long kept as relics. 
 
 The mother of Lord Somers had been placed in this old 
 house for security, for she was on the eve of giving birth to the 
 future statesman, who was born in that sanctuary just at this 
 time. His father at that very moment commanded a troop of 
 horse in Cromwell's army, so that the risk the Cavaliers ran was 
 imminent. The King's horse was led into the hall. Day was 
 dawning ; and the Cavaliers, as they entered the old conventual 
 tenement, and saw the sunbeams on its walls, perceived their 
 peril. A family of servants nained Penderell held various offices 
 there, and at Boscobel. William took care of Boscobel, 
 George was a servant at White-Ladies ; Humphrey was the 
 miller to that house , Richard lived close by, at Hebbal 
 Grange. He and William were called into the royal pre- 
 sence. Lord Derby then said to them, ' This is the King ; 
 have a care of him, and preserve him as thou didst me.' 
 
 Then the attendant courtiers began undressing the King. 
 They took off his buff-coat, and put on him a ' noggon coarse 
 
ViHiers in Hiding. 1 1 
 
 shirt,' and a green suit and another doublet — Richard Pende- 
 rell's woodman's dress. Lord Wilmot cut his sovereign's haii 
 with a knife, but Richard Penderell took up his shears and 
 finished the work, ' Bum it,' said the king ; but Richard kept 
 the sacred locks. Then Charles covered his dark face with 
 soot. Could anything have taken away the expression of his 
 half-sleepy, half-merry eyes ? 
 
 They departed, and half an hour afterwards Colonel Ashen- 
 hurst, with a troop of Roundhead horse, rode up to the White- 
 Ladies. The King, meantime, had been conducted by Richard 
 Penderell into a coppice-wood, with a bill-hook in his hands for 
 defence and disguise. But his followers were overtaken near 
 Newport ; and here Buckingham, with Lords Talbot and Levis- 
 ton, escaped ; and henceforth, until Charles's wanderings were 
 transfeiTed from England to France, George Villiers was sepa- 
 rated from the Prince. Accompanied by the Earls of Derby 
 and Lauderdale, and by Lord Talbot, he proceeded northwards, 
 in hopes of joining General Leslie and the Scotch horse. But 
 their hopes were soon dashed : attacked by a body of Round- 
 heads, Buckingham and Lord Leviston were compelled to leave 
 the high road, to alight from their horses, and to make their way 
 to Bloore Park, near Newport, where Villiers found a shelter. 
 He was soon, however, necessitated to depart : he put on a 
 labourer's dress ; he deposited his George, a gift from Henrietta 
 Maria, with a companion, and set off for Billstrop, in Notting- 
 hamshire, one Matthews, a carpenter, acting as his guide ; at 
 Billstrop he was welcomed by Mr. Hawley, a Cavalier ; and 
 from that place he went to Brookesby, in Leicestershire, the 
 original seat of the Villiers family, and the birthplace of his 
 father. Here he was received by Lady Villiers — the widow, 
 probably, of his father's brother, Sir William Villiers, one of 
 those contented country squires who not only sought no dis- 
 tinction, but scarcely thanked James I. when he made him a 
 baronet. Here might the hunted refugee see, on the open bat- 
 tlements of the church, the shields on which were exhibited 
 united quarterings of his father's family with those of his mo- 
 ther ; here, listen to old tales about his grandfather, good Sir 
 George, who married a serving-woman in his deceased wife's 
 
12 He Appears as a Mountebank. 
 
 kitcnen ;* and that serving-woman became the leader of fashions 
 in the court of James. Here he might ponder on the vicissitudes 
 which marked the destiny of the house of Villiers, and wondei 
 what should come next. 
 
 That the spirit of adventure was strong within him, is shown 
 by his daring to go up to London, and disguising himself as a 
 mountebank. He had a coat made, called a 'Jack Pudding 
 Coat :' a little hat was stuck on his head, with a fox's tail in it, 
 and cocks' feathers here and there. A wizard's mask one day, 
 a daubing of flour another, completed the disguise it was then 
 so usual to assume : witness the long traffic held at Exeter 
 Change by the Duchess of Tyrconnel, Francis Jennings, in a 
 white mask, selling laces, and French gew-gaws, a trader to ail 
 appearance, but really carrying on political intrigues ; every one 
 went to chat with the 'White Milliner,' as she was called, 
 during the reign of William and Mary. The Duke next erected 
 a stage at Charing Cross— in the very face of the stem Rum- 
 pers, who, with long faces, rode past the sinful man each day 
 as they came ambling up from the Parliament House. A band 
 of puppet-players and violins set up their shows ; and music 
 covers a multitude of incongruities. The ballad was then the 
 great vehicle of personal attack, and Villiers's dawning taste 
 for poetry was shown in the ditties which he now composed, 
 and in which he sometimes assisted vocally. Whilst all the 
 other Cavaliers were forced to fly, he thus bearded his enemies 
 in their very homes : sometimes he talked to them face to face, 
 and kept the sanctimonious citizens in talk, till they found 
 themselves sinfully disposed to laugh. But this vagrant life 
 had serious evils : it broke down all the restraints which civilised 
 society naturally, and beneficially, imposes. The Duke of 
 Buckingham, Butler, the author of Hudibras, writes, 'rises, 
 eats, goes to bed by the Julian account, long after all others 
 that go by the new style, and keeps the. same hours with owls 
 and the Antipodes. He is a great observer of the Tartar cus- 
 
 * Sir George Villiers's second wife was Mary, daughter of Antony Beaumont, 
 Esq., of Glenfield, (Nichols's' Leicestershire, iii. 193,) who was sonof Wm. Beau- 
 mont, Esq., of Cole Orton. She afterwards was married successively to Sii 
 Wm. Rayner and Sir Thomas Compton, and was create.: Counttas of Bucking; 
 bam in t6i8. 
 
Buckingham! s Habits. i ^ 
 
 toms, and never eats till the great cham, havin 'lined, makes 
 proclamation that all the world may go to dim "r. He does 
 not dwell in his house, but haunts it like an e'-il spirit, that 
 walks all night, to disturb the family, and neve- appears by 
 day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and 
 loses his time as men do their ways in the dark : and as blind 
 men are led by their dogs, so he is governed by some mean 
 servant or other that relates to his pleasures. He is as incon- 
 stant as the moon which he lives under ; and although he doe; 
 nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great i 
 stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world. Kis mind 
 entertains all things that come and go ; but like guests and 
 strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long. This lays 
 him open to all cheats, quacks, and impostors, who apply to 
 every particular humour while it lasts, and afterwards vanish. 
 He deforms nature, while he intends to adorn her, like Indians 
 that hang jewels in their lips and noses. His ears are perpe- 
 tually drilling with a fiddlestick, and endures pleasures with less 
 patience than other men do their pains.' 
 
 The more effectually to support his character as a mounte 
 bank, Villiers sold mithridate and galbanum plasters : tho> 
 sands of spectators and customers thronged every day to se 
 and hear him. Possibly many guessed that beneath all th< 
 fantastic exterior some ulterior project was concealed; yet b 
 remained untouched by the City Guards. Well did Dryde- 
 describe him : — 
 
 'Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
 Beside ten thousand freaks that died in thinldng. 
 Blest madman, who could every hour employ 
 With something new to wish or to enjoy.' 
 
 His elder sister. Lady Mary Villiers, had married the Duke 
 of Richmond, one of the loyal adherents of Charles I. The 
 duke was, therefore, in durance at Windsor, whilst the duchess 
 was to be placed under strict surveillance at Whitehall. 
 
 Villiers resolved to see her. Hearing that she was to pass 
 into Whitehall on a certain day, he set up his stage where she 
 could not fail to perceive him. He had something important 
 to say to her. As she drew near, he cried out to the mob tha» 
 
14 CromwelPs Saintly Daughter. 
 
 he would give them a song on the Duchess of Richmond and 
 the Duke of Buckingham : nothing could be more acceptable. 
 ' The mob,' it is related, ' stopped the coach and the duchess 
 . . . Nay, so outrageous were the mob, that they forced the 
 duchess, who was then the handsomest woman in England, to 
 sit in the boot of the coach, and to hear him sing all his imper- 
 tinent songs. Having left off singing, he told them it was no 
 more than reason that he should present the duchess with some 
 of the songs. So he alighted from his stage, covered all over 
 with papers and ridiculous little pictures. Having come to the 
 coach, he took off a black piece of taffeta, which he always 
 wore over one of his eyes, when his sister discovered imme- 
 diately who he was, yet had so much presence of mind as not 
 to give the least .sign of mistrust; nay, she gave him some very 
 opprobrious language, but was very eager at snatching the 
 papers he threw into her coach. Among them was a packet of 
 letters, which she had no sooner got but she went forward, the 
 duke, at the head of the mob, attending and hallooing her a 
 good way out of the town.' 
 
 A still more daring adventure was contemplated also by this 
 young, irresistible duke. Bridget Cromwell, the eldest daughter 
 of Oliver, was, at that time, a bride of twenty-six years of age ; 
 having married, in 1647, the saintly Henry Ireton, Lord Deputy 
 of Ireland. Bridget was the pattern heroine of the ' unco giiid,' 
 the quintessence of all propriety ; the impersonation of sanctity ; 
 an ultra republican, who scarcely accorded to her father the 
 modest title of Protector. She was esteemed by her party a 
 ' personage of sublime growth :' ' humbled, not exalted,' accord- 
 ing to Mrs. Hutchinson, by her elevation : ' nevertheless,' says 
 that excellent lady, ' as my Lady Ireton was walking in the St. 
 James's Park, the Lady Lambert, as proud as her husband, 
 came by where she was, and as the present princess always 
 hath precedency of the relict of the dead, so she put by my 
 Lady Ireton, who, notwithstanding her piety and humility, was 
 a little grieved at the affront.' 
 
 After this anecdote one cannot give much credence to this 
 iady's humility : Bridget was, however, a woman of powerful 
 intellect, weakened by her extreme, and, to use a now common 
 
VILI.IERS IN DISGUISE— THE MEETING WITH HIS SISTER. 
 
Villiers and the Rabbi. 1 5 
 
 term, croichety opinions. Like most esprits forts, she was ea.sily 
 imposed upon. One day this paragon saw a mountebank 
 dancing on a stage in the most exquisite style. His fine shape, 
 too, caught the attention of one who assumed to be above all 
 folly. It is sometimes fatal to one's peace to look out of a 
 window; no one knows what sights may rivet or displease. 
 Mistress Ireton was sitting at her window unconscious that any 
 one with the hated and malignant name of 'Villiers' was before 
 her. After some unholy admiration, she sent to speak to the 
 mummer. The duke scarcely knew whether to trust himself in the 
 power of the bloodthirsty Ireton's bride or not — yet his courage 
 — ^his love of sport — prevailed. He visited her that evening : no 
 longer, however, in his jack-pudding coat, but in a rich suit, 
 disguised with a cloak over it. He wore still a plaster over one 
 eye, and was much disposed to take it off, but prudence for- 
 bade ; and thus he stood in the presence of the prim and 
 saintly Bridget Ireton. The particulars of the interview rest on 
 his statement, and they must not, therefore, be accepted im- 
 plicitly. Mistress Ireton is said to have made advances to the 
 handsome incognito. What a triumph to a man like Villiers, 
 to have intrigued with my Lord Protector's sanctified daughter ! 
 But she inspired him with disgust. He saw in her the pre- 
 sumption and hypocrisy of her father ; he hated her as Crom- 
 well's daughter and Ireton's wife. He told her, therefore, that 
 he was a Jew, and could not by his laws become the paramour 
 of a Christian woman. The saintly Bridget stood amazed ; she 
 had imprudently let him into some of the most important 
 secrets of her party. A Jew ! It was dreadful 1 But how 
 could a person of that persuasion be so strict, so strait-laced ? 
 She probably entertained all the horror of Jews which the Puri- 
 tanical party cherished as a virtue ; forgetting the lessons of 
 toleration and liberality inculcated by Holy Writ. She sent, 
 however, for a certain Jewish Rabbi to converse with the 
 stranger. What was the Duke of Buckingham's surprise, on 
 visiting her one evening, to see the learned doctor armed at all 
 points with the Talmud, and thirsting for dispute, by the side 
 of the saintly Bridget. He could noways meet such a body of 
 controversy J but thought it best forthwith to set off for the 
 
1 6 2 lie Buckingham Pictures and Estate. 
 
 Downs. Before he departed he wrote, however, to Mistress 
 Ireton, on the plea that she might wish to know to what tribe of 
 Jews he belonged. So he sent her a note written with all his 
 native wit and point.* 
 
 Buckingham now experienced all the miseries that a man of 
 expensive pleasures with a sequestrated estate is likely to 
 endure. One friend remained to watch over his interests in 
 England. This was John Traylman, a servant of his late 
 father's, who was left to guard the collection of pictures made 
 by the late duke, and deposited in York House. That collec- 
 tion was, in the opinion of competent judges, the third in point 
 of value in England, being only inferior to those of Charles I. 
 and the Earl of Arundel. 
 
 It had been bought, with immense expense, partly by the 
 duke's agents in Italy, the Mantua Gallery suppl)dng a great 
 portion — ^partly in France — ^partly in Flanders ; and to Flanders 
 1 great portion was destined now to return. Secretly and labo- 
 riously did old Traylman pack up and send off these treasures 
 to Antwerp, where now the gay youth whom the aged domestic 
 had known from a child was in want and exile. The pictures 
 were eagerly bought by a foreign collector named Duart. The 
 proceeds gave poor Villiers bread; but the noble works of 
 Titian and Leonardo da Vinci, and others, were lost for ever to 
 England. 
 
 It must have been very irritating to Villiers to know that 
 whilst he just existed abroad, the great estates enjoyed by his 
 father were being subjected to pillage by Cromwell's soldiers, 
 or sold for pitiful sums by the Commissioners appointed by 
 the Parliament to break up and annihilate many of the old pro- 
 perties in England. Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the stately seat on 
 which the first duke had lavished thousands, had been taken 
 by the Roundheads. It was so large, and presented so long a 
 line of buildings, that the Parliamentarians could not hold it 
 without leaving in it a great garrison and stores of ammunition. 
 It was therefore burnt, and the stables alone occupied; and 
 those even were formed into a house of unusual size. York 
 
 * This incident is taken from Madame Dunois' Memoirs, patt i. li. iks 
 
York House. 17 
 
 House was doubtless marked out for the next destructive 
 decree. There was something in the very history of this house 
 which might be supposed to excite the wrath of the Round- 
 heads. Queen Mary (whom we must not, after Miss Strick- 
 land's admirable life of her, call Bloody Queen Mary, but who 
 mil always be best known by that unpleasant title), had be- 
 stowed York House on the See of York, as a compensation for 
 York House, at Whitehall, which Henry VHI. had taken from 
 Wolsey. It had afterwards come into possession of the Keepers 
 of the Great Seal. Lord Bacon was bom in York House, his 
 father having lived there ; and the 
 
 'Greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,' 
 
 built here an aviary which cost ;^3oo. When the Duke of 
 Lennox wished to buy York House, Bacon thus, wrote to 
 him : — ' For this you will pardon me : York House is the house 
 where my father died, and where I first breathed ; and there 
 will I yield my last breath, if it so please God and the King.' 
 It did not, however, please the King that he should ; the house 
 was borrowed only by the first Duke of Buckingham from the 
 Archbishop of York, and then exchanged for another seat, on 
 the plea that the duke would want it for the reception of foreign 
 potentates, and for entertainments given to royalty. 
 
 The duke pulled it down : and the house, which was 
 erected as. a temporary structure, was so superb that even 
 Pepys, twenty years after it had been left to bats and cob- 
 webs, speaks of it in raptures, as of a place in which the great 
 duke's soul was seen in every chamber. On the walls were 
 shields on which the arms of Manners and of Villiers— pea- 
 cocks and lions— were quartered. York House was never, 
 however, finished ; but as the lover of old haunts enters 
 Buckingham Street in the Strand, he will perceive an ancient 
 water-gate, beautifully proportioned, built by Inigo Jones- 
 smoky, isolated, impaired— but still speaking volumes of re-, 
 membrance of the glories -of the assassinated duke, who had 
 purposed to build the whole house in that style. 
 
 ' Yorschaux; as he called it— York House— the French 
 ambassador had written word to his friends at home, ' is the 
 
 z 
 
1 8 Villiers Returns to England. 
 
 most riclily fitted up of any that I saw.' The galleries and 
 state rooms were graced by the display of the Roman marbles, 
 both busts and statues, which the first duke had bought from 
 Rubens ; whilst in the gardens the Cain and Abel of John ol 
 Bologna, given by Philip IV. of Spain to King Charles, ana 
 by him bestowed on the elder George Villiers, made that fair 
 pkasaunce famous. It was doomed — as were what were called 
 the ' superstitious ' pictures in the house — to destruction : 
 henceforth all was in decay and neglect. ' I went to see York 
 House and gardens,' Evelyn writes in 1655, 'belonging to 
 the former greate Buckingham, but now much mined through 
 neglect' 
 
 Traylman, doubtless, kept George Villiers the younger in 
 full possession of all that was to happen to that deserted tene- 
 ment in which the old man mourned for the departed, and 
 thought of the absent. 
 
 The intelligence which he had soon to communicate was 
 all-important. York House was to be occupied again; and 
 Cromwell and his coadjutors had bestowed it on Fairfax. 
 The blow was perhaps softened by the reflection that Fairfax 
 was a man of generous temper ; and that he had an only 
 daughter, Mary Fairfax, young, and an heiress. Though the 
 daughter of a Puritan, a sort of interest was attached, even by 
 Cavaliers, to Mary Fairfax, from her having, at five years of 
 age, followed her father through the civil wars on horseback, 
 seated before a maid-servant; and having, on her journey, 
 frequently fainted, she was so ill as to have been left in a 
 house by the roadside, her father never expecting to see her 
 again. 
 
 In reference to this young girl, then about eighteen years 
 of age, Buckingham now formed a plan. He resolved to 
 return to England disguised, to offer his hand to Mary Fair- 
 fax, and so recover his property through the influence of 
 Fairfax. He was confident of his own attractions ; and, in- 
 deed, from every account, he appears to have been one of 
 those reckless, handsome, speculative characters that often take 
 the fancy of better men than themselves. 'He had,' says 
 Burnet, 'no sort of literature, only he was drawn into chy- 
 
Poor Mary Fairfax ! 19 
 
 rnistry ; and for some years he thought he was very near the 
 finding of the philosopher's stone, which had the effect that 
 attends on all such men as he was, when they are drawn in, 
 to lay out for it. He had no principles of religion, virtue, or 
 friendship ; pleasure, frolic, or extravagant diversion, was all he 
 laid to heart. He was true to nothing ; for he was not true to 
 himself. He had no steadiness nor conduct ; he could keep 
 no secret, nor execute any design without spoiling it ; he could 
 never fix his thoughts, nor govern his estate, though then the 
 greatest in England. He was bred about the king, and for 
 many years he had a great ascendant over him ; but he spoke 
 of him to all persons with that contempt, that at last he drew 
 a lasting disgrace upon himself. And he at length ruined both 
 body and mind, fortune and reputation, equally.' 
 
 This was a sad prospect for poor Mary Fairfax, but certainly 
 if in their choice 
 
 -' Weak women go astray, 
 
 Their stars are more in fault than they,' 
 and she was less to blame in her choice than her father, who 
 ought to have advised her against the marriage. Where and 
 how they met is not known. Mary was not attractive in 
 person : she was in her youth little, brown, and thin, but 
 became a ' short fat body,' as De Grammont tells us, in her 
 early married life ; in the later period of her existence she was 
 described by the Vicomtesse de Longueville as a ' little round 
 crumpled woman, very fond of finerj- ;' and she adds that, on 
 visiting the duchess one day, she found her, though in mourn- 
 ing, in a kind of loose robe over her, all edged and laced with 
 gold. So much for a Puritan's daughter ! 
 
 To this insipid personage the duke presented himself She 
 soon liked him, and in spite of his outrageous infidelities, con- 
 tinued to like him after their marriage. 
 
 He carried his point : Mary Fairfax became his wife on the 
 6th of September, 1675, and, by the influence of Fairfax, his 
 estate, or, at all events, a portion of the revenues, about 
 ;£'4,ooo a year, it is said, were restored to him. Nevertheless, 
 it is mortifying to find that in 1682, he sold York House, in 
 which his father had taken such pride, for ^^30,000. The 
 
20 Villiers in the Tower. 
 
 house was pulled down ; streets were erected on the gardens; 
 George Street, Villiers Street, Duke Street. Buckingham Street, 
 Off Alley recall the name of the ill-starred George, first duke, 
 and of his needy, profligate son ; but the only trace of the real 
 greatness of the family importance thus swept away is in the 
 motto inscribed on the point of old Inigo's water-gate, towards 
 the street : 'Fidei coticula crux.' It is sad for all good royalists 
 to reflect that it was not the rabid Roundhead, but a degenerate 
 Cavalier, who sold and thus destroyed York House. 
 
 The marriage with Mary Fairfax, though one of interest 
 solely, was not a mesalliance: her father was connected by 
 the female side with the Earls of Rutland ; he was also a 
 man of a generous spirit, as he had shown, in handing over to 
 the Countess of Derby the rents of the Isle of Man, which 
 had been granted to him by the Parliament. In a similar 
 spirit he was not sorry to restore York House to the Duke of 
 Buckingham. 
 
 Cromwell, however, was highly exasperated by the nuptials 
 between Mary Fairfax and Villiers, which took place at Nun- 
 Appleton, near York, one of Fairfax's estates. The Protector 
 had, it is said, intended Villiers for one of his own daughters. 
 Upon what plea he acted it is not stated : he committed 
 Villiers to the Tower, where he remained until the death of 
 Oliver, and the accession of Richard Cromwell. 
 
 In vain did Fairfax solicit his release : Cromwell refused 
 it, and Villiers remained in durance until the abdication of 
 Richard Cromwell, when he was set at liberty, but not without 
 the following conditions, dated February 2ist, 1658 — 9 ;^- 
 
 'The humble petition of George Duke of Buckingham was 
 this day read. Resolved that George Duke of Buckingham, 
 now prisoner at Windsor Castle, upon his engagement upon 
 his honour at the bar of this House, and upon the engage- 
 ment of Lord Fairfax in ^^20,000 that the said duke shall 
 peaceably dernain himself for the future, and shall not join 
 with, or abet, or have any correspondence with, any of the 
 enemies of the Lord Protector, and of this Commonwealth, in 
 any of the parts beyond the sea, or within this Common- 
 wealth, shall be discharged of his imprisonment and restraint ; 
 
A braham Cowley, the Poet. 2 1 
 
 and that the Governor of Windsor Castle be required to 
 bring the Duke of Buckingham to the bar of this House on 
 Wednesday next, to engage his honour accordingly. Ordered; 
 that the security of ^^20,000 to be given by the Lord Fairfax, 
 on the behalf of the Duke of Buckingham, be taken in the 
 name of His Highness the Lord Protector. ' 
 
 During his incarceration at Windsor, Buckingham had a 
 companion, of whom many a better man might have been 
 envious : this was Abraham Cowley, an old college friend of 
 the duke's. Cowley was the son of a grocer, and owed his 
 entrance into academic life to having been a King's Scholar 
 at Westminster. One day he happened to take up from his 
 mother's parlour window a copy of Spenser's ' Faerie Queene.' 
 He eagerly perused the delightful volume, though he was then 
 only twelve years old : and this impulse being given to his 
 mind, became at fifteen a reciter of verses. His ' Poetical 
 Blossoms,' published whilst he was still at school, gave, how- 
 ever, no foretaste of his future eminence. He proceeded to 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, where his friendship with Villiers 
 was formed ; and where, perhaps, from that circumstance, 
 Cowley's predilections for the cause of the Stuarts was ripened 
 into loyalty. 
 
 No two characters could be more dissimilar than those of 
 Abraham Cowley and George Villiers. Cowley was quiet, 
 modest, sober, of a thoughtful, philosophical turn, and of an 
 affectionate nature; neither boasting of his own merits nor 
 depreciating others. He was the friend of Lucius Cary, Lord 
 Falkland ; and yet he loved, though he must have condemned, 
 George Villiers. It is not unlikely that, whilst Cowley im- 
 parted his love of poetry to Villiers, Vilhers may have inspired 
 the pensive and blameless poet with a love of that display 
 of wit then in vogue, and heightened that sense of humoui 
 which speaks forth in some of Cowley's productions. Few 
 authors suggest so many new thoughts, really his own, as 
 Cowley. ' His works,' it has been said, ' are a flower-garden 
 ran to weeds, but the flowers are numerous and brilliant, and 
 a search after them will repay the pains of a collector who is 
 not too indolent or fastidious.' 
 
22 The Greatest Ornament of Whitehall. 
 
 As Cowley and his friend passed the weary hours in 
 duranoe, many an old tale could the poet tell the peer of 
 stirring times ; for Cowley had accompanied Charles I. in 
 many a perilous journey, and had protected Queen Henrietto 
 Maria in her escape to France : through Cowley had the cor- 
 respondence of the royal pair, when separated, been carried 
 on. The poet had before suffered imprisonment for his loyalty; 
 and, to disguise his actual occupation, had obtained the 
 degree of Doctor of Medicine, and assumed the character of a 
 physician, on the strength of knowing the virtues of a few plants. 
 
 Many a laugh, doubtless, had Buckingham at the expense of 
 Dr. Cowley : however, in later days, the duke proved a true 
 friend to the poet, in helping to procure for him the lease of 
 a farm at Chertsey from the queen, and here Cowley, rich 
 upon ;^3oo a year, ended his days. 
 
 For some time after Buckingham's release, he lived quietly 
 and respectably at Nun-Appleton, with General Fairfax and 
 the vapid Mary. But the Restoration — the first dawnings of 
 which have been referred to in the commencement of this 
 biography — ruined him, body and mind. 
 
 He was made a Lord of the Bedchamber, a Member of 
 the Privy Council, and afterwards Master of the Horse,* and 
 Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire. He lived in great magnificence 
 at Wallingford House, a tenement next to York House, intended 
 to be the habitable and useful appendage to that palace. 
 
 He was henceforth, until he proved treacherous to his sove- 
 reign, the brightest ornament of Whitehall. Beauty of person 
 was hereditary : his father was styled the ' handsomest-bodied 
 man in England,' and George Villiers the younger equalled 
 George Villiers the elder in all personal accomplishments. 
 When he entered the Presence-Chamber all eyes followed 
 him; every movement was graceful and stately. Sir John 
 Reresby pronounced him ' to be the finest gentleman he ever 
 saw.' ' He was born,' Madame Dunois declared, ' for gallantry 
 and magnificence.' His wit was faultless, but his manners 
 engaging ; yet his sallies often descended into buffoonery, and 
 
 * The duke became Master of the Horse in 1688 • he paid ;^ 20.000 to the 
 Uuke of Albemarle for the post. 
 
Buckinghavi s Wd and Beauty. 23 
 
 he spared no one in his meriy moods. One evening a play 
 of Dryden's was represented. An actress had to spout forth 
 this line — 
 
 ' My wound is great because it is so small 1' 
 
 She gave it out with pathos, paused, and was theatrically dis- 
 tressed. Buckingham was seated in one of the boxes. He 
 rose, all eyes were fixed upon a face well known in all gay 
 assemblies, in a tone of burlesque he answered — 
 
 ■ Then 'twoujd be greater were it none at all.' 
 
 Instantly the audience laughed at the Duke's tone of ridicule, 
 and the poor woman was hissed off the stage. 
 
 The king himself did not escape Buckingham's shafts ; 
 whilst Lord Chancellor Clarendon fell a victim to his ridicule : 
 nothing could withstand it. There, not in that iniquitous gal- 
 lery at Whitehall, but in the king's privy chambers, Villiers 
 might be seen, in all the radiance of his matured beauty. His 
 face was long and oval, with sleepy, yet glistening eyes, over 
 which large arched eyebrows seemed to contract a brow on 
 which the curls of a massive wig (which fell almost to his 
 shoulders) hung low. His nose was long, well formed, and 
 flexible ; his lips thin and compressed, and defined, as the cus- 
 tom was, by two very short, fine, black patches of hair, looking 
 more like strips of sticking-plaster than a moustache. As he 
 made his reverence, his rich robes fell over a faultless form. 
 He was a beau to the very fold of the cambric band round his 
 throat; with long ends of the richest, closest point that was 
 ever rummaged out from a foreign nunnery to be placed on the 
 person of this sacrilegious sinner. 
 
 Behold, now, how he changes. Villiers is Villiers no longer. 
 He is Clarendon, walking solemnly to the Court of the Star 
 Chamber : a pair of bellows is hanging before him for the 
 purse ; Colonel Titus is walking with a fire shovel on his 
 shoulder, to represent a mace ; the king, himself a capital 
 mimic, is splittiiLg his sides with laughter ; the courtiers are 
 fairly in a roar. Then how he was wont to divert the king 
 with his descriptions ! ' Ipswich, for instance,' he said, ' was 
 a town without inhabitants — a river it had without water — 
 
24 Flecknois Opinion of Him. 
 
 streets without names; and it was a place where asses wore 
 boots :' alluding to the asses, when employed in rolling Lord 
 Hereford's bowling-green, having boots on their feet to prevent 
 their injuring the turf. 
 
 Flecknoe, the poet, describes the duke at this period, in 
 ' Euterpe Revived' — 
 
 The gallant'st person, and the noblest minde, 
 
 In all the world his prince could ever finde, 
 
 Or to participate his private cares, 
 
 Or bear the pubUc weight of his affairs, 
 
 Like well-built arches, stronger with their weight. 
 
 And well-built minds, the steadier with their height ; 
 
 Such was the composition and frame 
 
 O' the noble and the gallant Buckingham.' 
 
 The praise, however, even in the duke's best days, was over- 
 charged. Villiers was no ' well-built arch,' nor could Charles 
 trust to the fidelity of one so versatile for an hour. Besides, 
 the moral character of Villiers must have prevented him, even 
 in those days, from bearing ' the pubHc weight of affairs.' 
 
 A scandalous intrigue soon proved the unsoundness of Fleck- 
 noe's tribute. Amongst the most licentious beauties of the court 
 was Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, the daughter of Robert 
 Bmdenel, Earl of Cardigan, and the wife of Francis, Earl of 
 Shrewsbury : amongst many shameless women she was the 
 most shameless, and her face seems to have well expressed 
 her mind. In the round, fair visage, with its languishing eyes, 
 and full, pouting mouth, there is something voluptuous and 
 bold. The forehead is broad, but low; and the wavy hair, 
 with its tendril curls, comes down almost to the fine arched 
 eyebrows, and then, falling into masses, sets off white shoulders 
 which seem to designate an inelegant amount of embonpoint. 
 There is nothing elevated in the whole countenance, as Lely 
 has painted her, and her history is a disgrace to her age and 
 time. 
 
 She had numerous lovers (not in the refined sense of the 
 word), and, at last, took up with Thomas Killigrew. He had 
 been, like Villiers, a royalist : first a page to Charles I., next 
 a companion of Charles II., in exile. He married the fair 
 Cecilia Croft ; yet his morals were so vicious that even in the 
 Court of Venice to which he was accredited, in order to borrow 
 
His Duel xvith the Earl of Shrewsbury. 2^ 
 
 money from the merchants of that city, he was too profligate 
 to remain. He came back with Charles II., and was Master 
 of the Revels, or King's Jester, as the court considered him, 
 though without any regular appointment, during his life : the 
 butt, at once, and the satirist of Whitehall. 
 
 It was Killigrew's wit and descriptive powers which, when 
 heightened by wine, were inconceivably great, that induced 
 Villiers to select Lady Shrewsbury for the object of his admi- 
 ration. When Killigrew perceived that he was supplanted by 
 Villiers, he became frantic with rage, and poured out the bit- 
 terest invectives against the countess. The result was that, one 
 night, returning from the Duke of York's apartments a't St. 
 James's, three passes with a sword were made at him through 
 his chair, and one, of them pierced his arm. This, and other 
 occurrences, at last aroused the attention of Lord Shrewsbury, 
 wno had hitherto never doubted his wife : he challenged the 
 Duke of Buckingham ; and his infamous wife, it is said, held 
 her paramour's horse, disguised as a page. Lord Shrewsbury 
 was killed,* and the scandalous intimacy went on as before. 
 No one but the queen, no one but the Duchess of Buckingham, 
 appeared shocked at this tragedy, and no one minded their 
 remarks, or joined in their indignation : all moral sense was 
 suspended, or wholly stifled ; and Villiers gloried in his de- 
 pravity, more witty, more amusing, more fashionable than ever ; 
 and yet he seems, by the best-known and most extolled of his 
 poems, to have had some conception of what a real and worthy 
 attachment might be. 
 
 The following verses are to his ' Mistress' : — 
 
 ' What a dull- fool was I 
 
 To think so gross a lie, 
 As that I ever was in love before ! 
 I have, perhaps, known one or two, 
 
 With whom I was content to be 
 
 At that which they call keeping company. 
 But after all that they could do, 
 
 I still could be with more. 
 
 Their absence never made me shed a tear ; 
 
 And I can truly swear, 
 That, till my eyes first gazed on you, 
 
 I ne'er beheld the thing I could adore. 
 
 • The duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury took place 17th January, 1667-8. 
 
26 Villiers as a Poet. 
 
 ' A world of things must curiously be sought : 
 
 A world of things must be together brought 
 To make up charms which have the power to mcvjt. 
 Through a disc eming eye, true love ; 
 That is a mas^fr-piece above 
 
 What only looks and shape can do ; 
 
 There must be wit and judgment too, 
 Greatness of thought, and worth, which draw, 
 From the whole world, respect and awe. 
 
 ' She that would raise a noble love must find 
 Ways to beget a passion for her mind ; 
 She must be that which she to be would seem, 
 For all true love is grounded on esteem : 
 Plainness and truth gain more a generous heart 
 Than all the crooked subtleties of art. 
 She must be— what said I ? — she must he you : 
 None but yourself that miracle can do. 
 At least, I'm sure, thus much I plainly see. 
 None but yourself e'er did it upon me. 
 'Tis you alone that can my heart subdue, 
 To you alone it always shall be true.' 
 
 The next lines are also remarkable for the delicacy ana 
 happy turn of the expressions — 
 
 • Though Phillis, from prevailing charms, 
 Have forc'd my Delia from my arms, 
 Think not your conquest to maintain 
 By rigour or unjust disdain. 
 In vain, fair nymph, in vain you strive. 
 For Love doth seldom Hope survive. 
 My heart may languish for a time. 
 As all beauties in their prime 
 Have justified such cruelty. 
 By the same fate that conquered me. 
 "When age shall come, at whose command 
 Those troops of beauty must disband — 
 A rival's strength once took away. 
 What slave's so dull as to obey ? 
 But if you'll learn a noble way 
 To keep his empire from decay. 
 And there for ever fix your throne. 
 Be kind, but kind to me alone.' 
 
 Like his father, who ruined himself by building, Villiers had 
 a monomania for bricks and mortar, yet he found time to 
 write ' The Rehearsal,' a play on which Mr. Reed in his 
 ' Dramatic Biography' makes the following observation : ' It 
 is so perfect a masterpiece in its way, and so truly original, that 
 notwithstanding its prodigious success, even the task of imita- 
 tion, which most kinds of excellence have invited inferior ge 
 niuses to undertake, has appeared as too arduous to be 
 atteicpted with regard to this, which through a whole contiiry 
 
A fearful Censure. 27 
 
 stands alone, notwithstanding that the very plays it was written 
 expressly to ridicule are forgotten, and the taste it was meant 
 to expose totally exploded.' 
 
 The reverses of fortune which brought George Villiers to 
 abject misery were therefore, in a very great measure, due to 
 his own misconduct, his depravity, his waste of life, his per- 
 version of noble mental powers : yet in many respects he was 
 in advance of his age. He advocated, in the House of Lords, 
 toleration to Dissenters. He wrote a ' Short Discourse on the 
 Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion, or Worship of 
 God ;' yet, such was his inconsistency, that in spite of these 
 works, and of one styled a ' Demonstration of the Deity,' writ- 
 ten a short time before his death, he assisted Lord Rochester 
 in his atheistic poem upon ' Nothing.' 
 
 Buder, the author of Hudibras, too truly said of Villiers 
 ' that he had studied the whole body of vice;' a most fearful cen- 
 sure — a. most significant description of a bad man. ' His parts,' 
 he adds, ' are disproportionate to the whole, and like a monster, 
 he has more of some, and less of others, than he should have. 
 He has pulled down all that nature raised in him, and built 
 himself up again after a model of his own. He has dammed 
 up all those Ughts that nature made into the noblest prospects 
 of the world, and opened other little blind loopholes backward 
 by turning day into night, and night into day.' 
 
 The satiety and consequent misery produced by this terrible 
 life are ably described by Butier. And it was perhaps pardy 
 this wearied, worn-out spirit that caused VilHers to rush madly 
 into poHtics for excitement. In 1666 he asked for the office 
 of Lord President of the North ; it was refused : he became 
 disaffected, raised mutinies, and, at last, excited the indigna- 
 tion of his too-indulgent sovereign. Charles dismissed him 
 from his office, after keeping him for some time in confinement. 
 After this epoch little is heard of Buckingham but what is dis- 
 graceful. He was again restored to Whitehall, and, according 
 to Pepys, even closeted with Charles, whilst the Duke of York 
 was excluded. A certain acquaintance of the duke's remon- 
 strated with him upon the course which Charles now took in 
 Parliament. ' How often have you said to me,' this person re- 
 
28 Villiers's Influence in Parliament. 
 
 marked, ■ that the king was a weak man, unable to govern, but 
 to be governed, and that you could command him as you liked ? 
 Why do you suffer him to do these things?' 
 
 ' Why,' answered the duke, ' I do suffer him to do these things, 
 that I may hereafter the better command him.' A reply which 
 betrays the most depraved principle of action, whether towards 
 a sovereign or a friend, that can be expressed. His influence 
 was for some time supreme, yet he became the leader of the 
 opposition, and invited to his table the discontented peers, to 
 whom he satirized the court, and condemned the king's want of 
 attention to business. Whilst the theatre was ringing with 
 laughter at the inimitable character of Bayes in the ' Rehearsal,' 
 the House of Lords was listening with profound attention to 
 the eloquence that entranced their faculties, making wrong seem 
 right, for Buckingham was ever heard with attention. 
 
 Taking into account his mode of existence, ' which,' says 
 Clarendon, ' was a life by night more than by day, in all the 
 liberties that nature could desire and wit invent,' it was aston- 
 ishing how extensive an influence he had in both Houses of 
 Pailiament. ' His rank and condescension, the pleasantness of 
 his humours and conversation, and the extravagance and keen- 
 ness of his wit, unrestrained by modesty or religion, caused 
 persons of all opinions and dispositions to be fond of his com- 
 pany, and to imagine that these levities and vanities would wear 
 off with age, and that there would be enough of good left to 
 make him useful to his country, for which he pretended a won- 
 derful affection.' 
 
 But this brilliant career was soon checked. The varnish over 
 the hollow character of this extraordinary man was eventually 
 rubbed off We find the first hint of that famous coalition 
 styled the Cabal in Pepys's Diary, and henceforth the duke must 
 be regarded as a ruined man. 
 
 ' He' (Sir H. Cholmly) ' tells me that the Duke of Bucking- 
 ham his cijmes, as far as he knows, are his being of a cabal 
 with some discontented persons of the late House of Commons, 
 and opposing the desires of the king in all his matters in that 
 House ; and endeavouring to become popular, and advising 
 how the Commons' House should proceed, and how he would 
 
A Scene in the Lords. 29 
 
 order the House of Lords. And he hath been endeavouring 
 to have the king's nativity calculated ; which was done, and 
 the fellow now in the Tower about it. . . . This silly lord hath 
 provoked, by his ill carriage, the Duke of York, my Lord 
 Chancellor, and all the great persons, and therefore most likely 
 will die.' 
 
 One day, in the House of Lords, during a conference be- 
 tween the two Houses, Buckingham leaned rudely over the 
 shoulder of Henry Pierrepont Marquis of Dorchester. Lord 
 Dorchester merely removed his elbow. Then the duke asked 
 him if he was uneasy. ' Yes,' the marquis replied, adding, ' the 
 duke dared not do this if he were anywhere else.' Buckingham 
 retorted, ' Yes, he would : and he was a better man than my 
 lord marquis :' on which Dorchester told him that he lied. On 
 this Buckingham struck off Dorchester's hat, seized him by the 
 periwig, pulled it aside, and held him. The Lord Chamberlain 
 and others interposed and sent them both to the Tower. Ne- 
 vertheless, not a month afterwards, Pepys speaks of seeing the 
 duke's play of ' The Chances' acted at Whitehall. ' A good 
 play,' he condescends to say, ' I find it, and the actors most 
 good in it ; and pretty to hear Knipp sing in the play very pro- 
 perly " All night I weepe," and sung it admirably. The whole 
 play pleases me well : and most of all, the sight of many fine 
 ladies, amongst others, my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Mid- 
 dleton.' 
 
 The whole management of public affairs was, at this period, 
 intrusted to five persons, and hence the famous combination, 
 the united letters of which formed the word ' Cabal :' — Clifford, 
 Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Their repre- 
 hensible schemes, their desperate characters, rendered them the 
 opprobrium of their age, and the objects of censure to all pos- 
 terity. Whilst matters were in this state a daring outrage, which 
 spoke fearfully of the lawless state of the times, was ascribed, 
 though wrongly, to Buckingham. The Duke of Ormond, the 
 object of his inveterate hatred, was at that time Lord Lieu- 
 tenant of Ireland. Colonel Blood, — a disaffected disbanded 
 officer of the Commonwealth, who had been attainted for a 
 conspiracy in Ireland, but had escaped punishment,— came to 
 
30 The Duke of Ormond in Danger. 
 
 England, and acted as a spy for the ' Cabal,' who did not hesi- 
 tate to countenance this daring scoundrel. 
 
 His first exploit was to attack the Duke of Ormond's coach 
 one night in St. James's Street : to secure his person, bind him, 
 put him on horseback after one of his accomplices, and carry 
 him to Tyburn, where he meant to hang his grace. On their 
 way, however, Ormond, by a violent effort, threw himself on 
 the ground ; a scuffle ensued : the duke's servants came up, and 
 after receiving the fire of Blood's pistols, the duke escaped. 
 Lord Ossory, the Duke of Ormond's son, on going afterward 
 to court, met Buckingham, and addressed him in these words : — 
 
 ' My lord, I know well that you are at the bottom of this 
 late attempt on my father ; but I give you warning, if he by 
 any means come to a violent end, I shall not be at a loss to 
 know the author. I shall consider you as an assassin, and shall 
 treat you as such ; and wherever I meet you I shall pistol you, 
 though you stood behind the king's chair ; and I tell it you in 
 his majesty's presence, that you may be sure I shall not fail of 
 performance.' 
 
 Blood's next feat was to carry off from the Tower the crown 
 jewels. He was overtaken and arrested : and was then asked 
 to name his accomplices. ' No,' he replied, ' the fear of danger 
 shall never tempt me to deny guilt or to betray a friend. 
 Charles II., with undignified curiosity, wished to see the culprit. 
 On inquiring of Blood how he dared to make so bold an at- 
 tempt on the crown, the bravo answered, ' My father lost a good 
 estate fighting for the crown, and I considered it no harm to 
 recover it by the crown.' He then told his majesty how he had 
 resolved to assassinate him : how he had stood among the reeds 
 in Battersea-fields with this design ; how then, a sudden awe 
 had come over him : and Charles was weak enough to admire 
 Blood's fearless bearing and to pardon his attempt. Well might 
 the Earl of Rochester write of Charles — 
 
 ' Here lies my sovereign lord the king. 
 
 Whose word no man rehes on ; 
 Wiio never said a fooUsh thing, 
 And never did a wise one.' 
 
 Notwithstanding Blood's outrages — the sHghtest penaJtv for 
 
Walling ford House, and Ham House. 31 
 
 which in our days would have been penal servitude for life — 
 Evelyn met him, not long afterwards, at Lord Clifford's, at 
 dinner, when De Grammont and other French noblemen were 
 entertained. ' The man,' says Evelyn, ' had not only a daring, 
 but a villanous, unmerciful look, a false countenance j but very- 
 well-spoken, and dangerously insinuating.' 
 
 Early in 1662, the Duke of Buckingham had been engaged 
 in practices against the court : he had disguised deep designs 
 by affecting the mere man of pleasure. Never was there such 
 splendour as at Wallingford House — such wit and gallantry ; 
 such perfect good breeding ; such apparently openhanded hos- 
 pitality. At those splendid banquets, John Wilmot, Earl of 
 Rochester, ' a man whom the Muses were fond to inspire, but 
 ashamed to avow,' showed his ' beautiful face,' as it was called •• 
 and chimed in with that wit for which the age was famous. 
 The frequenters at Wallingford House gloried in their indeli- 
 cacy. ' One is amazed,' Horace Walpole observes, ' at hearing 
 the age of Charles II. called polite. The Puritans have af- 
 fected to call everything by a Scripture' name ; the new comers 
 affected to call everything by its right name ; 
 
 ' As if preposterously they would confess 
 A forced hypocrisy in wickedness.' 
 
 Walpole compares the age of Charles II. to that of Aristo- 
 phanes — ' which called its own grossness polite.' How bitterly 
 he decries the stale poems of the time as ' a heap of senseless 
 ribaldry ;' how truly he shows that licentiousness weakens as 
 well as depraves tlie judgment. ' When Satyrs are brought to 
 court,' he observes, ' no wonder the Graces would not trust 
 themselves there.' 
 
 The Cabal is said, however, to have been concocted, not at 
 Wallingford House, but at Ham House, near Kingston-on- 
 Thames. 
 
 In this stately old manor-house, the abode of the Tollemache 
 family, the memory of Charles II. and of his court seems to 
 linger still. Ham House was intended for the residence of 
 Henry, Prince of Wales, and was built in 16 10. It stands near 
 the river Thames ; and is flanked by noble avenues of elm and 
 of chestnut trees, down which one may almost, as it were, hear 
 
^2 ' Madame Ellen! 
 
 the king's talk with his courtiers ; see Arlington approach with 
 the well-known patch across his nose ; or spy out the lovely, 
 childish Miss Stuart and her future husband, the Duke of 
 Richmond, slipping behind into the garden, lest the jealous 
 mortified king should catch a sight of the ' conscious lovers.' 
 
 This stately structure was given by Charles II., in 1672, to 
 the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale : she, the supposed mis- 
 tress of Cromwell ; he, the cruel, hateful Lauderdale of the 
 Cabal. This detestable couple, however, furnished with massive 
 grandeur the apartments of Ham House. They had the ceil- 
 ings painted by Verrio ; the furniture was rich, and even now 
 the bellows and brushes in some of the rooms are of silver fili- 
 gree. One room is furnished with yellovir damask, still rich, 
 though faded ; the very seats on which Charles, looking around 
 him, saw Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (the infamous 
 Shaftesbury), and Lauderdale — and knew not, good easy man, 
 that he was looking on a band of traitors — are still there. 
 Nay, he even sat to Sir Peter Lely for a portrait for this very 
 place — in which, schemes for the ruin of the kingdom were 
 concocted. All, probably, was smooth and pleasing to the 
 monarch as he ranged down the fine gallery, ninety-two feet 
 long ; or sat at dinner amid his foes in that hall, surrounded 
 with an open balustrade ; or disported himself on the river's 
 green brink. Nay, one may even fancy Nell Gwynn taking a 
 day's pleasure in this then lone and ever sweet locality. We 
 hear her swearing, as she was wont to do, perchance at the dim 
 looking-glasses, her own house in Pall Mall, given her by the 
 king, having been filled up, for the comedian, entirely, ceiling 
 and all, ivith looking-glass. How bold and pretty she looked 
 in her undress ! Even Pepys — no very sound moralist, though 
 a vast hypocrite — tells us : Nelly, 'all unread^ was 'very pretty, 
 prettier far than he thought.' But to see how she was ' painted,'- 
 would, he thought, ' make a man mad.' 
 
 ' Madame Ellen,' as after her elevation, as it was termed, she 
 was called, might, since she held long a great sway over 
 
 Charles's fancy, be suffered to scamper about Ham House 
 
 where her merry laugh perhaps scandalised the now Saintly 
 Duchess of Lauderdale, — just to impose on the world ; for NeU 
 
The Cabal. 33 
 
 was regarded as the Protestant champion of the court, in oppo- 
 sition to her French rival, the Duchess of Portsmouth. 
 
 Let us suppose that she has been at Ham House, and is gone 
 oflf to Pall Mall again, where she can see her painted face in 
 every turn. The king has departed, and Killigrew, who, at all 
 events, is loyal, and the true-hearted Duke of Richmond, all 
 are away to London. In yon sanctimonious-looking closet^ 
 next to the duchess's bed-chamber, with her psalter and her 
 prayer-book on her desk, which is fixed to her great chair, and 
 that very cane which still hangs there serving as her support 
 when she comes forth from that closet, murmur and wrangle the 
 component parts of J;hat which was never mentioned without 
 fear — the Cabal. The conspirators dare not trust themselves 
 in the gallery : there is tapestry there, and we all know what 
 coverts there are for eaves-droppers and spiders in tapestried 
 walls : then the great Cardinal spiders do so click there, are so 
 like the death-watch, that Villiers, who is inveterately supersti- 
 tious, will not abide there. The hall, with its enclosing galleries, 
 and the buttery near, are manifestly unsafe. So they heard, 
 nay crouch, mutter, and concoct that fearful treachery which, 
 as far as their country is concerned, has been a thing apart in 
 our annals, in ' my Lady's' closet. Englishmen are turbulent, 
 ambitious, unscrupulous ; but the craft of Maitland, Duke ot 
 Lauderdale — the subtlety of Ashley, seem hardly conceivable 
 either in a Scot or Southron. 
 
 These meetings had their natural consequence. One leaves 
 Lauderdale, Arlington, Ashley, and Clifford, to their fate. But 
 the career of Villiers inspires more interest. He seemed born 
 for better things. Like many men of genius, he was so credu- 
 lous that the faith he pinned on one Heydon, an astrologer, 
 at this time, perhaps buoyed him up with false hopes. Be it 
 as it may, his plots now tended to open insurrection. In 1666, 
 a proclamation had been issued for his apprehension — he hav- 
 ing then absconded. On this occasion he was saved by the 
 act of one whom he had injured grossly — his wife. She ma- 
 naged to outride the serjeant-at-arms, and to warn him of his 
 danger. She had borne his infidelities, after the fashion of the 
 day, as a matter of course : jealousy was then an impertinence 
 
 3 
 
34 Villiers again in the Tower. 
 
 — constancy, a chimera ; and her husband, whatever his con- 
 duct, had ever treated her with kindness of manner ; he had 
 that charm, that attribute of his family, in perfection, and it 
 had fascinated Mary Fairfax. 
 
 He fled, and played for a year successfully the pranks of his 
 youth. At last, worn out, he talked of giving himself up to 
 justice. ' Mr. Fenn, at the table, says that he hath been taken 
 by the watch two or three times of late, at unseasonable hours, 
 but so disguised they did not know him ; and when I come 
 home, by and by, Mr. Lowther tells me that the Duke of 
 Buckingham do dine publickly this day at Wadlow's, at the Sun 
 Tavern ; and is mighty merry, and sent word to the Lieutenant 
 of the Tower, that he would come to him as soon as he dined.' 
 So Pepys states. 
 
 Whilst in the Tower — to which he was again committed — 
 . Buckingham's pardon was solicited by Lady Castlemaine ; on 
 which account the king was very angry with her ; called her 
 a meddling 'jade;' she calling him ' fool,' and saying if he was 
 not a fool he never would suffer his best subjects to be impri- 
 soned — referring to Buckingham. And not only did she ask 
 his liberty, but the restitution of his places. No wonder there 
 was discontent when such things were done, and public affairs 
 were in such a state. We must again quote the graphic, terse 
 language of Pepys : — ' It was computed that the Parliament 
 had given the king for this war only, besides all prizes, and 
 besides the ;^2oo,ooo which he was to spend of his own re- 
 venue, to guard the sea, above ^5,000,000, and odd ;^ioo,ooo; 
 which is a most prodigious sum. Sir H. Cholmly, as a true 
 English gentleman, do decry the king's expenses of his privy 
 purse, which in King James's time did not rise to above 
 ;^5,ooo a year, and in King Charles's to ;^io,ooo, do now 
 cost us above ^^100,000, besides the great charge oi the 
 monarchy, as the Duke of York has ;^ioo,ooo of it, and other 
 limbs of the royal family.' 
 
 In consequence of Lady Castlemaine's intervention, Villiers 
 was restored to liberty — a strange instance, as Pepys remarks, 
 of the ' fool's play' of the age. Buckingham was now as pre- 
 suming as ever: he had a theatre of his own, and he soon 
 
A Change. 3 5 
 
 showed his usual arrogance by beating Henry Killigrew on the 
 stage, and taking away his coat and sword ; all very ' inno- 
 cently' done, according to Pepys. In July he appeared in his 
 place in the House of Lords, as ' brisk as ever,' and sat in his 
 robes, ' which,' says Pepys, ' is a monstrous thing that a man 
 should be proclaimed against, and put in the Tower, and re- 
 leased without any trial, and yet not restored to his places.' 
 
 We next find the duke intrusted with a mission to France, 
 in concert with Halifax and Arlington. In the year 1680, he 
 was threatened with an impeachment, in which, with his usual 
 skill, he managed to exculpate himself by blaming Lord ArUng- 
 ton. The House of Commons passed a vote for his removal ; 
 and he entered the ranks of the opposition. 
 
 But this career of public meanness and private profligacy 
 was drawing to a close. Alcibiades no longer — his frame 
 wasted by vice — his spirits broken by pecuniary difficulties^ 
 Buckingham's importance visibly sank away. ' He remained, 
 at last,' to borrow the words of Hume, ' as incapable of doing 
 hurt as he had ever been little desirous of doing good to man- 
 kind.' His fortune had now dwindled down to ;^3oo a year 
 in land; he sold Wallingford House, and removed into the 
 City. 
 
 And now the fruits of his adversity, not, we "hope, too late, 
 began to appear. Like Lord Rochester, who had ordered all 
 his immoral works to be burnt, Buckingham now wished to 
 retrieve the past. In 1685 he wrote the religious works which 
 form so striking a contrast with his other productions. 
 
 That he had been up to the very time of his ruin perfectly 
 impervious to remorse, dead also to shame, is amply mani- 
 fested by his conduct soon after his duel with the Earl oi 
 Shrewsbury. 
 
 Sir George Etherege had brought out a new play at the 
 Duke of York's Theatre. It was called, ' She Would if she 
 Could.' Plays in those days began at what we now consider our 
 luncheon hour. Though Pepys arrived at the theatre on this 
 occasion at two o'clock — ^his wife having gone before — about a 
 thousand people had then been put back from the pit. At last, 
 seeing his wife in the eighteen-penny-box, Samuel ' made 
 
36 The Duke of York's Theatre. 
 
 shift' to get there and there saw, ' but lord !' (his own words 
 are inimitable) ' how dull, and how silly the play, there being 
 nothing in the world good in it, and few people pleased in it. 
 The king was there ; but I sat mightily behind, and could see 
 but little, and hear not at all. The play being done, I went 
 into the pit to look for my wife, it being dark and raining, but 
 could not find her ; and so staid, going between the two doors 
 and through the pit an hour and a half, I think, after the play 
 was done ; the people staying there till the rain was over, and 
 to talk to one another. And among the rest, here was the 
 Duke of Buckingham to-day openly in the pit ; and there I 
 foimd him with my Lord Buckhurst, and Sedley, and Etheridge 
 the poet, the last of whom I did hear mightily find fault with 
 the actors, that they were out of humour, and had not their 
 parts perfect, and that Harris did do nothing, nor could so 
 much as sing a ketch in it ; and so was mightily concerned, 
 while all the rest did, through the whole pit, blame the play as 
 a silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish aud 
 witty ; but the design of the play, and end, mighty insipid.' 
 
 Buckingham had held out to his Puritan friends the hope 
 of his conversion for some years ; and when they attempted to 
 convert him, he had appointed a time for them to finish their 
 work. They kept their promise, and discovered him in the most 
 profligate society. It was indeed impossible to know in what 
 directions his fancies might take him, when we find him be- 
 lieving in the predictions of a poor fellow in a wretched lodg- 
 ing near Tower Hill, who, having cast his nativity, assured 
 the duke he would be king. 
 
 He had continued for years' to live with the Countess of 
 Shrewsbury, and two months after her husband's death, had 
 taken her to his home. Then, at last, the Duchess of Buck- 
 ingham indignantly observed, that she and the countess could 
 not possibly live together. ' So I thought, madam,' was the 
 reply. ' I have therefore ordered your coach to take you to 
 your father's.' It has been asserted that Dr. Sprat, the duke's 
 chaplain, actually married him to Lady Shrewsbury, and that 
 his legal wife was thenceforth styled ' The Duchess-dowager.' 
 He retreated with his mistress to Claverdon, near Windsor 
 
Buckingham and the Princess of Orange. 37 
 
 situated on the summit of a hill which is washed by the 
 Thames. It is a noble building, with a great terrace in front, 
 under which are twenty-six niches, in which Buckingham had 
 intended to place twenty-six statues as large as life ; and in the 
 middle is an alcove with stairs. Here he lived with the in- 
 famous countess, by whom he had a son, whom he styled Earl 
 of Coventry, (his second tide,) and who died an infant. 
 
 One lingers still over the social career of one whom Louis 
 XIV. called ' the only English gentleman he had ever seen.' 
 A capital retort was made to Buckingham by the Princess of 
 Orange, during an interview, when he stopped at the Hague, 
 between her and the Duke. He was trying diplomatically to 
 convince her of the affection of England for the States. ' We 
 do not,' he said, ' use Holland like a mistress, we love her as 
 a wife.' ' Vraiment je crois que vous nous aimez comme vous 
 aimez la vdtrej was the sharp and clever answer. 
 
 On the death of Charles II., in 1685, Buckingham retired 
 to the small remnant of his Yorkshire estates. His debts were 
 now set down at the sum of ;^i4o,ooo. They were liquidated 
 by the sale of his estates. He took kindly to a country life, to 
 the surprise of his old comrade in pleasure, Etherege. 'I 
 have heard the news,' that wit cried, alluding to this change, 
 ' with no less astonishment than if I had been told that the 
 Pope had begun to wear a periwig and had turned beau in 
 the seventy-fourth year of his age !' 
 
 Father Petre and Father Fitzgerald were sent by James II. 
 to convert the duke to Popery. The following anecdote is 
 told of their conference with the dying sinner: — 'We deny,' 
 said the Jesuit Petre, ' that any one can be saved out of our 
 Church. Your grace allows that our people may be saved.' — 
 ' No,' said the duke, ' I make no doubt you will all be damned 
 to a man !' ' Sir,' said the father, ' I cannot argue with a 
 person so void of all charity.' — ' I did not expect, my reve- 
 rend father,' said the duke, 'such a reproach from you, whose 
 whole reasoning was founded on the very same instance of 
 want of charity to yourself.' 
 
 Buckingham's death took place at Helmsby, in Yorkshire, 
 and the immediate cause was an ague and fever, owing to 
 
38 His last Hours. 
 
 having sat down on the wet grass after fox-hunting. Pope 
 has given die following forcible, but inaccurate account of his 
 last hours, and the place in which they were passed : — 
 
 ' In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half bung. 
 The floors of plaster and the walls of dung, 
 On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw, 
 With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw ; 
 The George and Garter danghng from that bed, 
 Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, 
 Great ViUiers Ues ; — alas I how changed from hii^ 
 That life of pleasure and that soul of whim 1 
 Gallant and gay, in Claverdon's proud alcove. 
 The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love , 
 Or, just as gay, at council in a ring 
 Of mimic'd statesmen and their merry King, 
 No wit to flatter left of all his store. 
 No fool to laugh at, which he valued more; 
 Then victor of his health, of fortune, friends. 
 And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.* 
 
 Far from expiring in the * worst inn's worst room,' the duke 
 breathed his last in Kirby Moorside, in a house which had 
 once been the best in the place. Brian Fairfax, who loved 
 this brilliant reprobate, has left the only authentic account on 
 record of his last hours. 
 
 The night previous to the duke's death Fairfax had received 
 a message from him desiring him to prepare a bed for him in 
 his house, Bishop Hill, in York. The next day, however, 
 Fairfax was sent for to his master, whom he found dying. He 
 was speechless, but gave the afflicted servant an earnest look of 
 recognition. 
 
 The Earl of Arran, son of the Duke of Hamilton, and a 
 gentleman of the neighbourhood, stood by his bedside. He 
 had then received the Holy Communion from a neighbouring 
 clergyman of the Established Church. When the minister 
 came it is said that he inquired of the duke what religion he 
 professed. 'It is,' replied the dying man, 'an insignificant 
 question, for I have been a shame and a disgrace to all 
 religions : if you can can do me any good, pray do.' When 
 a Popish priest had been mentioned to him, he answered 
 vehemently, ' No, no !' 
 
 He was in a very low state when Lord Arran had found 
 him. But though that nobleman saw death in his looks, the 
 
His Death. 39 
 
 duke said he ' felt so well at heart that he knew he could be in 
 no danger.' 
 
 He appeared to have had inflammation in the bowels, which 
 ended in mortification. He begged of Lord Arran to stay 
 with him. The house seems to have been in a most miserable 
 condition, for in a letter from Lord Arran to Dr. Sprat, he 
 says, ' I confess it made my heart bleed to see the Duke of 
 Buckingham in so pitiful a place, and so bad a condition, and 
 what made it worse, he was not at all sensible of it, for he 
 thought in a day or two he should be well ; and when we 
 reminded him of his condition, he said it was not as we ap- 
 prehended. So I sent for a worthy gentleman, Mr. Gibson, 
 to be assistant to me in this work ; so we jointly represented 
 his condition to him, who I saw was at first very uneasy ; but 
 I think we should not have discharged the duties of honest 
 men if we had suffered him to go out of this world without 
 desiring him to prepare for death.' The duke joined heartily 
 in the beautiful prayers for the dying, of our Church, and 
 yet there was a sort of selfishness and indifference to others 
 manifest even at the last. 
 
 'Mr. Gibson,' writes Lord Arran, 'asked him if he had 
 made a will, or if he would declare who was to be his heir ? 
 but to the first, he answered he had made none ; and to the 
 last, whoever was named he answered, " No." First, my lady 
 duchess was named, and then I think almost everybody that 
 had any relation to him, but his answer always was, "No." 
 I did fully represent my lady duchess' condition to him, but 
 nothing that was said to him could make him come to any 
 point' 
 
 In this 'retired comer,' as Lord Arran terms it, did the 
 former wit and beau, the once brave and fine cavalier, the 
 reckless plotter in after-life, end his existence. His body 
 was removed to Helmsby Castle, there to wait the duchess' 
 pleasure, being meantime embalmed. Not one farthing could 
 his steward produce to defray his burial. His George and 
 blue ribbon were sent to the Khig James, with an account of 
 his death. 
 
 In Kirby Moorside the following entry in the register of 
 
40 DucJtess of Buckingham. 
 
 burials records the event, which is so replete with a singular 
 retributive justice — so constituted to impress and sadden the 
 mind : — 
 
 ' Georges Villus Lord dooke of Buckingham. ' 
 
 He left scarcely a friend to mourn his life ; for to no man 
 had he been true. He died on the i6th of April according 
 to some accounts ; according to others, on the third of that 
 month, 1687, in the sixty-first year of his age. His body, 
 after being embalmed, was deposited in the family vault in 
 Henry VII.'s chapel.* He left no children, and his title was 
 therefore extinct. The Duchess of Buckingham, of whom 
 Brian Fairfax remarks, ' that if she had none of the vanities, 
 she had none of the vices of the court,' survived him several 
 years. She died in 1705, at the age of sixty-six, and was 
 buried in the vault of the Villiers' family, in the chapel of 
 Henry VII. 
 
 Such was the extinction of all the magnificence and intel- 
 lectual ascendency that at one time centred in the great and 
 gifted family of Villiers. 
 
 * Brian Fairfax states, that at his death (the Duke of Buckingham's) he 
 charged his debts on his estate, leaving much more than enough to i:over 
 them. By the register of Westminster Abbey it appears that he was buried 
 in Henry VII.'s Chapel, 7th June, 1687. 
 
TwlmJ" "IL ^iLl Lu LLmi'JuMM'. 'ui ii,!.'iini'i!iiii n / »JLL.1L. B 
 *c. '» « ' " 
 
 COUNT DE GRAMMONT, ST. EVREMOND, 
 AND LORD ROCHESTER. 
 
 De Grammont's Choice. — His Influence witli Turenne.— The Church or the 
 Army? — ^An Afiventure at Lyons. — ^A brilliant Idea. — De Grammont's 
 Generosity. — ^A Hoise ' for the Cards.' — Knight-Cicisbeism. — De Gram- 
 mont's first Love. — His Witty Attacks on Mazarin. — ^Anne Lucie de la 
 Mothe Houdancourt. — Beset with Snares. — De Grammont's Visits to 
 England. — Charles II. — The Court of Charles II. — Introduction of 
 Country-dances. — Norman Pecuharities. — St. Evremond, the Handsome 
 Norman. — ^The most Beautiful Woman in Europe. — Hortense Mancini's 
 Adventures. — Madame Mazarin's House at Chelsea. — ^Anecdote of Lord 
 Dorset. — Lord Rochester in his Zenith. — His Courage and Wit. — 
 Rochester's Pranks in the City. — CreduUty, Past and Present. — ' Dr. 
 Bendo,' and La Belle Jennings. — La Triste Heriti^re. — Ehzabeth, Coun- 
 tess of Rochester. — Retribution and Reformation. — Conversion. — Beaux 
 mthout Wit. — Little Jermyn. — An Incomparable Beauty. — Anthony 
 Hamilton, De Grammont's Biographer. — The Three Courts. — ' La Belle 
 Hamilton.' — Sir Peter Lely's Portrait of her. — ^The Household Deity of 
 Whitehall. — ^Who shall have the Caliche?*— A Chaplain in Livery. — De 
 Granmiont's Last Hours. — What might he not have been? 
 
 ilT has been observed by a French critic, that the 
 Mdmoires de Grammont afford the truest specimens 
 of French character in our language. To this it may 
 be added, that the subject of that animated narrative was most 
 completely French in principle, in intelligence, in wit that 
 hesitated at nothing, in spirits that were never daunted, and in 
 that incessant activity which is characteristic of his countrymen. 
 Grammont, it was said, ' slept neither night nor day ;' his life 
 was one scene of incessant excitement. 
 
 His father, supposed to have been the natural son of 
 Henry the Great, of France, did not suppress that fact, but 
 desired to pubHsh it : for the morals of his time were so de- 
 praved, that it was thought to be more honourable to be the 
 illegitimate son of a king than the lawful child of lowlier 
 parents. Bom in the Castle of Semeac, on the banks of the 
 Garonne, the fame of two fair ancestresses, Corisande and 
 
42 De Grammonfs Choice. 
 
 Menadame, had entitled the family of De Grammont to ex- 
 pect in each successive member an inheritance of beauty. 
 Wit, courage, good nature, a charming address, and boundless 
 assurance, were the heritage of Philibert de Grammont. 
 Beauty was not in his possession; good nature, a more popular 
 quality, he had in abundance : 
 
 • His wit to scandal never stooping, 
 His mirth ne'er to buffoonery drooping.' 
 
 As Philibert grew up, the two aristocratic professions of 
 France were presented for his choice : the army, or the church. 
 Neither of these vocations constitutes now the ambition of the 
 high-born in France : the church, to a certain extent, retains 
 its prestige, but the army, ever since officers have risen from 
 the ranks, does not comprise the same class of men as in 
 England. In the reign of Louis XIII. , when De Grammont 
 lived it was otherwise. All political power was vested in the 
 church. Richelieu was, to all purposes, the ruler of France, 
 the dictator of Europe ; and, with regard to the church, great 
 men, at the head of military affairs, were daily proving to 
 the world, how much intelligence could effect with a small 
 numerical power. Young men took one course or another : 
 the sway of the cabinet, on the one hand, tempted them to 
 the church ; the brilliant exploits of Turenne, and of Conde, 
 on the other, led them to the camp. It was merely the 
 difference of dress between the two that constituted the dis- 
 tinction : the soldier might be as pious as the priest, the priest 
 was sure to be as worldly as the soldier; the soldier might 
 have ecclesiastical preferment ; the priest sometimes turned 
 out to fight. 
 
 Philibert de Grammont chose to be a soldier. He was 
 styled the Chevalier de Grammont, according to custom, his 
 father being still living. He fought under Turenne, at the siege 
 of Trino. The army in which he served was beleaguering that 
 city when the gay youth from the banks of the Garonne joined 
 it, to aid it not so much by his valour as by the fun, the 
 raillery, the off-hand anecdote, the ready, hearty companionship 
 which lightened the soldier's life in the trenches: adieu to 
 
His Influence with Turenne. 43 
 
 impatience, to despair, even to gravity. The very generals 
 could not maintain their seriousness when the light-hearted De 
 Grammont uttered a repartee — 
 
 •Sworn enemy to all long speeches, 
 Lively and brilliant, frank and free^ 
 Author of many a repartee : 
 Remember, over all, that he 
 Was not renowned for storming breaches,' 
 
 Where he came, all was sunshine, yet there breathed not a 
 colder, graver man than the Calvinist Turenne : modest, 
 serious, somewhat hard, he gave the young nobility who served 
 under him no quarter in their shortcomings; but a word, a 
 look, from De Grammont could make him, malgrt lui, unbend. 
 The gay chevalier's white charger's prancing, its gallant rider 
 foremost in every peril, were not forgotten in after-times, when 
 De Grammont, in extreme old age, chatted over the achieve- 
 ments and pleasures of his youth. 
 
 Amongst those who courted his society in Turenne's army 
 was Matta, a soldier of simple manners, hard habits, and 
 handsome person, joined to a candid, honest nature. He soon 
 persuaded De Grammont to share his quarters, and there they 
 gave splendid entertainments, which. Frenchman-like, De Gram- 
 mont paid for out of the successes of the gaming-tables. But 
 chances were against them ; the two officers were at the mercy 
 of their maitre (Thotel, who asked for money. One day, 
 when De Grammont came home sooner than usual, he found 
 Matta fast asleep. Whilst De Grammont stood looking at 
 him, he awoke, and burst into a violent fit of laughter. 
 
 'What is the matter ?' cried the chevalier. 
 
 'Faith, chevalier,' answered Matta, ' I was dreaming that we 
 had sent away our maitre dhdtel, and were resolved to live 
 like our neighbours for the rest of the campaign.' 
 
 'Poor fellow !' cried De Grammont. 'So, you are knocked 
 down at once : what would have become of you if you had 
 been reduced to the situation I was in at Lyons, four days 
 before I came here ? Come, I will tell you all about it.' 
 
 ' Begin a little farther back,' cried Matta, ' and tell me about 
 the manner in which you first paid your respects to Cardinal 
 
44 fhe Church or the Army f 
 
 Richelieu. Lay aside your pranks as a child, your genealogy, 
 and all your ancestors together; you cannot know anything 
 about them.' 
 
 ' Well,' replied De Grammont, ' it was my father's own fault 
 t'lat he was not Henry IV.'s son : see what the Grammonts 
 have lost by this crossed-grained fellow ! Faith, we might 
 have walked before the Counts de Vendome at this very 
 moment' 
 
 Then he went on to relate how he had been sent to Pau, 
 to the college, to be brought up to the church, with an old ser- 
 vant to act both as his valet and his guardian. How his 
 head was too full of gaming to learn Latin. How they gave 
 him his rank at college, as the youth of quality, when he did 
 not deserve it ; how he travelled up to Paris to his brother to 
 be polished, and went to court in the character of an abbd. 
 ' Ah, Matta, you know the kind of dress then in vogue. 
 No, I would not change my dress, but I consented to draw 
 over it a cassock. I had the finest head of hair in the world, 
 well curled and powdered above my cassock, and below were 
 my white buskins and spurs.' 
 
 Even Richelieu, that hypocrite, he went on to relate, could 
 not help laughing at the parti-coloured costume, sacerdotal 
 above, soldier-like below ; but the cardinal was greatly offended 
 — not with the absence of decorum, but with the dangerous 
 wit, that could laugh in public at the cowl and shaven crown, 
 points which constituted the greatest portion of Richelieu's 
 sanctity. 
 
 De Grammont's brother, however, thus addressed the Che- 
 valier : — ' Well, my little parson,' said he, as they went home, 
 •you have acted your part to perfection; but now you must 
 choose your career. If you like to stick to the church, you 
 will possess great revenues, and nothing to do ; if you choose 
 to go into the army, you will risk your arm or your leg, but in 
 time you may be a major-general with a wooden leg and a 
 glass eye, the spectacle of an indifferent, ungrateful court. 
 Make your choice.' 
 
 The choice, Philibert went on to relate, was made. For 
 the good of his soul, he renounced the church, but tor his own 
 
An Adventure at Lyons. 45 
 
 advantage, he kept his abbacy. This was not difficult in days 
 when secular abbds were common ; nothing would induce him 
 to change his resolution of being a soldier. Meantime he was 
 perfecting his accomplishments as a fine gentleman, one of the 
 requisites for which was a knowledge of all sorts of games. No 
 matter that his mother was miserable at his decision. Had 
 her son been an abbe, she thought he would have become a 
 saint : nevertheless, when he returned home, with the air of a 
 courtier and a man of the world, boy as he was, and the very 
 impersonation of what might then be termed la jeune France, 
 she was so enchanted with him that she consented to his going 
 to the wars, attended again by Brinon, his valet, equerry, and 
 Mentor in one. Next in De Grammont's narrative came his 
 adventure at Lyons, where he spent the 200 louis his mother 
 had given Brinon for him, in play, and very nearly broke the 
 poor old servant's heart ; where he had duped a horse-dealer ; 
 and he ended by proposing plans, similarly honourable, to be 
 adopted for their present emergencies. 
 
 The first step was to go to head-quarters, to dine with a 
 certain Count de Cameran, a Savoyard, and invite him to 
 supper. Here Matta interposed. 'Are you mad?' he ex- 
 claimed. ' Invite him to supper ! we have neither money nor 
 credit; we are ruined; and to save us you intend to give a 
 supper !' 
 
 'Stupid fellow!' cried De Grammont. 't^Iameran plays at 
 quinze : so do I : we want money. He has more than he 
 knows what to do with : we give a supper, he pays for it. 
 However,' he added, 'it is necessary to take certain precau- 
 tions. You command the Guards : when night comes on, order 
 your Sergent-de-place to have fifteen or twenty men under arms, 
 and let them lay themselves flat on the ground between this 
 and head-quarters. Most likely we shall win this stupid fellow's 
 money. Now the Piedmontese are suspicious, and he com- 
 mands the Horse. Now, you know, Matta, you cannot hold 
 your tongue, and are very likely to let out some joke that will 
 vex him. Supposing he takes it into his head that he is being 
 cheated ? He has always eight or ten horsemen : we must he 
 prepared.' 
 
46 A Brilliant Idea. 
 
 ' Embrace me !' cried Matta, ' embrace me ! for thou art un- 
 paralleled. I thought you only meant to prepare a pack of 
 cards, and some false dice. But the idea of protecting a man 
 who plays at quinze by a detachment of foot is excellent : thine 
 own, dear Chevalier.' 
 
 Thus, like some of Dumas' heroes, hating villany as a matter 
 of course, but being by no means ashamed to acknowledge it, 
 the Piedmontese was asked to supper. He came. Neverthe- 
 less, in the midst of the affair, when De Cameran was losing as 
 fast as he could, Matta's conscience touched him : he awoke 
 from a deep sleep, heard the dice shaking, saw the poor 
 Savoyard losing, and advised him to play no more. 
 
 ' Don't you know, Count, you cannot win ?' 
 
 •Why?' asked the Count. 
 
 ' Why, faith, because we are cheating you,' was the reply. 
 
 The Chevalier turned round impatiently, ' Sieur Matta,' he 
 cried, ' do you suppose it can be any amusement to Monsieur 
 le Comte to be plagued with your ill-timed jests? For my 
 part, I am so weary of the game, that I swear by Jupiter I can 
 scarcely play any more.' Nothing is more distasteful to a 
 losing gamester than a hint of leaving off; so the Count en- 
 treated the Chevalier to continue, and assured him that ' Mon- 
 sieur Matta might say what he pleased, for it did not give him 
 the least uneasiness to continue.' 
 
 The Chevalier allowed the Count to play upon credit, and 
 that act of courtesy was taken very kindly : the dupe lost 1,500 
 pistoles, which he paid the next morning, when Matta was 
 sharply reprimanded for his interference. 
 
 ' Faith,' he answered, ' it was a point of conscience with me ; 
 besides, it would have given me pleasure to have seen his 
 Horse engaged with my Infantry, if he had taken anything 
 amiss.' 
 
 The sum thus gained set the spendthrifts up ; and De Gram- 
 mont satisfied his conscience by giving it away, to a certain 
 extent, in charity. It is singular to perceive in the history of 
 this celebrated man that moral taint of character which the 
 French have never lost : this total absence of right reasoning 
 on all points of conduct, is coupled in our Gallic neighbours 
 
De Grammont's Generosity. 47 
 
 with the greatest natural benevolence, with a generosity only 
 kept back by povert}', with impulsive, impressionable disposi- 
 tions, that require the guidance of a sound Protestant faith to 
 elevate and correct them. 
 
 The Chevalier hastened, it is related, to find out distressed 
 comrades, officers who had lost their baggage, or who had been 
 ruined by gaming ; or soldiers who had been disabled in the 
 trenches; and his manner of relieving them was as graceful 
 and as delicate as the bounty he distributed was welcome. 
 He was the darling of the army. The poor soldier knew him 
 personally, and adored him ; the general was sure to meet him 
 in the scenes of action, and to seek his company in those of 
 security. 
 
 And, having thus retrieved his finances, the gay-hearted 
 Chevalier used, henceforth, to make De Cameran go halves 
 with him in all games in which the odds were in his own favour. 
 Even the staid Calvinist, Turenne, who had not then renounced, 
 as he did in after-life, the Protestant faith, delighted in the off- 
 hand merriment of the Chevalier. It was towards the end of 
 the siege of Trino, that De Grammont went to visit that gene- 
 ral in some new quarters, where Turenne received him, sur- 
 rounded by fifteen or twenty officers. According to the custom 
 of the day, cards were introduced, and the general asked the 
 Chevalier to play. 
 
 ' Sir,' returned the young soldier, ' my tutor taught me that 
 when a man goes to see his friends it is neither prudent to leave 
 his own money behind him nor civil to take theirs.' 
 
 'Well,' answered Turenne, 'I can tell you you will find 
 neither much money nor deep play among us ; but that it 
 cannot be said that we allowed you to go off without playing, 
 suppose we each of us stake a horse.' 
 
 De Grammont agreed, and, lucky as ever, won from the 
 officers some fifteen or sixteen horses, by way of a joke; but 
 seeing several faces pale, he said, 'Gentlemen, I should be 
 sorry to see you go away from your general's quarters on foot ; 
 it will do very well if you all send me to-morrow your horses, 
 except one, which I give for the cards.' 
 
 The vaM-4e-chambre thought he was jesting. 'I am serious,' 
 
48 Knight-Cicisleism. 
 
 cried the Chevalier. 'Parole d'honneur I give a horse for the 
 cards; and what's more, take which you please, only don't 
 take mine.' 
 
 ' Faith,' said Turenne, pleased with the novelty of the affair, 
 • I don't believe a horse was ever before given for the cards.' 
 
 Young people, and indeed old people, can perhaps hardly 
 remember the time when, even in England, money used to be 
 put under the candlesticks ' for the cards,' as it was said, but in 
 fact for the servants, who waited. Winner or loser, the tax 
 was to be paid, and this custom of vails was also prevalent in 
 France. 
 
 Trino at last surrendered, and the two friends rushed from 
 their campaigning life to enjoy the gaieties of Turin, at that 
 time the centre of pleasure ; and resolved to perfect their cha- 
 racters as military heroes — ^by faUing in love, if respectably, 
 well; if disreputably, well too, perhaps all the more agree- 
 able, and venturesome, as they thought. 
 
 The court of Turin was then presided over by the Duchess 
 of Savoy, Madame Royale, as she was called in France, the 
 daughter of Henry IV. of France, the sister of Henrietta Maria 
 of England. She was a woman of talent and spirit, worthy of 
 her descent, and had certain other qualities which constituted a 
 point of resemblance between her and her father; she was, like 
 him, more fascinating than respectable. 
 
 The customs of Turin were rather Italian than French. At 
 that time every lady had her professed lover, who wore the 
 liveries of his mistress, bore her arms, and sometimes assumed 
 her very name. The office of the lover was, never to quit his 
 lady in public, and never to approach her in private : to be on 
 all occasions her esquire. In the tournament her chosen knight- 
 cicisbeo came forth with his coat, his housings, his very lance 
 distinguished with the cyphers and colours of her who had con- 
 descended to invest him with her preference. It was the rem- 
 nant of chivalry that authorized this custom ; but of chivalry 
 demorahzed — chivalry denuded of her purity, her respect, the 
 chivalry of corrupted Italy, not of that which, perhaps, falla- 
 ciously, we assign to the earlier ages. 
 
 Grammont and Matta enlisted themselves at once in the 
 
De Grammonfs First Love. 49 
 
 service of two beauties. Grammont chose for the queen of 
 beauty, who was to 'rain influence' upon him, Mademoiselle 
 de St. Germain, who was in the very bloom of youth. She 
 was French, and, probably, an ancestress of that all-accom- 
 plished Comte de St. Germain, whose exploits so dazzled suc- 
 cessive European courts, and the fullest account of whom, in 
 all its brilliant colours, yet tinged with mystery, is given in the 
 Memoirs of Maria Antoinette, by the Marquise d'Adhdniar, her 
 lady of the bed-chamber. 
 
 The lovely object of De Grammont's ' first love' was a radiant 
 brunette belle, who took no pains to set off by art the charms 
 of nature. She had some defects : her black and sparkling 
 eyes were small ; her forehead, by no means ' as pure as moon- 
 light sleeping upon snow,' was not fair, neither were her hands ; 
 neither had she small feet — ^but her form generally was perfect ; 
 her elbows had a peculiar elegance in them; and in old times 
 to hold the elbow out well, and yet not to stick it out, was a 
 point of early discipline. Then her glossy black hair set off a 
 superb neck and shoulders ; and, moreover, she was gay, full 
 of mirth, life, complaisance, perfect in all the acts of polite- 
 ness, and invariable in her gracious and graceful bearing. 
 
 Matta admired her; but De Grammont ordered him to 
 attach himself to the Marquise de Sfenantes, a married beauty 
 of the court ; and Matta, in full faith that all Grammont said 
 and did was sure to succeed, obeyed his friend. The Cheva- 
 lier had fallen in love with Mademoiselle de St. Germain at 
 first sight, and instantly arrayed himself in her colour, which 
 was green, whilst Matta wore blue, in compliment to the mar- 
 quise ; and they entered the next day upon duty, at La Venerie, 
 where the Duchess of Savoy gave a grand entertainment. De 
 Grammont, with his native tact and unscrupulous mendacity, 
 played his part to perfection; but his comrade, Matta, com- 
 mitted a hundred solecisms. The very second time he honoured 
 the marquise with his attentions, he treated her as if she were 
 his humble servant : when he pressed her hand, it was a pres- 
 sure that almost made her scream. When he ought to have 
 ridden by the side of her coach, he set off, on seeing a hare 
 start from her form ; then he talked to her of partridges when 
 
 4 
 
50 His Witty A ttacks on Mazarin. 
 
 he should have been laying himself at her feet. Both these 
 affairs ended as might have been expected. Mademoiselle 
 de St. Germain was diverted by Grammont, yet he could not 
 touch her heart. Her aim was to marry ; his was merely to 
 attach himself to a reigning beauty. They parted without 
 regret ; and he left the then remote court of Turin for the gayer 
 scenes of Paris and Versailles. Here he became as celebrated 
 for his alertness in play as for his readiness in repartee ; as 
 noted for his intrigues, as he afterwards was for his bravery. 
 
 Those were stirring days in France. Anne of Austria, then 
 in her maturity, was governed by Mazarin, the most artful of 
 ministers, an Italian to the very heart's core, with a love of 
 amassing wealth engrafted in his supple nature that amounted 
 to a monomania. The whole aim of his life was gain. Though 
 gaming was at its height, Mazarin never played for amuse- 
 ment; he played to enrich himself; and when he played, he 
 cheated. 
 
 The Chevalier de Grammont was now rich, and Mazarin 
 worshipped the rich. He was witty ; and his wit soon procured 
 him admission into the clique whom the wily Mazarin collected 
 around him in Paris. Whatever were De Grammont's faults, 
 he soon perceived those of Mazarin ; he detected, and he de- 
 tested, the wily, grasping, serpent-like attributes of the Italian ; 
 he attacked him on every occasion on which a ' wit combat' was 
 possible : he gracefully showed Mazarin off in his true colours. 
 With ease he annihilated him, metaphorically, at his own table. 
 Yet De Grammont had something to atone for : he had been 
 the adherent and companion in arms of Condd ; he had fol- 
 lowed that hero to Sens, to Nordlingen, to Fribourg, and had 
 returned to his allegiance to the young king, Louis XIV., only 
 because he wished to visit the court at Paris. Mazarin's policy, 
 however, was that of pardon and peace — of duplicity and 
 treachery — and the Chevalier seemed to be forgiven on his re- 
 turn to Paris, even by Anne of Austria. Nevertheless, De 
 Grammont never lost his independence ; and he could boast in 
 after-life that he owed the two great cardinals who had governed 
 France nothing that they could have refused. It was true that 
 Richelieu had left him his abbacy ; but he could not refuse it 
 
Anne Lttcie de la Mothe Houdancourt. 5 1 
 
 to one of De Grammont's rank. From Mazarin he had gained 
 nothing except what he had won at play. 
 
 After Mazarin's death the Chevalier intended to secure the 
 favour of the king, Louis XIV., to whom, as he rejoiced to find, 
 court alone was now to be paid. He had now somewhat recti- 
 fied his distinctions between right and wrong, and was resolved 
 to have no regard for favour unless supported by merit ; he 
 determined to make himself beloved by the courtiers of Louis, 
 and feared by the ministers ; to dare to undertake anything to 
 do good, and to engage in nothing at the expense of innocence. 
 He still continued to be eminently successful in play, of which 
 he did not perceive the evil, nor allow the wickedness ; but he 
 was unfortunate in love, in which he was equally unscrupulous 
 and more rash than at the gaming-table. 
 
 Among the maids of honour of Anne of Austria was a young 
 lady named Anne Lucie de la Mothe Houdancourt. Louis, 
 though not long married, showed some symptoms of admiration 
 for this debutante in the wicked ways of the court. 
 
 Gay, radiant in the bloom of youth and innocence, the story 
 of this young girl presents an insta,nce of the unhappiness 
 which, without guUt, the sins of others bring upon even the 
 virtuous. The queen-dowager, Anne of Austria, was living at 
 St. Germains when Mademoiselle de la Mothe Houdancourt 
 was received into her household. The Duchess de Noailles, at 
 that time Grande Maitresse, exercised a vigilant a;nd kindly rule 
 over the maids of honour ; nevertheless, she could not prevent 
 their being liable to the attentions of Louis : she forbade him 
 however to loiter, or indeed even to be seen in the room ap- 
 propriated to the young damsels under her charge ; and when 
 attracted by the beauty of Annie Lucie de la Mothe, Louis was 
 obliged to speak to her through a hole behind a clock which 
 stood in a corridor. 
 
 Annie Lucie, notwithstanding this apparent encouragement of 
 the king's addresses, was perfectly indifferent to his admiration. 
 She was secretly attached to the Marquis de Richelieu, who 
 had, or pretended to have, honourable intentions towards her. 
 Everything was tried, but tried in vain, to induce the poor girl 
 £0 give up all her predilections for the sake of a guilty distinc 
 
52 Beset with Snares. 
 
 tion — that of being the king's mistress : even her mother re 
 preached her with her coldness. A family council was held, 
 in hopes of convincing her of her wilfulness, and Annie Luci? 
 was bitterly reproached by her female relatives ; but her heart 
 still clung to the faithless Marquis de Richelieu, who, however, 
 when he saw that a royal lover was his rival, meanly withdrew 
 
 Her fall seemed inevitable ; but the firmness of Anne of 
 Austria saved her from her ruin. That queen insisted on her 
 being sent away ; and she resisted even the entreaties of the 
 queen, her daughter-in-law, and the wife of Louis XIV. ; who, 
 for some reasons not explained, entreated that the young lady 
 might remain at the court. Anne was sent away in a sort of 
 disgrace to die convent of Chaillot, which was then considered 
 to be quite out of Paris, and sufficiently secluded to protect her 
 from visitors. According to another account, a letter full of 
 reproaches, which she wrote to the Marquis de Richelieu up- 
 braiding him for his desertion, had been intercepted. 
 
 It was to this young lady that De Grammont, who was then, 
 in the very centre of the court, ' the type of fashion and the 
 mould of form,' attached himself to her as an admirer who 
 could condescend to honour with his attentions those whom 
 the king pursued. The once gay girl was thus beset with 
 snares : on one side was the king, whose disgusting preference 
 was shown when in her presence by sighs and sentiment ; on 
 the other, De Grammont, whose attentions to her were impor- 
 tunate, but failed to convince her that he was in love ; on the 
 other was the time-serving, heartless De Richelieu, whom her 
 reason condemned, but whom her heart cherished. She soon 
 showed her distrust and dislike of De Grammont : she treated 
 him with contempt ; she threatened him with exposure, yet he 
 would not desist : then she complained of him to the king. It 
 was then that he perceived that though love could equalize con- 
 ditions, it could not act in the same way between rivals. He 
 was commanded to leave the court. Paris, therefore, Ver- 
 sailles, Fontainbleau, and St. Germains were closed against this 
 gay Chevalier ; and how could he live elsewhere ? Whither 
 could he go ? Strange to say, he had a vast fancy to behold 
 the man who, stained witli the crime of regicide, and sprung 
 
De Grammonfs Visits to England. S3 
 
 from the people, was receiving magnificent embassies from con- 
 tinental nations, whilst Charles II. was seeking security in his 
 exile from the power of Spain in the Low Countries. He was 
 eager to see the Protector, Cromwell. But Cromwell, though 
 in the height of his fame when beheld by De Grammont— 
 though feared at home and abroad — was little calculated to win 
 suffrages from a mere man of pleasure like De Grammont 
 The court, the city, the country, were in his days gloomy, dis- 
 contented, joyless : a proscribed nobihty was the sure cause of 
 the thin though few festivities of the now lugubrious gallery of 
 Whitehall. Puritanism drove the old jovial churchmen into re- 
 treat, and dispelled every lingering vestige of ancient hospi- 
 tality : long graces and long sermons, sanctimonious manners, 
 and grim, sad faces, and sad-coloured dresses were not much to 
 De Grammont's taste ; he returned to France, and declared 
 that he had gained no advantage from his travels. Neverthe- 
 less, either from choice or necessity, he made another trial of 
 the damps and fogs of England.* 
 
 When he again visited our country, Charles II. had been two 
 years seated on the throne of his father. Everything was 
 changed, and the British court was in its fullest splendour; 
 whilst the rejoicings of the people of England at the Restora- 
 tion were still resounding through the land. 
 
 If one could include royal personages in the rather gay than 
 worthy category of the ' wits and beaux of society,' Charles IL 
 should figure at their head. He was the most agreeable com- 
 panion, and the worst king imaginable. In the first place he 
 was, as it were, a citizen of the world : tossed about by fortune 
 from his early boyhood ; a witness at the tender age of twelve 
 of the battle of Edge Hill, where the celebrated Harvey had 
 charge of him and of his brother. That inauspicious com- 
 mencement of a wandering life had perhaps been amongst the 
 least of his early trials. The fiercest was his long residence as 
 a sort of royal prisoner in Scotland. A travelled, humbled man, 
 he came back to England with a full knowledge of men and 
 manners, in the prime of his life, with spirits unbroken by ad- 
 
 * M. de Grammont visited England during the Protectorate. His second 
 nsit, after being forbidden the court by Louis XIV., was in 1662. 
 
54 Charles II. 
 
 versity, with a heart unsoured by that ' stem nurse,' with a gaiety 
 that was always kindly, never uncourteous, ever more French 
 than English j far more natural did he appear as the son of 
 Henrietta Maria than as the offspring of the thoughtful Charles. 
 
 In person, too, the king was then agreeable, though rather 
 what the French would call distinguk than dignified ; he was, 
 however, tall, and somewhat elegant, with a long French face, 
 which in his boyhood was plump and full about the lower part 
 of the cheeks, but now began to sink into that well-known, lean, 
 dark, flexible countenance, in which we do not, however, re- 
 cognize the gaiety of the man whose very name brings with it 
 associations of gaiety, politeness, good company, and all the 
 attributes of a first-rate wit, except the almost inevitable ill- 
 nature. There is in the physiognomy of Charles II. that me- 
 lancholy which is often observable in the faces of those who 
 are mere men of pleasure. 
 
 De Grammont found himself completely in his own sphere 
 at Whitehall, where the habits were far more French than En- 
 glish. Along that stately Mall, overshadowed with umbrageous 
 trees, which retains — and it is to be hoped ever will retain — the 
 old name of the ' Birdcage Walk,' one can picture to oneself 
 the king walking so fast that no one can keep up with him ; 
 yet stopping from time to time to chat with some acquaintances. 
 He is walking to Duck Island, which is full of his favourite 
 water-fowl, and of which he has given St. Evremond the go- 
 vernment. How pleasant is his talk to those who attend him 
 as he walks along ; how well the quality of good-nature is shown 
 in his love of dumb animals ; how completely he is a boy still, 
 even in that brown wig of many curls, and with the George and 
 Garter on his breast ! Boy, indeed, for he is followed by a 
 litter of young spaniels : a little brindled greyhound frisks 
 beside him ; it is for that he is ridiculed by the '■psaltii sung at 
 the Calves' Head Club : these favourites were cherished to his 
 death. 
 
 ' His dogs would sit in council boards 
 Like judges in their seats : 
 We question much which had most sense, 
 The master or the curs.' 
 
 Then what capital stories Charles would tell, as he unbent at 
 
The Court of Charles II. 55 
 
 night amid the faithful, though profligate, companions of his 
 exile ! He told his anecdotes, it is true, over and over again, 
 yet they were always embellished with some fresh touch — like 
 the repetition of a song which has been encored on the stage. 
 Whether from his inimitable art, or from his royalty, we leave 
 others to guess, but his stories bore repetition again and again : 
 they were amusing, and even novel to the very last. 
 
 To this seducing court did De Grammont now come. It was 
 a delightful exchange from the endless ceremonies and j)uncti- 
 lios of the region over which Louis XIV. presided. Wherever 
 Charles was, his palace appeared to resemble a large hospit- 
 able house — sometimes town, sometimes country — in which 
 every one did as he liked ; and where distinctions of rank were 
 kept up as a matter of convenience, but were only valued on 
 that score. 
 
 In other respects, Charles had modelled his court very much 
 on the plan of thatx)f Louis XIV., which he had admired foi 
 its gaiety and spirit Comeille, Racine, Molifere, Boileau, were 
 encouraged by le Grand Monarque. Wycherley and Dryden 
 were attracted by Charles to celebrate the festivities, and to 
 amuse the great and the gay. In various points De Grammont 
 found a resemblance. The queen-consort, Catherine of Bra- 
 ganza, was as complacent to her husband's vices as the queen 
 of Louis. These royal ladies were merely first sultanas, and 
 had no right, it was thought, to feel jealousy, or to resent neg- 
 lect. Each returning sabbath saw Whitehall lighted up, and 
 heard the tabors sound for a brank, (Anglicised 'brawl') 
 This was a dance which mixed up everybody, and called a 
 brawl, from the foot being shaken to a quick time. Gaily did 
 his Majesty perform it, leading to the hot exercise Anne Hyde, 
 Duchess of York, stout and homely, and leaving Lady Castle- 
 maine to his son, the Duke of Monmouth. Then Charles, with 
 ready grace, would begin the coranto, taking a single lady in 
 this dance along the gallery. Lords and ladies one after another 
 followed, and ' very noble,' writes Pepys, ' and great pleasure 
 it was to see.' Next came the country dances, introduced by 
 Mary, Countess of Buckingham, the grandmother of the grace- 
 fill duke who is moving along the gallery ; — and she invented 
 
$6 Norman Peculiarities. 
 
 those once popular dances in order to introduce, with lesi 
 chance of failure, her rustic country cousins, who could not 
 easily be taught to carry themselves well in the brawl, or to 
 step out gracefully in the coranto, both of which dances re- 
 quired practice and time. In all these dances the king shines 
 the most, and dances much better than his brother the Duke 
 of York. 
 
 In these gay scenes De Grammont met with the most 
 fashionable belles of the court : fortunately for him they all 
 spoke French tolerably ; and he quickly made himself welcome 
 amongst even the few — and few indeed there were — ^who 
 plumed themselves upon untainted reputations. Hitherto 
 those French noblemen who had presented themselves in Eng- 
 land had been poor and absurd. The court had been thronged 
 with a troop of impertinent Parisian coxcombs, who had pre- 
 tended to despise ever3rthing English, and who treated the 
 natives as if they were foreigners in their own country. De 
 Grammont, on the contrary, was familiar with every one : he 
 ate, he drank, he lived, in short, according to the custom of 
 the country that hospitably received him, and accorded him 
 the more respect, because they had been insulted by others. 
 
 He now introduced ihepetits soupers, which have never been 
 understood anywhere so well as in France, and which are even 
 there dying out to make way for the less social and more ex- 
 pensive dinner ; but, perhaps, he would even here havs been 
 unsuccessful, had it not been for the society and advice of the 
 fd,mous St. Evremond, who at this time was exiled in France, 
 and took refuge in England. 
 
 This celebrated and accomplished man had some points of 
 resemblance with De Grammont. Like him, he had been ori- 
 ginally intended for the church ; like him he had turned to the 
 military profession ; he was an ensign before he was full six- 
 teen ; and had a company of foot given him after serving two 
 or three campaigns. Like De Grammont, he owed the faci- 
 lities of his early career to his being the descendant of an 
 ancient and honourable family. St. Evremond was the 
 Seigneur of St Denis le Guast, in Normandy, where he was 
 bom. 
 
St. Evremond, the Handsome Norman. 57 
 
 Both these sparkling wits of society had at one time, and, 
 in fact, at the same period, served under the great Condd ; both 
 were pre-eminent, not only in literature, but in games of chance. 
 St. Evremond was famous at the University of Caen, in which 
 he studied, for his fencing ; and ' St. Evremond's pass' was well 
 known to swordsmen of his time ; — both were gay and satirical ; 
 neither of them pretended to rigid morals ; but both were ac- 
 counted men of honour among theii fellow-men of pleasure. 
 They were graceful, kind, generous. 
 
 In person St. Evremond had the advantage, being a Nor- 
 man — a race which combines the handsomest traits of an 
 English countenance with its blond hair, blue eyes, and fair 
 skin. Neither does the slight tinge of the Galhc race detract 
 from the attractions of a true, well-bom Norman, bred up in 
 that province which is called the Court-end of France, and 
 polished in the capital. Your Norman is hardy, and fond of 
 field-sports : like the Englishman, he is usually fearless ; gene- 
 rous, but, unlike the English, somewhat crafty. You may know 
 him by the fresh colour, the peculiar blue eye, long and large ; 
 by his joyousness and look of health, gathered up in his own 
 marshy country, for the Norman is well fed, and lives on the 
 produce of rich pasture-land, with cheapness and plenty around 
 him. And St. Evremond was one of the handsomest speci- 
 mens of this fine locality (so mixed up as it is with us) ; and 
 his blue eyes sparkled with humour ; his beautifully-turned 
 mouth was all sweetness ; and his noble forehead, the whiteness 
 of which was set off by thick dark eyebrows, was expressive of 
 his great intelligence, until a wen grew between his eyebrows, 
 and so changed all the expression of his face that the Duchess 
 of Mazarin used to call him the ' Old Satyr.' St. Evremond 
 was also Norman in other respects : he called himself a 
 thorough Roman Catholic, yet he despised the superstitions of 
 his church, and prepared himself for death without them. 
 When asked by an ecclesiastic sent expressly firom the court 
 of Florence to attend his death-bed, if he ' would be recon- 
 ciled,' he answered, ' With all my heart ; I would fain be re- 
 conciled to my stomach, which no longer performs its usual 
 functions.' And his talk, we are told, during the fortnight 
 
5,8 The most Beautiful Woman in Europe. 
 
 that preceded his death, was not regret for a life we should, 
 in seriousness, call misspent, but because partridges and phea- 
 sants no longer suited his condition, and he was obliged to be 
 reduced to boiled meats. No one, however, could tell what 
 might also be passing in his heart We cannot always judge 
 of a life, any more than of a drama, by its last scene ; but this 
 is certain, that in an age of blasphemy St. Evremond could 
 not endure to hear religion insulted by ridicule. ' Common 
 decency,' said this man of the world, ' and a due regard to 
 our fellow-creatures, would not permit it' He did not, it 
 seems, refer his displeasure to a higher source — to the pre 
 sence of the Omniscient, — ^who claims from us all not alone 
 the tribute of our poor frail hearts in serious moments, but 
 the deep reverence of every thought in the hours of careless 
 pleasure. 
 
 It was now St Evremond who taught De Grammont to col- 
 ^ , ,lect around him the wits of that court, so rich in attractions, so 
 poor in honour and morality. The object of St Evremond's 
 devotion, though he had, at the se^a of the Restoration, passed 
 his fiftieth year, was Hortense Mancini, once the richest 
 heiress, and still the most beautiful woman in Europe, and a 
 niece, on her mother's side, of Cardinal Mazarin. Hortense 
 had been educated, after the age of six, in France. She was 
 Italian in her accomplishments, in her reckless, wild disposi- 
 tion, opposed to that of the French, who are generally calcu- 
 lating and wary, even in their vices : she was Italian in the 
 style of her surpassing beauty, and French to the core in her 
 principles. Hortense, at the age of thirteen, had been mar- 
 ried to Armand Due de Meilleraye and Mayenne, who had 
 fallen so desperately in love with this beautiful child, that he 
 declared ' if he did not marry her he should die in three 
 months.' Cardinal Mazarin, although he had destined his 
 niece Mary to this alliance, gave his consent on condition that 
 the duke should take the name of Mazarin. The cardinal died 
 a year after this marriage, leaving his niece Hortense the enor- 
 mous fortune of ;^i, 625,000 ; yet she died in the greatest 
 difficulties, and her corpse was seized by her creditors. 
 
 The Due de Mayenne proved to be a fanatic, who used to 
 
Hor tense Mancints Adventures. 59 
 
 vaken his wife in the dead of the night to hear his visions ; 
 who forbade his child to be nursed on fast-days ; and who be- 
 lieved himself to be inspired. After six years of wretchedness 
 poor Hortense petitioned for a separation and a division of 
 property. She quitted her husband's home and took refuge 
 first in a nunnery, where she showed her unbelief, or her irre- 
 verence, by mixing ink with holy-water, that the poor nuns 
 might black their faces when they crossed themselves ; or, in 
 concert with Madame de Courcelles, another handsome mar- 
 ried woman, she used to walk through the dormitories in the 
 dead of night, with a number of little dogs barking at their 
 heels ; then she filled two great chests that were over the dor- 
 mitories with water, which ran over, and, penetrating through 
 the chinks of the floor, wet the holy sisters in their beds. At 
 length all this sorry gaiety was stopped by a decree that Hor- 
 tense was to return to the Palais Mazarin ; and to remain there 
 until the suit for a separation should be decided. That the re- 
 sult should be favourable was doubtful : therefore, one fine night 
 in June, 1667, Hortense escaped. She dressed herself in male at- 
 tire, and, attended by a female servant, managed to get through the 
 gate at Paris, and to enter a carriage. Then she fled to Swit- 
 zerland ; and, had not her flight been shared by the Chevalier 
 de Rohan, one of the handsomest men in France, one could 
 -hardly have blamed an escape from a half-lunatic husband. She 
 was only twenty-eight when, after various adventures, she came 
 in all her unimpaired beauty to England. Charles was captivated 
 by her charms, and, touched by her misfortunes, he settled on 
 her a pension of ^^4,000 a year, and gave her rooms in St. 
 James's. Waller sang her praise : — 
 
 ' When through the world fair Mazarine had run, 
 Bright as her fellow-traveller, the sun : 
 Hither at length the Roman eagle flies. 
 As the last triumph of her conquering eyes." 
 
 If Hortense failed to carry off firom the Duchess of Ports- 
 mouth — then the star of Whitehall — the heart of Charles, she 
 . found, at all events, in St. Evremond, one of those French, pla- 
 tonic, life-long fiiends, who, as Chateaubriand worshipped Ma- 
 
6o Madame Mazarin's House at Chelsea. 
 
 dame Rdcamier, adored to the last the exiled niece of Mazaria 
 Every day, when in her old age and his, the warmth of love 
 had subsided into the serener affection of pitying, and yet ad- 
 miring friendship, St. Evremond was seen, a little old man in 
 a black coif, carried along Pall Mall in a sedan chair, to the 
 apartment of Madame Mazarin, in St. James's. He always 
 took with him a pound of butter, made in his own little dairy, 
 for her breakfast. When De Grammont was installed at the 
 court of Charles, Hortense was, however, in her prime. Her 
 house at Chelsea, then a country village, was famed for its so- 
 ciety and its varied pleasures. St. Evremond has so well des- 
 cribed its attractions that his words should be literally given. 
 ' Freedom and discretion are equally to be found there. Every 
 one is made more at home than in his own house, and treated 
 with more respect than at court. It is true that there are fre- 
 quent disputes there, but they are those of knowledge and not 
 of anger. There is play there, but it is inconsiderable, and 
 only practised for its amusement. You discover in no counte- 
 nance the fear of losing, nor concern for what is lost. Some 
 are so disinterested that they are reproached for expressing joy 
 when they lose, and regret when they win. Play is followed by 
 the most excellent repasts in the world. There you will find 
 whatever delicacy is brought from France, and whatever is cu- 
 rious from the Indies. Even the commonest meats have the 
 rarest relish imparted to them. There is neither a plenty which 
 gives a notion of extravagance, nor a frugality that discovers 
 penury or meanness.' 
 
 What an assemblage it must have been ! Here lolls Charles, 
 Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Lard Dorset, the laziest, in mat- 
 ters of business or court advancement — the boldest, in point 
 of frolic and pleasure, of all the wits and beaux of his time. 
 His youth had been full of adventure and of dissipation. ' I 
 know not how it is,' said Wilmot, Lord Rochester, ' but my 
 Lord Dorset can do anything, and is never to blame.' He had, 
 in truth, a heart ; he could bear to hear others praised ; he 
 despised the arts of courtiers ; he befriended the unhappy ; he 
 was the most engaging of men in manners, the most loveable 
 and accomplished of human beings; at once poet, philan- 
 
A necdote of L ord Dorset. 6 1 
 
 thropist, and wit ; he was also possessed of chivalric notions, 
 and of daring courage. 
 
 Like his royal master, Lord Dorset had travelled ; and when 
 made a gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles II., he was 
 not unlike his sovereign in other traits ; so full of gaiety, so 
 high-bred, so lax, so courteous, so convivial, that no supper 
 was complete without him : no circle ' the right thing,' unless 
 Buckhurst, as he was long called, was there to pass the bottle 
 round, and to keep every one in good-humour Vet, he had 
 misspent a youth in reckless immorality, and had even been 
 in Newgate on a charge, a doubtful charge it is true, of high- 
 way robbery and murder, but had been found guilty of man- 
 slaughter only. He was again mixed up in a disgraceful 
 affair with Sir Charles Sedley. When brought before Sir Robert 
 Hyde, then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, his name 
 having been mentioned, the judge inquired whether that was 
 the Buckhurst lately tried for robbery ? and when told it was, 
 he asked him whether he had so soon forgotten his deliver- 
 ance at that time : and whether it would not better become 
 him to have been at his prayers begging God's forgiveness than 
 to come into such courses again ? 
 
 The reproof took effect, and Buckhurst became what was 
 then esteemed a steady man ; he volunteered and fought 
 gallantly in the fleet under James Duke of York : and he com- 
 pleted his reform, to all outward show, by marrying Lady 
 Falmouth.* Buckhurst, in society, the most good-tempered 
 of men, was thus referred to by Prior, in his poetical epistle to 
 Fleetwood Sheppard : — 
 
 ' When crowding folks, with strange ill faces, 
 Were making legs, and begging places : 
 And some with patents, some with merit, 
 Tired out my good Lord Dorset's spirit.* 
 
 Yet his pen was full of malice, whilst his heart was tender to 
 
 all. Wilmot, Lord Rochester, cleverly said of him : — 
 
 ■ For pointed satire I would Buckhurst chuse. 
 The best good man with the worst-natured muse." 
 
 * The Earl of Dorset married Ehzabeth, widow of Charles Berkeley, Earl 
 of Falmouth, and daughter of Hervey Bagot, Esq., of Pipe Hall, Warwick- 
 shire, who died without issue. He married, 7th March, 1684 — 5, Lady Mary 
 Compton, daughter of James Earl of Northampton. 
 
62 ^ord Rochester in his Zenith. 
 
 Still more celebrated as a beau and wit of his time, was John 
 Wihnot, Lord Rochester. He was the son of Lord Wilmot, 
 the cavalier who so loyally attended Charles II. after the 
 Battle of Worcester; and, as, the offspring of that royalist, 
 was greeted by Lord Clarendon, then Chancellor of the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford, when he took his degree as Master of Arts, 
 with a kiss.* The young nobleman then travelled, according 
 to custom; and then most unhappily for himself and for 
 others, whom he corrupted by his example, he presented him- 
 self at the court of Charles II. He was at this time a youth 
 of eighteen, and one of the handsomest persons of his age. 
 The face of Buckhurst was hard and plain ; that of De 
 Grammont had little to redeem it but its varying intelligence ; 
 but the countenance of the young Earl of Rochester was per- 
 fectly symmetrical ; it was of a long oval, with large, thoughtful, 
 sleepy eyes ; the eyebrows arched and high above them ; the 
 brow, though concealed by the curls of the now modest wig, 
 was high and smooth ; the nose, delicately shaped, somewhat 
 aquiline ; the mouth full, but perfectly beautiful, was set off by a 
 round and well-formed chin. Such was Lord Rochester in his 
 zenith ; and as he came forward on state occasions, his false 
 light curls hanging down on his shoulders — a cambric kerchief 
 loosely tied, so as to let the ends, worked in point, fall grace- 
 fully down : his scarlet gown in folds over a suit of light steel 
 armour — for men had become carpet knights then, and the 
 coat of mail worn by the brave cavaliers was now less warlike, 
 and was mixed up with robes, ruffles, and rich hose — and when 
 in this guise he appeared at Whitehall, all admired ; and Charles 
 was enchanted with the simplicity, the intelligence, and modesty 
 of one who was then an ingenuous youth, with good aspirations, 
 and a staid and decorous demeanour. 
 
 Woe to Lady Rochester — woe to the mother who trusted her 
 son's innocence in that vitiated court ! Lord Rochester forms 
 one of the many instances we daily behold, that it is those 
 most tenderly cared for, who often fall most deeply, as well as 
 most early, into temptation. He soon lost every trace of 
 
 • Lord Rochester succeeded to the Earldom in 1659. It was created by 
 Charles II. in 1652, at Paris. 
 
His Courage and Wit. 6T) 
 
 virtue — of principle, even of deference to received notions of 
 propriety. For a while there seemed hopes that he would not 
 wholly fall : courage was his inheritance, and he distinguished 
 himself in 1665, when as a volunteer, he went in quest of the 
 Dutch East India fleet, and served with heroic gallantry under 
 Lord Sandwich. And when he returned to court, there was a 
 partial improvement in his conduct. He even looked back 
 upon his former indiscretions with horror : he had now shared 
 in the realities of life : he had grasped a high and honourable 
 ambition ; but he soon fell away — soon became almost a cast- 
 away. ' For five years,' he told Bishop Burnet, when on his 
 death-bed, 'I was never sober.' His reputation as a wit must 
 rest, in the present day, chiefly upon productions which , have 
 long since been condemned as unreadable. Strange to say, 
 when not under the influence of wine, he was a constant 
 student of classical authors, perhaps the worst reading for a 
 man of his tendency : all that was satirical and impure attract- 
 ing him most. Boileau, among French writers, and Cowley 
 among the English, were his favourite authors. He also read 
 many books of physic ; for long before thirty his constitution 
 was so broken by his life, that he turned his attention to reme- 
 dies, and to medical treatment ; and it is remarkable how many 
 men of dissolute lives take up the same sort of reading, in the 
 vain hope of repairing a course of dissolute living. As a 
 writer, his style was at once forcible and lively ; as a com- 
 panion, he was wildly vivacious : madly, perilously, did he 
 outrage decency, insult virtue, profane religion. Charles II. 
 liked him on first acquaintance, for Rochester was a man of 
 the most finished and fascinating manners ; but at length there 
 came a coolness, and the witty courtier was banished from 
 Whitehall. Unhappily for himself, he was recalled, and com- 
 manded to wait in London until his majesty should choose to 
 readmit him into his presence. 
 
 Disguises and practical jokes were the fashion of the day. 
 The use of the mask, which was put down by proclamation 
 soon after the accession of Queen Anne, favoured a series of 
 pranks with which Lord Rochester, during the period of his 
 living concealed in London, diverted himself. The success 
 
64 Credulity, Past and Present. 
 
 of his scheme was perfect. He established himself, since he 
 could not go to Whitehall, in the City. ' His first design,' 
 De Grammont relates, 'was only to be initiated into the 
 mysteries of those fortunate and happy inhabitants ; that is 
 to say, by changing his name and dress, to gain admittance 
 to their feasts and entertainments. ... As he was able to 
 adapt himself to all capacities and humours, he soon deeply 
 insinuated himself into the esteem of the substantial wealthy 
 aldermen, and into the affections of their more delicate, mag- 
 nificent, and tender ladies ; he made one in all their feasts 
 and at all their assemblies ; and whilst in the company of the 
 husbands, he declaimed against the faults and mistakes of 
 government; he joined their wives in railing against the 
 profligacy of the court ladies, and in inveighing against the 
 king's mistresses : he agreed with them, that the industrious 
 poor were to pay for these cursed extravagances ; that the City 
 beauties were not inferior to those at the other end of the 
 town, . . . after which, to outdo their murmurings, he said, 
 that he wondered Whitehall was not yet consumed by fire from 
 heaven, since such rakes as Rochester, Killigrew, and Sidney 
 were suffered there.' 
 
 This conduct endeared him so much to the City, and made 
 him so welcome at their clubs, that at last he grew sick of 
 their cramming, and endless invitations. 
 
 He now tried a new sphere of action ; and instead of re- 
 turning, as he might have done, to the court, retreated into 
 the most obscure corners of the metropoUs ; and again chang- 
 ing his name and dress, gave himself out as a German doctor 
 named Bendo, who professed to find out inscrutable secrets, 
 and to apply infallible remedies ; to know, by astrology, all 
 the past, and to foretell the future. 
 
 If the reign of Charles was justly deemed an age of high 
 civilization, it was also one of extreme credulity. Unbelief in 
 religion went hand in hand with blind faith in astrology and 
 witchcraft ; in omens, divinations, and prophecies : neither let 
 us too strongly despise, in these their foibles, our ancestors. 
 They had many excuses for their superstitions ; and for their 
 fears, false as their hopes, and equally groundless. The circu- 
 
' Dr. Bendo ' and La Belle Jennings. 65 
 
 lation of knowledge was limited : the public journals, that part 
 of the press to which we now owe inexpressible gratitude for 
 its general accuracy, its enlarged views, its purity, its infor- 
 mation, was then a meagre statement of dry facts: an an 
 nouncement, not a commentary. ' The Flying Post,' the ' Daily 
 Courant,' the names of which may be supposed to imply 
 speed, never reached lone country places till weeks after they 
 had been printed on their one duodecimo sheet of thin coarse 
 paper. Religion, too, just emerging into glorious light from 
 the darkness of popery, had still her superstitions ; and the 
 mantle that priestcraft had contrived to throw over her ex 
 quisite, ladiant, and simple form, was not then wholly and 
 finally withdrawn. Romanism still hovered in the form of 
 credulity. 
 
 But now, with shame be it spoken, in the full noonday 
 genial splendour of our Reformed Church, with newspapers, 
 the leading articles of which rise to a level with our greatest 
 didactic writers, and are competent even to form the mind as 
 well as to amuse the leisure hours of the young readers : with 
 every species of direct communication, we yet hold to falla- 
 cies from which the credulous in Charles's time would have 
 shrunk in dismay and disgust. Table-turning, spirit-rapping, 
 clairvoyance, Swedenborgianism, and all that family of follies, 
 would have been far too strong for the faith of those who 
 counted upon dreams as their guide, or looked up to the 
 heavenly planets with a belief, partly superstitious, partly 
 reverential, for their guidance; and in a dim and flickering 
 faith trusted to their stars. 
 
 ' Dr. Bendo,' therefore, as Rochester was called — ^handsome, 
 witty, unscmpulous, and perfectly acquainted with the then 
 small circle of the court — ^was soon noted for his wonderful 
 revelations. Chamber-women, waiting-maids, and shop-girls 
 were his first customers : but, very soon, gay spinsters from 
 the court came in their hoods and masks to ascertain with 
 anxious faces, their fortunes ; whilst the cunning, sarcastic 
 ' Dr. Bendo,' noted in his diary all the intrigues which were 
 confided to him by these lov^y clients. La Belle Jennings, 
 the sister of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, was among his 
 
 5 
 
66 La Triste Heritihe. 
 
 disciples ; she took with her the beautiful Miss Price, and, 
 disguising themselves as orange girls, these young ladies set off 
 in a hackney-coach to visit Dr. Bendo ; but when within half a 
 street of the supposed fortune-teller's, were prevented by the 
 interruption of a dissolute courtier named Brounker. 
 
 ' Everything by turns and nothing long.' When Lord Ro- 
 chester was tired of being an astrologer, he used to roam about 
 the streets as a beggar ; then he kept a footman who knew the 
 Court well, and used to dress him up in a red coat, supply him 
 with a musket, like a sentinel, and send him to watch at the 
 doors of all the fine ladies, to find out their goings on : after- 
 wards, Lord Rochester would retire to the country, and write 
 libels on these fair victims, and, one day, offered to present the 
 king with one of his lampoons ; but being tipsy, gave Charles, 
 instead, one written upon himself. 
 
 At this juncture we read with sorrow Bishop Burnet's forcible 
 description of his career : — 
 
 ' He seems to have freed himself from all impressions of 
 virtue or religion, of honour or good nature. . . . He had but 
 one maxim, to which he adhered firmly, that he has to do 
 everything, and deny himself in nothing that might maintain 
 his greatness. He was unhappily made for drunkenness, for 
 he had drunk all his friends dead, and was able to subdue 
 two or three sets of drunkards one after another ; so it scarce 
 ever appeared that he was disordered after the greatest drink- 
 ing : an hour or two of sleep carried all off so entirely, that no 
 sign of them remained. . . . This had a terrible conclusion.' 
 
 Like many other men, Rochester might have been saved by 
 being kept far from the scene of temptation. Whilst he re- 
 mained in the country he was tolerably sober, perhaps steady. 
 When he approached Brentford on his route to London, his old 
 propensities came upon him. 
 
 When scarcely out of his boyhood he carried off a young 
 heiress, Elizabeth Mallett, whom De Grammont calls La triste 
 heritilre: and triste, indeed, she naturally was. Possessed of 
 a fortune of ;^2Soo a year, this young lady was marked out by 
 Charles II. as a victim for the profligate Rochester. But the 
 reckless young wit chose to take his own way of managing the 
 
Elizabeth, Countess of Rochester. 67 
 
 matter. One night, after supping at Whitehall with Miss Stuart, 
 the young Elizabeth was returning home with her grandfather, 
 Lord Haly, when their coach was suddenly stopped near 
 Charing Cross by a number of bravos, both on horseback and 
 on foot — the 'Roaring Boys and Mohawks,' who were not ex- 
 tinct even in Addison's time. They lifted the affrighted girl 
 out of the carriage, and placed her in one which had six horses; 
 they then set off for Uxbridge, and were overtaken ; but the 
 outrage ended in marriage, and EUzabeth became the unhappy, 
 neglected Countess of Rochester. Yet she loved him — ^perhaps 
 in ignorance of all that was going on whilst she stayed with her 
 four children at home. 
 
 ' If,' she writes to him, ' I could have been troubled at any- 
 thing, when I had the happiness of receiving a letter from 
 you, I should be so, because you did not name a time when I 
 might hope to see you, the uncertainty of which very much 
 afflicts me. . . . Lay your commands upon me what I am to 
 do, and though it be to forget my children, and the long hope 
 I have lived in of seeing you, yet will I endeavour to obey 
 you; or in the memory only torment myself, without giving 
 you the trouble of putting you in mind that there lives a 
 creature as 
 
 ' Your faithful, humble servant. 
 
 And he, in reply : ' I went away (to Rochester) like a rascal, 
 without taking leave, dear wife. It is an unpolished way of 
 proceeding, which a modest man ought to be ashamed of 
 I have left you a prey to your own imaginations amongst 
 my relations, the worst of damnations. But there will come 
 an hour of deliverance, till when, may my mother be merci- 
 ful unto you ! So I commit you to what I shall ensue, woman 
 to woman, wife to mother, in hopes of a future appearance in 
 glory. ... 
 
 ' Pray write as often as you have leisure, to your 
 
 'Rochester.' 
 
 To his son, he writes : 'You are now grown big enough to 
 be a man, if you can be wise enough ; and the way to be truly 
 
68 Retribution and Reformation. 
 
 wise is to serve God, learn your book, and observe the in 
 structions of your parents first, and next your tutor, to whom 
 I have entirely resigned you for this seven years ; and accord- 
 ing as you employ that time, you are to be happy or unhappy 
 for ever. I have so good an opinion of you, that I am glad to 
 think you will never deceive me. Dear child, learn your book 
 and be obedient, and you will see what a father I shall be to 
 you. You shall want no pleasure while you are good, and thai 
 you may be good are my constant prayers.' 
 
 Lord Rochester had not attained the age of thirty, when he 
 was mercifully awakened to a sense of his guilt here, his peril 
 hereafter. It seemed to many that his very nature was so 
 warped that penitence in its true sense could never come 
 to him ; but the mercy of God is unfathomable ; He judges 
 not as man judges; He forgives, as man knows not how to 
 forgive. 
 
 ' God, our kind Master, merciful as just. 
 Knowing our frame, remembers man is dust : 
 He marlcs the dawn of every virtuous aim. 
 And fans the smolcing fiax into a flame ; 
 He hears the language of a silent tear, 
 And sighs are incense from a heart sincere." 
 
 And the reformation of Rochester is a confiraiation of the doc- 
 trine of a special Providence, as well as of that of a retribution, 
 even in this life. 
 
 The retribution came in the form of an early but certain 
 decay ; of a suffering so stem, so composed of mental and 
 bodily anguish, that never was man called to repentance by a 
 voice so distinct as Rochester. The reformation was sent 
 through the instrumentality of one who had been a sinner like 
 himself, who had sinned with him ; an unfortunate lady, who, 
 in her last hours, had been visited, reclaimed, consoled by 
 Bishop Burnet. Of this, Lord Rochester had heard. He was 
 then, to all appearance, recovering from his last sickness. He 
 sent for Burnet, who devoted to him one evening every week 
 of that solemn winter when the soul of the penitent sought 
 reconciliation and peace. 
 
 The conversion was not instantaneous ; it was gradual, pene- 
 trating, effective, sincere. Those who wish to gratify curiositj 
 
Conversion. 69 
 
 concerning the death-bed of one who had so notoriously sinned, 
 will read Burnet's account of Rochester's illness and death with 
 deep interest ; and nothing is so interesting as a death-bed. 
 Those who delight in works of nervous thought, and elevated 
 sentiments, will read it too, and arise from the perusal grati- 
 fied. Those, however, who are true, contrite Christians will go 
 still farther ; they will own that few works so intensely touch 
 the hohest and highest feelings ; few so absorb the heart ; few 
 so greatly show tlie vanity of life ; the unspeakable value of 
 purifying faith. ' It is a book which the critic,' says Doctor 
 Johnson, ' may read for its elegance, the philosopher for its ar- 
 guments, the saint for its piety.' 
 
 Whilst deeply lamenting his own sins. Lord Rochester be- 
 came anxious to redeem his former associates from theirs. 
 
 ' When Wilmot, Earl of Rochester,'* writes William Thomas, 
 in a manuscript preserved in the British Museum, ' lay on his 
 death-bed, Mr. Fanshawe came to visit him, with an intention 
 to stay about a week with him. Mr. Fanshawe, sitting by the 
 Bedside, perceived his lordship pra)dng to God, through Jesus 
 Christ, and acquainted Dr. Radcliffe, who attended my Lord 
 Rochester in this illness and was then in the house, with what 
 he had heard, and told him that my lord was certainly delirious, 
 for to his knowledge, he said, he believed neither in God nol 
 in Jesus Christ. The doctor, who had often heard him pray in 
 the same manner, proposed to Mr. Fanshawe to go up to his 
 lordship to be further satisfied touching this affair. When they 
 came to his room the doctor told my lord what Mr. Fanshawe 
 said, upon which his lordship addressed himself to Mr. Fan- 
 shawe to this effect : " Sir, it is true, you and I have been very 
 bad and profane together, and then I was of the opinion you 
 mention. But now I am quite of another mind, and happy am 
 I that I am so. I am very sensible how miserable I was 
 whilst of another opinion. Sir, you may assure yourself that 
 there is a Judge and a future state ;" and so entered into a very 
 handsome discourse concerning the last judgment, future state 
 
 * Mr. William Thomas, the writer of this statement, heard it from Dr. Rad- 
 cliffe at the table of Speaker Harley, (afterwards Earl of Oxford,) i6th June, 
 1702. 
 
•JO Beaux without Wit. 
 
 &c., and concluded with a serious and pathetic exhortation to 
 Mr. Fanshawe to enter into another course of life ; adding that 
 he (Mr. F.) knew him to be his friend ; that he never was more 
 so than at this time ; and " sir," said he, " to use a Scripture 
 expression, I am not mad, but speak the words of truth and 
 soberness." Upon this Mr. Fanshawe trembled, and went im- 
 mediately a-foot to Woodstock, and there hired a horse to 
 Oxford, and thence took coach to London.' 
 
 There were other butterflies in that gay court ; beaux with- 
 out wit ; remorseless rakes, incapable of one noble thought or 
 high pursuit ; and amongst the most foolish and fashionable 
 of these was Henry Jermyn, Lord Dover. As the nephew of 
 Henry Jermyn, Lord St. Albans, this young simpleton was 
 ushered into a court life with the most favourable auspices. 
 Jermyn Street (built in 1667) recalls to us the residence of 
 Lord St. Albans, the supposed husband of Henrietta Maria. 
 It was also the centre of fashion when Henry Jermyn the 
 younger was launched into its unholy sphere. Near Eagle 
 Passage lived at that time La Belle Stuart, Duchess of Rich- 
 mond ; next door to her Henry Savile, Rochester's friend. 
 The locality has since been purified by worthier associations : 
 Sir Isaac Newton lived for a time in Jermyn Street, and Gray 
 lodged there. 
 
 It was, however, in De Grammont's time, the scene of all 
 the various gallantries which were going on. Henry Jermyn 
 was supported by the wealth of his uncle, that uncle who, 
 whilst Charles II. was starving at Brussels, had kept a lavish 
 table in Paris : little Jermyn, as the younger Jermyn was called, 
 owed much indeed to his fortune, which had procured him 
 great eclat at the Dutch court. His head was large ; his 
 features small ; his legs short ; his physiognomy was not posi- 
 tively disagreeable, but he was affected and trifling, and his 
 wit consisted in expressions learnt by rote, which supplied him 
 either with raillery or with compliments. 
 
 This petty, inferior being had attracted the regard of the 
 Princess Royal — afterwards Princess of Orange — the daughter 
 of Charles I. Then the Countess of Castlemaine — afterwards 
 Duchess of Cleveland — ^became infatuated with him ; he cap 
 
An Incomparable Beauty. 71 
 
 tivated also the lovely Mrs. Hyde, a languishing beauty, whom 
 Sir Peter Lely has depicted in all her sleepy attractions, with 
 her ringlets falling lightly over her snowy forehead and down 
 to her shoulders. This lady was, at the time when Jermyn 
 came to England, recently married to the son of the great 
 Clarendon. She fell desperately in love with this unworthy 
 being : but, happily for her peace, he preferred the honour (or 
 dishonour) of being the favourite of Lady Castlemaine, and 
 Mrs. Hyde escaped the disgrace she, perhaps, merited. 
 
 De Grammont appears absolutely to have hated Jermyn; 
 not because he was immoral, impertinent, and contemptible, 
 but because it was Jermyn's boast that no woman, good or bad, 
 could resist him. Yet, in respect to their unprincipled life, 
 Jermyn and De Grammont had much in common. The Che- 
 valier was at this time an admirer of the foolish beauty, Jane 
 Middleton ; one of the loveliest women of a court where it was 
 impossible to turn without seeing loveliness. 
 
 Mrs. Middleton was the daughter of Sir Roger Needham , 
 and she has been described, even by the grave Evelyn, as a 
 'famous, and, indeed, incomparable beauty.' A coquette, she 
 was, however, the friend of intellectual men ; and it was pro- 
 bably at the house of St. Evremond that the Count first saw 
 her. Her figure was good, she was fair and delicate ; and she 
 had so great a desire. Count Hamilton relates, to ' appear mag- 
 nificently, that she was ambitious to vie with those of the great- 
 est fortunes, though unable to support the expense.' 
 
 Letters and presents now flew about. Perfumed gloves, 
 pocket looking-glasses, elegant boxes, apricot paste, essences, 
 and other small wares arrived weekly from Paris; English 
 jewellery still had the preference, and was liberally bestowed ; 
 yet Mrs. Middleton, affected and somewhat precise, accepted 
 the gifts but did not seem to encourage the giver. 
 
 The Count de Grammont, piqued, was beginning to turn his 
 attention to Miss Warmistre, one of the queen's maids of honour. 
 a lively brunette, and a contrast to the languid Mrs. Middleton ; 
 when, happily for him, a beauty appeared on the scene, and 
 attracted him, by higher qualities than mere looks, to a real, 
 fervent, and honourable attachment. 
 
f2 Anthony Hamilton, De Crammonts biographer. 
 
 Amongst the few respected families of that period was tha 
 of Sir George Hamilton, the fourth son of James, Earl of ADei- 
 com, and of Mary, grand-daughter of Walter, eleventh Earl ol 
 Ormond. Sir George had distinguished himself during the 
 Civil Wars : on the death of Charles I. he had retired to France, 
 but returned, after the Restoration, to London, with a large 
 family, all intelligent and beautiful. 
 
 From their relationship to the Ormond family, the Hamil- 
 lons were soon installed in the first circles of fashion. The 
 Duke of Ormond's sons had been in exile with the king ; they 
 now added to the lustre of the court after his return. The Earl 
 of Arran, the second, was a beau of the true Cavalier order; 
 clever at games, more especially at tennis, the king's favourite 
 diversion ; he touched the guitar well ; and made love ad libi- 
 tum. Lord Ossory, his elder brother, had less vivacity but 
 more intellect, and possessed a liberal, honest nature, and an 
 heroic character. 
 
 All the good qualities of these two young noblemen seem to 
 have been united in Anthony Hamilton, of whom De Gram- 
 mont gives the following character : — ' The elder of the Hamil- 
 tons, their cousin, was the man who, of all the court, dressed 
 best; he was well made in his person, and possessed those 
 happy talents which lead to fortune, and procure success in 
 love : he was a most assiduous courtier, had the most lively 
 wit, the most polished manners, and the most punctual atten- 
 tion to his master imaginable ; no person danced better, nor 
 was any one a more general lover — a merit of some account in 
 a court entirely devoted to love and gallantry. It is not at all 
 surprising that, with these quaUties, he succeeded my Lord 
 Falmouth in the king's favour.' 
 
 The fascinating person thus described was bom in Ireland : 
 he had already experienced some vicissitudes, which were re- 
 newed at the Revolution of 1688, when he fled to France — the 
 country in which he had spent his youth — and died at St. Ger- 
 mains, in 1720, aged seventy-four. His poetry and his fairy 
 tales are forgotten ; but his ' Memoirs of the Count de Gram- 
 mont' is a work which combines the vivacity of a French writei 
 with the truth of an English historian. 
 
The Three Courts. *j 
 
 Ormond Yard, St. James's Square, was the London residence 
 of the Duke of Ormond : the garden wall of Ormond House 
 took up the greater part of York Street : the Hamilton family 
 had a commodious house in the same courtly neighbourhood ; 
 and the cousins mingled continually. Here persons of the 
 greatest distinction constantly met ; and here the ' Chevalier de 
 Grammont,' as he was still called, was received in a manner 
 suitable to his rank and style ; and soon regretted that he had 
 passed so much time in other places ; for, after he once knew 
 the charming Hamiltons, he wished for no other friends. 
 
 There were three courts at that time in the capital ; that at 
 Whitehall, in the king's apartments ; that in the queen's, in the 
 same palace ; and that of Henrietta Maria, the Queen-Mother, 
 as she was styled, at Somerset House. Charles's was pre-emi- 
 nent in immorality, and in the daily outrage of all decency ; 
 that of the unworthy widow of Charles I. was just bordering 
 on impropriety; that of Katherine of Braganza was still de- 
 corous, though not irreproachable. Pepys, in his Diary, has 
 this passage : — ' Visited Mrs. Ferrers, and stayed talking with 
 her a good while, there being a little, proud, ugly, talking lady 
 there, that was much crying up the queene-mother's court at 
 Somerset House, above our queen's ; there being before her no 
 allowance of laughing and mirth that is at the other's ; and, in- 
 deed, it is observed that the greatest court now-a-days is there. 
 Thence to Whitehall, where I carried my wife to see the queene 
 in her presence-chamber ; and the maydes of honour and the 
 young Duke of Monmouth, playing at cards.' 
 
 Queen Katherine, notwithstanding that the first words she 
 was ever known t© say in English were ' You lie /' was one of 
 the gentlest of beings. Pepys describes her as having a modest, 
 innocent look, among all the demireps with whom she was 
 forced to associate. Again we turn to Pepys, an anecdote of 
 whose is characteristic of poor Katherine's submissive, uncom 
 plaining nature : — 
 
 'With Creed, to the King's Head ordinary; . . . and a 
 pretty gentleman in our company, who confirms my Lady 
 Castlemaine's being gone from court, but knows not the reason ; 
 he told us of one wipe the queene, a little while ago, did give 
 
74 ' La belle Hamilton^ 
 
 her, when she came in and found the queene under the dresser'^ 
 hands, and had been so long. " I wonder your Majesty," says 
 she, " can have the patience to sit so long a-dressing ?" — " I 
 nave so much reason to use patience," says the queene, " that 
 I can very well bear with it." ' 
 
 It was in the court of this injured queen that De Grammont 
 went one evening to Mrs. Middleton's house : there was a bal! 
 that night, and amongst the dancers was the loveliest creature 
 that De Grammont had ever seen. His eyes were riveted on 
 this fair form; he had heard, but never till then seen her, 
 whom all the world consented to call 'La Belle Hamilton,' 
 and his heart instantly echoed the expression. From this time 
 he forgot Mrs. Middleton, and despised Miss Warmestre ; ' he 
 found,' he said, that he 'had seen nothing at court till this 
 instant.' 
 
 ' Miss Hamilton,' he himself tells us, ' was at the happy age 
 when the charms of the fair sex begin to bloom ; she had the 
 finest shape, the loveliest neck, and most beautiful arms in the 
 world; she was majestic and graceful in all her movements; 
 and she was the original after which all the ladies copied in 
 their taste and air of dress. Her forehead was open, white, 
 and smooth ; her hair was well set, and fell with ease into that 
 natural order which it is so difficult to imitate. Her complexion 
 was possessed of a certain freshness, not to be equalled by 
 borrowed colours ; her eyes were not large, but they were lively, 
 and capable of expressing whatever she pleased.' * So far for 
 her person ; but De Grammont was, it seems, weary of external 
 charms : it was the intellectual superiority that riveted his feel- 
 ings, whilst his connoisseurship in beauty was satisfied that he 
 had never yet seen any one so perfect. 
 
 ' Her mind,' he says, ' was a proper companion for such a 
 form : she did not endeavour to shine in conversation by those 
 sprightly sallies which only puzzle, and with still greater care 
 she avoided that affected solemnity in her discourses which 
 produces stupidity ; but without any eagerness to talk, she just 
 said what she ought, and no more. She had an admirable 
 
 * See De Grammont's Memoirs, 
 
Sir Peter Lely's Portrait of Her. 75 
 
 discernment in distinguishing between solid and false wit ; and 
 far from making an ostentatious display of her abilities, she was 
 reserved, though very just in her decisions. Her sentiments 
 were always noble, and even lofty to the highest extent, when 
 there was occasion; nevertheless, she was less prepossessed 
 with her own merit than is usually the case with those who have 
 so much. Formed as we have described, she could not fail of 
 commanding love ; but so far was she from courting it, that she 
 was scrupulously nice with respect to those whose merit might 
 entitle them to form any pretensions to her.' 
 
 Bom in 1641, Elizabeth— for such was the Christian name of 
 this lovely and admirable woman — was scarcely in her twentieth 
 year when she first appeared at Whitehall. Sir Peter Lely was 
 at that time painting the Beauties of the Court, and had done 
 full justice to the intellectual and yet innocent face that riveted 
 De Grammont He had depicted her with her rich dark hair, 
 of which a tendril or two fell on her ivory forehead, adorned 
 at the back with large pearls, under which a gauze-like tex- 
 ture was gathered up, falling over the fair shoulders like a veil : 
 a frill corsage, bound by a light band either of ribbon or of gold 
 lace, confining, with a large jewel or button, the sleeve on the 
 shoulder, disguised somewhat the exquisite shape. A frill ol 
 fine cambric set off, whilst in whiteness it scarce rivalled, the 
 shoulder and neck. 
 
 The features of this exquisite face are accurately described by 
 De Grammont, as Sir Peter has painted them. ' The mouth 
 does not smile, but seems ready to break out into a smile. 
 Nothing is sleepy, but everything is soft, sweet, and innocent in 
 that face so beautiful and so beloved.' 
 
 Whilst the colours were fresh on Lely's palettes, James Duke 
 of York, that profligate who aped the saint, saw it, and hence- 
 forth paid his court to the original, but was repelled with fear- 
 less hauteur. The dissolute nobles of the court followed his 
 example, even to the 'lady-killer' Jermyn, but in vain. Un- 
 happily for La Belle Hamilton, she became sensible to the 
 attractions of De Grammont, whom she eventually married. 
 
 Miss Hamilton, intelligent as she was, lent herself to the 
 fashion of the day, and delighted in practical jokes and tricks. 
 
76 the Household Deity of Whitehall. 
 
 At the splendid masquerade given by the queen she continued 
 to plague her cousin, Lady Musketry ; lo confuse and expose a 
 stupid court beauty, a Miss Blaque ; and at the same time to 
 produce on the Count de Grammont a still more powerful effect 
 than even her charms had done. Her success in hoaxing — 
 which we should now think both perilous and indelicate — seems 
 to have only riveted the chain, which was drawn around him 
 more strongly. 
 
 His friend, or rather his foe, St. Evremond, tried in vain to 
 discourage the Chevalier from his new passion. The former 
 tutor was, it appeared, jealous of its influence, and hurt that 
 De Grammont was now seldom at his house. 
 
 De Grammont's answer to his remonstrances was very charac- 
 teristic. ' My poor philosopher,' he cried, ' you understand 
 Latin well — ^you can make good verses— you are acquainted 
 with the nature of the stars in the firmament — ^but you are 
 wholly ignorant of the luminaries in the terrestrial globe.' 
 
 He then announced his intention to persevere, notwithstand- 
 ing all the obstacles which attached to the suit of a man with- 
 out either fortune or character, who had been exiled from his 
 own country, and whose chief mode of livelihood was dependent 
 on the gaming-table. 
 
 One can scarcely read of the infatuation of La Belle Hamil- 
 ton without a sigh. During a period of six years their mar- 
 riage was in contemplation only ; and De Grammont seems to 
 have trifled inexcusably with the feelings of this once gay and 
 ever lovely girl. It was not for want of means that De Grammont 
 thus delayed the fulfilment of his engagement. Charles II., 
 inexcusably lavish, gave him a pension of 1500 Jacobuses : it 
 was to be paid to him until he should be restored to the favour 
 of his own king. The fact was that De Grammont contributed 
 to the pleasures of the court, and pleasure was the household 
 deity of Whitehall. Sometimes, in those days of careless gaiety, 
 there were promenades in Spring Gardens, or the Mall ; some- 
 times the court beauties salUed forth on horseback ; at other 
 times there were shows on the river, which then washed the 
 very foundations of Whitehall. There in the summer evenings, 
 when it was too hot and dusty to walk, old Thames might Le 
 
WAo shall have the Calkhe ? 77 
 
 seen covered with little boats, filled with court and city beau 
 ties, attending the royal barges ; collations, music, and fireworks 
 completed the scene, and De Grammont always contrived some 
 surprise — some gallant show : once a concert of vocal and in- 
 strumental music, which he had privately brought from Paris, 
 struck up unexpectedly : another time a collation brought from 
 the gay capital surpassed that supplied by the king. Then the 
 Chevalier, finding that coaches with glass windows, lately in- 
 troduced, displeased the ladies, because their charms were only 
 partially seen in them, sent for the most elegant and superb 
 caliche ever seen : it came after a month's journey, and was 
 presented by De Grammont to the king. It was a royal present 
 in price, for it had cost two thousand livres. The famous dis- 
 pute between Lady Castlemaine and Miss Stuart, afterwards 
 Duchess of Richmond, arose about this caTeche. The Queen 
 and the Duchess of York appeared first in it in Hyde Park, 
 which had then recently been fenced in with brick. Lady Cas- 
 tlemaine thought that the caliche showed off a fine figure better 
 than the coach ; Miss Stuart was of the same opinion. Both 
 these grown-up babies wished to have the coach on the same 
 day, but Miss Stuart prevailed. 
 
 The Queen condescended to laugh at the quarrels of these 
 two foohsh women, and complimented the Chevalier de 
 Grammont on his present. ' But how is it,' she asked, ' that 
 you do not even keep a footman, and that one of the common 
 runners in the street lights you home with a link ?' 
 
 ' Madame,' he answered, ' the ChevaUer de Grammont hates 
 pomp : my link-boy is faithful and brave.' Then he told the 
 Queen that he saw she was unacquainted with the nation of 
 Hnk-boys, and related how that he had, at one time, had one 
 hundred and sixty around his chair at night, and people had 
 asked 'whose funeral it was? As for the parade of coaches 
 and footmen,' he added, ' I despise it. I have sometimes had 
 five or six valets-de-chambre, without a single footman in livery 
 except my chaplain.' 
 
 ' How !' cried the Queen, laughing, ' a chaplain in livery ? 
 surely he was not a priest' 
 
 'Pardon, Madame, a priest, and the best dancer in the woria 
 of the Biscayan gig.' 
 
/8 A Cltaplain in Livery. 
 
 ' Chevalier,' said the king, ' tell us the history . of youi 
 chaplain Poussatin.' 
 
 Then De Grammont related how, when he was with the great 
 Condd, after the campaign of Catalonia, he had seen among a 
 company of Catalans, a priest in a little black jacket, skipping 
 and frisking : how Condd was charmed, and how they recog- 
 nized ip him a Frenchman, and how he offered himself to De 
 Grammont for his chaplain. De Grammont had not much 
 need, he said, for a chaplain in his house, but he took the 
 priest, who had afterwards the honour of dancing before Anne 
 of Austria, in Paris. 
 
 Suitor after suitor interfered -vvith De Grammont's at last 
 honourable address to La Belle Hamilton. At length an inci- 
 dent occurred which had very nearly separated them for ever. 
 Philibert de Grammont was recalled to Paris by Louis XIV. 
 He forgot. Frenchman-like, all his engagements to Miss 
 Hamilton, and hurried off. He had reached Dover, when her 
 two brothers rode up after him. ' Chevalier de Grammont,' 
 they said, ' have you ftirgotten nothing in London ?' 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' he answered, ' I forgot to marry your 
 sister.' It is said that this story suggested to Molifere the idea 
 of Le Mariage ford. They were, however, married. 
 
 In 1669 La Belle Hamilton, after giving birth to a child, 
 went to reside in France. Charles II., who, thought she would 
 pass for a handsome woman in France, recommended her to 
 his sister, Henrietta Duchess of Orleans, and begged her to 
 be kind to her. 
 
 Henceforth the Chevalier De Grammont and his wife figured 
 at Versailles, where the Countess de Grammont was appointed 
 Damedu Palais. Her career was less brilliant than in England. 
 The French ladies deemed her haughty and old, and even 
 termed her utie Anglaise insupportable. 
 
 She had certainly too much virtue, and perhaps too much 
 beauty still, for the Parisian ladies of fashion at that period to 
 admire her. 
 
 She endeavoured in vain, to reclaim her libertine husband, 
 and to call him to a sense of his situation when he was on his 
 <leath-bed. Louis XIV. sent the Marquis de Dangeau to con- 
 
De Grammonfs Last Hours. 79 
 
 vert him, and to talk to him on a subject Httle thought of by 
 De Grammont — the world to come. After the Marquis had 
 been talking for some time, De Grammont turned to his wife 
 and said, ' Countess, if you don't look to it, Dangeau will 
 juggle you out of my conversion.' St. Evremond said he would 
 gladly die to go off with so successful a bon-mot. 
 
 He became however, in time, serious, if not devout or 
 penitent. Ninon de I'Enclos having written to St. Evremond 
 that the Count de Grammont had not only recovered but had 
 become devout, St. Evremond answered her in these words : — 
 
 ' I have learned with a great deal of pleasure that the Coun( 
 de Grammont has recovered his former health, and acquired 
 a new devotion. Hitherto I have been contented with being 
 a plain honest man ; but I must do something more : and I 
 only wait for your example to become a devotee. You live 
 in a country where people have wonderful advantages o( 
 saving their souls : there, vice is almost as opposite to the 
 mode as virtue ; sinning passes for ill-breeding, and shocks 
 decency and good-manners, as much as religion. Formerly 
 it was enough to be wicked, now one must be a scoundrel 
 withal to be damned in France.' 
 
 A report having been circulated that De Grammont was 
 dead, St. Evremond expressed deep regret. The report was 
 contradicted by Ninon de I'Enclos. The Chevalier was then 
 eighty-six years of age ; ' nevertheless he was,' Ninon says, 
 ' so young, that I think him as lively as when he hated sick 
 people, and loved them after they had recovered their health;' 
 a trait very descriptive of a man whose good-nature was 
 always on the surface, but whose selfishness was deep as that 
 of most wits and beaux, who are spoiled by the world, and 
 who, in return, distrust and deceive the spoilers. With this 
 long life of eighty-six years, endowed as De Grammont was 
 with elasticity of spirits, good fortune, considerable talent, an 
 excellent position, a wit that never ceased to flow in a clear 
 current ; with all these advantages, what might he not have 
 been to society, had his energy been well applied, his wl" 
 innocent, his talents employed worthily, and his heart as sure 
 to stand muster as his manners ? 
 
BEAU FIELDING. 
 
 On Wits and Beaiix. — Scotland Yard in Charles II. 's day. — Orlando of 'The 
 Tatler.' — Beau Fielding, Justice of the Peace. — Adonis in Search of a Wife. 
 — ^The Sham Widow. — ^Ways and Means. — Barbara Villiers, Lady Castle- 
 maine. — Quarrels with the King. — The Beau's Second Marriage. — ^The 
 Last Days of Fops and Beaux. 
 
 ET US be wise, boys, here's a fool coming, said a sen- 
 sible man, when he saw Beau Nash's splendid car- 
 riage draw up to the door. Is a beau a fool ? Is 
 a sharper a fool ? Was Bonaparte a fool ? If you reply ' no ' 
 to the last two questions, you must give the same answer to the 
 first. A beau is a fox, but not a fool — a very clever fellow, who. 
 knowing the weakness of his brothers and sisters in the world, 
 takes advantage of it to make himself a fame and a 
 fortune. Nash, the son of a glass-merchant — Brummell, the 
 hopeful of a small shopkeeper — became the intimates of 
 princes, dukes, and fashionables ; were petty kings of Vanity 
 Fair, and were honoured by their subjects. In the kingdom of 
 the blind, the one-eyed man is king ; in the realm of folly, the 
 sharper is a monarch. The only proviso is, that the cheat 
 come not within the jurisdiction of the law. Such a cheat 
 is the beau or dandy, or fine gentleman, who imposes on his 
 public by his clothes and appearance. £on&-Jide monarchs 
 have done as much: Louis XIV. won himself the title of Le 
 Grand Monarque by his manners, his dress, arid his vanity. 
 Fielding, Nash, and Brummell did nothing more. It is not a 
 question whether such roads to eminence be contemptible or 
 not, but whether their adoption in one station of life be more 
 so than in another. Was Brummell a whit more contemptible 
 than 'Wales ?' Or is John Thomas, the pride and glory of the 
 ' Domestics' Free-and-Easy,' whose whiskers, figure, face, and 
 
On Wits and Beaux 8 1 
 
 manner are all superb, one atom more ridiculous than your 
 recognized beau ? I trow not. What right, then, has your 
 beau to a place among wits ? I fancy Chesterfield would be 
 much disgusted at seeing his name side by side with that of 
 Nash in this volume ; yet Chesterfield had no objection, when 
 at Bath, to do homage to the king of that city, and may have 
 prided himself on exchanging pinches from diamond-set snuff- 
 boxes with that superb gold-laced dignitary in the Pump-room. 
 Certainly, people who thought little of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 
 thought a great deal of the glass-merchant^s reprobate son 
 when he was in power, and submitted without a murmur to his 
 impertinences. The fact is, that the beaux and the wits are 
 more intimately connected than the latter would care to 
 own : the wits have all been, or aspired to be, beaux, and beaux 
 have had their fair share of wit ; both lived for the same pur- 
 pose — ^to shine in society : both used the same means — coats 
 and bon-mots. The only distinction is, that the garments of 
 the beaux were better, and their sayings not so good as those 
 of the wits ; while the conversation of the wits was better, and 
 their apparel not so striking as those of the beaux. So, my 
 Lord Chesterfield, who prided yourself quite as much on being 
 a fine gentleman as on being a fine wit, you cannot complain 
 at your proximity to Mr. Nash and others who were fine gentle- 
 men, and would have been fine wits if they could. 
 
 Robert Fielding was, perhaps, the least of the beaux ; but then, 
 to make up for this, he belonged to a noble family : he married a 
 duchess, and, what is more, he beat her. Surely in the kingdom 
 of fools such a man is not to be despised. You may be sure he 
 did not think he was, for was he not made tjie subject of two 
 papers in ' The Tatler,' and what more could such a man desire ? 
 
 His father was a Suffolk squire, claiming relationship with 
 the Earls of Denbigh, and therefore, with the Hapsburgs, from 
 whom the Beau and the Emperors of Austria had the common 
 honour of being descended. Perhaps neither of them had suffi- 
 cient sense to be proud of the greatest intellectual ornament of 
 their race, the author of ' Tom Jones ;' but as our hero was 
 dead before the humourist was bom, it is not fair to conjecture 
 what he might have thought on the subject 
 
 6 
 
82 Scotland Yard in Charles II! s Day. 
 
 It does not appear that very much is known of this great 
 gem of the race of Hapsburg. He had the misfortune to be 
 very handsome, and the folly to think that his face would be 
 his fortune : it certainly stood him in good stead at times, but 
 it also brought him into a lamentable dilemma. 
 
 His father was not rich, and sent his son to the Temple to 
 study laws which he was only fitted to break. The young 
 Adonis had sense enough to see that destiny did not beckon 
 him to fame in the gloom of a musty law court, and removed 
 a little further up to the Thames, and the more fashionable 
 region of Scotland Yard. Here, where now Z 300 repairs to 
 report his investigations to a Commissioner, the young dandies 
 of Charles II.'s day strutted in gay doublets, swore hasty oaths 
 of choice invention, smoked the true Tobago from huge pipe- 
 bowls, and ogled the fair but not too bashful dames who passed 
 to and fro in their chariots. The court took its name from the 
 royalties of Scotland, who, when they visited the South, were 
 there lodged, as being conveniently near to Whitehall Palace. 
 It is odd enough that the three architects, Inigo Jones, Van- 
 brugh, and Wren, all lived in this yard. 
 
 It was not to oe supposed that a man who could so well ap- 
 preciate a handsome face and well-cut doublet as Charles II. 
 should long overlook his neighbour, Mr. Robert Fielding, and 
 in due course the Beau, who had no other diploma, fpund him- 
 self in the honourable position of a justice of the peace. 
 
 The emoluments of this office enabled Orlando, as 'The 
 Tatler ' calls him, to shine forth in all his glory. With an en- 
 viable indifference to the future, he launched out into an 
 expenditure which alone would have made him popular in a 
 country where the heaviest purse makes the greatest gentleman. 
 His lacqueys were arrayed in the brightest yellow coats with 
 black sashes — the Hapsburg colours. He had a carriage, 01 
 course, but, like Sheridan's, it was hired, though drawn by his 
 own horses. This carriage was described as being shaped like 
 a sea-shell ; and ' the Tatier ' calls it ' an open tumbril of less 
 size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his limbs and the 
 grandeur of his personage to the best advantage.' The said 
 limbs were Fielding's especial pride : he gloried in the strength 
 
Orlando of ' The Tatler.' 83 
 
 of his leg and arm ; and when he walked down the street, he 
 was followed by an admiring crowd, whom he treated with as 
 much haughtiness as if he had been the emperor himself, instead 
 of his cousin five hundred times removed. He used his 
 strength to good or bad purpose, and was a redoubted fighter 
 and bully, though good-natured withal. In the Mall, as he 
 strutted, he was the cynosure of all female eyes. His dress 
 had all the elegance of which the graceful costume of that 
 period was capable, though Fielding did not, like Brummell, 
 understand the delicacy of a quiet, but studied style. Those 
 were simpler, somewhat more honest days. It was not necessary 
 for a man to cloak his vices, nor be ashamed of his cloak. The 
 beau then-a-day openly and arrogantly gloried in the grandeur 
 of his attire ; and bragging was a part of his character. Fielding 
 was made by his tailor ; Brummell made his tailor : the only 
 point in common to both was that neither of them paid the 
 tailor's bill. 
 
 The fine gentleman, under the Stuarts, was fine only in his 
 lace and his velvet doublet ; his language was coarse, his man 
 ners coarser, his vices the coarsest of all. No wonder when the 
 king himself could get so drunk with Sedley and Buckhurst as 
 to be unable to give an audience appointed for ; and when the 
 chief fun of his two companions was to divest themselves of all 
 the habiliments which civilization has had the ill taste to make 
 necessary, and in that state run about the streets. 
 
 ' Orlando' wore the finest ruffles and the heaviest sword; his 
 wig was combed to perfection ; and in his pocket he carried a 
 little comb with which to arrange it from time to time, even 
 as the dandy of to-day pulls out his whiskers or curls his mous- 
 tache. Such a man could not be passed over ; and accordingly 
 he numbered half the officers and gallants of the town among 
 his intimates. He drank, swore, and swaggered, and the snobs 
 of the day proclaimed him a ' complete gentleman.' 
 
 His impudence, however, was not always tolerated. In the 
 playhouses of the day, it was the fashion for some of the spec- 
 tators to stand upon the stage, and the places in that position 
 were chiefly occupied by young gallants. The ladies came 
 raost in masques : but this did not prevent Master Fielding 
 
84 Adonis in Search of a Wife. 
 
 from making his remarks very freely, and in no very refined 
 strain to them. The modest damsels, whom Pope has described, 
 
 ' The fair sat pouting at the courtier's play, 
 And not a mask went unimproved away : 
 The modest fan was lifted up no more, 
 And virgins smiled at what they blushed before," 
 
 were not too coy to be pleased with the fops' attentions, and 
 replied in like strain. The players were unheeded ; the audi- 
 ence laughed at the improvised and natural wit, when carefully 
 prepared dialogues failed to fix their attention. The actors were 
 disgusted, and, in spite of Master Fielding's herculean strength, 
 kicked him off the stage, with a warning not to come again. 
 
 The rble of a beau is expensive to keep up ; and our justice 
 of the peace could not, like Nash, double his income by gaming. 
 He soon got deeply into debt, as every celebrated dresser has 
 done. The old story, not new even in those days, was enacted 
 and the brilliant Adonis had to keep watch and ward against 
 tailors and bailiffs. On one occasion they had nearly caught 
 him ; but his legs being lengthy, he gave them fair sport as far 
 AS St. James's Palace, where the officers on guard rushed out to 
 save their pet, and drove off the myrmidons of the law at the 
 point of the sword. 
 
 But debts do not pay themselves, nor die, and Orlando with 
 all his strength and prowess could not long keep off the con- 
 stable. Evil days gloomed at no very great distance before 
 him, and the fear, of a sponging-house and debtors' prison com- 
 pelled him to turn his handsome person to account. Had he 
 not broken a hundred hearts already ? had he not charmed a 
 thousand pairs of beaming eyes ? was there not one owner of 
 one pair v/ho was also possessed of a pretty fortune ? Who 
 should have the honour of being the wife of such an Adonis? 
 who, indeed, but she who could pay highest for it ; and who 
 could pay with a handsome income but a well-dowered widow ? 
 A widow it must be — a widow it should be. Noble indeed was 
 the sentiment which inspired this great man to sacrifice himself 
 on the altar of Hymen for the good of his' creditors. Ye young 
 men in the Guards, who do this kind of thing every day — that 
 is, every day that you can meet with a widow with the propei 
 
The Sham Widow. Sc 
 
 qualifications — ^take warning by the lamentable history of Mr. 
 Robert Fielding, and never trust to ' third parties.' 
 
 A widow was found, fat, fair, and forty — and oh ! — charm 
 greater far than •all the rest — with a fortune of sixty thousand 
 pounds ; this was a Mrs. Deleau, who lived at Whaddon in 
 Surrey, and at Copthall-court in London. Nothing could be 
 more charming ; and the only obstacle was the absence of all 
 acquaintance between the parties — ^for, of course, it was im- 
 possible for any widow, whatever her attractions, to be insensible 
 to those of Robert Fielding. Under these- circumstances, the 
 Beau looked about for an agent, and found one in the person 
 of a Mrs. Villars, hairdresser to the widow. He offered this 
 person a handsome douceur in case of success, and she was to 
 undertake that the lady should meet the gentleman in the most 
 unpremeditated manner. Various schemes were resorted to ; 
 with the alias, for he was not above an alias, of Major-General 
 Villars, the Beau called at the widow's country house, and was 
 permitted to see the gardens. At a window he espied a lady, 
 whom he took to be the object of his pursuit — bowed to her 
 majestically, and went away, persuaded he must have made an 
 impression. But, whether the widow was wiser than wearers of 
 weeds have the reputation of being, or whether the agent had 
 really no power in the matter, the meeting never came on. 
 
 The hairdresser naturally grew anxious, the douceur was too 
 good to be lost, and as the widow could not be had, some one 
 must be supplied in her place. 
 
 One day while the Beau was sitting in his splendid ' night- 
 gown,' as the morning-dress of gentlemen was then called, two 
 ladies were ushered into his august presence. He had been 
 warned of this visit, and was prepared to receive the yielding 
 widow. The one, of course, was the hairdresser, the other a 
 young, pretty, and apparently modest creature, who blushed 
 much— though with some difficulty — at the trying position in 
 which she found herself. The Beau, delighted, did his best to 
 reassure her. He flung himself at her feet, swore, with oaths 
 more fashionable than delicate, that she was the only woman 
 he ever loved, and prevailed on the widow so far as to induce 
 her to ' call again to-morrow.' 
 
86 IVays and Means. 
 
 Of course she came, and Adonis was in heaven. He wrote 
 little poems to her — ^for, as a gallant, he could of course make 
 verses — serenaded her through an Italian donna, invited her 
 to suppers, at which the deUcacies of the season were served 
 without regard to the purveyor's account, and to which, coy as 
 she was, she consented to come, and clenched the engagement 
 with a ring, on which was the motto, ' Tibi Soli.' Nay, the 
 Beau had been educated, and had some knowledge of ' the 
 tongues,' so that he added to these attentions the further one 
 of a song or two translated from the Greek. The widow ought 
 to have been pleased, and was. One thing only she stipulated, 
 namely, that the marriage should be private, lest her relations 
 should forbid the banns. 
 
 Having brought her so far, it was not likely that the fortune- 
 hunter would stick at such a mere trifle, and accordingly an 
 entertainment was got up at the Beau's own rooms, a supper 
 suitable to the rank and wealth of the widow, provided by 
 some obligingly credulous tradesman ; a priest found — for, be 
 it premised, our hero had changed so much of his religion as 
 he had to change in the reign of James II., when Romanism 
 was not only fashionable, but a sure road to fortune — and the 
 mutually satisfied couple swore to love, honour, and obey one 
 another till death them should part. 
 
 The next morning, however, the widow left the gentleman's 
 lodgings, on the pretext that it was injudicious for her friends 
 to know of their union at present, and continued to visit her 
 sposo and sup somewhat amply at his chambers from time to 
 time. We can imagine the anxiety Orlando now felt for a chequ" 
 book at the heiress's bankers, and the many insinuations he 
 may have deUcately made, touching ways and means. We can 
 fancy the artful excuses with which these hints were put asid' 
 by his attached wife. But the dupe was still in happy ignoranc- 
 of the trick played on him, and for a time such ignoranc 
 was bliss. It must have been trying to him to be called or 
 by Mrs. Villars for the promised douceur, but he consoled 
 himself with the pleasures of hope. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, he had formed the acquaintance of a 
 
Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine. 87 
 
 woman of a very different reputation to the real Mrs. Deleau, 
 and the intimacy which ensued was fatal to him. 
 
 When Charles II. was wandering abroad, he was joined, 
 among others, by a Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. The husband was a 
 stanch old Romanist, with the qualities which usually acron. 
 panied that faith in those days — little respect for morality, and 
 a good deal of bigotry. In later days he was one of the vic- 
 tims suspected of the Titus Oates plot, but escaped, and even- 
 tually died in Wales, in 1705, after having been James II.'s 
 ambassador to Rome. This in a few words, is the history of 
 that Roger Palmer, afterwards Lord Castlemaine, who by some 
 is said to have sold his wife — not at Smithfield, but at White- 
 hall — to his Majesty King Charles II., for the sum of one 
 peerage — an Irish one, taken on consideration : by others, is 
 alleged to have been so indignant with the king as to have re- 
 mained for some time far from court ; and so disgusted with 
 his elevation to the peerage as scarcely to assume his title; and 
 this last is the most authenticated version of the matter. 
 
 Mrs. Palmer belonged to one of the oldest families in 
 England, and traced her descent to Pagan de Villiers, in the 
 days of William Rufus, and a good deal farther among the 
 nobles of Normandy. She was the daughter of William, second 
 Viscount Grandison, and rejoiced in the appropriate name of 
 Barbara, for she could be savage occasionally. She was very 
 beautiful, and very wicked, and soon became Charles's mistress. 
 On the Restoration she joined the king in England, and when 
 the poor neglected queen came over was foisted upon her as a 
 bedchamber-woman, in spite of all the objections of that ill 
 used wife. It was necessary to this end that she should be the 
 wife of a peer; and her husband accepted the title of Earl 
 of Castlemaine, well knowing to what he owed it. Pepys, who 
 admired Lady Castlemaine more than any woman in England, 
 describes the husband and wife meeting at Whitehall with a 
 cold ceremonial bow : yet the husband was there. A quarrel 
 between the two, strangely enough on the score of religion, her 
 ladyship insisting that her child should be christened by a Pro- 
 testant clergyman, while his lordship insisted on the ceremony 
 being performed by a Romish priest, brought about a sepaia 
 
88 Quarrels with the King. 
 
 tion, and from that time Lady Castlemaine, lodged in White- 
 hall, began her empire over the king of England. That man, 
 ' who never said a foohsh thing, and never did a wise one,' was 
 the slave of this imperious and most impudent of women. She 
 forced him to settle on her an immense fortune, much of which 
 she squandered at the basset-table, often staking a thousand 
 pounds at a time, and sometimes losing fifteen thousand pounds 
 a-night. 
 
 Nor did her wickedness end here. We have some pity for 
 one, who, like La Vallifere, could be attracted by the attentions 
 of a handsome, fascinating prince : we pity though we blame. 
 But Lady Castlemaine was vicious to the very marrow : not 
 content with a king's favour, she courted herself the young 
 gallant of the town. Quarrels ensued between Charles and his 
 mistress, in which the latter invariably came off victorious, 
 owing to her indomitable temper ; and the scenes recorded by 
 De Grammont — ^when she threatened to bum down Whitehall, 
 and tear her children in pieces — are too disgraceful for inser- 
 tion. She forced the reprobate monarch to consent to all her 
 extortionate demands : rifled the nation's pockets as well as his 
 own ; and at every fresh difference, forced Charles to give her 
 some new pension. An intrigue with Jermyn, discovered and 
 objected to by the King, brought on a fresh and more serious 
 difference, which was only patched up by a patent of the 
 Duchy of Cleveland. The Duchess of Cleveland was even 
 worse than the Countess of Castlemaine. Abandoned in time 
 by Charles, and detested by all people of any decent feeling, 
 she consoled herself for the loss of a real king by taking up 
 with a stage one. Hart and Goodman, the actors, were suc- 
 cessively her cavalieri ; the former had been a captain in the 
 army ; the latter a student at Cambridge. Both were men of 
 the coarsest minds and most depraved lives. Goodman, in 
 after-years was so reduced that, finding, as Sheridan advised 
 his son to do, a pair of pistols handy, a horse saddled, and 
 Hounslow Heath not a hundred miles distance, he took to the 
 pleasant and profitable pastime of which Dick Turpin is the 
 patron saint. He was all but hanged for his daring robberies, 
 but unfortunately not quite so. He lived to suffer such indi- 
 
The Beau's Second Marriage. 89 
 
 gence, that he and another rascal had but one under-garmeni 
 between them, and entered into a compact that one should lie 
 in bed while the other wore the article in question. Naturall/ 
 enough the two fell out in time, and the end of Goodman — 
 sad misnomer— was worse than his beginning : such was the 
 gallant whom the imperious Duchess of Cleveland vouchsafed 
 to honour. 
 
 The life of the once beautiful Barbara Villiers grew daily 
 more and more depraved : at the age of thirty she retired to 
 Paris, shunned and disgraced. After numerous intrigues abroad 
 and at home, she put the crowning point to her follies by fall- 
 ing in love with the handsome Fielding, when she herself num- 
 bered sixty-five summers. 
 
 Whether the Beau still thought of fortune, or whether having 
 once tried matrimony, he was so enchanted with it as to make 
 it his cacoethes, does not appear : the legend explains not for 
 what reason he married the antiquated beauty only three 
 weeks after he had been united to the supposed widow. For 
 a time he wavered between the two, but that time was short : 
 the widow discovered his second marriage, claimed him, and 
 in so doing revealed the well-kept secret that she was not a 
 widow ; indeed, not even the relict of John Deleau, Esq., of 
 Whaddon, but a wretched adventurer of the name of Mary 
 Wadsworth, who had shared with Mrs. Villars the plunder of 
 the trick. The Beau tried to preserve his dignity, and throw 
 over his duper, but in vain. The first wife reported the state 
 of affairs to the second : and the duchess, who had been 
 shamefully treated by Master Fielding, was only too glad of 
 an opportunity to get rid of him. She offered Mary Wads- 
 worth a pension of ;^ioo a year, and a sum of ;^2oo in ready 
 money, to prove the previous marriage. The case came on, 
 and Beau Fielding had the honour of playing a part in a 
 famous state trial. 
 
 With his usual impudence he undertook to defend himself 
 at the Old Bailey, and hatched up some old story to prove that 
 the first wife was married at the time of their union to one 
 Brady ; but the plea fell to the ground, and the fine gentleman 
 was sentenced to be burned in the hand. His interest in cer- 
 
90 Tlie Last Days of Fops and Beaux. 
 
 tain quarters saved him this ignominious punishment which 
 would, doubtless, have spoiled a limb of which he was particu- 
 larly proud. He was pardoned : the real widow married a fat 
 more honourable gentleman, in spite of the unenviable noto- 
 riety she had acquired ; the sham one was somehow quieted, 
 and the duchess died some four years later, the more peacefully 
 for being rid of her tyrannical mate. 
 
 Thus ended a petty scandal of the day, in which all the 
 parties were so disreputable that no one could feel any r.yni- 
 pathy for a single one of them. How the dupe himself ended 
 is not known. The last days of fops and beaux are never glo- 
 rious. Brummell died in slovenly penury ; Nash in contempt. 
 Fielding lapsed into the dimmest obscurity ; and as far as 
 evidence goes, there is as little certainty about his death as of 
 that of the Wandering Jew. Let us hope that he is not still 
 alive : though his friends seemed to have cared little whether 
 he were so or not, to judge from a couple of verses written by 
 one of th^m : — 
 
 ' If Fielding is dead, 
 
 And rests under this stone, 
 Then he is not alive 
 You may bet two to one. 
 
 'But if he's alive. 
 
 And does not lie there — 
 Let him live till he's hanged, 
 For which no man will care.' 
 
OF CERTAIN CLUBS AND CLUB-WITS UNDER 
 
 ANNE. 
 
 The Origin of Clubs.— The Establishment of Coffee-houses.— The October Club. 
 —The Beef-steak Club.— Of certain other Clubs.— The Kit-kat Club.— The 
 Romance of the Bowl.— The Toasts of the Kit-kat.— The Members of the 
 Kit-kat.— A good Wit, and a bad Architect. — ' Well-natured Garth."- The 
 Poets of the Kit-kat.— Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax.— Chancellor 
 Somers. — Charles Sackville, Lord Dorset. — Less celebrated Wits. 
 
 SUPPOSE that, long before the building of Babel, 
 man discovered that he was an associative animal, 
 with the universal motto, ^L union iest la force ;^ and 
 that association, to be of any use, requires talk. A history oi 
 celebrated associations, from the building society just mentioned 
 down to the thousands which are represented by an office, a 
 secretary, and a brass-plate, in the present day, would give a 
 curious scheme of the natural tendencies of man ; while the 
 story of their failures — and how many have not failed, sooner 
 or later ! — would be a pretty moral lesson to your anthropo- 
 Niters who Babelize now-a-days, and believe there is nothing 
 which a company with capital cannot achieve. I wonder what 
 object there is, that two men can possibly agree in desiring, 
 and which it takes more than one to attain, for which an asso- 
 ciation of some kind has not been formed at some time or 
 other, since first the swarthy savage learned that it was neces- 
 sary to unite to kill the lion which infested the neighbourhood ! 
 Alack for human nature ! I fear by far the larger proportion 
 of the objects of associations would be found rather evil than 
 good, and, certes, nearly all of them might be ranged under 
 two heads, according as the passions of hate or desire found 
 a common object in several hearts. Gain on the one hand— 
 
92 ' The Origin of Clubs. 
 
 destruction on the other — ^have been the chief motives of club- 
 bing in all time. 
 
 A delightful exception is to be found, though — to wit, in 
 associations for the purpose of talking. I do not refer to par- 
 liaments and philosophical academies, but to those companies 
 which have been formed for the sole purpose of mutual enter- 
 tainment by interchange of thought. 
 
 Now, will any kind reader oblige me with a derivation of the 
 word ' Club ?' I doubt if it is easy to discover. But one thing 
 is certain, whatever its origin, it is, in its present sense, purely 
 English in idea and in existence. Dean Trench points this out, 
 and, noting the fact that no other nation (he might have ex- 
 cepted the Chinese) has any word to express this kind of asso- 
 ciation, he has, with very pardonable natural pride, but unpar- 
 donably bad logic, inferred that the English are the most 
 sociable people in the world. The contrary is true ; nay, was 
 true, even in the days of Addison, Swift, Steele — even in the 
 days of Johnson, Walpole, Selwyn ; ay, at all time since we 
 have been a nation. The fact is, we are not the most sociable, 
 but the most associative race ; and the establishment of clubs 
 is a proof of it. We cannot, and never could, talk freely, com- 
 fortably, and generally, without a company for talking. Con- 
 versation has always been with us as much a business as rail- 
 road-making, or what not. It has always demanded certain 
 accessories, certain condiments, certain stimulants to work it 
 up to the proper pitch. ' We all know' we are the cleverest 
 and wittiest people under the sun ; but then our wit has been 
 stereotyped. France has no ' Joe Miller ;' for a bon-mot there, 
 however good, is only appreciated historically. Our wit is 
 printed, not spoken ; our best wits behind an inkhom have 
 sometimes been the veriest logs in society. On the Continent 
 clubs were not called for, because society itself was the arena 
 of conversation. In this country, on the other hand, a man 
 could only chat when at his ease ; could only be at his ease 
 among those who agreed with him on the main points of reli- 
 gion and politics, and even then wanted the aid of a bottle 
 to make him comfortable. Our want of sociability was the 
 
Tlte Establishment of Coffee-Houses. 93 
 
 cause of our clubbing, and tJierefore the word 'club' is purely 
 English. 
 
 This was never so much the case as after the Restoration. 
 Religion and politics never ran higher than when a monarch, 
 who is said to have died a papist because he had no religion at 
 all during his. life, was brought back to supplant a furious puri- 
 tanical Protectorate. Then, indeed, it was difficult for men ol 
 opposite parties to meet without bickering; and society de 
 manded separate meeting-places for those who differed. The 
 origin of clubs in this country is to be traced to two causes — 
 the vehemence of religious and political partisanship, and the 
 estabUshment of coflfee-houses. These certainly gave the first 
 idea of clubbery. The taverns which preceded them had given 
 the English a zest for public life in a small way. ' The Mer- 
 maid' was, virtually, a club of wits long before the first real 
 club was opened, and, like the clubs of the eighteenth century, 
 it had its presiding geniuses in Shakespeare and Rare Ben. 
 
 The coffee-houses introduced somewhat more refinement and 
 less exclusiveness. The oldest of these was the 'Grecian,' 
 ' One Constantine, a Grecian,' advertised in ' The Intelligencer" 
 of January 23rd, 1664-5, that 'the right coffee b^ry or choco- 
 late,' might be had of him ' as cheap and as good t.6 is anywhere 
 to be had for money,' and soon after began to sell the said 
 ' coffee beiy" in small cups at his own establishment in Deve- 
 reux Court, Strand. Some two years later we have news of 
 ' Will's,' the most famous, perhaps, of the coffee-houses. Here 
 Dryden held forth with pedantic vanity : and here was laid the 
 first germ of that critical acumen which has since become a dis- 
 tinguishing feature in English literature. Then, in the City, one 
 Garraway, of Exchange Alley, first sold ' tea in leaf and drink, 
 made according to the directions of the most knowing, and tra- 
 vellers into those eastern countries ;' and thus established the 
 well-known ' Garraway's,' whither, in Defoe's day, ' foreign ban- 
 quiers' and even ministers resorted, to drink the said beverage. 
 ' Robin's,' ' Jonathan's,' and many another, were all opened 
 about this time, and the rage for coffee-house life became general 
 throughout the country. 
 
 In these places the company was of course of all classes and 
 
94 The October Club. 
 
 colouis; but, as the conversation was general, there was na- 
 turally at first a good deal of squabbling, till, for the sake of peace 
 and comfort, a man chose his place of resort according to his 
 political principles ; and a little later there were regular Whig and 
 Tory coflfee-houses. Thus, in Anne's day, ' The Cocoa-nut,' in 
 St. James's Street, was reserved for Jacobites, while none but 
 Whigs firequented ' The St. James's.' Still there was not suffi- 
 cient exclusiveness ; and as early as in Charles II.'s reign men 
 of peculiar opinions began to appropriate certain coffee-houses 
 at certain hours, and to exclude from them all but approved 
 members. Hence, the origin of clubs. 
 
 The October Club was one of the earliest, being composed 
 of some hundred and fifty rank Tories, chiefly country members 
 of Parliament. They met at the ' Bell,' in King Street, West- 
 minster, that street in which Spenser starved, and Dryden's bro- 
 ther kept a grocer's shop. A portrait of Queen Anne, by Dahl, 
 hung in the club-room. This and the Kit-kat, the great Whig 
 club, were chiefly reserved for politics ; but the fashion of 
 clubbing having once come in, it was soon followed by people 
 of all fancies. No reader of the ' Spectator' can fail to remem- 
 ber the ridicule to which this was turned by descriptions of 
 imaginary clubs for which the qualifications were absurd, and of 
 which the business, on meeting, was preposterous nonsense of 
 some kind. The idea of such fraternities, as the Club of Fat 
 Men, the Ugly Club, the Sheromp Club, the Everlasting Club, 
 the Sighing Club, the Amorous Club, and others, could only 
 have been suggested by real clubs almost as ridiculous. The 
 names, too, were almost as fantastical as those of the taverns 
 in the previous century, which counted ' The Devil,' and ' The 
 Heiven and Hell,' among their numbers. Many derived their 
 titles from the standing dishes preferred at supper, the Beef- 
 steak and the Kit-kat (a sort of mutton-pie), for instance. 
 
 The Beef-steak Club, still in existence, was one of the most 
 famous established in Anne's reign. It had at that time less of 
 a political than a jovial character. Nothing but that excellent 
 British fare, from which it took its name, was, at first, served at 
 the supper-table. It was an assemblage of wits of every sta- 
 tion, and very jovial were they supposed to be when the juicy 
 
The Beef -Steak Club. ^t 
 
 dish had been discussed. Early in the century, Estcourt, the 
 actor, was made provider to this club, and wore a golden grid- 
 iron as a badge of office, and is thus alluded to in Dr. King's 
 'Art of Cookery' (1709) : — 
 
 ' He that of honour, wit, and mirth partakes, 
 May be a fit companion o'er beef-stakes ; 
 His name may be to future times enrolled 
 In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's framed of gold." 
 
 Estcourt was one of the best mimics of the day, and a keen 
 satirist to boot ; in fact he seems to have owed much of his 
 success on the stage to his power of imitation, for while his own 
 manner was inferior, he could at pleasure copy exactly that of 
 any celebrated actor. He ivould be a player. At fifteen he 
 ran away from home, and joining a strolling company, acted 
 Roxana in woman's clothes : his friends pursued him, and, 
 changing his dress for that of a girl of the time, he tried to 
 escape them, but in vain. The histrionic youth was captured, 
 and bound apprentice in London town ; the ' seven long years' 
 of which did not cure him of the itch for acting. But he was 
 too good a wit for the stage, and amused himself, though not 
 always his audience, by interspersing his part with his own re- 
 marks. The great took him by the hand, and old Marlborough 
 especially patronized him : he wrote a burlesque of the Italian 
 operas then beginning to be in vogue; and died in 17x2-13. 
 Estcourt was not the only actor belonging to the Beef-steak, nor 
 even the only one who had concealed his sex under emergency ; 
 Peg Woffington, who had made as good a boy as he had done 
 a girl, was afterwards a member of this club. 
 
 In later years the beef-steak was cooked in a room at the top 
 of Covent Garden Theatre, and counted many a celebrated wit 
 among those who sat around its cheery dish. Wilkes the 
 blasphemer, Churchill, and Lord Sandwich, were all members 
 of it at the same time. Of the last, Walpole gives us informa- 
 tion in 1763 at the time of Wilkes's duel with Martin in Hyde 
 Park. He tells us that at the Beef-steak Club Lord Sandwich 
 talked so profusely, ' that he drove harlequins out of the com- 
 pany.' To the honour of the club be it added, that his lord- 
 ship was driven out after the harlequins, and finally expelled : 
 
q6 The Kit-Kat Club. 
 
 It is sincerely to be hoped that Wilkes was sent after his lord- 
 ship. This club is now represented by one held behind the 
 Lyceum, with the thoroughly British motto, ' Beef and Liberty:' 
 the name was happily chosen and therefore imitated. In the 
 reign of George II. we meet with a ' Rump-steak, or Liberty 
 Club ;' and somehow steaks and liberty seem to be the two 
 ideas most intimately associated in the Britannic mind. Can 
 any one explain it ? 
 
 Other clubs there were under Anne, — ^political, -aitical, and 
 hilarious — but the palm is undoubtedly carried oli. jy the glori- 
 ous Kit-kat. 
 
 It is not every eating-house that is immortalized by a Pope, 
 though Tennyson has sung ' The Cock' with its ' plump head- 
 waiter,' who, by the way, was mightily offended by the Lau- 
 reate's verses — or pretended to be so — and thought it ' a great 
 liberty of Mr. , Mr. , what is his name ? to put re- 
 spectable private characters into his books.' Pope, or some say 
 Arbuthnot, explained the etymology of this club's extraordinary 
 title :— 
 
 ' Whence deathless Kit-kat took its name, 
 
 Few critics can unriddle : 
 Some say from pastrycook it came, 
 Aad some from Cat and Fiddle 
 
 ' From no trim beaux its name it boasts. 
 Grey statesmen or green wits ; 
 But from the pell-mell pack of toasts 
 Of old cats and young lots.' 
 
 Probably enough the title was hit on a hap-hazard, and re 
 tained because it was singular, but as it has given a poet a 
 heme, and a painter a name for pictures of a peculiar size, its 
 etymology has become important. Some say that the pastry 
 cook in Shire Lane, at whose house it was held, was namea 
 Christopher Katt. Some one or other was certainly celebrated 
 for the manufacture of that forgotten delicacy, a mutton-pie, 
 which acquired the name of a Kit-kat. 
 
 ■ A Kit-kat is a supper for a lord,' 
 
 jays a comedy of 1700, and certes it afforded at this club eve- 
 ning nourishment for many a celebrated noble profligate of the 
 day. The supposed sign of the Cat and Fiddle (Kitt), gave 
 
The Romance of the Bowl, 05 
 
 another solution, but after all, Pope's may be satisfactorily re- 
 ceived. 
 
 The Kit-kat was, par excellence, the Whig Club of Queen 
 Anne's time : it was established at the beginning of the eigh- 
 teenth century, and was then composed of thirty-nine members, 
 among whom were the Dukes of Marlborough, Devonshire, 
 Grafton, Richmond, and Somerset. In later days it numbered 
 lie greatest wits of the age, of whom anon. 
 
 This club was celebrated more than any for its toasts. 
 
 Now, if men must drink — and sure the vine was given us for 
 use, I do not say for abuse — they had better make it an occa- 
 sion of friendly intercourse ; nothing can be more degraded 
 than the solitary sanctimonious toping in which certain of our 
 northern brethren are known to indulge. They had better give 
 to the quaffing of that rich gift, sent to be a medicine for the 
 mind, to raise us above the perpetual contemplation of worldly 
 ills, as much of romance and elegance as possible. It is the 
 opener of the heart, the awakener of nobler feelings of gene- 
 rosity and love, the banisher of all that is narrow, and sordid, 
 and selfish ; the herald of all that is exalted in man. No won- 
 der that the Greeks made a god of Bacchus, that the Hindu 
 worshipped the mellow Soma, and that there has been scarce a 
 poet who has not sung its praise. There was some beauty in 
 the feasts of the Greeks, when the goblet was really wreathed 
 with fl'owers ; and even the German student, dirty and drunken 
 as he may be, removes half the stain from his orgies with the 
 rich harmony of his songs, and the hearty good-fellowship of 
 his toasts. We drink still, perhaps we shall always drink till the 
 end of time, but all the romance of the bowl is gone ; the last 
 trace of its beauty went with the frigid abandonment of the 
 toast. 
 
 There was some excuse for wine when it brought out that 
 now forgotten expression of good-will. Many a feud was re- 
 conciled in the cHnking of glasses ; just as many another was 
 begun when the cup was drained too deeply. The first quarter 
 of the last century saw the end of all the social glories of the 
 wassail in this country, and though men drank as much fifty 
 years later, all its poetry and romance had then disappeared. 
 
 7 
 
gS The Toasts of the Kit-kai. 
 
 It was still, however, the custom at that period to call on the 
 name of some fair maiden, and sing her praises over the cup as 
 it passed. It was a point of honour for all the company to join 
 the health. Some beauties became celebrated for the number 
 of their toasts ; some even standing toasts among certain sets. 
 In the Kit-kat Club the custom was carried out by rule, and 
 every member was compelled to name a beauty, whose claims 
 to the honour were then discussed, and if her name was ap- 
 proved, a separate bowl was consecrated to her, and verses to 
 her honour engraved on it. Some of the most celebrated toasts 
 had even their portraits hung in the club-room, and it was no 
 slight distinction to be the favourite of the Kit-kat. When 
 only eight years old, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu enjoyed this 
 privilege. Her father, the Lord Dorchester, afterwards Evelyn, 
 Duke of Kingston, in a fit of caprice, proposed 'the pretty 
 little child' as his toast. The other members, who had never 
 seen her, objected ; the Peer sent for her, and there could no 
 longer be any question. The forward little girl was handed 
 from knee to knee, petted, probably, by Addison, Congreve, 
 Vanbrugh, Garth, and many another famous wit. Another 
 celebrated toast of the Kit-kat, mentioned by Walpole, was 
 Lady Molyneux, who, he says, died smoking a pipe. 
 
 This club was no less celebrated for its portraits than for the 
 ladies it honoured. They, the portraits, were all painted by 
 Kneller, and all of one size, which thence got the name of 
 Kit-kat ; they were hung round the club-room. Jacob Tonson, 
 the publisher, was secretary to the club. 
 
 Defoe tells us the Kit-kat held the first rank among the clubs 
 of the early part of the last century, and certainly the names of 
 its members comprise as many wits as we could expect to find 
 collected in one society. 
 
 Addison must have been past forty when he became a mem- 
 ber of the Kit-kat. His 'Cato' had won him the general ap- 
 plause of the Whig party, who could not allow so fine a writer 
 to slip firom among them. He had long, too, played the cour- 
 tier, and was ' quite a gentieman.' A place among the exclu- 
 sives of the Kit-kat was only the just reward of such attain- 
 ments, and he had it. I shall not be asked to give a notice of 
 
The Members of the Kit-kat. 99 
 
 a man so universally known, and one who ranks rather with 
 the humorists than the wits. It will suffice to say, that it was 
 not till after the publication of the ' Spectator,' and some time 
 after, that he joined our society. 
 
 Congreve I have chosen out of this set for a separate life, 
 for this man happens to present a very average sample of all 
 their peculiarities. Congreve was a literary man, a poet, a wit, 
 a beau, and— what unhappily is quite as much to the purpose 
 — a profligate. The only point he, therefore, wanted in com- 
 mon with most of the members, was a title ; but few of the 
 titled members combined as many good and bad qualities of 
 the Kit-kat kind as did William Congreve. 
 
 Another dramatist, whose name seems to be inseparable 
 from Congreve's, was that mixture of bad and good taste — • 
 Vanbrugh. The author of ' The Relapse,' the most Hcentious 
 play ever acted ; — the builder of Blenheim, the ugliest house 
 ever erected, was a man of good family, and Walpole counts 
 him among those who ' wrote genteel comedy, because they 
 lived in the best company.' We doubt the logic of this ; but 
 if it hold, how is it that Van wrote plays which the best com- 
 pany, even at that age, condemned, and neither good nor bad , 
 company can read in the present day without being shocked ? 
 If the conversation of the Kit-kat was anything like that in this 
 member's comedies, it must have been highly edifying. How- 
 ever, I have no doubt Vanbrugh passed for a gentleman, what- 
 ever his conversation, and he was certainly a wit, and appa- 
 rently somewhat less licentious in his morals than the rest. 
 Yet what Pope said of his literature may be said, too, of some 
 acts of his life : — 
 
 ' How Van wants graee, who never wanted wit.' 
 
 And his quarrel with ' Queen Sarah' of Marlborough, though 
 the duchess was by no means the most agreeable woman in the 
 world to deal with, is not much to Van's honour. AVhen the 
 nation voted half a million to build that hideous mass of stone, 
 the irregular and unsightly piling of which caused Walpole to 
 say that the architect ' had emptied quarries, rather than built 
 houses,' and Dr. Evans to write this epitaph for the builder — 
 
100 A Good Wit and a Bad Architect. 
 
 ' Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he 
 Laid many a heavy load on thee,' 
 
 Sarah haggled over ' seven-pence halfpenny a bushel ;' Van 
 retorted by calling her 'stupid and troublesome,' and 'that 
 wicked woman of Marlborough,' and after the Duke's death, 
 wrote that the Duke had left her 'twelve thousand pounds 
 a-year to keep herself clean and go to law.' Whether she 
 employed any portion of it on the former object we do not 
 pretend to say, but she certainly spent as much as a miser could 
 on litigation, Van himself being one of the unfortunates she 
 attacked in this way. 
 
 The events of Vanbrugh's life were varied. He began life in 
 the army, but in 1697 gave the stage 'The Relapse.' It was 
 sufficiently successful to induce him to follow it up with the 
 ' Provoked Wife,' one of the wittiest pieces produced in those 
 days. Charles, Earl of Carlisle, Deputy Earl Marshal, for 
 whom he built Castle Howard, made him Clarencieux King-at- 
 arms in 1704, and he was knighted by George I., 9th of Sep- 
 tember, 1714. In 1705 he joined Congreve in the manage- 
 ment of the Haymarket, which he himself built. George I. 
 made him Comptroller-general of the royal works. He had 
 even an experience of the Bastille, where he was confined for 
 sketching fortifications in France. He died in 1726, with the 
 reputation of a good wit, and a bad architect. His conversa- 
 tion was, certainly, as light as his buildings were heavy. 
 
 Another member, almost as well known in his day, was Sir 
 Samuel Garth, the physician, ' well-natured Garth,' as Pope 
 called him. He won his fame by his satire on the apothecaries 
 in the shape of a poem called ' The Dispensary.' When de- 
 livering the funeral oration over Dryden's body, which had 
 been so long unburied that its odour began to be disagreeable, 
 he mounted a tub, the top of which fell through and left the 
 doctor in rather an awkward position. He gained admission 
 to the Kit-kat in consequence of a vehement eulogy on King 
 WilHam which he had introduced into his Harveian oration in 
 1697.* It was Garth, too, who extemporized most of the 
 
 » The Kit-kat club was not founded till 1703. 
 
'Well-natured Garth! loi 
 
 verses which were inscribed on the toasting-glasses of their 
 club, so that he may, par excellence, be considered the Kit-kat 
 poet. He was the physician and friend of Marlborough, with 
 whose sword he was knighted by George I., who made him his 
 physician in ordinary. Garth was a very jovial man, and, some 
 say, not a very religious one. Pope said he was as good a 
 Christian as ever lived, 'without knowing it.' He certainly 
 had no affectation of piety, and if charitable and good-natured 
 acts could take a man to heaven, he deserved to go there. 
 He had his doubts about faith, and is said to have died a 
 Romanist This he did in 17 19, and the poor and the Kit-kat 
 must both have felt his loss. He was perhaps more of a wit 
 than a poet, although he has been classed at times with Gray 
 and Prior; he can scarcely take the same rank as other verse- 
 making doctors, such as Akenside, Darwin, and Armstrong. 
 He seems to have been an active, healthy man — ^perhaps too 
 much so for a poet — for it is on record that he ran a match in 
 the Mall with the Duke of Grafton, and beat him. He was 
 fond, too, of a hard frost, and had a regular speech to intro- 
 duce on that subject : 'Yes, sir, 'fore Gad, very fine weather, 
 w — very wholesome weather, sir — kills trees, sir — very good 
 for man, sir.' 
 
 Old Marlborough had another intimate friend at the club, 
 who was probably one of its earliest members. This was Arthur 
 Maynwaring, a poet, too, in a way, but more celebrated at this 
 time for his liaison with Mrs. Oldfield, the famous but dis- 
 reputable actress, with whom he fell in love when he was forty 
 years old, and whom he instructed in the niceties of elocution, 
 making her rehearse her parts to him in private. Maynwaring 
 was bom in 1668, educated at Oxford, and destined for the 
 bar, for which he studied. He began life as a vehement Jaco- 
 bite, and even supported that party in sundry pieces ; but like 
 some others, he was easily converted, when, on coming to town, 
 he found it more fashionable to be a Whig. He held two or 
 three posts under the Government, whose cause he now es- 
 poused : had the honour of the dedication of 'The Tatler' to 
 him by Steele, and died suddenly in 1712. He divided his 
 fortune between his sister and his mistress, Mrs. Oldfield, and 
 
I02 The Poets of the Kit-kat. 
 
 his son by the latter. Mrs. Oldfield must have grown rich in 
 her sinful career, for she could afford, when ill, to refuse to 
 take her salary from the theatre, though entitled to it. She 
 acted best in Vanbrugh's ' Provoked Husband,' so well, in fact, 
 that the manager gave her an extra fifty pounds by way of 
 acknowledgment. 
 
 Poetising seems to have been as much a polite accomplish- 
 ment of that age as letter-writing was of a later, and a smatter- 
 ing of science is of the present day. Gentlemen tried to be 
 poets, and poets gentlemen. The consequence was, that both 
 made fools of themselves. Among the poetasters who belonged 
 to the Kit-kat, we must mention Walsh, a country gentleman, 
 member of Parliament, and very tolerable scholar. He dabbled 
 in odes, elegies, epitaphs, and all that small fry of the muse 
 which was then so plentiful. He wrote critical essays on Virgil, 
 in which he tried to make out that the shepherds in the days 
 of the Roman poet were very well-bred gentlemen of good 
 education ! He was a devoted admirer and friend of Dryden, 
 and he encouraged Pope in his earlier career so kindly that the 
 little viper actually praised him ! Walsh died somewhere about 
 1709 in middle life. 
 
 We have not nearly done with the poets of the Kit-kat. A 
 still smaller one than Walsh was Stepney, who, like Garth, had 
 begun life as a violent Tory and turned coat when he found 
 his interest lay the other way. He was well repaid, for from 
 1692 to 1706 he was sent on no less than eight diplomatic 
 missions, chiefly to German courts. He owed this preferment 
 to the good luck of having been a schoolfellow of Charles Mon- 
 tagu, afterwards Earl of HaKfax. He died about 1707, and 
 had as grand a monument and epitaph in Westminster Abbey 
 as if he had been a Milton or Dryden. 
 
 When you meet a dog trotting along the road, you naturally 
 expect that his master is not far off. In the same way, where 
 you find a poet, still more a poetaster, there you may feel cer- 
 tain you will light upon a patron. The Kit-kat was made up 
 of Maecenases and their humble servants ; and in the same 
 club with Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and the minor poets, 
 
Chancellor Somers. 103 
 
 (ve are not at all surprised to find Sir Robert "Walpole, the 
 Duke of Somerset, Halifax, and Somers. 
 
 Halifax was, par excellence, the Maecenas of his day, and Pope 
 described him admirably in the character of Bufo : — 
 
 ' Proud as Apollo, on his forked hill, 
 Sat full-blown Bufo, puff 'd by every quill ; 
 Fed with soft dedication all day long, 
 Horace and he went hand in hand in song.' 
 
 The dedications poured in thickly. Steele, Tickell, Philips, 
 Smith, and a crowd of lesser lights, raised my lord each one on 
 a higher pinnacle ; and in return the powerful minister was not 
 forgetful of the douceur which well-tuned verses were accus- 
 tomed to receive. He himself had tried to be a poet, and in 
 1703 wrote verses for the toasting-cups of the Kit-kat. His 
 lines to a Dowager Countess of * * * *, are good enough to 
 make us surprised that he never wrote any better. Take a 
 specimen : — 
 
 ' Fair Queen of Fop-land in her royal style ; 
 Fop-land the greatest part of this great isle 1 
 Nature did ne'er so equally divide 
 A female heart 'twixt piety and pride : 
 Her waiting-maids prevent the peep of day. 
 And all in order at her toilet lay 
 Prayer-books, patch-boxes, sermon-notes, and paint. 
 At once t'improve the sinner and the saint.' 
 
 A Maecenas who paid for his dedications was sure to be well 
 spoken of, and Halifax has been made out a wit and a poet, 
 as well as a clever statesman. Halifax got his earldom and the 
 garter from George I., and died, after enjoying them less tlian 
 a year, in 17 15. 
 
 Chancellor Somers, with whom Halifax was associated in 
 the impeachment case in 1701, was a far better man in every 
 respect. His was probably the purest character among those 
 of all the members of the Kit-kat. He was the son of a 
 Worcester attorney, and bom in 1652. He was educated at 
 Trinity, Oxford, and rose purely by merit, distinguishing him- 
 self at the bar and on the bench, unwearied in his application 
 to business, and an exact and upright judge. At school he 
 was a terribly good boy, keeping to his book in play-hours 
 
104 Charles Sackville, Lord Dorset. 
 
 Througliout life his habits were simple and regular, and his 
 character unblemished. He slept but little, and in later years 
 had a reader to attend him at waking. With such habits he can 
 scarcely have been a constant attender at the club ; and as he 
 died a bachelor, it would be curious to learn what ladies he 
 selected for his toasts. In his latter years his mind was 
 weakened, and he died in 1716 of apoplexy. Walpole calls 
 him ' one of those divine men who, like a chapel in a palace, 
 remained unprofaned, while all the rest is tyranny, corruption, 
 and folly.' 
 
 A huge stout figure rolls in now to join the toasters in Shire 
 Lane. In the puffy, once handsome face, there are signs of 
 age, for its owner is past sixty ; yet he is dressed in superb 
 fashion ; and in an hour or so, when the bottle has been dili- 
 gently circulated, his wit will be brighter and keener than that 
 of any young man present. I do not say it will be repeatable, 
 for the talker belongs to a past age, even coarser than that of the 
 Kit-kat. He is Charles Sackville,* famous as a companion of 
 the merriest and most disreputable of the Stuarts, famous — or, 
 rather, infamous — for his mistress, Nell Gwynn, famous for his 
 verses, for his patronage of poets, and for his wild frolics in 
 early life, when Lord Buckhurst Rochester called him 
 
 ' The best good man vrith the worst-natured muse ;' 
 
 and Pope says he was 
 
 ' The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great, 
 Of fops in learning and of knaves in state.' 
 
 Our sailors still sing the ballad which he is said to have written 
 on the eve of the naval engagement between the Duke of York 
 and Admiral Opdam, which begins — 
 
 ' To all you ladies now on land 
 We men at sea indite." 
 
 With a fine classical taste and a courageous spirit, he had 
 in early days been guilty of as much iniquity as any of Charles's 
 profligate court. He was one of a band of young libertines 
 who robbed and murdered a poor tanner on the high-road, and 
 were acquitted, less on account of the poor excuse they dished 
 
 • For some notice of Lord Dorset, see p. 61. 
 
Less Celebrated Wits. 105 
 
 up for this act than of their rank and fashion. Such fine gen- 
 tlemen could not be hanged for the sake of a mere workman in 
 those days — no ! no ! Yet he does not seem to have repented 
 of this transaction, for soon after he was engaged with Sedley 
 and Ogle in a series of most indecent acts at the Cock Tavern 
 in Bow-street, where Sedley, in ' birthday attire,' made a 
 blasphemous oration from the balcony of the house. In later 
 years he. was the pride of the poets : Dryden and Prior, 
 Wycherley, Hudibras, and Rymer, were all encouraged by 
 him, and repaid him with praises. Pope and Dr. King were 
 no less bountiful in their eulogies of this Maecenas. His con- 
 versation was so much appreciated that gloomy William III. 
 chose him as his companion, as merry Charles had done be- 
 fore. The famous Irish ballad, which my Uncle Toby was 
 always humming, ' Lillibullero buUen-a-lah,' but which Percy 
 attributes to the Marquis of Wharton, another member of the 
 Kit-kat, was said to have been written by Buckhurst. He re- 
 tained his wit to the last ; and Congreve, who visited him when 
 he was d)ang, said, 'Faith, he stutters more wit than other 
 people have in their best health.' He died at Bath in 1 706. 
 
 Buckhurst does not complete the list of conspicuous members 
 of this club, but the remainder were less celebrated for their wit. 
 There was the Duke of Kingston, the father of Lady Mary Wort- 
 ley Montagu ; Granville, who imitated Waller, and attempted 
 to make his ' Myra' as celebrated as the court-poet's Saccharissa, 
 who, by the way, was the mother of the Earl of Sunderland ; 
 the Duke of Devonshire, whom Walpole calls ' a patriot among 
 the men, a gallant among the ladies,' and who founded Chats- 
 worth ; and other noblemen, chiefly belonging to the latter part 
 of the seventeenth century, and all devoted to WiUiam III., 
 though they had been bred at the courts of Charles and James. 
 
 With such an array of wits, poets, statesmen, and gallants, 
 it can easily be believed that to be the toast of the Kit-kat was 
 no slight honour ; to be a member of it a still greater one ; and 
 to be one of its most distinguished, as Congreve was, the 
 greatest. Let us now see what title this conceited beau and 
 poet had to that position. 
 
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 ^.^^ 
 
 WILLIAM CONGREVE. 
 
 When and where was he born? — ^The Middle Temple. — Congreve finds his 
 Vocation. — Verses to Queen Mary. — ^The Tennis-court Theatre. — Congreve 
 abandons the Drama. — Jeremy Collier. — The Immorality of the Stage. — 
 Very improper Things. — Congreve 's Writings. — Jeremy's ' Short Views.' — 
 Rival Theatres. — Dryden's Funeral. — A Tub-Preacher. — Horoscopic Pre- 
 dictions. — Dryden's Solicitude for his Son. — Congreve's Ambition. — ^Anec- 
 dote of Voltaire and Congreve. — ^The Profession of Maecenas. — Congreve's 
 Private Life. — ' Malbrook's' Daughter. — Congreve's Death and Burial. 
 
 I HEN 'Queen Sarah' of Marlborough read the silly 
 epitaph which Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, 
 had written and had engraved on the monument she 
 set up to Congreve, she said, with one of the true Blenheim 
 sneers, ' I know not what happiness she might have in his com- 
 pany, but I am sure it was no honour^ alluding to her daughter's 
 eulogistic phrases. 
 
 Queen Sarah was right, as she often was when condemnation 
 was called for : and however amusing a companion the drama- 
 tist may have been, he was not a man to respect, for he had 
 not only the common vices o'" his age, but added to them a fop- 
 pish vanity, toadyism, and fine gentlemanisra (to coin a most 
 necessary word), which we scarcely expect to meet with in a 
 man who sets up for a satirist. 
 
 It is the fate of greatness to have falsehoods told of it, and 
 of nothing in connection with it more so than of its origin. If 
 the converse be true, Congreve ought to have been a great man, 
 for the place and time of his birth are both subjects of dispute. 
 Oh ! happy Gilford ! or happy Croker ! why did you not — per- 
 haps you did — go to work to set the world right on this matter 
 — you, to whom a date discovered is the highest palm (no pun 
 intended, I assure you) of glory, and who would rather Shakes- 
 
WAen and Wher^ zvas he Born f loj 
 
 pere had never written ' Hamlet,' or Homer the ' IHad,' than that 
 some miserable little forgotten scrap which decided a year or a 
 place should have been consigned to flames before it fell into 
 your hands ? Why did you not bring the thunder of your 
 abuse and the pop-gunnery of your satire to bear upon the 
 question, ' How, when, and where was William Congreve 
 bom?' 
 
 It was Lady Morgan, I think, who first ' saw the light' (that 
 is, if she was born in the day-time) in the Irish Channel. If 
 it had been only some one more celebrated, we should have 
 had by this time a series of philosophical, geographical, and 
 ethnological pamphlets to prove that she was English or Irish, 
 according to the fancies or prejudices of the writers. It was 
 certainly a very Irish thing to do, which is one argument for 
 the Milesians, and again it was done in the Irish Channel, 
 which is another and a stronger one ; and altogether we are not 
 inclined to go into forty-five pages of recondite facts and fine- 
 drawn arguments, mingled with the most vehement abuse of 
 anybody who ever before wrote on the subject, to prove that 
 this country had the honour of producing her ladyship^ — the 
 Wild Irish Girl. We freely give her up to the sister island. 
 But not so William Congreve, though we are equally indifferent 
 to the honour in his case. 
 
 The one party, then, assert that he was bom in this country, 
 the other that he breathed his first air in the Emerald Isle. 
 Whichever be the true state of the case, we, as Englishmen, 
 prefer to agree in the commonly received opinion that he came 
 into this wicked world at the village of Bardsea, or Bardsey, 
 not far from Leeds in the county of York. Let the Bardseyans 
 immediately erect a statue to his honour, if they have been re- 
 miss enough to neglect him heretofore. 
 
 But our difficulties are not ended, for there is a similar doubt 
 about the year of his birth. His earliest biographer assures us 
 he was bom in 1672, and others that he was baptized three 
 years before, in 1669. Such a proceeding might well be taken 
 as a proof of his Hibernian extraction, and accordingly we 
 find Malone supporting the earlier date, producing, of course, 
 a certificate of baptism to support himself; and as we have a 
 
lo8 The Middle Temple. 
 
 very great respect for his authority, we beg also to support Mr. 
 Malone. 
 
 This being settled, we have to examine who were his parents ! 
 and this is satisfactorily answered by his earliest biographer, 
 who informs us that he was of a very ancient family, being 
 ' the only surviving son of William Congreve, Esq. (who was 
 second son to Richard Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretr 
 ton in that county),' to wit, Yorkshire. Congreve plre held a 
 military command, which took him to Ireland soon after the 
 dramatist's birth, and thus young William had the incomparable 
 advantage of being educated at Kilkenny, and afterwards at 
 Trinity, Dublin, the ' silent sister,' as it is commonly called at 
 our universities. 
 
 At the age of nineteen, this youth sought the classic shades 
 of the Middle Temple, of which he was entered a student, but 
 by the honourable society of which he was never called to the 
 bar ; but whether this was from a disinclination to study ' Coke 
 upon Lyttleton,' or from an incapacity to digest the requisite 
 number of dinners, the devouring of which qualify a young 
 gentleman to address an enlightened British jury, we have no 
 authority for deciding. He was certainly not the first, nor the 
 last, young Templar who has quitted special pleading on a cru- 
 sade to the heights of Parnassus, and he began early to try 
 the nib of his pen and the colour of his ink in a novel. Eheu ! 
 how many a novel has issued from the dull, dirty chambers of 
 that same Temple ! The waters of the Thames just there seem 
 to have been augmented by a mingled flow of sewage and 
 Helicon, though the former is undoubtedly in the greater pro- 
 portion. This novel, called ' Incognita ; or. Love and Duty 
 Reconciled,' seems to have been- — for I confess that I have not 
 read more than a chapter of it, and hope I never may be forced 
 to do so — great rubbish, with good store of villains and ruffians, 
 love-sick maidens who tune their lutes — always conveniently at 
 hand — and love-sick gallants who run their foes through the 
 body with the greatest imaginable ease. It was, in fact, such 
 a novel as James might have written, had he lived a century 
 and a half ago. It brought its author but little fame, and ac^ 
 cordingly he turned his attention to another branch of litera- 
 
Congreve Finds his Vocation. luy 
 
 ture, and in 1693 produced ' The Old Bachelor,* a play of which 
 Dryden, his friend, had so high an opinion that he called it 
 the ' best first-play he had ever read.' However, before being 
 put on the stage it was submitted to Dryden, and by him and 
 others prepared for representation, so that it was well fathered. 
 It was successful enough, and Congreve thus found his voca- 
 tion. In his dedication — a regular piece of flummery of those 
 days, for which authors were often well paid, either in cash or 
 interest — he acknowledges a debt of gratitude to Lord Halifax, 
 who appears to have taken the young man by the hand. 
 
 The young Templar could do nothing better now than write 
 another play. Play-making was as fashionable an amusement 
 in those days of Old Drury, the only patented theatre then, as 
 novel-writing is in i860; and when the young ensign, Van- 
 brugh, could write comedies and take the direction of a theatre, 
 it was no derogation to the dignity of the Staffordshire squire's 
 grandson to do as much. Accordingly, in the following year 
 he brought out a better comedy, 'The Double Dealer,' with a 
 prologue which was spoken by the famous Anne Bracegirdle. 
 She must have been eighty years old when Horace Walpole 
 wTote of her to that other Horace — Mann : ' Tell Mr. Chute 
 that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted with me this morning. 
 As she went out and wanted her clogs, she turned to me and 
 said : " I remember at the playhouse they used to call, Mrs. 
 Oldfield's chair ! Mrs. Barry's clogs ! and Mrs. Bracegirdle's 
 pattens !'" These three ladies were all buried in Westminster 
 Abbey, and, except Mrs. Gibber, the most beautiful and most 
 sinful of them all — though they were none of them spotless — 
 are the only actresses whose ashes and memories are hallowed 
 by the place, for we can scarcely say that they do it much 
 honour. 
 
 The success of ' The Double Dealer,' was at first moderate, 
 although that highly respectable woman. Queen Mary, honoured 
 it with her august presence, which forthwith called up verses of 
 the old adulatory style, though with less point and neatness 
 than those addressed to the Virgin Queen : 
 
 ' Wit is again the care of majesty, ' 
 
J if^ Verges to Queen Mary 
 
 said the poet, and 
 
 ' Thus flourished wit in our forefathers' age. 
 And thus the Roman and Athenian stage. 
 Whose wit is best, we'll not presume to tell. 
 But this we know, our audience will excell ; 
 For never was in Rome, nor Athens seen 
 So fair a circle, and so bright a queen.' 
 
 But this was not enough, for when Her Majesty departed foi 
 another realm in the same year, Congreve put her into a highly 
 eulogistic pastoral, under the name of Pastora, and made some 
 compliments on her, which were considered the finest strokes 
 of poetry and flattery combined, that an age of addresses and 
 eulogies could produce. 
 
 ' As lofty pines o'ertop the lowly steed. 
 So did her gracefiil heiglit all nymphs exceed. 
 To which excelling height she bore a mind 
 Humble as osiers, bending to the wind. 
 * * * ♦ 
 
 I mourn Pastora dead ; let Albion mourn, 
 And sable clouds her chalkie cliffs adorn.' 
 
 This play was dedicated to Lord Halifax, of whom we have 
 spoken, and who continued to be Congreve's patron. 
 
 The fame of the young man was now made ; but in the fol- 
 lowing year it was destined to shine out more brilliantly still. 
 Old Betterton — one of the best Hamlets that ever trod the 
 stage, and of whom Booth declared that when he was playing 
 the Ghost to his Hamlet, his look of surprise and horror was 
 so natural, that Booth could not for some minutes recover him- 
 self — was now a veteran in his sixtieth year. For forty years 
 he had walked the boards, and made a fortune for the patentees 
 of Drury. It was very shabby of them, therefore, to give some 
 of his best parts to younger actors. Betterton was disgusted, 
 and determined to set up for himself, to which end he managed 
 to procure another patent, turned the Queen's Court in 
 Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn, into a theatre, and opened it on 
 the 30th of April, 1695. The building had been before used 
 as a theatre in the days of the Merry Monarch, and Tom 
 Killegrew had acted here some twenty years before ; but it had 
 again become a ' tennis-quatre of the lesser sort,' says Gibber, 
 and the new theatre was not very grand r.i fabric But Better- 
 
The Tennis Court Theatre. i\\ 
 
 ton drew to it all the best actors and actresses of his former 
 company ; and Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle remained true 
 to the old man. Congreve, to his honour, espoused the same 
 cause, and the theatre opened with his play of ' Love for Love,' 
 which was more successful than either of the former. The 
 veteran himself spoke the prologue, and fair Bracegirdle the 
 epilogue, in which the poet thus alluded to their change of 
 stage : 
 
 ' And thus our audience, which did once resort 
 To shining theatres to see our sport, 
 Now find us tost into a tennis-court. 
 Thus from the past, we hope for future grace : 
 
 I beg It 
 
 And some here know I have a iegging face.' 
 
 The king himself completed the success of the opening by 
 attending it, and the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields might have 
 ruined the older house, if it had not been for the rapidity with 
 which Vanbrugh and Gibber, who wrote for Old Drury, managed 
 to concoct their pieces ; while Congreve was a slower, though 
 perhaps better, writer. ' Love for Love ' was hereafter a 
 favourite of Betterton's, and when in 1709, a year before his 
 death, the company gave the old man — then in ill health, poor 
 circumstances, and bad spirits — a benefit, he chose this play, 
 and himself, thougn more than seventy, acted the part of 
 Valentine, supported by Mrs. Bracegirdle as Angelina, and 
 Mrs. Barry as Frail. 
 
 The young dramatist with all his success, was not satisfied 
 with his fame, and resolved to show the world that he had as 
 much poetry as wit in him. This he failed to do ; and, like 
 better writers, injured his own fame, by not being contented 
 with what he had. Congreve — the wit, the dandy, the man 
 about town — ^took it into his head to write a tragedy. In 1697 
 ' The Mourning Bride ' was acted at the Tennis Court Theatre. 
 The author was wise enough to return to his former muse, and 
 some time after produced his best piece, so some think, ' The 
 Way of the World,' which was also performed by Betterton's 
 company ; but, alas ! for overwriting — that cacoetlies of im- 
 prudent men — it was almost hissed off the stage. Whether this 
 was owing to a weariness of Congreve's style, or whether at the 
 
112 Congreve Abandons the Drama. 
 
 time of its first appearance Collier's attacks, of which anon, had 
 already disgusted the public with the obscenity and immorality 
 of this writer, I do not know : but, whatever the cause, the 
 consequence was that Mr. William Congreve, in a fit of pique, 
 made up his mind never to write another piece for the stage — a 
 wise resolution, perhaps — and to turn fine gentleman instead. 
 With the exception of composing a masque called the ' Judg- 
 ment of Paris,' and an opera ' Gemele,' which was never per- 
 formed, he kept this resolution very honestly; and so Mr. 
 William Congreve's career as a playwright ends at the early age 
 of thirty. 
 
 But though he abandoned the drama, he was not allowed to 
 retire in peace. There was a certain wortliy, but peppery little 
 man, who, though a Jacobite and a clergyman, was stanch and 
 true, and as superior in character — even, indeed, in vigour of 
 writing — to Congreve, as Somers was to every man of his age. 
 This very Jeremy Collier, to whom we owe it that there is any 
 English drama fit to be acted before our sisters and wives in 
 the present day. Jeremy, the peppery, purged the stage in a 
 succession of Jeremiads. 
 
 Bomin 1650, educated at Cambridge as a poor scholar, ordained 
 at the age of twenty-six, presented three years later with the living 
 of Ampton, near Bury St. Edmunds, Jeremy had two qualities 
 to recommend him to Englishmen — respectability and pluck. In 
 an age when the clergy were as bad as the blackest sheep in 
 their flocks, Jeremy was distinguished by purity of life ; in an 
 age when the only safety lay in adopting the principles of the 
 Vicar of Bray, Jeremy was a Nonjuror, and of this nothing 
 could cure him. The Revolution of 1688 was scarcely effected, 
 when the fiery little partizan published a pamphlet, which was 
 rewarded by a residence of some months in Newgate, not in 
 capacity of chaplain. But he was scarcely let out, when again 
 went his furious pen, and for four years he continued to assail 
 the new government, till his hands were shackled and his 
 mouth closed in the prison of ' The Gate-house.' Now, see 
 the character of the man. He was liberated upon giving bail, 
 but had no sooner reflected on this liberation than he came to 
 the conclusion that it was wrong, by offering security, to re- 
 
Jeremy Collier. 113 
 
 cognize the authority of magistrates appointed by a usurper, as 
 he held William to be, and voluntarily surrendered himself to 
 his judges. Of course he was again committed, but this time 
 to the King's Bench, and would doubtless in a few years have 
 made the tour of the London prisons, if his enemies had not 
 been tired of trying him. Once more at liberty, he passed the 
 next three years in retirement. 
 
 After 1693, Jeremy Collier's name was not brought before 
 the public till 1696, when he publicly absolved Sir John Friend 
 and Sir William Perkins, at their execution, for being concerned 
 in a plot to assassinate King William. His ' Essays on Moral 
 Subjects' were published in 1697; 2nd vol., 1705; 3rd vol., 
 1709. But the only way to put out a firebrand like this is to 
 let it alone, and Jeremy, being, no longer persecuted, began, 
 at last, to think the game was grown stupid, and gave it up. 
 He was a well-meaning man, however, and as long as he had 
 the luxury of a grievance, would injure no one. 
 
 He found one now in the immorality of his age, and if he 
 had left politics to themselves from the first, he might have 
 done much more good than he did. Against the vices of a 
 court and courtly circles it was useless to start a crusade single- 
 handed ; but his quaint clever pen might yet dress out a power- 
 ful Jeremiad against those who encouraged the licentiousness 
 of the people. Jeremy was no Puritan, for he was a Nonjuror 
 and a Jacobite, and we may, therefore, believe that the cause 
 was a good one, when we find him adopting precisely the same 
 line as the Puritans had done before him. In 1698 he published, 
 to the disgust of all Drury and Lincoln's Inn, his ' Short View 
 of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, to- 
 gether with the Sense of Antiquity upon this Argument.' 
 
 While the King of Naples is supplying his ancient Venuses 
 with gowns, and putting his Mars and Hercules into pan- 
 taloons, there are — such are the varieties of opinion — ^respect- 
 able men in this country who call Paul de Kock the greatest 
 moral writer of his age, and who would yet like to see ' The 
 Relapse,' ' Love for Love,' and the choice specimens of 
 Wycherley, Farquhar, and even of Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 acted at the Princess's and the Haymarket in the year of grace 
 
 8 
 
1 14 Very Improper Things. 
 
 i860; I am not writing 'A Short View 'of this or any othei 
 moral subject ; but this I must say — the effect of a sight or 
 sound on a human being's silly little passions must of necessity 
 be relative. Staid people read ' Don Juan,' Lewis's ' Monk,' 
 the plays of Congreve, and any or all of the publications of 
 Holywell Street, without more than disgust at their obscenity 
 and admiration for their beauties. But could we be pardoned 
 for putting these -works into the hands of ' sweet seventeen, ' or 
 making Christmas presents of them to our boys ? Ignorance 
 of evil is, to a certain extent, virtue : let boys be boys in purity 
 of mind as long as they can : let the unrefined ' great un- 
 washed ' be treated also much in the same way as young 
 people. I maintain that to a coarse mind all improper ideas, 
 however beautifully clothed, suggest only sensual thoughts — 
 nay, the very modesty of the garments makes them the more 
 insidious — the more dangerous. I would rather give my boy 
 Jonson, Massinger, or Beaumont and Fletcher, whose very im- 
 proper things ' are called by their proper names,' than let him 
 dive in the prurient innuendo of these later writers. 
 
 But there is no need to argue the question — the public has 
 decided it long since, and, except in indelicate ballets, and oc- 
 casional rather French passages in farce, our modem stage is 
 free from immorality. Even in Garrick's days, when men were 
 not much more refined than in those of Queen Anne, it was 
 found impossible to put the old drama on the stage without 
 considerable weeding. Indeed I doubt if even the liberal up- 
 holder of Paul de Kock would call Congreve a moral writer ; 
 but I confess I am not a competent judge, for 7-ismn teneatis, 
 my critics, I have not read his works since I was a boy, and what 
 is more, I have no intention of reading them. I well remember 
 getting into my hands a large thick volume, adorned with 
 miserable woodcuts, and bearing on its back the title ' Wycher- 
 ley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar.' I devoured it at first 
 with the same avidity with which one might welcome a bottle- 
 imp, who at the hour of one's dulness turned up out of the 
 carpet and offered you delights new and old for nothing but a 
 tether on your soul : and with a like horror, boy though I was, 
 I recoiled from it when any better moment came. It seemed 
 
Con^reves Writings. 115 
 
 to me, when I read this book, as if life were too rotten for any 
 belief, a nest of sharpers, adulterers, cut-tliroats, and prostitutes. 
 There was none — as far as I remember — of that amiable weak- 
 ness, of that better sentiment, which in Ben Jonson or Mas- 
 singer reconcile us to human nature. If truth be a test of 
 genius, it must be a proof of true poetry, that man is not made 
 uglier than he is. Nay, his very ugliness loses its intensity and 
 palls upon our diseased tastes, for want of some goodness, some 
 purity and honesty to relieve it. I will not say that there is 
 none of this in Congreve. I only know, that my recollection 
 of his plays is like that of a vile nightmare, which I would not 
 for anything have return to me. I have read, since, books as 
 bad, perhaps worse in some respects, but I have found the re- 
 demption here and there. I would no more place Shandy 
 in any boy's hands than Congreve and Farquhar ; and yet I 
 can read Tristram again and again with delight ; for amid all that 
 is bad there stand out Trim and Toby, pure specimens of the best 
 side of human nature, coming home to us and teUing us that 
 the world is not all bad. There may be such touches in ' Love 
 for Love,' or ' The Way of the World '^ — I know not and care 
 not. To my remembrance Congreve is but a horrible night- 
 mare, and may the fates forbid I should be forced to go through 
 his plays again. 
 
 Perhaps, then, Jeremy was not far wrong, when he attacked 
 these Specimens of the drama with an unrelenting Nemesis ; 
 but he was before his age. It was less the obvious coarse- 
 ness of these productions with which he found fault than their 
 demoralizing tendency in a direction which we should now, 
 perhaps, consider innocuous. Certainly the Jeremiad overdid 
 it, and like a swift, but not straight bowler at cricket, he sent 
 balls which no wicket-keeper could stop, and which, therefore, 
 were harmless to the batter. He did not want boldness. He 
 attacked Dryden, now close upon his grave : Congreve, a young 
 man ; Vanbrugh, Cibber, Farquhar, and the rest, all alive, all 
 in the zenith of their fame, and all as popular as writers could 
 be. It was as much as if a man should stand up to-day and 
 denounce Dickens and Thackeray, with the exception that well- 
 meaning people went along with Jeremy, whereas very few 
 
1 1 6 Jeremy's ' Short Views! 
 
 would do more than smile at the zeal of any one who tilted 
 against our modern pets. Jeremy, no doubt, was bold, but he 
 wanted tact, and so gave his enemy occasion to blaspheme 
 He made out cases where there were none, and let alone what 
 we moderns should denounce. So Congreve took up the 
 cudgels against him with much wit and much coarseness, and 
 the two fought out the battle in many a pamphlet and many 3 
 letter. But Jeremy was not to be beaten. His ' Short View ' 
 was followed by ' A Defence of the Short View,' a ' Second 
 Defence of the Short View,' ' A Farther Short View,' and, in 
 short, a number of ' Short Views,' which had been bettei 
 merged into one ' Long Sight' Jeremy grew coarse and bitter ; 
 Congreve coarser and bitterer ; and the whole controversy made 
 a pretty chapter for the ' Quarrels of Authors.' But the Jere- 
 miad triumphed in the long run, because, if its method was bad, 
 its cause was good, and a succeeding generation voted Congreve 
 immoral. Enough of Jeremy. We owe him a tribute for his 
 pluck, and though no one reads him in the present day, we may 
 be thankful to him for having led the way to a better state of 
 things.* 
 
 Congreve defended himself in eight letters addressed to Mr. 
 Moyle, and we can only say of them, that, if anything, they are 
 yet coarser than the plays he would excuse. 
 
 The works of the young Templar, and his connection with 
 Betterton, introduced him to all the writers and wits of his day. 
 He and Vanbrugh, though rivals, were fellow-workers, and our 
 glorious Haymarket Theatre, which has gone on at times when 
 Drury and Covent Garden have been in despair, owes its origin 
 to their confederacy. But Vanbrugh's theatre was on the site 
 of the present Opera House, and the Haymarket was set up as a 
 rival concern. Vanbrugh's was built in 1705, and met the 
 usual fate of theatres, being burnt down some eighty-four years 
 after. It is curious enough that this house, destined for the 
 ' legitimate drama ' — often a very illegitimate performance — ^was 
 opened by an opera set to Itattan music, so that ' Her Ma- 
 jesty's' has not much departed from the original cast of the place. 
 
 • Dryden, in the Preface to his Fables, acknowledged that Collier ' had, in 
 many points, taxed him justly. ' ^^ 
 
Dryden's Death. 1 17 
 
 Perhaps Congreve's best friend was Dryden. This man's 
 life and death are pretty well known, and even his funeral has 
 been described time and again. But Corinna — as she was 
 styled — ^gave of the latter an account which has been called 
 romantic, and much discredited. There is a deal of character- 
 istic humour in her story of the funeral, and as it has long been 
 lost sight of; it may not be unpalatable here : Dryden died on 
 May-day, lyor, and Lord HaUfax* undertook to give his body 
 a. private funeral in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 ' On the Saturday following,' writes Corinna, ' the Company 
 came. The Corps was put into a Velvet Hearse, and eighteen 
 Mourning Coaches filled with Company attending. When, 
 just before they began to move, Lord Jeffreys, with some of 
 his rakish Companions, coming by, in Wine, ask'd whose 
 Funeral ? And being told ; " What !" cries he, " shall Dryden, 
 the greatest Honour and Ornament of the Nation, be buried 
 after this private Manner ? No, Gentlemen ! let all that lov'd 
 Mr. Dryden, and honour his Memory, alight, and join with me 
 in gaining my Lady's Consent, to let me have the Honour of 
 his Interment, which shall be after another manner than this, 
 and I will bestow ;^iooo on a Monument in the Abbey for 
 him." The Gentlemen in the Coaches, not knowing of the 
 Bishop of Rochester's Favom:, nor of Lord Halifax's generous 
 Design (these two noble Spirits having, out of Respect to the 
 Family, enjoin'd Lady Elsabeth and her Son to keep their 
 Favour concealed to the World, and let it pass for her own Ex- 
 pense), readily came out of the Coaches, and attended Lord 
 Jeffreys up to the Lady's Bedside, who was then sick. He re- 
 peated the purport of what he had before said, but she abso- 
 lutely refusing, he fell on his knees, vowing never to rise till his 
 request was granted. The rest of the Company, by his Desire, 
 kneeled also ; she being naturally of a timorous Disposition, 
 and then under a sudden surprise, fainted away. As soon as 
 she recover'd her Speech, she cry'd, " No, no !" " Enough 
 gentlemen," repl/d he (rising briskly), " My Lady is very good, 
 
 * Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax. Lord Halifax was bom in 1661, and 
 died in 1715. He was called ' Mouse Montagu.' 
 
1 18 Dry den's Funeral. 
 
 she says, Go, go !" She repeated her former Words with all 
 her Strength, but alas in vain ! her feeble voice was lost in their 
 Acclamations of Joy 1 and Lord Jefireys orderd the Hearseman 
 to carry the Corps to Russell's, an undertaker in Cheapside, 
 and leave it there, till he sent orders for the Embalment, which, 
 he added, should be after the Royal Manner. His Directions 
 were obey'd, the Company dispersed, and Lady Elsabeth and 
 Mr. Charles remained Inconsolable. Next Morning Mr. Charles 
 waited on Lord Halifax, &c., to excuse his Mother and self, by 
 relating the real Trudi. But neither his Lordship nor the 
 Bishop would admit of any Plea ; especially the latter, who had 
 the Abbey lighted, the ground open'd, the Choir attending, an 
 Anthem ready set, and himself waiting for some Hours, without 
 any Corps to bury. Russell, after three days' Expectance of 
 Orders for Embalment, without receiving any, waits on Lord 
 Jeffreys, who, pretending Ignorance of the Matter, tum'd it off 
 with an ill-natured Jest, saying, " Those who observed the orders 
 of a drunken Frolick, deserved no better ; that he remembered 
 nothing at all of it, and he might do what he pleased with the 
 Corps." On this Mr. Russell waits on Lady Elsabeth and Mr. 
 Dryden; but alas, it was not in their power to answer. The 
 season was very hot, the Deceas'd had liv'd high and fast ; and 
 being corpulent, and abounding with gross Humours, grew very 
 offensive. The Undertaker, in short, threaten'd to bring home 
 the Corps, and set it before the Door. It cannot be easily 
 imagin'd what grief, shame, and confusion seized this unhappy 
 Family. They begged a Day's Respite, which was granted. 
 Mr. Charles wrote a very handsome Letter to Lord Jeffreys, 
 who returned it with this cool Answer, " He knew nothing of 
 the Matter, and would be troubled no more about it." He 
 then addressed the Lord Halifax and Bishop of Rochester, who 
 were both too justly tho' unhappily incensed, to do anything in 
 it. In this extream Distress, Dr. Garth, a man who entirely 
 lov'd Mr. Dryden, and was withal a Man of Generosity and 
 great Humanity, sends for the Corps to the College of Phy- 
 sicians in Warwick Lane, and proposed a Funeral by Subscrip- 
 tion, to which himself set a most noble example. Mr. Wycher- 
 ley, and several others, among whom must not be forgotten 
 
A Ttib P readier. 119 
 
 Heniy Cromwell, Esq., Captain Gibbons, and Mr. Christopher 
 Metcalfe, Mr. Dryden's Apothecary and intimate Friend (since 
 a Collegiate Physician), who with many others contributed 
 most largely to the Subscription ; and at last a Day, about 
 three weeks after his Decease, was appointed for the Interment 
 at the Abbey. Dr. Garth pronounced a fine Latin Oration 
 over the Corps at the College ; but the Audience being nume- 
 rous, and the Room large, it was requisite the Orator should be 
 elevated, that he might be heard. But as it unluckily hap- 
 pen'd there was nothing at hand but an old Beer-Barrel, which 
 the Doctor with much good-nature mounted ; and in the midst 
 of his Oration, beating Time to the Accent with his Foot, the 
 Head broke in, and his Feet sunk to the Bottom, which occa- 
 sioned the malicious Report of his Enemies, "That he was 
 turned a Tub-Preacher." However, he finished the Oration 
 with a superior grace and genius, to the loud Acclamations of 
 Mirth, which inspir'd the mix'd or rather Mob-Auditors. The 
 Procession began to move, a numerous Train of Coaches at- 
 tended the Hearse : But, good God ! in what Disorder can only 
 be express'd by a Sixpenny Pamphlet, soon after pubUshed, 
 entitled " Dryden's Funeral." At last the Corps arrived at the 
 Abbey, which was all unlighted. No Organ played, no Anthem 
 sung ; only two of the Singing boys preceded the Corps, who 
 sung an Ode of Horace, with each a small candle in their 
 Hand. The Butchers and other Mob broke in like a Deluge, 
 so that only about eight or ten Gentlemen could gain Admis- 
 sion, and those forced to cut the Way with their drawn Swords, 
 The Coffin in this Disorder was let down into Chaucer's Grave, 
 with as much confusion, and as little Ceremony, as was possi- 
 ble ; every one glad to save themselves from the Gentlemen's 
 Swords, or the Clubs of the Mob. When the Funeral was 
 over, Mr. Charles sent a Challenge to Lord Jeffreys, who re- 
 fiising^to answer it, he sent several others, and went often him- 
 self, but could neither get a Letter deliver' d, nor Admittance to 
 speak to him, that he resolved, since his Lordship refused to 
 answer him hke a Gentleman, he would watch an Opportunity 
 to meet him, and fight off hand, tho' with all the Rules of 
 Honour ; which his Lordship hearing, left the Town, and Mr. 
 
l2o Dryderis Solicitude for his Son, 
 
 Charles could never have the satisfaction to meet him, tho' hf 
 sought it till his death with the utmost Application.' 
 
 Dryden was, perhaps, the last man of learning that believed ~ 
 in astrology; though an eminent English author, now living, 
 and celebrated for the variety of his acquirements, has been 
 known to procure the casting of horoscopes, and to consult a 
 noted ' astrologer,' who gives opinions for a small sum. The 
 coincidences of prophecy are not more remarkable than those 
 of star-telling ; and Dryden and the author I have referred to 
 were probably both captivated into belief by some fatuitous 
 realization of their horoscopic predictions. Nor can we alto- 
 gether blame their credulity, when we see biology, table-turning, 
 rapping, and all the family of imposture, taken up seriously in 
 our own time. 
 
 On the birth of his son Charles, Dryden immediately cast his 
 horoscope. The following account of Dryden's paternal soli- 
 citude for his son, and its result, may be taken as embellished, 
 if not apocrjrphal. Evil hour, indeed — Jupiter, Venus, and 
 the Sun were all ' under the earth ;' Mars and Saturn were in 
 square : eight, or a multiple of it, would be fatal to the child 
 ■ — the square foretold it. In his eighth, his twenty-fourth, or his 
 thirty-second year, he was certain to die, though he might pos- 
 sibly linger on to the age of thirty-four. The stars did all they 
 could to keep up their reputation. When the boy was eight 
 years old he nearly lost his life by being buried under a heap 
 of stones out of an old wall, knocked down by a stag and 
 hounds in a hunt. But the stars were not to be beaten, and 
 though the child recovered, went in for the game a second time 
 in his twenty-third year, when he fell, in a fit of giddiness, from 
 a tower, and, to use Lady Elsabeth's words, was ' mash'd to a 
 mummy.' Still the battle was not over, and the mummy re- 
 turned in due course to its human form, though considerably 
 disfigured. Mars and Saturn were naturally disgusted at his 
 recovery, and resolved to finish the disobedient youth. As we 
 have seen, he in vain sought his fate at the hand of Jeffreys ; 
 but we must conclude that the offended constellations took 
 Neptune in partnership, for in due course the youth met with 
 % watery grave. 
 
Congrevis A mbition. 1 2 1 
 
 After abandoning the drama, Congreve appears to have come 
 out in the light of an independent gentleman. He was already 
 sufficiently introduced into literary society ; Pope, Steele, Swift, 
 and Addison were not only his friends but his admirers, and we 
 can well believe that their admiration was considerable, when 
 we find the one dedicating his ' Miscellany,' the other his trans- 
 lation of the ' Iliad,' to a man who was qualified neither by 
 rank nor fortune to play Maecenas. 
 
 At what time he was admitted to the Kit-kat I am not in 
 a position to state, but it must have been after 1715, and by 
 that time he was a middle-aged man, his fame was long since 
 achieved ; and whatever might be thought of his works and his 
 controversy with Collier, he was recognised as one of the lite- 
 rary stars at a period when the great courted the clever, and 
 wit was a passport to any society. Congreve had plenty of that, 
 and probably at the Kit-kat was the Hfe of the party when 
 Vanbrugh was away or Addison in a graver mood. Untroubled 
 by conscience, he could launch out on any subject whatever; 
 and his early life, spent in that species of so-called gaiety which 
 was then the routine of every young man of the world, gave 
 him ample experience to draw upon. But Congreve's ambition 
 was greater than his talents. No man so little knew his real 
 value, or so grossly asserted one which he had not. Gay, hand- 
 some, and in good circumstances, he aspired to be, not Congreve 
 the poet, not Congreve the wit, not Congreve the man of mind, 
 but simply Congreve the fine gentleman. Such humility would 
 be charming if it were not absurd. It is a vice of scribes to 
 seek a character for which they have little claim. Moore loved 
 to be thought a diner-out rather than a poet; even Byron 
 affected the fast man when he might have been content with 
 the name of ' genius ;' but Congreve went farther, and was 
 ashamed of being poet, dramatist, genius, or what you will. 
 An anecdote of him, told by Voltaire, who may have been an 
 ' awfu' liar,' but had no temptation to invent in such a case as 
 this, is so consistent with what we gather of the man's cha- 
 racter, that one cannot but think it is true. 
 
 The philosopher of Femey was anxious to see and converse 
 with a brother dramatist of such celebrity as the author of 
 
122 Anecdote of Voltaire and Congreve. 
 
 ' The Way of the World.' He expected to find a man of a 
 keen satirical mind, who would join him in a laugh against 
 humanity. He visited Congreve, and naturally began to talk 
 of his works. The fine gentleman spoke of them as trifles 
 utterly beneath his notice, and told him, with an affectation 
 which perhaps was sincere, that he wished to be visited as a 
 gentleman, not as an author. One can imagine the disgust ot 
 his brother dramatist. Voltaire replied, that had Mr. Congreve 
 been nothing more than a gentleman, he should not have 
 taken the trouble to call on him, and therewith retired with an 
 expression of merited contempt. 
 
 It is only in the present day that authorship is looked upon 
 as a profession, though it has long been one. It is amusing 
 to listen to the sneers of men who never wrote a book, or who, 
 having written, have gained thereby some more valuable ad- 
 vantage than the publisher's cheque. The men who talk with 
 horror of writing for money, are glad enough if their works 
 introduce them to the notice of the influential, and aid them 
 in procuring a place. In the same way, Congreve was not at 
 all ashamed of fulsome dedications, which brought him the 
 favour of the great. Yet we may ask, if, the labourer being 
 worthy of his hire, and the labour of the brain being the highest, 
 finest, and most exhausting that can be, the man who straight- 
 forwardly and without affectation takes guineas from his pub- 
 lisher, is not honester than he who counts upon an indirect 
 reward for his toil ? Fortunately, the question is almost settled 
 by the example of the first writers of the present day ; but 
 there are still people who think that one should sit down to a 
 year's — ay, ten years' — ^hard mental work, and expect no re- 
 turn but fame. Whether such objectors have always private 
 means to return to, or whether they have never known what it 
 is to write a book, we do not care to examine, but they are to 
 be found in large numbers among the educated ; and indeed, 
 to this present day, it is held by some among the upper classes 
 to be utterly derogatory to write for money. 
 
 Whether this was the feeling in Congreve's day or not is not 
 now the question. Those were glorious days for an author, 
 who did not mind playing the sycophant a little. Instead of 
 
TJu Profession of Mcecenas. 123 
 
 having to trudge from door to door in Paternoster Row, humbly 
 requesting an interview, which is not always granted — instead of 
 sending that heavy parcel of MS., which costs you a fortune for 
 postage, to publisher after publisher, till it is so often ' returned 
 with thanks' that you hate the very sight of it, the young author ot 
 those days had a much easier and more comfortable part to play. 
 An introduction to an influential man in town, who again would 
 introduce you to a patron, was all that was necessary. The 
 profession of Maecenas was then as recognized and established 
 as that of doctor or lavvyer. A man of money could always 
 buy brains ; and most noblemen considered an author to be 
 as necessary a part of his establishment as the footmen who 
 ushered them into my lord's presence. A fulsome dedication 
 in the largest type was all that he asked : and if a writer 
 were sufficiently profuse in his adulation, he-might dine at Mae- 
 cenas's table, drink his sack and canary without stint, and apply 
 to him for cash whenever he found his pockets empty. Nor 
 was this all : if a writer were sufficiently successful in his works 
 to reflect honour on his patron, he was eagerly courted by others 
 of the noble profession. He was offered, if not hard cash, as 
 good an equivalent, in the shape of a comfortable government 
 sinecure ; and if this was not to be had, he was sometimes even 
 lodged and boarded by his obliged dedicatee. In this way he 
 was introduced into the highest society ; and if he had wit 
 enough to support the character, hesoon found himself /a<:z7if 
 ■princeps in a circle of the highest nobility in the land. Thus 
 it is that in the clubs of the day we find title and wealth min- 
 gling with wit and genius ; and the writer who had begun life by 
 a cringing dedication, was now rewarded by the devotion and 
 assiduity of the men he had once flattered. When Steele, Swift, 
 Addison, Pope, and Congreve were the kings of their sets, it 
 was time for authors to look and talk big. Eheu ! those happy 
 days are gone ! 
 
 Our dramatist, therefore, soon discovered that a good play 
 was the key to a good place, and the Whigs took care that he 
 should have it. Oddly enough, when the Tories came in they 
 did not turn him out. Perhaps they wanted to gain him over 
 to themselves; perhaps, like the Vicar of Bray, he did not 
 
124 Congr eve's Private Life. 
 
 mind turning his coat once or twice in a life-time. Howevei 
 this may be, he managed to keep his appointment without 
 offending his own party ; and when the latter returned to power, 
 he even induced them to give him a comfortable Uttle sinecure, 
 which went by the name of Secretary to the Island of Ja- 
 maica, and raised the income from his appointments to ^^1200 
 a year. 
 
 From this period he was little before the public. He could 
 afford now to indulge his natural indolence and selfishness. 
 His private life was perhaps not worse than that of the majority 
 of his contemporaries. He had his intrigues, his mistresses, 
 the same love of wine, and the same addiction to gluttony. 
 He had the reputation of a wit, and with wits he passed his 
 time, sufficiently easy in his circumstances to feel no damping 
 to his spirits in the cares of this life. The Island of Jamaica 
 probably gave him no further trouble than that of signing a few 
 papers from time to time, and giving a receipt for his salary. 
 His life, therefore, presents no verj' remarkable feature, and he 
 is henceforth known more on account of his friends than for 
 aught he may himself have done. The best of these friends 
 was Walter Moyle, the scholar, who translated parts of Lucian 
 and Xenophon, and was pretty well known as a classic. He 
 was a Cornish man of independent means, and it was to him 
 that Congreve addressed the letters in which he attempted to 
 defend himself from the attacks of Collier. 
 
 It was not to be expected that a wit and a poet should go 
 through life without a platonic, and accordingly we find our 
 man not only attached, but devoted to a lady of great dis- 
 tinction. This was no other than Henrietta, Duchess of Marl- 
 borough, the daughter of ' Malbrook ' himself, and of the 
 famous ' Queen Sarah.' Henrietta was the eldest daughter, 
 and there was no son to inherit the prowess of Churchill and 
 the parsimony of his wife. The nation — to which, by the way, 
 the Marlboroughs were never grateful — would not allow the 
 title of their pet warrior to become extinct, and a special Act 
 of Parliament gave to the eldest daughter the honours of the 
 duchy.* The two Duchesses of Marlborough hated each other 
 
 • See Burke's ' Peerage." 
 
'Malbrook's' Daughter. 125 
 
 cordially. Sarah's temper was probably the main cause of theit 
 bickering ; but there is never a feud between parent and child 
 in which both are not more or less blameable. 
 
 The Duchess Henrietta conceived a violent fancy for the wit 
 and poet, and whatever her husband, Lord Godolphin, may 
 have thought of it, the connection ripened into a most intimate 
 friendship, so much so that Congreve made the duchess not 
 only his executrix, but the sole residuary legatee of all his pro- 
 perty.* His will gives us some insight into the toadying cha- 
 racter of the man. Only four near relations are mentioned as 
 legatees, and only £^^0 is divided among them; whereas, 
 after leaving ;^2oo to Mrs. Bracegirdle, the actress ; ;^ioo, 'and 
 all my apparel and linnen of all sorts ' to a Mrs. Rooke, he di- 
 vides the rest between his friends of the nobility. Lords Cob- 
 ham and Shannon, the Duchess of Newcastle, Lady Mary 
 Godolphin, Colonel Churchill (who receives 'twenty pounds, 
 together with my gold-headed cane'), and, lastly, 'to the poor 
 of the parish,' the magnificent sum of ten pounds. ' Blessed are 
 those who give to the rich ;' these words must surely have ex- 
 pressed the sentiment of the worldly Congreve. 
 
 However, Congreve got something in return from the 
 Duchess Henrietta, which he might not have received from 
 ' the poor of the parish,' to wit, a monument, and an inscrip- 
 tion on it written by her own hand. I have already said what 
 'Queen Sarah' thought of the latter, and, for the rest, those 
 who care to read the nonsense on the walls of Westminster 
 Abbey can decide for themselves as to the honour the poet re- 
 ceived from his titled friend. 
 
 The latter days of William Congreve were passed in wit and 
 gout : the wine, which warmed the one, probably brought on 
 the latter. After a course of ass's milk, which does not seem 
 to have done him much good, the ex-dramatist retired to Bath, 
 a very fashionable place for departing Ufe in, under easy and 
 elegant circumstances. But he not only drank of the springs 
 beloved of King Bladud, of apocryphal memory, but even went 
 so far as to imbibe the snail-water, which was then the last 
 species of quack cure in vogue. This, probably, despatched 
 
 • The Duchess of Ma^'borough received ;^io,ooo by Mr. Congreve's will. 
 
126 Con^reves Death and Burial. 
 
 him. But it is only just to that disagreeable little reptile that 
 infests our gardens, and whose slime was supposed to possess 
 peculiarly strengthening properties, to state that his death was 
 materially hastened by being overturned when driving in his 
 chariot. He was close upon sixty, had long been blind from 
 cataracts in his eyes, and as he was no longer either useful or 
 ornamental to the world in general, he could perhaps be spared. 
 He died soon after this accident in January, 1729. He had 
 the sense to die at a time when Westminster Abbey, being re- 
 garded as a mausoleum, was open to receive the corpse of any 
 one who had a httle distinguished himself, and even of some 
 who had no distinction whatever. He was buried there with 
 great pomp, and his dear duchess set up his monument. So 
 much for his body. What became of the soul of a dissolute, 
 vain, witty, and unprincipled man, is no concern of ours. Re- 
 quiescat in pace, if there is any peace for those who are buried 
 in Westminster Abbey. 
 
BEAU NASH. 
 
 The King of Bath.— Nash at Oxford.—' My Boy Dick.'— OflFers of Knighthood. 
 —Doing Penance at York. — Days of Folly. — ^A very Romantic Story. — 
 Sickness and Civilization. — Nash descends upon Bath. — Nash's Chef- 
 d'oeuvre. — ^The Ball. — Improvements in the Pump-room, &c. — ^A Public 
 Benefactor. — Life at Bath in Nash's time.— A Compact with the Duke of 
 Beaufort. — Gaming at Bath. — Anecdotes of Nash. — 'Miss Sylvia.' — ^A 
 Generous Act. — Nash's Sun setting. — A Panegyric. — Nash's Funeral.— His 
 Characteristics. 
 
 HERE is nothing new under the sun, said Walpole, by 
 way of a very original remark. ' No,' whispered 
 George Selwyn, ' nor under the grandson, either.' 
 Mankind, as a body, has proved its silliness in a thousand 
 ways, but in none, perhaps, so ludicrously as in its respect for 
 a man's coat He is not always a fool that knows the value of 
 dress ; and some of the wisest and greatest of men have been 
 dandies of the. first water. King Solomon was one, and Alex- 
 ander the Great was another ; but there never was a more des- 
 potic monarch, nor one more humbly obeyed by his subjects, 
 than the King of Bath, and he won his dominions by the cut of 
 his coat. But as Hercules was killed by a dress-shirt, so the 
 beaux of the modem world have generally ruined themselves 
 by their wardrobes, and brought remorse to their hearts, or 
 contempt from the very people who once worshipped them. 
 The husband of Mrs. Damer, who appeared in a new suit 
 twice a-day, and whose wardrobe sold for ;£^i 5,000, blew his 
 brains out at a coffee-house. Beau Fielding, Beau Nash, and 
 Beau Brummell all expiated their contemptible vanity in ob- 
 scure old age of want and misery. As the world is full of folly, 
 the history of a fool is as good a mirror to hold up to it as 
 another ; but in the case of Beau Nash the only question is, 
 whether he or his subjects were the greater fools. So nOw foi 
 
128 Thx King of Bath. 
 
 a picture of as much folly as could well be crammed into that 
 hot basin in the Somersetshire hills, of which more anon. 
 
 It is a hard thing for a man not to have had a father — ^harder 
 still, like poor Savage, to have one whom he cannot get hold 
 of; but perhaps it is hardest of all, when you have a father, 
 and that parent a very respectable man, to be told that you 
 never had one. This was Nash's case, and his father was so 
 little known, and so seldom mentioned, that the splendid Beau 
 was thought almost to have dropped from the clouds, ready 
 dressed and powdered. He dropped in reality from anything 
 but a heavenly place — the shipping town of Swansea : so that 
 Wales can claim the honour of having produced the finest 
 beau of his age. 
 
 Old Nash was, perhaps, a better gentleman than his son ; 
 but with far less pretension. He was a partner in a glass- 
 manufactory. The Beau, in after-years, often got rallied on the 
 inferiority of his origin, and the least obnoxious answer he ever 
 made was to Sarah of Marlborough, as rude a creature as him- 
 self, who told him he was ashamed of his parentage. ' No, 
 madam,' replied the King of Bath, ' I seldom mention my 
 father, in company, not because I have any reason to be 
 ashamed of him, but because he has some reason to be 
 ashamed of me.' Nash, though a fop and a fool, was not a 
 bad-hearted man, as we shall see. And if there were no other 
 redeeming point in his character, it is a great deal to say for 
 him, that in an age of toadyism, he treated rank in the same 
 manner as he did the want of it, and did his best to remove 
 the odious distinctions which pride would have kept up in his 
 dominions. In fact. King Nash may be thanked for having, 
 by his energy in this respect, introduced into society the first 
 elements of that middle class which is found alone in England. 
 
 Old Nash — whose wife, by the way, was niece to that Colonel 
 Poyer who defended Pembroke Castle in the days of the first 
 Revolution — was one of those silly men who want to make 
 gentlemen of their sons, rather than good men. He had his 
 wish. His son Richard was a very fine gentleman, no doubt ; 
 Out, unfortunately, the same circumstances that raised him to 
 that much coveted position, also made him a gambler and a 
 
Nash at Oxford. 129 
 
 profligate. Oh ! foolish papas, when will you learn that a 
 Christian snob is worth ten thousand irreligious gentlemen? 
 When will you be content to bring up your boys for heaven 
 rather than for the brilliant world ? Nash, senior, sent his son 
 first to school and then to Oxford, to be made a gentleman of. 
 Richard was entered at Jesus College, the haunt of the Welsh 
 In my day, this quiet little place was celebrated for little more 
 than the humble poverty of its members, one-third of whom 
 rejoiced in the cognomen of Jones. They were not renowned 
 for cleanliness, and it was a standing joke with us silly boys, to 
 ask at the door for ' that Mr. Jones who had a tooth-brush.' If 
 the college had the same character then, Nash must have asto- 
 nished its dons, and we are not surprised that in his first year 
 they thought it better to get rid of him. 
 
 His father could ill afford to keep him at Oxford, and fondly 
 hoped he would distinguish himself ' My boy Dick' did so at 
 the very outset, by an offer of marriage to one of those charming 
 sylphs of that academical city, who are always on the look-out 
 for credulous undergraduates. The affair was discovered, and 
 Master Richard, who was not seventeen, was removed from the 
 University.* Whether he ever, in after-life, made another offer, 
 I know not, but there is no doubt that he ought to have been 
 married, and that the connections he formed in later years were 
 far more disreputable than his first love affairs. 
 
 The worthy glass manufacturer, having failed to make his 
 son a gentleman in one way, took the best step to make him 
 a blackguard, and, in spite of the wild inclinations he had 
 abeady evinced, bought him a commission in the army. In 
 this new position the incipient Beau did everything but his 
 duty ; dressed superbly, but would not be in time for parade , 
 spent more money than he had, but did not obey orders ; and 
 finally, though not expelled from the army, he found it con- 
 venient to sell his commission, and return home, after spending 
 the proceeds. 
 
 Papa was now disgusted, and sent the young Hopeless to 
 shift for himself What could a well-disposed, handsome youth 
 
 • Warner (' History of Bath,' p. 366), says, ' Nash was removed from Oxford 
 by bis friends.' 
 
 9 
 
'30 Offers of Knighthood. 
 
 do to keep body and, not soul, but clothes together ? He had 
 but one talent, and that was for dress. Alas, for our degenerate 
 days ! When we are pitched upon our own bottoms, we must 
 work ; and that is a highly ungentlemanly thing to do. But in 
 the beginning of the last century, such a degrading resource 
 was quite unnecessary. There were always at hand plenty ol 
 establishments where a youth could obtain the necessary funds 
 to pay his tailor, if fortune favoured him ; and if not, he could 
 follow the fashion of the day, and take to what the Japanese 
 call ' the happy Despatch.' Nash probably suspected that he 
 had no brains to blow out, and he determined the more reso- 
 lutely to make fortune his mistress. He went to the gaming- 
 table, and turned his one guinea into ten, and his ten into a 
 hundred, and was soon blazing about in gold lace, and a new 
 sword, the very delight of dandies. 
 
 He had entered his name, by way of excuse, at the Temple, 
 and we can quite believe that he ate all the requisite dinners, 
 though it is not so certain that he paid for them. He soon 
 found that a fine coat is not so very far beneath a good brain 
 in worldly estimation, and when, on the accession of William 
 the Third, the Templars, according to the old custom, gave his 
 Majesty a banquet, Nash, as a promising Beau, was selected to 
 manage the establishment. It was his first experience of the 
 duties of an M.C., and he conducted himself so ably on this 
 occasion that the king even offered to make a knight of him. 
 Probably Master Richard thought of his empty purse, for he 
 replied with some of that assurance which afterwards stood him 
 in such good stead, ' Please your majesty, if you intend to make 
 me a knight, I wish I may be one of your poor knights of 
 Windsor, and then I shall have a fortune, at least able to sujy 
 port my title.' WilHam did not see the force of this argument, 
 and Mr. Nash remained Mr. Nash till the day of his death. 
 He had another chance of the title, however, in days when he 
 could have better maintained it, but again he refused. Queen 
 Anne once asked him why he declined knighthood. He re- 
 plied : 'There is Sir William Read, the mountebank, who has 
 just been knighted, and I should have to call him " brother." ' 
 The honour was, in fact, rather a cheap one in those days, and 
 
Doi7tg Penance at York. \ 3 \ 
 
 who knows whether a man who had done such signal service to 
 his country did not look forward to a peerage ? Worse men 
 dian even Beau Nash have had it. 
 
 Well, Nash could afford to defy royalty, for he was to be 
 himself a monarch of all he surveyed, and a good deal more ; 
 but before we follow him to Bath, let us give the devil his due — 
 which, by the way, he generally gets — and tell a pair of tales 
 m the Beau's favour. 
 
 Imprimis, his accounts at the Temple were ;^io deficient. 
 Now I don't mean that Nash was not as great a liar as most 
 of his craft, but the truth of this tale rests on the authority of 
 the ' Spectator,' though Nash took delight in repeating it. 
 
 ' Come hither, young man,' said the Benchers, coolly : 
 Whereunto this deficit ?' 
 
 'Pri'thee, good masters,' quoth Nash, ' that ;^ 10 was spent 
 on making a man l\appy.' 
 
 ' A man happy, young sir, pri'thee explain.' 
 
 ' Odds donners,' quoth Nash, ' the fellow said in my hearing 
 that his wife and bairns were starving, and £,\o would make 
 him the happiest man sub sole, and on such an occasion as His 
 Majesty's accession, could I refuse it him ?' 
 
 Nash was, proverbially more generous than just. He would 
 not pay a debt if he could help it, but would give the very 
 amount to the first friend that begged it. There was much 
 ostentation in this, but then my friend Nash was ostentatious. 
 One friend bothered him day and night for J[^2o that was 
 owing to him, and he could not get it. Knowing his debtor's 
 character, he hit, at last, on a happy expedient, and sent a friend 
 to borrow the money, ' to relieve his urgent necessities.' Out 
 came the bank note, before the story of distress was finished. 
 The fiiend carried it to the creditor, and when the latter again 
 met Nash, he ought to have made him a pretty compliment on 
 his honesty. 
 
 Perhaps the King of Bath would not have tolerated in any 
 one else the juvenile frolics he delighted in after-years to relate 
 of his owij early days. When at a loss for cash, he would do 
 anything, but work, for a fifty pound note, and having, in one 
 3f his trips, lost all his money at York, the Beau undertook to 
 
132 Days of Folly. 
 
 'do penance' at the minster door for that sum. He accordingly 
 arrayed himself — not in sackcloth and ashes — ^but in an able- 
 bodied blanket, and nothing else, and took his stand at the 
 porch, just at the hour when the dean would be going in to 
 read service. ' He, ho,' cried that dignitary, who knew him, 
 ' Mr. Nash in masquerade ?' ■ — ' Only a Yorkshire penance, 
 Mr. Dean,' quoth the reprobate ; ' for keeping bad company, 
 too,' pointing therewith to the friends who had come to see 
 the sport. 
 
 This might be tolerated, but when in the eighteenth century 
 a young man emulates the hardiness of Godiva, without her 
 merciful heart, we may not think quite so well of him. Mr. 
 Richard Nash, Beau Extraordinary to the Kingdom of Bath, 
 once rode through a village in that costume of which even our 
 first parent was rather ashamed, and that, too, on the back of 
 a cow ! The wager was, I believe, considerable. A young 
 Englishman did something more respectaljle, yet quite as ex- 
 traordinary, at Paris, not a hundred years ago, for a small bet. 
 He was one of the stoutest, thickest-built men possible, yet 
 being but eighteen, had neither whisker nor moustache to mas- 
 culate his clear English complexion. At the Maison Dor^e 
 one night he offered to ride in the Champs Elysees in a lady's 
 habit, and not be mistaken for a man. A friend undertook to 
 dress him, and went all over Paris to hire a habit that would 
 fit his round figure. It was hopeless for a time, but at last a 
 good-sized body was found, and added thereto, an ample skirt. 
 Fdix dressed his hair with mainte plats and a 7id. He looked 
 perfect, but in coming out of the hairdresser's to get into his 
 fly, unconsciously pulled up his skiit and displayed a sturdy 
 pair of well-trousered legs. A crowd — there is always a ready 
 crowd in Paris — was waiting, and the laugh was general. This 
 hero reached the horse-dealer's — 'mounted,' and rode down 
 the Champs. ' A very fine woman that,' said a Frenchman in 
 the promenade, 'but what a back she has!' It was in the 
 return bet to this that a now well-known diplomat drove a goat- 
 chaise and six down the same fashionable resort, with a monkey, 
 dressed as a footman, in the back seat. The days of folly did 
 not, apparently end with Beau Nash. 
 
A very Romantic Story. 133 
 
 There is a long lacuna in the history of this worthy's life, 
 which may have been filled up by a residence in a spunging- 
 house, or by a temporary appointment as billiard-marker ; but 
 the heroic Beau accounted for his disappearance at this time in 
 a much more romantic manner. He used to relate that he was 
 once asked to dinner on board of a man-of-war under orders 
 for the Mediterranean, and that such was the affection the 
 officers entertained for him, that, having made him drunk — no 
 difficult matter — they weighed anchor, set sail, and carried the 
 successor of King Bladud away to the wars. Having gone so 
 far, Nash was not the man to neglect an opportunity for ima- 
 ginary valour. He therefore continued to relate, that, in the 
 apocryphal vessel, he was once engaged in a yet more apocry 
 phal encounter, and wounded in the leg. This was a little too 
 much for the good Bathonians to believe, but Nash silenced 
 their doubts. On one occasion, a lady who was present when 
 he was telling this story, expressed her incredulity. 
 
 ' I protest, madam,' cried the Beau, lifting his leg up, ' it is 
 true, and if I cannot be believed, your ladyship may, if you 
 please, receive further information and feel the ball in my leg.' 
 Wherever Nash may have passed the intervening years, may 
 be an interesting speculation for a German professor, but is of 
 little moment to us. We find him again, at the age of thirty, 
 taking first steps towards the complete subjugation of the king- 
 dom he afterwards ruled. 
 
 There is, among the hUls of Somersetshire, a huge basin 
 formed by the river Avon, and conveniently supplied with a 
 natural gush of hot water, which can be turned on at any time 
 for the cleansing of diseased bodies. This hollow presents 
 many curious anomalies; though sought for centuries for the 
 sake of health, it is one of the most unhealthily-situated places 
 in the kingdom ; here the body and the pocket are alike cleaned 
 out, but the spot itself has been noted for its dirtiness since the 
 days of King Bladud's wise pigsj here, again, the diseased 
 flesh used to be healed, but the healthy soul within it speedily 
 besickened : you came to cure gout and rheumatism, and caught 
 in exchange dice-fever. 
 
 The mention of those pigs reminds me that it would be a 
 
134 Sickness and Civilization. 
 
 shameful omission to speak of this city without giving the story 
 of that apocryphal British monarch, King Bladiid. But let me 
 be the one exception ; let me respect the good sense of the 
 reader, and not insult him by supposing him capable of believ- 
 ing a mythic jumble of kings and pigs and dirty marshes, which 
 he will, if he cares to, find at full length in any 'Bath Guide' — 
 price sixpence. 
 
 But whatever be the case with respect to the Celtic sove- 
 reign, there is, I presume, no doubt, that the Romans were 
 here, and probably the centurians and tribunes cast the alea in 
 some pristine assembly-room, or wagged their plumes in some 
 well-built Pump-room, with as much spirit of fashion as the 
 full-bottomed-wig exquisites in the reign of King Nash. At 
 any rate Bath has been in almost every age a common centre 
 for health-seekers and gamesters — two antipodal races who 
 always flock together — and if it has from time to time declined, 
 it has only been for a period. Saxon churls and Norman lords 
 were too sturdy to catch much rheumatic gout ; crusaders had 
 better things to think of than their imaginary ailments ; good- 
 health was in fashion under Plantagenets and Tudors ; doctors 
 were not believed in ; even empirics had to praise their wares 
 with much wit, and Morrison himself must have mounted a 
 bank and dressed in Astle)dan costume in order to find a 
 customer; sack and small-beer were harmless, when homes 
 were not comfortable enough to keep earl or churl by the fire- 
 side, and ' out-of-doors' was the proper drawing-room for a 
 man : in short, sickness came in with civilization, indisposition 
 with immoral habits, fevers with fine gentlemanliness, gout with 
 greediness, and valetudinarianism — there is no Anglo-Saxon 
 word for that — with what we falsely call refinement. So, what- 
 ever Bath may have been to pampered Romans, who over-ate 
 themselves, it had little importance to the stout, healthy middle 
 ages, and it was not till the reign of Charles II. that it began 
 to look up. Doctors and touters — the two were often one in 
 those days — thronged there, and fools were found in plenty to 
 follow them. At last the blessed countenance of portly Anne 
 smiled on the pig styes of King Bladud. In 1703 she went to 
 Bath, and from that time ' people of distinction ' flocked there. 
 
Nash Descends Upon Bath. 131; 
 
 The assemblage was not perhaps very brilliant or very refined. 
 The visitors danced on the green, and played privately at 
 hazard. A few sharpers found their way down from London ; 
 and at last the Duke of Beaufort instituted an M.C. in the per- 
 son of Captain Webster — Nash's predecessor — whose main act 
 of glory was in setting up gambling as a public amusement. 
 It remained for Nash to make the place what it afterwards was, 
 when Chesterfield could lounge in the Pump-room and take 
 snuff with the Beau ; when Sarah of Marlborough, Lord and 
 Lady Hervey, the Duke of Wharton, Congreve, and all the 
 little-great of the day thronged thither rather to kill time with 
 less ceremony than in London, than to cure complaints more 
 or less imaginary. 
 
 The doctors were only less numerous than the sharpers ; the 
 place was still uncivilized ; the company smoked and lounged 
 without etiquette, and played without honour : the place itself 
 lacked all comfort, all elegance, and all cleanliness. 
 
 Upon this delightful place, the avatar of the God of Eti- 
 quette, personified in Mr. Richard Nash, descended some- 
 where about the year 1705, for the purpose of regenerating the 
 barbarians. He alighted just at the moment that one of the 
 doctors we have alluded to, in a fit of disgust at some slight on 
 the part of the town, was threatening to destroy its reputation, 
 or, as he politely expressed it, ' to throw a toad into the spring.' 
 The Bathonians were alarmed and in consternation, when 
 young Nash, who must have already distinguished himself as a 
 macaroni, stepped forward and offered to render the angry 
 physician impotent. 'We'll charm his toad out again with 
 music,' quoth he. He evidently thought very little of the 
 watering-place, after his town experiences, and prepared to 
 treat it accordingly. He got up a band in the Pump-room, 
 brought thither in this manner the healthy as well as the sick, 
 and soon raised the renown of Bath as a resort for gaiety as 
 well as for mineral waters. In a word, he displayed a surpris- 
 ing talent for setting everything and everybody to rights, and 
 was, therefore, soon elected, by tacit voting, the King of Bath. 
 
 He rapidly proved his qualifications for the position. Firsi 
 he secured his Orphean harmony by collecting a band-subscrip- 
 
1 36 Nash's Chef-d'ceuvre. 
 
 tion, which gave two guineas a-piece to six performers ; then 
 he engaged an official pumper for the Pump-room ; and lastly, 
 finding that the bathers still gathered under a booth to drink 
 their tea and talk their scandal, he induced one Harrison to 
 build assembly-rooms, guaranteeing him three guineas a week 
 to be raised by subscription. 
 
 All this demanded a vast amount of impudence on Mr. 
 Nash's part, and this he possessed to a liberal extent. The 
 subscriptions flowed in regularly, and Nash felt his power in- 
 crease with his responsibility. So, then, our minor monarch 
 resolved to be despotic, and in a short time laid down laws for 
 the guests, which they obeyed most obsequiously. Nash had 
 not much wit, though a great deal of assurance, but ' these laws 
 were his chef d'osuvre. Witness some of them : — 
 
 I. ' That a visit of ceremony at first coming and another at 
 going away, are all that are expected or desired by ladies of 
 quality and fashion — except impertinents. 
 
 4. ' That no person takes it ill that any one goes to another's 
 play or breakfast, and not theirs — except captious nature. 
 
 5. ' That no gentleman give his ticket for the balls to any 
 but gentlewomen. N.B. — Unless he has none of his acquaint- 
 ance. 
 
 6. ' That gentlemen crowding before the ladies at the ball, 
 show ill manners ; and that none do so for the future — except 
 such as respect nobody but themselves. 
 
 9. ' That the younger ladies take notice how many eyes ob- 
 serve them. N.B. — ^This does not extend to the Have-at-aUs. 
 
 10. ' That all whisperers of lies and scandal be taken for 
 their authors.' 
 
 Really this law of Nash's must have been repealed some time 
 or other at Bath. Still more that which follows : — 
 
 II. 'That repeaters of such lies and scandal be shunned 
 by all company, except such as have been guilty of the same 
 crime.' 
 
 There is a certain amount of satire in these Lycurgus sta- 
 tutes that shows Nash in the light of an observer of society ; 
 but, query, whether any frequenter of Bath would not have de- 
 vised as good ? 
 
The Ball. 137 
 
 The dances of those days must have been somewhat tedious. 
 They began with a series of minuets, in which, of course, only 
 one couple danced at a time, the most distinguished opening 
 the ball. These solemn performances lasted about two hours, 
 and we can easily imagine that the rest of the company were 
 delighted when the country dances, which included everybody, 
 began. The ball opened at six ; the country dances began at 
 eight : at nine there was a lull for the gentlemen to offer their 
 partners tea ; in due course the dances were resumed, and at 
 eleven Nash held up his hand to the musicians, and under no 
 circumstances was the ball allowed to continue after that hour. 
 Nash well knew the value of early hours to invalids, and he 
 would not destroy the healing reputation of Bath for the sake 
 of a little more pleasure. On one occasion the Princess 
 Amelia implored him to allow one dance more. The despot 
 rephed, that his laws were those of Lycurgus, and could not be 
 abrogated for any one. By this we see that the M.C. was 
 already an autocrat in his kingdom. 
 
 Nor is it to be supposed that his majesty's laws were con- 
 fined to such merely professional arrangements. Not a bit of 
 it ; in a very short time his impudence gave him undenied right 
 of interference with the coats and gowns, the habits and man- 
 ners, even the daily actions of his subjects, for so the visitors 
 at Bath were compelled to become. Si parvis componere magna 
 recibit, we may admit that the rise of Nash and that of Napo- 
 leon were owing to similar causes. The French emperor found 
 France in a state of disorder, with which sensible people were 
 growing more and more disgusted ; he offered to restore order 
 and propriety J the French hailed him, and gladly submitted to 
 his early decrees ; then, when he had got them into the habit of 
 obedience, he could make what laws he liked, and use his 
 power without fear of opposition. The Bath emperor followed 
 the same course, and it may be asked whether it does not de- 
 mand as great an amount of courage, assurance, perseverance, 
 and administrative power to subdue several hundreds of English 
 ladies and gentlemen as to rise supreme above some millions 
 of French republicans. Yet Nash experienced less opposition 
 
i^S Improvements in the Pump-Room. 
 
 than Napoleon; Nash reigned longer, and had no infernal 
 machine prepared to blow him up. 
 
 Everybody was delighted with the improvements in the 
 Pump-room, the balls, the promenades, the chairmen — the 
 Rouge ruffians of the mimic kingdom — whom he reduced to sub- 
 mission, and therefore nobody complained when Emperor Nash 
 went further, and made war upon the white aprons of the ladies 
 and the boots of the gentlemen. The society was in fact in a 
 very barbarous condition at the time, and people who came for 
 pleasure liked to be at ease. Thus ladies lounged into the 
 balls in their riding-hoods or morning dresses, gentlemen in 
 boots, with their pipes in their mouths. Such atrocities were 
 intolerable to the late frequenter of London society, and in his 
 imperious arrogance, the new monarch used actually to pull off 
 the white aprons of ladies who entered the assembly-rooms 
 with that degage article, and throw them upon the back seats. 
 Like the French emperor, again, he treated high and low in 
 the same manner, and when the Duchess of Queensberry ap- 
 peared in an apron, coolly pulled it off, and told her it was only 
 fit for a maid-servant. Her grace made no resistance. 
 
 The men were not so submissive ; but the M.C. turned them 
 into ridicule, and whenever a gentleman appeared at the as- 
 sembly-rooms in boots, would walk up to him, and in a loud 
 voice remark, ' Sir, I think you ha^ve forgot your horse.' To 
 complete his triumph, he put the offenders into a song called 
 ' Trentinella's Invitation to the Assembly.' 
 
 ' Come, one and all, 
 To Hoyden Hall, 
 
 For there's the assembly this night . 
 None but proud fools, 
 Mind manners and rules ; " 
 
 We Hoydens do decency slight 
 
 ' Come trollops and slatterns, 
 Coolct hats and white aprons ; 
 
 This best our modesty suits : 
 For why should not we 
 In a dress be as free 
 
 As Hogs-Norton squires in boots?' 
 
 and as this was not enough, got up a puppet-show of a sufficient 
 coarseness to suit the taste of the time, in which the practice oi 
 wearing boots was satirized. 
 
Life at Bath in Nask's Time. ijg 
 
 His next onslaught was upon that of carrying swords ; and 
 in this respect Nash became a public benefactor, for in those 
 days, though Chesterfield was the writer on etiquette, people 
 were not well-bred enough to keep their tempers, and rivals for 
 a lady's hand at a minuet, or gamblers who disputed over their 
 cards, invariably settled the matter by an option between suicide 
 or murder under the polite name of duel. The M.C. wisely 
 saw that these affairs would bring Bath in bad repute, and deter- 
 mined to supplant the rapier by the less dangerous cane. In 
 this he was for a long time opposed, until a notorious torch- 
 light duel between two gamblers, of whom one was run through 
 the body, and the other, to show his contrition, turned Quaker, 
 brought his opponents to a sense of the danger of a weapon 
 always at hand ; and henceforth the sword was abolished. 
 
 These points gained, the autocrat laid down rules for the 
 employment of the visitors' time, and these, from setting the 
 fashion to some, soon became a law to all. The first thing to 
 be done was, sensibly enough, the ostensible object of their 
 residence in Bath, the use of the baths. At an early hour four 
 lusty chairmen waited on every lady to carry her, vrrapped in 
 flannels, in 
 
 ' A little black box, just the size of a cofiSn,' 
 
 to one of the five baths. Here, on entering, an attendant 
 placed beside her a floating tray, on which were set her hand- 
 kerchief, bouquet, and snuff-box, for our great-great-grand- 
 mothers did take snuff"; and here she found her fiiends in the 
 same bath of naturally hot water. It was, of course, a reunion 
 for society on the plea of health ; but the early hours and ex- 
 ercise secured the latter, whatever the baths may have done. 
 A walk in the Pump-room, to the music of a tolerable band, 
 was the next measure; and there, of course, the gentlemen 
 mingled with the ladies. A coffee-house was ready to receive 
 those of either sex ; for that was a time when madame and 
 miss lived a great deal in public, and English people were not 
 ashamed of eating their breakfast in public company. These 
 breakfasts were often enlivened by concerts paid for by the rich 
 ind enjoyed by all 
 Supposing the peacocks now to be dressed out and to have 
 
140 A Compact with the Duke of Beaufort. 
 
 their tails spread to the best advantage, we next find some in 
 the public promenades, others in the reading-rooms, the ladies 
 having their clubs as well as the men ; others riding ; others, 
 perchance, already gambling. Mankind and womankind then 
 dined at a reasonable hour, and the evening's amusements 
 began early. Nash insisted on this, knowing the value of health 
 to those, and they were many at that time, who sought Bath on 
 its account. The balls began at six, and took place every 
 Tuesday and Friday, private balls filling up the vacant nights. 
 About the commencement of his reign, a theatre was built, and 
 whatever it may have been, it afterwards became celebrated as 
 the nursery of the London stage, and now, O tempo passato 1 is 
 almost abandoned. It is needless to add that the gaming- 
 tables were thronged in the evenings. 
 
 It was at them that Nash made the money which sufficed to 
 keep up his state, which was vulgarly regal. He drove about 
 in a chariot, flaming with heraldry, and drawn by six grays, with 
 outriders, running footmen, and all the appendages which made 
 an impression on the vulgar minds of the visitors of his king- 
 dom. His dress was magnificent ; his gold lace unUmited, his 
 coats ever new ; his hat alone was always of the same colour — 
 white ; and as the emperor Alexander was distinguished by his 
 purple tunic and Brummell by his bow. Emperor Nash was 
 known all England over by his white hat. 
 
 It is due to the King of Bath to say that, however much he 
 gained, he always played fair. He even patronized young 
 players, and after fleecing them, kindly advised them to play no 
 more. When he found a man fixed upon ruining himself, he 
 did his best to keep him from that suicidal act. This was the 
 case with a young Oxonian, to whom he had lost money, and 
 whom he invited to supper, in order to give him his parental 
 advice. The fool would not take the Beau's counsel and ' came 
 to grief.' Even noblemen sought his protection. The Duke 
 of Beaufort entered on a compact with him to save his purse, 
 if not his soul. He agreed to pay Nash ten thousand guineas, 
 whenever he lost the same amount at a sitting. It was a com- 
 fortable treaty for our Beau, who accordingly watched his grace 
 Yet it must be said, to Nash's honour, that he once saved him 
 
Gam ing at Bath. 141 
 
 from losing eleven thousand, when he had already lost eight, 
 by reminding him of his compact. Such was play in those 
 days ! It is said that the duke had afterwards to pay the fine, 
 from losing the stipulated sum at Newmarket. 
 
 He displayed as much honesty with the young Lord Towns- 
 hend, who lost him his whole fortune, his estate, and even his 
 carriage and horses — ^what madmen are gamblers ! — and actually 
 cancelled the whole debt, on condition my lord should pay 
 him ;^Sooo whenever he chose to claim it. To Nash's honour 
 it must be said that he never came down upon the nobleman 
 during his life. He claimed the sum from his executors, who 
 paid it. — ' Honourable to both parties.' 
 
 But an end was put to the gaming at Bath and everywhere else 
 — except in a royal palace, and Nash swore that, as he was a king, 
 Bath came under the head of the exceptions — ^by an Act of 
 Parliament. Of course Nash and the sharpers who firequented 
 Bath — and their name was Legion — found means to evade this 
 law for a time, by the invention of new games. But this could 
 not last, and the Beau's fortune went with the death of the dice. 
 
 Still, however, the very prohibition increased the zest for play 
 for a time, and Nash soon discovered that a private table was 
 more comfortable than a public one. He entered into an ar- 
 rangement with an old woman at Bath, in virtue of which he 
 was to receive a fourth share of the profits. This was probably 
 not the only ' hell'-keeping transaction of his life, and he had 
 once before quashed an action against a cheat in consideration 
 of a handsome bonus; and, in fact, there is no saying what 
 amount of dirty work Nash would not have done for a hundred 
 or so, especially when the game of the table was shut up to 
 him. Th? man was immensely fond of money ; he liked to 
 show his gold-laced coat and superb new waistcoat in the Grove, 
 the Abbey Ground, and Bond Street, and to be known as Le 
 Grand Nash. But, on the other hand, he did not love money 
 for itself, and never hoarded it. It is, indeed, something to 
 Nash's honour, that he died poor. He delighted, in the poverty 
 of his mind, to display his great thick-set person to the most 
 advantage ; he was as vain as any fop, without the affectation 
 of that character, for he was always blunt and free-spoken, but, 
 
142 Anecdotes of Nash. 
 
 as long as he had enough to satisfy his vanity, he cared nothing 
 for mere wealth. He had generosity, though he neglected the 
 precept about the right hand and the left, and showed some 
 ostentation in his charities. When a poor ruined fellow at his 
 elbow saw him win at a throw .;£2oo, and murmured ' How 
 happy that would make me !' Nash tossed the money to him, 
 and said, ' Go and be happy then.' Probably the witless beau 
 did not see the delicate satire implied in his speech. It was 
 only the triumph of a gamester. On other occasions he col- 
 lected subscriptions for poor curates, and so forth, in the same 
 spirit, and did his best towards founding an hospital, which has 
 since proved of great value to those afflicted with rheumatic 
 gout. In the same spirit, though himself a gamester, he often 
 attempted to win young and inexperienced boys, who came to 
 loss away their money at the rooms, from seeking their own 
 ruin ; and, on tlie whole, there was some goodness of heart in 
 this gold-laced bear. 
 
 That he was a bear there are anecdotes enough to show, and 
 whether true or not, they sufficiently prove what the reputation 
 of the man must have been. Thus, when a lady, afflicted with 
 a curvature of the spine, told him that ' She had come straight 
 from London that day,' Nash replied with utter heartlessness, 
 ' Then, ma'am, you've been damnably warpt on the road.' The 
 lady had her revenge, however, for meeting the beau one day 
 in the Grove, as she toddled along with her dog, and being im- 
 pudently asked by him if she knew the name of Tobit's dog, 
 she answered quickly, ' Yes, sir, his name was Nash, and a most 
 impudent dog he was too.' 
 
 It is due to Nash to state that he made many attempts to put 
 an end to the perpetual system of scandal, which from some 
 hidden cause seems always to be connected with mineral springs; 
 but as he did not banish the old maids, of course he failed. 
 Of the young ladies and their reputation he took a kind of 
 paternal care, and in that day they seem to have needed it, for 
 even at nineteen, those who had any money to lose, staked it 
 at the tables with as much gusto as the wrinkled, puckered, 
 greedy-eyed ' single woman,' of a certain or uncertain age. 
 Pfash protected and cautioned them, and even gave them the 
 
' Miss Sylvia.' 143 
 
 advantage of his own unlimited experience. Witness, for ir.- 
 stance, the care he took of ' Miss Sylvia,' a lovely heiress who 
 brought her face and her fortune to enslave some and enrich 
 others of the loungers of Bath. She had a terrible love of 
 hazard, and very little prudence, so that Nash's good offices 
 were much needed in the case. The young lady soon became 
 the standing toast at all the clubs and suppers, and lovers of 
 her, or her ducats, crowded round her ; but though at that time 
 she might have made a brilliant match, she chose, as young 
 women will do, to fix her affections upon one of the worst men 
 in Bath, who, naturally enough, did not return them. When 
 this individual, as a climax to his misadventures, was clapt into 
 prison, the devoted young creature gave the greater part of her 
 fortune in order to pay off his debts, and falling into disrepute 
 from this act of generosity, which was, of course, interpreted 
 after a worldly fashion, she seems to have lost her honour with 
 her fame, and the fair Sylvia took a position which could not 
 be creditable to her. At last the poor girl, weary of slights, 
 and overcome with shame, took her silk sash and hanged her- 
 self. The terrible event made a nine hours' — not nine days' — 
 sensation in Bath, which was too busy with mains and aces to 
 care about the fate of one who had long sunk out of its circles. 
 When Nash reached the zenith of his power, the adulation 
 he received was somewhat of a parody on the flattery of cour- 
 tiers. True, he had his bards from Grub Street who sang his 
 praises, and he had letters to show from Sarah of Marlborough 
 and others of that calibre, but his chief worshippers were cooks, 
 musicians, and even imprisoned highwaymen — one of whom 
 disclosed the secrets of the craft to him — who wrote him dedi- 
 cations, letters, poems, and what not. The good city of Bath 
 set up his statue, and did Newton and Pope* the great honoui 
 of playing ' supporters' to him, which elicited from Chesterfield 
 some well-known lines : — 
 
 'This statue placed the busis between 
 
 Adds to the satire strength ; 
 Wisdom and Wit are Uttle seen. 
 But Folly at full length." 
 
 * A full-length statue of Nash was placed between busts of Newton ani 
 Pope. 
 
144 ■^ Generoits Act. 
 
 Meanwhile his private character was none of the best. He 
 had in early life had one attachment, besides that unfortunate 
 affair for which his friends had removed him from Oxford, and 
 in that had behaved with great magnanimity. The young lady 
 had honestly told him that he had a rival ; the Beau sent for 
 him, settled on her a fortune equal to that her father intended 
 for her, and himself presented her to the favoured suitor. 
 Now, however, he seems to have given up all thoughts of matri- 
 mony, and gave himself up to mistresses, who cared rnore for 
 his gold than for himself It was an awkward conclusion, to 
 Nash's generous act in that one case, that before a year had 
 passed, the bride ran away with her husband's footman ; yet, 
 though it disgusted him with ladies, it does not seem to have 
 cured him of his attachment to the sex in general. 
 
 In the height of his glory Nash was never ashamed of re- 
 ceiving adulation. He was as fond of flattery as Le Grand 
 Monarque — and he paid for it too — ^whether it came from a 
 prince or a chair-man. Every day brought him some fresh 
 meed of praise in prose or verse, and Nash was always de- 
 lighted. 
 
 But his sun was to set in time. His fortune went when 
 gaming was put down, for he had no other means of subsist- 
 ence. Yet he lived on : he had not the good sense to die ; 
 and he reached the patriarchal age of eighty-seven. In his old 
 age he was not only garrulous, but bragging : he told stories of 
 his exploits, in which he, Mr. Richard Nash, came out as the 
 first swordsman, swimmer, leaper, and what not. But by this 
 time people began to doubt Mr. Richard Nash's long-bow, and 
 the yarns he spun were listened to with impatience. He grew 
 rude and testy in his old age ; suspected Quin, the actor, who 
 was living at Bath, of an intention to supplant him ; made 
 coarse, impertinent repartees to the visitors at that city, and in 
 general raised up a dislike to himself Yet, as other monarchs 
 have had their eulogists in sober mind, Nash had his in one of 
 the most depraved ; and Anstey, the low-minded author of 
 ' The New Bath Guide,' panegyrized him a short time after his 
 death in the following verses : — 
 
A Panegyric. 145 
 
 'Yet here no confusion — no tumult is known ; 
 Fair order and beauty establish their throne ; 
 For order, and beauty, and just regulation. 
 Support ail the works of this ample creation. 
 For this, in compassion to mortals below, 
 The gods, their peculiar favour to show. 
 Sent Hermes to Bath in the shape of a beau : 
 That grandson of Atlas came down from above 
 To bless all the regions of pleasure and love ; 
 To lead the fair nymph thro' the various maze, 
 Bright beauty to marshal, his glory and praise ; 
 To govern, improve, and' adorn the gay scene. 
 By the Graces instructed, and Cyprian queen : 
 As when in a garden delightful and gay, 
 Where Flora is wont all her charms to display, 
 The sweet hyacinthus with pleasure we vieW, 
 Contend with narcissus in delicate hue ; 
 The gard'ner, indiistrious, trims out his border, 
 Puts each odoriferous plant in its order ; 
 The myrtle he ranges, the rose and the lily. 
 With iris, and crocus, and daffa-down-dilly ; 
 Sweet peas and sweet oranges all he disposes. 
 At once tn regale both your eyes and your noses. 
 Long reign'd the great Nash, this omnipotent lord. 
 Respected by youth, and by parents ador'd ; 
 For him not enough at a ball to preside, 
 The unwary and beautiful nymph would he guide ; 
 Oft tell her a tale, how the credulous maid 
 By man, by perfidious man, is betrayed ; 
 Taught Charity's hand to relieve the distrest. 
 While tears have his tender compassion exprest ; 
 But alas ! he is gone, and the city can tell 
 How in-years and in glory lamented he fell. 
 Him moum'd all the Dryads on Claverton's mount ; 
 Him Avon deplor'd, him the nymph of the fount. 
 The crystalline streams. 
 Then perish his picture — ^his statue decay — 
 A tribute more lasting the Muses shall pay. 
 If true, what philosophers all will assure us. 
 Who dissent from the doctrine of great Epicurus, 
 That the spirit's immortal {as poets allow) : 
 In reward of his labours, his virtue and pains. 
 He is footing it now in the Elysian plains. 
 Indulged, as a token of Proserpine's favour, 
 To preside at her balls in a cream-colour'd beaver. 
 Then peace to his ashes — our giief be supprest. 
 Since we find such a phcenix has sprung from his nest ; 
 Kind heaven has sent us another professor. 
 Who follows the steps of his great predecessor." 
 
 The end of the Bath Beau was somewhat less tragical than 
 that of his London successor — Brummell. Nash, in his old 
 age and poverty, hung about the clubs and supper-tables, but 
 ton-holed youngsters, who thought him a bore, spun his long 
 yams, and tried to insist on obsolete fashions, when near the 
 end of his life's century. 
 
146 Nash's Fuller al. 
 
 The clergy took more care of him than the youngsters. 
 They heard that Nash was an octogenarian, and likely to die 
 in his sins, and resolved to do their best to shrive him. Wor- 
 thy and well-meaning men accordingly wrote him long letters, 
 in which there was a deal of warning, and there was nothing 
 which Nash dreaded so much. As long as there was immediate 
 fear of death, he was pious and humble ; the moment the fear 
 had passed, he was jovial and indifferent again. His especial 
 delight, to the last, seems to have been swearing against the 
 doctors, whom he treated like the individual in Anstey's ' Bath 
 Guide,' shying their medicines out of window upon their own 
 heads. But the wary old Beckoner called him in, in due time, 
 with his broken, empty-chested voice ; and Nash was forced to 
 obey. Death claimed him — and much good it got of him — in 
 1761, at the age of eighty-seven: tliere are few beaux who 
 lived so long. 
 
 Thus ended a life, of which the moral lay, so to speak, out 
 of it. The worthies of Bath were true to the worship of Folly, 
 whom Anstey so well, though indelicately, describes as there 
 conceiving Fashion ; and though Nash, old, slovenly, disre- 
 spected, had long ceased to be either beau or monarch, treated 
 his huge unlovely corpse with the honour due to the great — 
 or little. His funeral was as glorious as that of any hero, and 
 far more showy, though much less solemn, than the burial of 
 Sir John Moore. Perhaps for a bit of prose flummery, by way 
 of contrast to Wolfe's lines on the latter event, there is little to 
 equal the account in a contemporary paper : — ' Sorrow sate 
 upon every face, and even children lisped that their sovereign 
 was no more. The awfulness of the solemnity made the deep- 
 est impression on the minds of the distressed inhabitants. 
 The peasant discontinued his toil, the ox rested from the 
 plough, all nature seemed to sympathise with their loss, and 
 the muffled bells rung a peal of bob-major.' 
 
 The Beau left little -behind him, and that little not worth 
 much, even including his renown. Most of the presents 
 which fools or flatterers had made him, had long since been 
 sent chiz ma tante; a few trinkets and pictures, and a few 
 
His Characteristics. 147 
 
 books, which probably he had never read, constituted his little 
 store.* 
 
 Bath and Tunbridge — for he had annexed that lesser kingdom 
 to his own — had reason to mourn him, for he had almost made 
 them what they were ; but the country has not much cause to 
 thank the upholder of gaming, the institutor of silly fashion, 
 and tlie high-priest of folly. Yet Nash was free from many 
 vices we should expect to find in such a man. He did not 
 drink, for instance ; one glass of wine, and a moderate quantity 
 of small beer, being his allowance for dinner. He was early 
 in his hours, and made others sensible in theirs. He was gene- 
 rous and charitable when he had the money; and when he 
 had not he. took care to make his subjects subscribe it. In a 
 word, there have been worse men and greater fools ; and we 
 may again ask whether those who obeyed and ilattered him 
 were not more contemptible than Beau Nash himself. 
 
 So much for the powers of impudence and a fine coat ' 
 
 * In the 'Annual Register,' (vol. v. p. 37), it is stated that a pension of ten 
 guineas a month was paid to Nash during the latter years of his Ufe by the Cor- 
 poration of Bath. 
 
PHILIP, DUKE OF WHARTON. 
 
 Wharton's Ancestors. — His Early Years. — ^Marriage at Sixteen. — ^Wharton taJ^es 
 leave of his Tutor. — ^The Young Marquis and the Old Pretender. — Frolics 
 at Paris. — ^Zeal for the Orange Cause. — ^A Jacobite Hero. — ^The Trial of 
 Atterbury. — Wharton's Defence of the Bishop. — Hypocritical Signs of 
 Penitence. — Sir Robert Walpole duped. — Very Trying. — ^The Dulce of 
 Wharton's 'Whens.' — Military Glory at Gibraltar. — 'Uncle Horace.' — 
 Wharton to ' Uncle Horace.' — The Duke's Impudence. — High Treason. — 
 Wharton's Ready Wit. — Last Extremities. — Sad Days in Paris.' — His Last 
 Journey to Spain. — His Death in a Bemardine Convent. 
 
 |F an illustration were wanted of that character unstable 
 as water which shall not excel, this duke would at 
 once supply it : if we had to warn genius against 
 self-indulgence — some clever boy against extravagance — some 
 poet against the bottle — this is the ' shocking example ' we 
 should select : if we wished to show how the most splendid 
 talents, the greatest wealth, the most careful education, the 
 most unusual advantages, may all prove useless to a man who 
 is too vain or too frivolous to use them properly, it is enough 
 to cite that nobleman, whose acts gained for him the name of 
 the infamous Duke of Wharton. Never was character more 
 mercurial, or life more unsettled than his ; never, perhaps, were 
 more changes crowded into a fewer number of years, more fame 
 and infamy gathered into so short a space. Suffice it to say 
 that when Pope wanted a man to hold up to the scorn of the 
 world, as a sample of wasted abilities, it was Wharton that he 
 chose, and his lines rise in grandeur in proportion to the vile 
 ness of the theme : 
 
 * Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days, 
 \Vhose ruling passion was a love of praise. 
 Bom with whate'er could win it from the wise, 
 Women and fools must like him or he dies : 
 
Whartoris Ancestors. 149 
 
 Though raptured senates hung on all he spokfc, 
 The club must hail him master of the joke. 
 Shall parts so various aim at nothing new ? 
 He'll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too. 
 
 • • • • 
 
 Thus with each gift of nature and of ait, 
 And Wanting nothing but an honest heart ; 
 Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt. 
 And most contemptible, to shun contempt ; 
 His passion still, to covet general praise, 
 His life to forfeit it a thousand ways ; 
 A constant bounty which no friend has made ; 
 An angel tongue which no man can persuade \ 
 A fool with more of wit than all mankind j 
 Too rash for thought, for action too refined.' 
 
 And then those memorable lines — 
 
 ' A tyrant to the wife his heart approved, 
 A rebel to the very king he loved ; 
 He dies, sad outcast of each church and state ; 
 And, harder still I flagitious, yet not great.' 
 
 Though it may be doubted if the ' lust of praise' was the cause 
 of his eccentricities, so much as an utter restlessness and insta- 
 bility of character, Pope's description is sufficiently correct, and 
 will prepare us for one of the most disappointing lives we could 
 well have to read. 
 
 Philip, Duke of Wharton, was one of those men of whom an 
 Irishman would say, that they were fortunate before they were 
 bom. His ancestors bequeathed him a name that stood high 
 in England for bravery and excellence. The first of the house. 
 Sir Thomas Wharton, had won his peerage from Henry VIII. 
 for routing some 15,000 Scots with 500 men, and other gallant 
 deeds. From his father the marquis he inherited much of his 
 talents ; but for the heroism of the former, he seems to have 
 received it only in the extravagant form of foolhardiness. Wal- 
 pole remembered, but could not tell where, a ballad he wrote 
 on being arrested by the guard in St. James's Park, for singing 
 the Jacobite song, ' The King shall have his own again,' and 
 quotes two lines to show that he was not ashamed of his own 
 cowardice on the occasion : — 
 
 ■ The duke he drew out half his sword, 
 the guard drew out the rest.' 
 
 At the siege of Gibraltar, where he took up arms against his 
 
I50 His Early Years. 
 
 own king and country, he is said to have gone alone one night 
 to the very walls of the town, and challenged the outpost. They 
 asked him who he was, and when he replied, openly enough, 
 ' The Duke of Wharton,' they actually allowed him to return 
 without either firing on or capturing him. The story seems 
 somewhat apocryphal, but it is quite possible that the English 
 soldiers may have refrained from violence to a well-known mad- 
 cap nobleman of their own nation. 
 
 Philip, son of the Marquis of Wharton, at that time only a 
 baron, was bom in the last year but one of the seventeenth 
 century, and came into the world endowed with every quality 
 which might have made a great man, if he had only added 
 wisdom to them. His father wished to make him a brilliant 
 statesman, and, to have a better chance of doing so, kept him 
 at home, and had him educated under his own eye. He seems 
 to have easily and rapidly acquired a knowledge of classical 
 languages ; and his memory was so good that when a boy of 
 thirteen he could repeat the greater part of the ' ^neid' and 
 of Horace by heart. His father's keen perception did not 
 allow him to stop at classics ; and he wisely prepared him for 
 the career to which he was destined by the study of history, 
 ancient and modern, and of English literature, and by teaching 
 him, even at that early age, the art of thinking and writing on 
 any given subject, by proposing themes for essays. There is 
 certainly no surer mode of developing the reflective and reason- 
 ing powers of the mind ; and the boy progressed with a rapidity 
 which was almost alarming. Oratory, too, was of course culti- 
 vated, and to this end the young nobleman was made to recite 
 before a small audience passages from Shakspeare, and even 
 speeches which had been delivered in the House of Lords, 
 and we may be certain he showed no bashfulness in this dis- 
 play. 
 
 He was precocious beyond measure, and at sixteen was a 
 man. His first act of folly — or, perhaps, he thought, of man- 
 hood — came off at this early age. He fell in love with the 
 daughter of a Major-General Holmes; and though there is 
 nothing extraordinary in that, for nine-tenths of us have been 
 love-mad at as early an age, he did what fortunately very few 
 
Marriage at Sixteen. t^i 
 
 do in a first love affair, he married the adored one. Early mar- 
 riages are often extolled, and justly enough, as safeguards against 
 profligate habits, but this one seems to have had the contrary 
 effect on young Philip. His wife was in every sense too good 
 for him : he was madly in love with her at first, but soon shame- 
 fully and openly faithless. Pope's line — 
 
 ' A tyrant to the wife his heart approved,' 
 
 requires explanation here. It is said that she did not present 
 her boy-husband with a son for three years after their marriage, 
 and on this chUd he set great value and great hopes. About 
 that time he left his wife in the country, intending to amuse 
 himself in town, and ordered her to remain behind with the 
 child. The poor deserted woman well knew what was the real 
 object of this journey, and could not endure the separation. In 
 the hope of keeping her young husband out of harm, and none 
 the less because she loved him very tenderly, she followed him 
 soon after, taking the little Marquis of Malmsbury, as the young 
 live branch was called, with her. The duke was, of course, dis- 
 gusted, but his anger was turned into hatred, when the child, 
 which he had hoped to make his heir and successor, caught in 
 town the small-pox, and died in infancy. He was furious with 
 his wife, refused to see her for a long time, and treated her with 
 unrelenting coldness. 
 
 The early marriage was much to the distaste of Philip's father, 
 who had been lately made a marquis, and who hoped to arrange 
 a very grand ' alliance' for his petted son. He was, in fact, so 
 much grieved by it, that he was fool enough to die of it in 
 1715, and the marchioness survived him only about a year, 
 being no less disgusted with the licentiousness which she al- 
 ready discovered in her Young Hopeful. 
 
 She did what she could to set him right, and the young 
 married man was shipped off with a tutor, a French Huguenot, 
 who was to take him to Geneva to be educated as a Protestant 
 and a Whig. The young scamp declined to be either. He was 
 taken, by way of seeing the world, to the petty courts of Ger- 
 many, and of course to that of Hanover, which had kindly sent 
 us the worst family that ever disgraced the English tlirone, and 
 
152 Wharton takes Leave of his Tutor. 
 
 by the various princes and grand-dukes received with all the 
 honours due to a young British nobleman. 
 
 The tutor and his charge settled at last at Geneva, and my 
 young lord amused himself with tormenting his strict guardian. 
 Walpole tells us that he once roused him out of bed only to 
 borrow a pin. There is no doubt that he led the worthy man 
 a sad hfe of it ; and to put a climax to his conduct, ran away 
 from him at last, leaving with him, by way of hostage, a young 
 bear-cub — -probably quite as tame as himself — which he had 
 picked up somewhere, and grown very fond of — birds of a 
 feather, seemingly — with a message, which showed more wit 
 than good-nature, to this effect : — ' Being po longer able to 
 bear with your ill-usage, I think proper to be gone from you ; 
 however, that you may not want company, I have left you the 
 bear, as the most suitable companion in the world that could 
 be picked out for you.' 
 
 The tutor had to console himself with a tu quoque, for the 
 young scapegrace had found his way to Lyons in October, 1716, 
 and then did the very thing his father's son should not have 
 done. The Chevalier de St. George, the Old Pretender, James 
 III., or by whatever other alias you prefer to call him, having 
 failed in his attempt ' to have his own again' in the preceding 
 year, was then holding high court in high dudgeon at Avignon. 
 Any adherent would, of course, be welcomed with open arms ; 
 and when the young marquis wrote to him to offer his allegi- 
 ance, sending with his letter a fine entire horse as a peace offer- 
 ing, he was warmly responded to. A person of rank was at 
 once despatched to bring the youth to the ex-regal court; he 
 was welcomed with much enthusiasm, and the empty title of 
 Duke of Northumberland at once, most kindly, conferred on 
 him. However, the young marquis does not seem to \i'A.vzgoM 
 the exile's court, for he stayed there one day only, and return- 
 ing to Lyons, set off to enjoy himself at Paris. With much 
 wit, no prudence, and a plentiful supply of money, which he 
 threw about with the recklessness of a boy just escaped from 
 his tutor, he could not fail to succeed in that capital; and, 
 accordingly, the English received him with open arms. Even 
 the ambassador, Lord Stair, though he had heard rumours of 
 
Pollies at Parii. 153 
 
 his wild doings, invited him repeatedly to dinner, and did his 
 best, by advice and warning, to keep him out of harm's way. 
 Young Philip had a horror of preceptors, paid or gratuitous, and 
 treated the plenipotentiary with the same coolness as he had 
 served the Huguenot tutor. When the former, praising the late 
 marquis, expressed — by way of a slight hint — a hope ' that he 
 would follow so illustrious an example of fidelity to his prince, 
 and affection to his country, by treading in the same steps,' 
 the young scamp replied, cleverly enough, ' That he thanked 
 his excellency for his good advice, and as his excellency had 
 also a worthy and deserving father, he hoped he would likewise 
 copy so bright an example, and tread in all his steps ;' the pert- 
 ness of which wae pertinent enough, for old Lord Stair had 
 taken a disgraceful part against his sovereign in the massacre 
 of Glencoe. 
 
 His frolics at Paris were of the most reckless character for a 
 young nobleman. At the ambassador's own table he would 
 occasionally send a servant to some one of the guests, to ask 
 him to join in the Old Chevalier's health, though it was almost 
 treason at that time to mention his name even. And again, 
 when the windows at the embassy had been broken by a young 
 EngKsh Jacobite, who was forthwith committed to Fort I'EvSque, 
 the hare-brained marquis proposed, out of revenge, to break 
 them a second time, and only abandoned the project because 
 he could get no one to join him in it. Lord Stair, however, 
 had too much sense to be offended at the follies of a boy of 
 seventeen, even though that boy was the representative of a 
 great English family ; he, probably, thought it would be better 
 to recall him to his allegiance by kindness and advice, than, 
 by resenting his behaviour, to drive him irrevocably to the 
 opposite party; but he was doubtless considerably relieved 
 when, after leading a wild life in the capital of France, spend- 
 ing his money lavishly, and doing precisely everything which 
 a young English nobleman ought not to do, my lord marquis 
 took his departure in December, 1716. 
 
 The political education he had received now made the un- 
 stable youth ready and anxious to shine in the State ; but being 
 yet under age, he could not, of course, take his seat in the 
 
154 Zeal for the Orange Cause. 
 
 House of Lords. Perhaps he was conscious of his own won- 
 derful abilities ; perhaps, as Pope declares, he was thirsting for 
 praise, and wished to display them ; certainly he was itching 
 to become an orator, and as he could not sit in an English 
 Parliament, he remembered tliat he had a peerage in Ireland, 
 as Earl of Rathfernhame and Marquis of Catherlogh, and off 
 he set to see if the Milesians would stand upon somewhat less 
 ceremony. He was not disappointed there. 'His brilliant 
 parts,' we are told by contemporary writers, but rather, we 
 should think, his reputation for wit and eccentricity, 'found 
 favour in the eyes of Hibernian quicksilvers, and in spite of 
 his years, he was admitted to the Irish House of Lords.' 
 
 When a friend had reproached him, before he left France, 
 with infidelity to the principles so long espoused by his family, 
 he is reported to have replied, characteristically enough, that 
 'he had pawned his principles to Gordon, the Chevalier's 
 banker, for a considerable sum, and, till he could repay him, 
 he must be a Jacobite ; but when that was done, he would 
 again return to the Whigs.' It is as likely as not that he bor- 
 rowed from Gordon on the strength of the Chevalier's favour, 
 for though a marquis in his own right, he was even at this 
 period always in want of cash; and on the other hand, the 
 speech, exhibiting the grossest want of any sense of honour, is 
 in thorough keeping with his after-life. But whether he paid 
 Gordon on his return to England — which is highly improbable 
 — or whether he had not honour enough to keep his compact — 
 which is extremely likely — there is no doubt that my lord mar- 
 quis began, at this period, to qualify himself for the post of 
 parish-weathercock to St. Stephens. 
 
 His early defection to a man who, whether rightful heir or 
 not, had that of romance in his history which is even now suffi- 
 cient to make our young ladies ' thorough Jacobites' at heart, 
 was easily to be excused, on the plea of youth and high 
 spirit. The same excuse does not explain his rapid return to 
 Whiggery — in which there is no romance at all — the moment 
 he took his seat in the Irish House of Lords. There is only 
 one way to explain the zeal with which he now advocated the 
 Orange cause : he must have been either a very designing 
 
A Jacobite Hero. 155 
 
 knave, or a very unprincipled fool. As he gained nothing by 
 the change but a dukedom for which he did not care, and as 
 he cared for little else that the government could give him, we 
 may acquit him of any very deep motives. On the other hand, 
 his life and some of his letters show that, with a vast amount 
 of bravado, he was sufficiently a coward. When supplicated, 
 he was always obstinate; when neglected, always supplicant. 
 Now it required some courage in those days to be a Jacobite. 
 Perhaps he cared for nothing but to astonish and disgust every- 
 body with the facility with which he could turn his coat, as a 
 hippodromist does with the ease with which he changes his 
 costume. He was a boy and a peer, and he would make pretty 
 play of his position. He had considerable talents, and now, 
 as he sat in the Irish House, devoted them entirely to the 
 support of the government. 
 
 For the next four years he was employed, on the one hand 
 in political, on the other in profligate, life. He shone in both ; 
 and was no less admired, by the wits of those days, for his 
 speeches, his arguments, and his zeal, than for the utter disre- 
 gard of public decency he displayed in his vices. Such a pro- 
 mismg youth, adhering to the government, merited some mark 
 of its esteem, and accordingly, before attaining the age of twenty- 
 one, he was raised to a dukedom. Being of age, he took his 
 seat in the English House of Lords, and had not been long 
 there before he again turned coat, and came out in the light 
 of a Jacobite hero. It was now that he gathered most of his 
 laurels. 
 
 The Hanoverian monarch had been on the English throne 
 some six years. Had the Chevalier's attempt occurred at this 
 period, it may be doubted if it would not have been successful. 
 The ' Old Pretender ' came too soon, the ' Young Pretender ' 
 too late. At the period or the first attempt, the public had had 
 no time to contrast Stuarts and Guelphs : at that of the second, 
 they had forgotten the one and grown accustonied to the other ; 
 but at the moment when our young duke appeared on the boards 
 of the senate, the vices of the Hanoverians were beginning to 
 draw down on them the contempt of the educated and the 
 ridicule of the vulgar ; and perhaps no moment could have been 
 
1S6 The Trial of A iter bury. 
 
 more favourable for advocating a restoration of the Stuarts. If 
 Wharton had had as much energy and consistency as he had 
 talent and impudence, he might have done much towards that 
 desirable, or undesirable end. 
 
 The grand question at this time before the House was the 
 trial of Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, demanded by Sir 
 Robert Walpole. The man had a spirit almost as restless as 
 his defender. The son of a man who might have been the ori- 
 ginal of the Vicar of Bray, he was very little of a poet, less of a 
 priest, but a great deal of a politician. He was born in 1662, so 
 that at this time he must have been nearly sixty years old. He 
 had had by no means a hard life of it, for family interest, together 
 with eminent talents, procured him one appointment after 
 another, till he reached the bench at the age of fifty-one, in the 
 reign of Anne. He had already distinguished himself in several 
 ways, most, perhaps, by controversies with Hoadly, and by sundry 
 high-church motions. But after his elevation, he displayed his 
 principles more boldly, refused to sign the Declaration of the 
 Bishops, which was somewhat servilely made to assure George, 
 the First of the fidelity of the Established Church, suspended 
 the curate of Gravesend for three years because he allowed the 
 Dutch to have a service performed in his church, and even, it 
 is said, on the death of Anne, offered to proclaim King James 
 ni., and head a procession himself in his lawn sleeves. The 
 end of this and other vagaries was, that in 1722, the Govern- 
 ment sent him to the Tower, on suspicion of being connected 
 with a plot in favour of the Old Chevalier. The case excited 
 no little attention, for it was long since a bishop had been 
 charged with high treason ; it was added that his gaolers used 
 him rudely ; and, in short, public sympathy rather went along 
 with hira for a time. In March, 1723, a bill was presented to 
 the Commons, for ' inflicting certain pains and penalties on 
 Francis, Lord Bishop of Rochester, and it passed that House 
 in April ; but when carried up to the Lords, a defence was re- 
 solved on. The bill was read a third time on May isth, and 
 on that occasion the Duke of Wharton, then only twenty-four 
 years old, rose and delivered a speech in favour of the bishop. 
 This oration far more resembled that of a lawyer summing up 
 
Wharton's Defence of the Bishop. 157 
 
 the evidence than of a parliamentary orator enlarging on the 
 general issue. It was remarkable for the clearness of its argu- 
 ment, the wonderful memory of facts it displayed, and the 
 ease and rapidity with which it annihilated the testimony of 
 various witnesses examined before the House. It was mild and 
 moderate, able and sufficient, but seems to have lacked all the 
 enthusiasm we might expect from one who was afterwards so 
 active a partisan of the Chevalier's cause. In short, striking as 
 it was, it cannot be said to give the duke any claim to the title 
 of a great orator ; it would rather prove that he might have 
 made a first-rate lawyer. It shows, however, that had he chosen 
 to apply himself diligently to politics, he might have turned out 
 a great leader of the Opposition. 
 
 Neither this speech nor the bishop's able defence saved him ; 
 and in the following month he was banished the kingdom, and 
 passed the rest of his days in Paris. 
 
 Wharton, however, was not content with the House as an 
 arena of political agitation. He was now old enough to have 
 matured his principles thoroughly, and he completely espoused 
 the cause of the exiled family. He amused himself with agitat- 
 ing throughout the country, influencing elections, and seeking 
 popularity by becoming a member of the Wax-chandlers' Com- 
 pany. It is a proof of his great abilities, so shamefully thrown 
 away, that he now, during the course of eight months, issued a 
 paper, called ' The True Briton,' every Monday and Friday, 
 written by himself, and containing varied and sensible argu- 
 ments in support of his opinions, if not displaying any vast 
 amount of original genius. This paper, on the model of ' The 
 Tatler,' ' The Spectator,' &c., had a considerable sale, and at- 
 tained no Uttle celebrity, so that the Duke of Wharton acquired 
 the reputation of a literary man as well as of a political 
 leader. 
 
 But, whatever he might have been in either capacity, his dis- 
 graceful life soon destroyed all hope of success in them. He 
 was now an acknowledged wit about town, and what was then 
 almost a recognized concomitant of that character, an acknow- 
 ledged profligate. He scattered his large fortune in the most 
 reckless and foolish manner : though married, his moral con- 
 
158 Hypocritical Signs of Penitence. 
 
 duct was as bad as that of any bachelor of the day : and such 
 was his extravagance and open licentiousness, that, having 
 wasted a princely revenue, he was soon caught in the meshes of 
 Chancery, which very sensibly vested his fortune in the hands of 
 trustees, and compelled him to be satisfied with an income of 
 twelve hundred pounds a year. 
 
 The young rascal now showed hypocritical signs of penitence 
 — he was always an adept in that line — and protested he would 
 go abroad and live quietly, till his losses should be retrieved. 
 There is little doubt that, under this laudable design, he con- 
 cealed one of attaching himself closer to the Chevalier party, 
 and even espousing the faith of that unfortunate prince, or pre- 
 tender, whichever he may have been. He set off for Vienna, 
 leaving his wife behind to die, in April, 1726. He ,had long 
 since quarrelled with her, and treated her with cruel neglect, 
 and at her death he was not likely to be much afflicted. It is 
 said, that, after that event, a ducal family offered him a daughter 
 and large fortune in marriage, and that the Duke of Wharton 
 declined the offer, because the latter was to be tied up, and he 
 could not conveniently tie up the former. However this may 
 be, he remained a widower for a short time : we may be sure, 
 not long. 
 
 The hypocrisy of going abroad to retrench was not long un- 
 discovered. The fascinating scapegrace seems to have de- 
 lighted in playing on the credulity of others; and Walpole 
 relates that, on the eve of the day on which he delivered his 
 famous speech for Atterbury, he sought an interview with the 
 minister. Sir Robert Walpole, expressed great contrition at 
 having espoused the bishop's cause hitherto, and a determina- 
 tion to speak against him the following day. The minister was 
 taken in, and at the duke's request, supplied him with all the 
 main arguments, pro and con. The deceiver, having got these 
 well into his brain — one of the most retentive — repaired to his 
 London haunts, passed the night in drinking, and the next day 
 produced all the arguments he had digested, in the bishop's 
 favour. 
 
 At Vienna he was well received, and carried out his private 
 mission successfully, but was too restless to stay in one place, 
 
A Fresh Love. 159 
 
 and soon set off for Madrid. Tired now of politics, he took a 
 turn at love. He was a poet after a fashion, for the pieces he 
 has left are not very good : he was a fine gentleman, always 
 spending more money than he had, and is said to have been 
 handsome. His portraits do not give us this impression : the 
 features are not very regular ; and though not coarse, are cer- 
 tainly not refined. The mouth, somewhat sensual, is still much 
 firmer than his character would lead us to expect ; the nose 
 sharp at the point, but cogitative at the nostrils ; the eyes long 
 but not large ; while the raised brow has all that openness which 
 he displayed in the indecency - of his vices, but not in any 
 honesty in his political career. In a word, the face is not 
 attractive. Yet he is described as having had a brilliant com- 
 plexion, a lively, varying expression, and a charm of person and 
 manner that was quite irresistible. Whether on this account, 
 or for his talents and wit, which were really shining, his new 
 Juliet fell as deeply in love with him as he with her. 
 
 She was maid of honour— and a highly honourable maid — to 
 the Queen of Spain. The Irish regiments long employed in 
 the Spanish service had become more or less naturalized in that 
 country, which accounts for the great number of thoroughly 
 Milesian names still to be found there, some of them, as 
 O'Donnell, owned by men of high distinction. Among other 
 officers who had settled with their families in the Peninsula was 
 a Colonel O'Byrne, who, like most of his countrymen there, 
 died penniless, leaving his widow with a pension and his 
 daughter without a sixpence. It can well be imagined that an 
 offer from an English duke was not to be sneezed at by either 
 Mrs. or Miss O'Byrne ; but there were some grave obstacles to 
 the match. The duke was a Protestant. But what of that ? — 
 he had never been encumbered with religion, nor even with a 
 decent observance of its institutions, for it is said that, when in 
 England, at his country seat, he had, to show how little he cared 
 for respectability, made a point of having the hounds out on a 
 Sunday morning. He was not going to lose a pretty girl for 
 the sake of a faith with which he had got disgusted ever since 
 his Huguenot tutor tried to make him a sober Christian. He 
 had turned coat in politics, and would now try his weathercock 
 
l6o Very Trying. 
 
 capabilities at religion. Nothing like variety, so Romanist he 
 became. 
 
 But this was not all : his friends on the one hand objected 
 to his marrying a penniless girl, and hers, on the other, warned 
 her of his disreputable character. But when two people have 
 made up their minds to be one, such trifles as these are of no 
 consequence. A far more trying obstacle was the absolute re- 
 fusal of her Most Catholic Majesty to allow her maid of honour 
 to marry the duke. 
 
 It is a marvel that after the life of dissipation he had led, 
 this man should have retained the power of loving at all. But 
 everything about him was extravagant, and now that he enter- 
 tained a virtuous attachment, he was as wild in it as he had 
 been reckless in less respectable connections. He must have 
 been sincere at the time, for the queen's refusal was followed 
 by a fit of depression that brought on a low fever. The queen 
 heard of it, and, touched by the force of his devotion, sent him 
 a cheering message. The moment was not to be lost, and, in 
 spite of his weak state, he hurried to court, threw himself at 
 her Majesty's feet, and swore he must have his lady-love or die. 
 Thus pressed, the queen was forced to consent, but warned 
 him that he would repent of it. The marriage took place, and 
 the couple set off to Rome. 
 
 Here the Chevalier again received him with open arms, and 
 took the opportunity of displaying his imaginary sovereignty 
 by bestowing on him the Order of the Garter^a politeness the 
 duke returned by wearing while there the no less unrecognised 
 title of Duke of Northumberland, which 'His Majesty' had 
 formerly conferred on him. But James III., though no saint, 
 had more respect for decent conduct than his father and uncle; 
 the duke ran off into every species of excess, got into debt as 
 usual — 
 
 ' When 'Wharton's Just, and learns to pay his debts, 
 And reputation dwells at Mother Brett's, 
 
 » • • • 
 
 Then, Celia, shall my constant passion cease, 
 And my poor suff' ring heart shall be at peace,' 
 
 says a satirical poem of the day, called ■ The Duke of Whar- 
 ton's Whm^ — was faithless to the wife he had lately been dying 
 
Military Glory at Gibraltar. i6i 
 
 for , and in short, such a thorough blackguard, that not even 
 the Jacobites could tolerate him, and they turned him out of 
 the Holy City till he should learn not to bring dishonour on 
 the court of their fictitious sovereign. 
 
 The duke was not the man to be much ashamed of himself, 
 though his poor wife may now have begun to think her late 
 mistress in tlie right, and he was probably glad of an excuse 
 for another change. At this time, 1727, the Spaniards were 
 determined to virest Gibraltar from its English defenders, and 
 were sending thither a powerful army under the command 
 of Los Torres. The Duke had tried many trades with more 
 or less success, and now thought that a Httle military glory 
 would tack on well to his highly honourable biography. At 
 any rate there was novelty in the din of war, and for novelty 
 he would go anywhere. It mattered little that he should fight 
 against his own king and ojvn countrymen : he was not half 
 blackguard enough yet, he may have thought ; he had played 
 traitor for some time, he would now play rebel outright — the 
 game was worth the candle. 
 
 So what does my lord duke do but write a letter (like the 
 Chinese behind their mud-walls, he was always bold enough 
 when well secured under the protection of the post, and was 
 more absurd in ink even than in action) to the King of Spain, 
 offering him his services as a volunteer against ' Gib.' Whethei 
 his Most Catholic Majesty thought him a traitor, a madman, or 
 a devoted partisan of his own, does not appear, for without 
 waiting for an answer — waiting was always too dull work for 
 Wharton — he and his wife set off for the camp before Gibraltar, 
 introduced themselves to the Conde in Command, were re- 
 ceived with all the honour — let us say honours — due to a duke — 
 and established themselves comfortably in the ranks of the 
 enemy of England. But all the duke's hopes of prowess were 
 blighted. He had good opportunities. The Conde de los 
 Torres made him his aide-de-camp, and sent him daily into the 
 trenches to see how matters went on. When a defence of a 
 certain Spanish outwork was resolved upon, the duke, from his 
 rank, was chosen for the command. Yet in the trenches he 
 got no worse wound than a slight one on the foot from a splinter 
 
i62 ' Uncle Horace' 
 
 of a shell, and this he afterwards made an excuse for not fight- 
 ing a duel with swords ; and as to the outwork, the English 
 abandoned the attack, so that there was no glory to be found 
 in the defence. He soon grew weary of such inglorious and 
 rather dirty work as visiting trenches before a stronghold ; and 
 well he might ; for if there be one thing duller than another 
 and less satisfactory, it must be digging a hole out of which to 
 kill your brother mortals ; and thinking he should amuse himself 
 better at the court, he set off for Madrid. Here the king, by way 
 of reward for his brilliant services in doing nothing, made him 
 colonel-aggregate — whatever that may be — of an Irish regiment ; 
 a very poor aggregate, we should think. But my lord duke 
 wanted something livelier than the command of a band of 
 Hispahiolized Milesians ; and having found the military career 
 somewhat uninteresting, wished to return to that of politics. 
 He remembered with gusto the froHc Hfe of the Holy City, and 
 the political excitement in the Chevalier's court, and sent off a 
 letter to ' His Majesty James IH.,' expressing, like a rusticated 
 Oxonian, his penitence for having been so naughty the last 
 time, and offering to come and be very good again. It is to 
 the praise of the Chevalier de St. George that he had worldly 
 wisdom enough not to trust the gay penitent. He was tired, as 
 everybody else was, of a man who could stick to nothing, and 
 did not seem to care about seeing him again. Accordingly, he 
 replied in true kingly style, blaming him for having taken up 
 arms against their common country, and telling him in polite 
 language — as a policeman does a riotous drunkard — that he 
 had better go home. The duke tliought so too, was not at all 
 offended at the letter, and set off, by way of returning towards 
 liis Penates, for Paris, where he arrived in May, 1728. 
 
 Horace Walpole — not the Horace — but ' Uncle Horace,' or 
 ' old Horace,' as he was called, was then ambassador to the 
 court of the Tuileries Mr. Walpole was one of the Houghton 
 ' lot,' a brother of the famous minister Sir Robert, and though 
 less celebrated, almost as able in his line. He had distin- 
 guished himself in various diplomatic appointments, in Spain, 
 at Hanover and the Hague, and having successfully tackled 
 Cardinel Fleury, the successor of the Richelieus and Mazarins 
 
Wharton to ' Uncle Horace^ 163 
 
 at Paris, he was now in high favour at home. In after )-ears 
 he was celebrated for his duel with Chetwynd, who, when 
 'Uncle Horace' had in the House expressed a hope that the 
 question might be carried, had exclaimed, ' I hope to see you 
 hanged first !' ' You hope to see me hanged first, do you ?' 
 cried Horace, with all the ferocity of the Walpoles ; and there- 
 upon, seizing him by the most prominent feature of his face, 
 shook him violently. This was matter enough for a brace of 
 swords and coffee for four, and Mr. Chetwynd had to repent 
 of his remark after being severely wounded. In those days 
 our honourable House of Commons was as much an arena of 
 wild beasts as the American senate of to-day. 
 
 To this minister our noble duke wrote a hypocritical letter, 
 which, as it shows how the man could write penitently, is worth 
 transcribing. 
 
 ' Lions, June '28, 1728. 
 
 ' Sir, — Your excellency will be surpris'd to receive a letter 
 from me; but the clemency with which the government o( 
 England has treated me, which is in a great measure owing t(? 
 your brother's regard to my father's memory, makes me hope 
 that you will give me leave to express my gratitude for it. 
 
 ' Since his present majesty's accession to the throne I have 
 absolutely refused to be concerned with the Pretender or any 
 of his affairs ; and during my stay in Italy have behaved my- 
 self in a manner that Dr. Peters, Mr. Godolphin, and Mr. Mills 
 can declare to be consistent with my duty to the present king. 
 I was forc'd to go to Italy to get out of Spain, where, if my 
 true design had been known, I should have been treated a Uttle 
 severely 
 
 ' I air coming to Paris to put myself entirely under your 
 excellency's protection; and hope that Sir Robert Walpole's 
 good-nature will prompt him to save a family which his gene- 
 rosity induced him to spare. If your excellency would pennit 
 me to wait upon you for an hour, I am certain you would be 
 convinc'd of the sincerity of my repentance for my former mad- 
 ness, would become an advocate with his majesty to grant me 
 his most gracious pardon, which it is my comfort I shall never 
 
164 The Duk^s Impudence. 
 
 be required to purchase by any step unworthy of a man of 
 honour. I do not intend, in case of the king's allowing me to 
 pass the evening of my days under the shadow of his royal 
 protection, to see England for some years, but shall remain 
 in France or Germany, as my friends shall advise, and enjoy 
 country sports till all former stories are buried in oblivion. 1 
 beg of your excellency to let me receive your orders at Paris, 
 wnich I will send to your hostel to receive. The Dutchess ol 
 Wharton, who is with me, desires leave to wait on Mrs. Wal- 
 pole, if you think proper. 
 
 ' I am, &c.' 
 
 After this, the ambassador could do no less than receive him; 
 but he was somewhat disgusted when on leaving him the duke 
 frankly told him — forgetting all about his penitent letter, pro- 
 bably, or too reckless to care for it — that he was going to dine 
 with the Bishop of Rochester — Atterbury himself, then living 
 in Paris— whose society was interdicted to any subject of King 
 George. The duke, with his usual folly, touched on other 
 subjects equally dangerous, his visit to Rome, and his conver- 
 sion to Romanism ; and, in short, disgusted the cautious Mr. 
 Walpole. There is something delightfully impudent about all 
 these acts of Wharton's ; and had he only been a clown at 
 Drury Lane instead of an English nobleman, he must have 
 been successful. As it is, when one reads of the petty hatred 
 and humbug of those days, when liberty of speech was as un- 
 known as any other liberty, one cannot but admire the impu- 
 ience of his Grace of Wharton, and wish that most dukes, 
 without being as profligate, would be as free-spoken. 
 
 With six hundred pounds in his pocket, our young Lothario 
 now set up house at Rouen, with an establishment ' equal,' saj 
 the old-school writers, ' to his position, but not to his means.' 
 In other words, he undertook to live in a style for which he 
 could not pay. Twelve hundred a year may be enough for a 
 duke, as for any other man, but not for one who considers a 
 legion of servants a necessary appendage to his position. My 
 lord duke, who was a good French scholar, soon found an 
 ample number of friends and ac(]uaintances, and not being 
 
High Treason. 16$ 
 
 particular about either, managed to get through his half-year's 
 income in a few weeks. Evil consequence : he was assailed 
 by duns. French duns know nothing about forgiving debtors ; 
 ' your money first, and then my pardon,' is their motto. My 
 lord duke soon found this out. Still he had an income, and 
 could pay them all off in time. So he drank and was merry, 
 till one fine day came a disagreeable pie(;e of news, which 
 startled him considerably. The government at home had 
 heard of his doings, and determined to arraign' him for high 
 treason. 
 
 He could expect little else, for had he not actually taken up 
 arms against his sovereign ? 
 
 Now Sir Robert Walpole was, no doubt, a vulgarian. He 
 was not a man to love or sympathise with ; but he was good- 
 natured at bottom. Our 'frolic grace' had reason to acknow- 
 ledge this. He could not complain of harshness in any mea- 
 sures taken against him, and he had certainly no claim to con- 
 sideration firom the government he had treated so ill. Yet Sir 
 Robert was willing to give him every chance ; and so far did 
 he go, that he sent over a couple of friends to him to induce 
 him only to ask pardon of the king, with a promise that it 
 would be granted. For sure the Duke of Wharton's character 
 was anomalous. The same man who had more than once 
 humiliated himself when unasked, who had written to Walpole's 
 brother the letter we have read, would not now, when entreated 
 to do so, write a few lines to that minister to ask mercy. Nay, 
 when the gentleman in question offered to be content even 
 with a letter from the duke's valet, he refused to allow the man 
 to write. Some people may admire what they will believe to 
 be firmness, but when we review the duke's character and sub- 
 sequent acts, we cannot attribute this refusal to anything but 
 obstinate pride. The consequence of this folly was a stoppage 
 of supplies, for as he was accused of high treason, his estate 
 was of course sequestrated. He revenged himself by writing 
 a paper which was published in 'Mist's Journal,' and which, 
 under the cover of a Persian tale, contained a species of libel 
 on the government. 
 
 His position was now far from enviable; and, assailed by 
 
lC6 Whartoris Ready Wit. 
 
 duns, he had no resource but to humble himself, not before 
 those he had offended, but before the Chevalier, to whom he 
 wrote in his distress, and who sent him _;^2,ooo, which he soon 
 frittered away in folHes. This gone, the duke begged and 
 borrowed, for there are some people such fools that they would 
 rather lose a thousand pounds to a peer than give sixpence to 
 a pauper, and many a tale was told of the artful manner in 
 which his grace managed to cozen his friends out of a louis oi 
 two. His ready wit generally saved him. 
 
 Thus on one occasion an Irish toady invited him to dinner : 
 the duke talked of his wardrobe, then sadly defective ; what 
 suit should he wear? The Hibernian suggested black velvet. 
 ' Could you recommend a tailor ?' ' Certainly.' Snip came, 
 an expensive suit wis ordered, put on, and the dinner taken. 
 In due course the tailor called for his money. The duke was 
 not a bit at a loss, though he had but a few francs to his name. 
 ' Honest man,' quoth he, ' you mistake the matter entirely. 
 Carry the bill to Sir Peter ; for know that whenever I consent 
 to wear another man's livery, my master pays for the clothes,' 
 and inasmuch as the dinner-giver was an Irishman, he did 
 actually discharge the account. 
 
 At other times he would give a sumptuous entertainment, 
 and in one way or another induce his guests to pay for it. He 
 was only less adroit in coining excuses than Theodore Hook, 
 and had he lived a century later, we might have a volume full 
 of anecdotes to give of his ways and no means. Meanwhile 
 his unfortunate duchess was living on the charity of friends, 
 while her lord and master, when he could get anyone to pay for 
 a band, was serenading young ladies. Yet he was jealous 
 enough of his wife at times, and once sent a challenge to a 
 Scotch nobleman, simply because some silly friend asked him 
 if he had forbidden his wife to dance with the lord. He went 
 all the way to Flanders to meet his opponent ; but, perhaps 
 fortunately for the duke. Marshal Berwick arrested the Scotch- 
 man, and the duel never came off. 
 
 Whether he felt his end approaching, or whether he was sick 
 of vile pleasures which he had recklessly pursued from the age 
 of fifteen, he now, though only thirty years of age, retired foi 
 
Last Extremities. 167 
 
 t time to a convent, and was looked on as a penitent and de- 
 votee. Penury, doubtless, cured him in a measure, and 
 poverty, the porter of the gates of heaven, warned him to look 
 forward beyond a life he had so shamefully misused. But it 
 was only a temporary repentance ; and when he left the re- 
 ligious house, he again rushed furiously into every kind of dis- 
 sipation. 
 
 At length, utterly reduced to the last extremities, he be- 
 thought himself of his colonelcy in Spain, and determined to 
 set out to join his regiment. The following letter from a friend 
 who accompanied him will best show whaJt circumstances he 
 was in : — 
 
 ' Paris, June i, 1729. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, — I am just returned from the Gates of Death, to 
 return you Thanks for your last kind Letter of Accusations, 
 which I am persuaded was intended as a seasonable Help to 
 my Recollection, at a Time that it was necessary for me to send 
 an Inquisitor General into my Conscience, to examine and 
 settle all the Abuses that ever were committed in that little 
 Court of Equity ; but I assure you, your long Letter did not 
 lay so much my Faults as my Misfortunes before me, which be- 
 lieve me, dear , have fallen as heavy and as thick upon me 
 
 as the Shower of Hail upon us two in E Forest, and has 
 
 left me much at a Loss which way to turn myself The Pilot 
 of the Ship I embarked in, who industriously ran upon every 
 Rock, has at last split the Vessel, and so much of a sudden, 
 that the whole Crew, I mean his Domesticks, are all left to 
 swim for their Lives, without one friendly Plank to assist them 
 to Shore. In short, he left me sick, in Debt, and without a 
 Penny ; but as I begin to recover, and have a little time to 
 Think, I can't help considering myself, as one whisk'd up be- 
 hind a Witch upon a Broomstick, and hurried over Mountains 
 ind Dales through confus'd Woods and thorny Thickets, and 
 vhen the Charm is ended, and the poor Wretch dropp'd in a 
 Desart, he can give no other Account of his enchanted Travels, 
 but that he is much fatigued in Body and Mind, his Cloaths 
 torn, and worse in all other Circumstances, without being of 
 the least Service to himself or any body else. But I will follow 
 
1 68 His Last Journey to Spain. 
 
 your Advice with an active Resolution, to retrieve my bad For- 
 tune, and almost a Year miserably misspent. 
 
 'But notwithstanding what I have suffered, and what mj 
 Brother Mad-man has done to undo himself, and every body 
 who was so unlucky to have the least Concern with him, I 
 could not but be movingly touch'd at so extraordinary a Vicissi 
 tude of Fortune, to see a great Man fallen from that shining 
 Light, in which I beheld him in the House of Lords, to such a 
 Degree of Obscurity, that I have observ'd the meanest Com- 
 moner here decline, and the Few he would sometimes fasten 
 on, to be tired of his Company ; for you know he is but a bad 
 Orator in his Cups, and of late he has been but seldom sober. 
 
 'A week before he left Paris, he was so reduced, that he had 
 not one single Crown at Command, and was forc'd to thrust in 
 with any Acquaintance for a Lodging ; Walsh and I have had 
 him by Turns, all to avoid a Crowd of Duns, which he had of 
 all Sizes, from Fourteen hundred Livres to Four, who hunted 
 him so close, that he was forced to retire to some of the neigh- 
 bouring Villages for Safety. I, sick as I was, hurried about 
 Paris to raise Money, and to St. Germain's to get him Linen ; 
 I bought him one Shirt and a Cravat, which with 500 Livres, 
 his whole Stock, he and his Duchess, attended by one Servant, 
 set out for Spain. All the News I have heard of them since is 
 that a Day or two after, he sent for Captain Brierly, and two or 
 three of his Domesticks, to follow him ; but none but the Cap- 
 tain obey'd the Summons. Where they are now, I can't tell . 
 but fear they must be in great Distress by this Time, if he has 
 no other Supplies ; and so ends my Melancholy Story. 
 
 ' I am, &c.' 
 
 Still his good-humour did not desert him ; he joked about 
 their poverty on the road, and wrote an amusing account of 
 their journey to a friend, winding up with the well-known 
 lines •■ — 
 
 • Be kind to my remains, and oh ! defend, 
 Against your judgment, your departed friend.' 
 
 His mind was as vigorous as ever, in spite of the waste of 
 many debauches j and when recommended to make a new 
 
His Death in a Bernardine Convent. i6<^ 
 
 translation of ' Telemachus ;' he actually devoted one whole day 
 to the work; the next he forgot all about it. In the same 
 manner he began a play on the story of Mary Queen of Scots, 
 and Lady M. W. Montagu wrote an epilogue for it, but the 
 piece never got beyond a few scenes. His genius, perhaps, was 
 not for either poetry or the drama. His mind was a keen, 
 clear one, better suited to argument and to grapple tough po- 
 lemic subjects. Had he but been a sober man, he might have 
 been a fair, if not a great -writer. The ' True Briton,' with many 
 faults of license, shows what his capabilities were. His absence 
 of moral sense may be guessed from his poem on the preaching 
 of Atterbury, in which is a parallel almost blasphemous. 
 
 At length he reached Bilboa and his regiment, and had to live 
 on the meagre pay of eighteen pistoles a month. The Duke 
 of Ormond, then an exile, took pity on his wife, and sup- 
 ported her for a time : she afterwards rejoined her mother at 
 Madrid, 
 
 Meanwhile, the year 1730 brought about a salutary change 
 in tlie duke's morals. His health was fast giving way from the 
 effects of divers excesses ; and there is nothing like bad health 
 for purging a bad soul. The end of a misspent life was fast 
 drawing near, and he could only keep it up by broth with eggs 
 beaten up in it. He lost the use of his limbs, but not of his 
 gaiety. In the mountains of Catalonia he met with a mineral 
 spring which did him some good ; so much, in fact, that he was 
 able to rejoin his regiment for a time. A fresh attack sent him 
 back to the waters ; but on his way he was so violently attacked 
 that he was forced to stop at a little village. Here he found 
 himself without the means of going farther, and in the worsi 
 state of health. The monks of a Bernardine convent took pity 
 on him and received him into their house. He grew worse 
 and worse ; and in a week died on the 31st of May, without ? 
 friend to pity or attend him, among strangers, and at the earl] 
 age of thirty-two. 
 
 Thus ended the life of one of the cleverest fools that Iwe 
 ever disgraced our peerage. 
 
LORD HERVEY. 
 
 George II. arriving from Hanover. — His Meeting with the Queen. — Lady 
 Suffolk. — Queen Caroline. — Sir Robert Walpole. — Lord Hervey. — ^A set of 
 Fine Gentlemen. — ^An Eccentric Race. — Carr, Lord Hervey. — A Fragile 
 Boy. — Description of George II. 's Family. — ^Anne Brett. — ^A Bitter Cup. — 
 The Darling of the Family. — Evenings at St. James's. — Frederick, Prince 
 of Wales. — ^Amelia Sophia Walmoden. — Poor Queen Caroline ! — Nocturnal 
 Diversions of Maids of Honour. — Neighbour George's Orange Chest. — 
 Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. — Rivalry. — Hervey's Intimacy witli Lady Mary. 
 — Relaxations of the Royal Household. — Bacon's Opinion of Twickenham. 
 — A Visit to Pope's Villa. — The Little Nightingale. — The Essence of Small 
 Talk. — Hervey's Affectation and Effeminacy.— Pope's Quarrel with Hervey 
 and Lady Mary. — Hervey's Duel with Pulteney. — 'The Death of Lord 
 Hervey : a Drama.' — Queen Caroline's last Drawing-room. — Her Illness 
 and Agony. — A Painful Scene. — The Truth discovered. — ^The Queen's 
 Dying Bequests. — ^The King's Temper. — Archbishop Potter is sent for. — ■ 
 The Duty of Reconciliation. — The Death of Queen Caroline.— A Change in 
 Hervey's Life. — Lord Hervey's Death. — ^Want of Christianity. — Memoirs of 
 his Own Time. 
 
 HE village of Kensington was disturbed in its sweet 
 repose one day, more than a century ago, by the 
 rumbling of a ponderous coach and six, with four 
 
 outriders and two equerries kicking up the dust ; whilst a small 
 body of heavy dragoons rode solemnly after the huge vehicle. 
 It waded, with inglorious struggles, through a deep mire ol 
 mud, between the Palace and Hyde Park, until the cortfege 
 entered Kensington Park, as the gardens were then called, and 
 began to track the old road that led to the red-brick sd^ucture 
 to which William III. had added a higher story, built by Wren. 
 There are two roads by which coaches could approach the 
 house : ' one,' as the famous John, Lord Hervey, wrote to his 
 mother, ' so convex, the other so concave, that, by this extreme 
 of faults, they agree in the common one of being, like the high 
 road, impassable.' The rumbling coach, with its plethoric 
 steeds, toils slowly on, and reaches the dismal pile, of which no 
 association is so precious as that of its having been the birth- 
 
George II. Arriving from Hanover. 171 
 
 place of our loved Victoria Regina. All around, as the em- 
 blazoned carriage impressively veers round into the grand 
 entrance, savours of William and ■ Mary, of Anne, of Bishop 
 Burnet and Harley, Atterbury and Bolingbroke. But those 
 were pleasant days compared to those of the second George, 
 whose return from Hanover in this mountain of a coach is now 
 described. 
 
 The panting steeds are gracefully curbed by the state coach- 
 man in his scarlet livery, with his cocked-hat and gray wig 
 underneath it: now the horses are foaming and reeking as if 
 they had come from the world's end to Kensington, and yet 
 they have only been to meet King George on his entrance into 
 London, which he has reached from Helvoetsluys, on his way 
 from Hanover, in time, as he expects, to spend his birthday 
 among his English subjects. 
 
 It is Sunday, and repose renders the retirement of Kensing- 
 ton and its avenues and shades more sombre than ever. 
 Suburban retirement is usually so. It is noon ; and the inmates 
 of Kensington Palace are just coming forth from the chapel in 
 the palace. The coach is now stopping, and the equerries are 
 at hand to offer their respectful assistance to the diminutive 
 figiure that, in full Field-marshal regimentals, a cocked-hat stuck 
 crosswise on his head, a sword dangling even down to his 
 heels, ungraciously heeds them not, but stepping down, as the 
 great iron gates are thrown open to receive him, looks neither 
 like a king or a gentleman. A thin, worn face, in which weak- 
 ness and passion are at once pictured ; a form buttoned and 
 padded up to the chin ; high Hessian boots without a wrinkle ; 
 a sword and a swagger, no more constituting him the military 
 character than the 'your majesty' from every lip can make a 
 poor thing of clay a king. Such was George II. : brutal, even 
 to his submissive wife. Stunted by nature, he was insignificant 
 in form, as he was petty in character ; not a trace of royalty 
 could be found in that silly, tempestuous physiognomy, with its 
 hereditary small head : not an atom of it in his made-up, paltry 
 little presence ; still less in his bearing, language, or qualities. 
 
 The queen and her court have come from chapel, to meet 
 the royal absentee at the great gate : the consort, who was to 
 
172 His Meeting withthe Queen. 
 
 his gracious majesty like an elder sister rather than a wife, 
 bends down, not to his knees, but yet she bends, to kiss the 
 hand of her royal husband. She is a fair, fat woman, no longer 
 young, scarcely comely ; but with a charm of manners, a com- 
 posure, and a savoir /aire that causes one to regard her as 
 mated, not matched to the little creature in that cocked-hat, 
 which he does not take off even when she stands before him. 
 The pair, nevertheless, embrace : it is a triennial ceremony 
 performed when the king goes or returns from Hanover, but 
 suffwed to lapse at other times ; but the condescension is too 
 great: and Caroline ends, where she began: ' gluing her lips 
 to the ungracious hand held out to her in evident ill-humour. 
 
 They turn, and walk through the court, then up the grand 
 staircase, into the queen's apartment. The king has been 
 swearing all the way at England and the English, because he 
 has been obliged to return from Hanover, where the German 
 mode of life and new mistresses were more agreeable to him 
 than the English customs and an old wife. He displays, there- 
 fore, even on this supposed happy occasion, one of the worst 
 outbreaks of his insufferable temper, of which the queen is the ■ 
 first victim. All the company in the palace, both ladies and 
 gentlemen, are ordered to enter : he talks to them all, but to 
 the queen he says not a word. 
 
 She is attended by Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady Sundon, 
 whose lively manners and great good temper and good will — 
 lent out like leasehold to all, till she saw what their friendship 
 might bring, — are always useful at these tristes rencontres. 
 Mrs. Clayton is the amalgamating substance between chemical 
 agents which have, of themselves, no cohesion ; she covers 
 with address what is awkward ; she smooths down with some- 
 thing pleasant what is rude; she turns off — and her office 
 in that respect is no sinecure at that court — what is indecent^ 
 so as to keep the small majority of the company who have 
 respectable notions in good humour. To the right of Queen 
 Caroline stands another of her majesty's household, to whom 
 the most deferential attention is paid by all present ; neverthe- 
 less, she is queen of the court, but not the queen of the royal 
 master of that court It is Lady Suffolk, the mistress of King 
 
m L., %. '— I 
 
 -.< ,% 
 
 
 SCENE BEFORE KENSINGTON PALACE — GEORGE II. AND QUEEN CAROLINE. 
 
Lady Suffolk 173 
 
 George II., and long mistress of the robes to Queen Caroline 
 She is now past the bloom of youth, but her attractions are not 
 in their wane ; but endured until she had attained her seventy- 
 ninth year. Of a middle height, well made, extremely fair, 
 with very fine light hair, she attracts regard from her sweet, 
 fresh face, which had in it a comeliness independent of regu- 
 larity of feature. According to her invariable custom, she is 
 dressed with simplicity ; her silky tresses are drawn somewhat 
 back from her snowy forehead, and fall in long tresses on her 
 shoulders, not less transparently white. She wears a gown of 
 rich silk, opening in firont to display a chemisette of the most 
 delicate cambric, which is scarcely less delicate than her skin. 
 Her slender arms are without bracelets, and her taper fingers 
 without rings. As she stands behind the queen, holding her 
 majesty's fan and gloves, she is obliged, from her deafness, to 
 lean her fair face with its sunny hair first to the right side, then 
 to the left, with the helpless air of one exceedingly deaf— for 
 she had been afflicted with that infirmity for some years : yet 
 one cannot say whether her appealing looks, which seem to 
 say, ' Enlighten me if you please, '^ — and the sort of softened 
 manner in which she accepts civilities which she scarcely compre- 
 hends do not enhance the wonderful charm which drew every 
 one who knew her towards this frail, but passionless woman. 
 
 The queen forms the centre of the group. CaroUne, 
 daughter of the Marquis of Brandenburgh-Anspach, notwith- 
 standing her residence in England of many years, notwithstand- 
 ing her having been, at the era at which this biography begins, 
 ten years its queen — is still German in every attribute. She 
 retains, in her fair and comely face, traces of having been hand- 
 jome ; but her skin is deeply scarred by the cruel small-pox. 
 She is now at that time of life when Sir Robert Walpole even 
 tliought it expedient to reconcile her to no longer being an 
 object of attraction to her royal consort. As a vroman, she 
 has ceased to be attractive to a man of the character of George 
 II. j but, as a queen, she is still, as far as manners are con- 
 cerned, incomparable. As she turns to address various mem- 
 bers of the assembly, her style is full of sweetness as well as 
 of courtesy, yet on other occasions she is majesty itself. The 
 
174 Sii' Robert Walpole. 
 
 tones of her voice, with its still foreign accent, are most cap 
 tivating ; her eyes penetrate into every countenance on which 
 they rest. Her figure, plump and matronly, has lost much of 
 its contour ; but is well suited for her part. Majesty in women 
 should be embonpoint. Her hands are beautifully white, and 
 faultless in shape. The king always admired her bust ; and it 
 is, therefore, by royal command, tolerably exposed. Her fair 
 hair is upraised in full short curls over her brow : her dress is 
 rich, and distinguished in that respect from that of the Countess 
 of Suffolk. — ' Her good Howard' — as she was wont to call her, 
 when, before her elevation to the peerage, she was lady of the 
 bedchamber to Caroline, had, when in that capacity, been often 
 subjected to servile offices, which the queen, though apologizing 
 in the sweetest manner, delighted to make her perform. ' My 
 good Howard' having one day placed a handkerchief on the 
 back of her royal mistress, the king, who half worshipped his 
 Intellectual wife, pulled it oif in a passion, saying, ' Because 
 you have an ugly neck yourself, you hide the queen's !' All, 
 however, that evening was smooth as ice, and perhaps as cold 
 also. The company are quickly dismissed, and the king, who 
 has scarcely spoken to the queeii, retires to his closet, where 
 he is attended by the subservient Caroline, and by two other 
 persons. 
 
 Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister, has accompanied the 
 king in his carriage, from the very entrance of London, where 
 the famous statesman met him. He is now the privileged com- 
 panion of their majesties, in their seclusion for the rest of the 
 evening. His cheerful face, in its full evening disguise of wig 
 and tie, his invariable good humour, his frank manners, his 
 wonderful sense, his views, more practical than elevated, suffi- 
 ciently account for the influence which tliis celebrated minister 
 obtained over Queen Carohne, and the readiness of King George 
 to submit to the tie. But Sir Robert's great source of ascend- 
 ancy was his temper. Never was there in the annals of our 
 country a minister so free of access : so obliging in giving, so 
 unoffending when he refused ; so indulgent and kind to those 
 dependent on him ; so generous, so faithful to his friends, so 
 forgiving to his foes. This was his character under one phase : 
 
Lord Hervey. 175 
 
 e'* en his adherents sometimes blamed his easiness of temper ;. 
 the impossibility in his nature to cherish the remembrance of a 
 wrong, or even to be roused by an insult. But, whilst such were 
 the amiable traits of his character, history has its lists of accu- 
 sations against him for corruption of the most shameless descrip- 
 tion. The end of this veteran statesman's career is well known. 
 The fraudulent contracts which he gave, the peculation and 
 profusion of the secret service money, his undue influence at 
 elections, brought around his later life a storm, from which he 
 retreated into the Upper House, when created Earl of Orford. 
 It was before this timely retirement from office that he burst 
 forth in these words : ' I oppose nothing ; give in to everything; 
 am said to do everything ; and to answer for everything ; and 
 yet, God knows, I dare not do what I think is right.' 
 
 With his public capacity, however, we have not here to do : 
 it is in his character of a courtier that we view him following 
 the queen and king. His round, complacent face, with his small 
 glistening eyes, arched eyebrows, and with a mouth ready to 
 break out aloud into a laugh, are all subdued into a respectful 
 gravity as he listens to King George grumbling at the necessity 
 for his return home. No English cook could dress a dinner ; 
 no EngUsh cook could select a dessert ; no English coachman 
 could drive ; nor English jockey ride ; no Englishman — such 
 were his habitual taunts — knew how to come into a room ; no 
 Englishwoman understood how to dress herself The men, he 
 said, talked of nothing but their dull politics, and the women 
 of nothing but their ugly clothes. Whereas, in Hanover, all 
 these things were at perfection : men were patterns of polite- 
 ness and gallantry ; women, of beauty, wit, and entertainment. 
 His troops there were the bravest in the world ; his manufac- 
 turers the most ingenious ; his people the happiest : in Hanover, 
 in short, plenty reigned, riches flowed, arts flourished, mag-nifi- 
 cence abounded, everything was in abundance that could make 
 a prince great, or a people blessed. 
 
 There was one standing behind the queen who listened to 
 these outbreaks of the king's bilious temper, as he called it, 
 with an apparently respectful soUcitude, but with the deepest 
 disgust in his heart. A slender, elegant figure, in a court suit 
 
176 A Set of Fine Gentlemen. 
 
 faultlessly and carefully perfect in that costume, stands behind 
 the queen's chair. It is Lord Hervey. His lofty forehead, his 
 features, which have a refinement of character, his well-turned 
 moutli, and full and dimpled chin, form his claims to that 
 beauty which won the heart of the lovely Mary Lepel ; whilst 
 the somewhat thoughtful and pensive expression of his physiog- 
 nomy, when in repose, indicated the sympathising, yet, at the 
 same time, satirical character of one who won the affections, 
 perhaps unconsciously, of the amiable Princess Caroline, the 
 favourite daughter of George II. 
 
 A general air of languor, ill concealed by the most studied 
 artifice of countenance, and even of posture, characterizes 
 Lord Hervey. He would have abhorred robustness ; for he 
 belonged to the clique then called Maccaronis ; a set of fine 
 gentlemen, of whom the present world would not be worthy, 
 tricked out for show, fitted only to drive out fading majesty in 
 a stage coach ; exquisite in every personal appendage, too fine 
 for the common usages of society; point- device, not only in 
 every curl and ruffle, but in every attitude and step ; men with 
 full satin roses on their shining shoes ; diamond tablet rings on 
 their forefingers ; with snuff-boxes, the worth of which might 
 almost purchase a farm ; lace worked by the delicate fingers of 
 some religious recluse of an ancestress, and taken from an altar- 
 cloth; old point-lace, dark as coffee-water could make it; with 
 embroidered waistcoats, wreathed in exquisite tambour-work 
 round each capricious lappet and pocket ; with cut steel but- 
 tons that glistened beneath the courtly wax-lights : with these 
 and fifty other small but costly characteristics that established 
 the reputation of an aspirant Maccaroni. Lord Hervey was, 
 in truth, an effeminate creature ; too dainty to walk ; too pre- 
 cious to commit his frame to horseback ; and prone to imitate 
 the somewhat recluse habits which German rulers introduced 
 within the court : he was disposed to candle-light pleasures and 
 cockney diversions ; to Marybone and the Mall, and shrinking 
 from the athletic and social recreations which, like so much 
 that was manly and English, were confined almost to the Eng- 
 lish squire /«r ^/ jm//^ after the Hanoverian accession ; whec 
 80 mucJi degeneracy for a while obscured the English character, 
 
An Eccentric Race. i^j 
 
 debased its tone, enervated its best races, vilified its literature; 
 corrupted its morals, changed its costume, and degraded its 
 architecture. 
 
 Beneath the effeminacy of the Maccaroni, Lord Hervey was 
 one of the few who united to 'rai&^&t finery in every minute de- 
 tail, an acute and cultivated intellect. To perfect a Maccaroni 
 it was in truth advisable, if not essential, to unite some smat- 
 tering of learning, a pretension to wit, to his super-dandyism ; 
 to be the author of some personal squib, or the translator of 
 some classic. Queen Caroline was too cultivated herself to 
 suffer fools about her, and Lord Hervey was a man after her 
 own taste j as a courtier he was essentially a fine gentleman ; 
 and, more than that, he could be the most delightful companion, 
 the most sensible adviser, and the most winning friend in the 
 court. His ill-health, which he carefully concealed, his fasti- 
 diousness, his ultra-delicacy of habits, formed an agreeable con- 
 trast to the coarse robustness of ' Sir Robert,' and constituted 
 a relief after the society of the vulgar, strong-minded minister, 
 who was bom for the hustings and the House of Commons 
 rather than for the courtly drawing-room. 
 
 John Lord Hervey, long vice-chamberlain to Queen Caroline, 
 was, like Sir Robert Walpole, descended from a commoner's 
 family, one of those good old squires who lived, as Sir Henry 
 Wotton says, 'without lustre and without obscurity.' The 
 Duchess of Marlborough had procured the elevation of the 
 Herveys of Ickworth to the peerage. She happened to be in 
 timate with Sir Thomas Felton, the father of Mrs. Hervey. 
 afterwards Lady Bristol, whose husband, at first created Lord 
 Hervey, and afterwards Earl of Bristol, expressed his obliga 
 tions by retaining as his motto, when raised to the peerage, thi 
 words ' J e n'oublieray jkmais,' in allusion to the service done 
 him by the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. 
 
 The Herveys had always been an eccentric race ; and the 
 classification of ' men, women, and Herveys,' by Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montagu, was not more witty than true. There was 
 in the whole race an eccentricity which bordered on the ridi 
 culous, but did not imply want of sense or of talent. Indeed 
 this third species, ' the Herveys,' were more gifted than the 
 
178 Carr, Lord Hervey. 
 
 generality of ' men and women.' The father of Lord Hervey 
 had been a country gentleman of good fortune, living at Icfc 
 worth, near Buiy in Suffolk, and representing the town in par- 
 liament, as his father had before him, until raised to the peerage. 
 Before that elevation he had lived on in his own county, uniting 
 the character of the English squire, in that fox-hunting county, 
 with that of a perfect gentleman, a scholar, and a most ad- 
 mirable member of society. He was a poet, also, affecting the 
 style of Cowley, who wrote an elegy upon his uncle, William 
 Hervey, an elegy compared to Milton's ' Lycidas' in imagery, 
 music, and tenderness of thought. The shade of Cowley, whom 
 Charles II. pronounced, at his death, to be ' the best man in 
 England,' haunted this peer, the first Earl of Bristol. He as- 
 pired especially to the poet's wit; and the ambition to be a wit 
 flew like wildfire among his family, especially infecting his two 
 sons, Carr, the elder brother of the subject of this memoir, and 
 Lord Hervey. 
 
 It would have been well could the Earl of Bristol have trans- 
 mitted to his sons his other qualities. He was pious, moral, 
 affectionate, sincere ; a consistent Whig of the old school, and, 
 as such, disapproving of Sir Robert Walpole, of the standing 
 army, the corruptions, and that doctrine of expediency so un- 
 blushingly avowed by the ministers. 
 
 Created Earl of Bristol in 17 14, the heir-apparent to his titles 
 and estates was the elder brother, by a former marriage, of 
 John, Lord Hervey ; the dissolute, clever, whimsical Carr, Lord 
 Hervey. Pope, in one of his satirical appeals to the second 
 Lord Hervey, speaks of his friendship with Carr, 'whose early 
 death deprived the family' (of Hervey) 'of as much wit and 
 honour as he left behind him in any part of it.' The wit was 
 a family attribute, but the honour was dubious : Carr was as 
 deistical as any Maccaroni of the day, and, perhaps, more dis- 
 solute than most : in one respect he has left behind him a cele- 
 brity which may be as questionable as his wit, or his honour ; 
 ne is reputed to be the father of Horace Walpole, and if we 
 accept presumptive evidence of the fact, the statement is clearly 
 borne out, for in his wit, his indifference to religion, to say the 
 least, his satirical turn, his love of the world, and his contempt 
 
A Fragile Boy. ijg 
 
 of all that was great and good, he strongly resembles his re- 
 puted son ; whilst the levity of Lady Walpole's character, and 
 Sir Robert's laxity and dissoluteness, do not furnish any reason- 
 able doubt to the statement made by Lady Louisa Stuart, in the 
 introduction to Lord Whamcliffe's ' Life of Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu.' Carr, Lord Hervey, died early, and his half-brother 
 succeeded him in his title and expectations. 
 
 John, Lord Hervey, was educated first at Westminster School, 
 under Dr. Freind, the friend of Mrs. Montagu; thence he was 
 removed to Clare Hall, Cambridge : he graduated as a noble- 
 man, and became M.A. in 1715. 
 
 At Cambridge Lord Hervey might have acquired some manly 
 prowess ; but he had a mother who was as strange as the family 
 into which she had married, and who was passionately devoted 
 to her son : she evinced her affection by never letting him have 
 a chance of being like other English boys. When his father 
 was at Newmarket, Jack Hervey, as he was called, was to ride 
 a race, to please his father ; but his mother could not risk her 
 dear boy's safety, and the race was won by a jockey. He was 
 as precious and as fragile as porcelain ; the elder brother's death 
 made the heir of the Herveys more valuable, more effeminate, 
 and more controlled than ever by his eccentric mother. A 
 court was to be his hemisphere, and to that all his views, early 
 in life, tended. He went to Hanover to pay his court to George 
 I. : Carr had done the same, and had come back enchanted 
 with George, the heir-presumptive, who made him one of the 
 lords of the bedchamber. Jack Hervey also returned full of 
 enthusiasm foi the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., and 
 the Princess ; and that visit influenced his destiny. 
 
 He now proposed making the grand tour, 'which comprised 
 Paris, Germany, and Italy. But his mother again interfered : 
 she wept, she exhorted, she prevailed. Means were refused, 
 and the stripling was recalled to hang about the court, or to 
 loiter at Ickworth, scribbhng verses, and causing his father un- 
 easiness lest he should be too much of a poet, and too little of 
 a public man. 
 
 Such was his youth : disappointed by not obtaining a com- 
 mission in the Guards, he led a desultory butterfly-like life ; 
 
i8o Dsscription of George II.'s Family/. 
 
 one day at Richmond \vith Queen Caroline, then Princess of 
 Wales ; another, at Pope's villa, at Twickenham ; sometimes in 
 the House of Commons, in which he succeeded his elder bro- 
 ther as member for Bury ; and, at the period when he has been 
 described as forming one of the quartett in Queen Caroline's 
 closet at St. James's, as vice-chamberlain to his partial and roya) 
 patroness. 
 
 His early marriage with Mary Lepel, the beautiful maid of 
 honour to Queen Caroline, insured his felicity, though it did not 
 curb his predilections for other ladies. 
 
 Henceforth Lord Hervey lived all the year round in what 
 were then called lodgings, that is, apartments appropriated to 
 the royal household, or even to others, in St. James's, or at 
 Richmond, or at Windsor. In order fully to comprehend all 
 the intimate relations which he had with the court, it is necessary 
 to present the reader with some account of the family of George 
 11. Five daughters had been the female issue of his majesty's 
 marriage with Queen Caroline. Three of these princesses, the 
 three elder ones, had lived, during the life of George I., at St 
 James's with their grandfather ; who, irritated by the differences 
 between him and his son, then Prince of Wales, adopted that 
 measure rather as showing his authority than from any affection 
 to the young princesses. It was, in truth, difficult to say which 
 of these royal ladies was the most unfortunate. 
 
 Anne, the eldest, had shown her spirit early in life whilst re- 
 siding with George I. ; she had a proud, imperious nature, and 
 her temper was, it must be owned, put to a severe test. The 
 only time that George I. did the English the honour of choos- 
 ing one of the beauties of the nation for his mistress, was during 
 the last year of his reign. The object of his choice was Anne 
 Brett, the eldest daughter of the infamous Countess of Mac- 
 clesfield by her second husband. The neglect of Savage, the 
 poet, her son, was merely one passage in the iniquitous life of 
 Lady Macclesfield. Endowed with singular taste and judg- 
 ment, consulted by CoUey Cibber on every new play he pro- 
 duced, the mother of Savage was not only wholly destitute of 
 all virtue, but of all shame. One day, looking out of the win- 
 dow, she perceived a very handsome man assaulted by some 
 
Anne Brett i8i 
 
 bailiffs who were going to arrest him : she paid his debt, re- 
 leased, and married him. The hero of this story was Colonel 
 Brett, the father of Anne Brett. 
 
 The child of such a mother was not likely to be even de- 
 cently-respectable ; and Anne was proud of her disgraceful pre- 
 eminence and of her disgusting and royal lover. She was dark, 
 and her flashing black eyes resembled those of a Spanish beauty. 
 Ten years after the death of George I., she found a husband in 
 Sir William Leman, of Northall, and was announced, on that 
 occasion, as the half-sister of Richard Savage. 
 
 To the society of this woman, when at St. James's, as 
 ' Mistress Brett,' the three princesses were subjected : at the 
 same time the Duchess of Kendal, the king's German mistress, 
 occupied other lodgings at St. James's. 
 
 Miss Brett was to be rewarded with the coronet of a coun- 
 tess for her degradation, the king being absent on the occasion 
 at Hanover ; elated by her expectations, she took the liberty, 
 during his majesty's absence, of ordering a door to be broken 
 out of her apartment into the royal garden, where the princesses 
 walked. The Princess Anne, not deigning to associate with 
 her, commanded that it should be forthwith closed. Miss Brett 
 imperiously reversed that order. In the midst of the affair, the 
 king died suddenly, and Anne Brett's reign was over, and her 
 influence soon as much forgotten as if she had never existed. 
 The Princess Anne was pining in the dulness of her royal home, 
 when a marriage with the Prince of Orange, was proposed for 
 the consideration of his parents. It was a miserable match 
 as well as a miserable prospect, for the prince's revenue 
 amounted to no more than _;^i 2,000 a year; and the state and 
 pomp to which the Princess Royal had been accustomed could 
 not be contemplated on so small a fortune. It was still worse 
 in point of that poor consideration, happiness. The Prince of 
 Orange was both deformed and disgusting in his person, tliough 
 his face was sensible in expression ; and if he inspired one idea 
 more strongly than another when he appeared in his uniform and 
 cocked hat, and spoke bad French, or worse English, it was 
 that of seeing before one a dressed-up baboon. 
 
 It was a bitter cup for the princess to drink, but she drank 
 
1 82 The Darling of the Family. 
 
 it : she, reflected that it might be the only way of quitting a 
 court where, in case of her father's death, she would be depend- 
 ent on her brother Frederic, or on that weak prince's strong- 
 minded wife. So she consented, and took the dwarf; and that 
 consent was regarded by a grateful people, and by all good 
 courtiers, as a sacrifice for the sake of Protestant principles, 
 the House of Orange being, par excellsnce, at the head of the 
 orthodox dynasties in Europe. A dowry of ;^8o,ooo was 
 forthwith granted by an admiring Commons — ^just double what 
 had ever been given before. That sum was happily lying in the 
 exchequer, being the purchase-money of some lands in St. 
 Christopher's which had lately been sold; and King George 
 was thankful to get rid of a daughter whose haughtiness gave 
 him trouble. In person, too, the princess royal was not veiy 
 ornamental to the Court She was ill-made, with a propensity 
 to grow fat ; her complexion, otherwise very fine, was marked 
 with the small-pox ; she had, however, a lively, clean look — one 
 of her chief beauties — and a certain royalty of manner. 
 
 The Princess Amelia died, as the world thought, single, but 
 consoled herself with various love flirtations. The Duke of 
 Newcastle made love to her, but her affections were centred on 
 the Duke of Grafton, to whom she was privately married, as is 
 confidendy asserted. 
 
 The Princess Caroline was the darling of her family. Even 
 the king relied on her truth. When there was any dispute, 
 he used to say, ' Send for Caroline ; she will tell us the right • 
 story.' 
 
 Her fate had its clouds. Amiable, gentle, of unbounded 
 charity, with strong affections, which were not suffered to flow 
 in a legitimate channel, she became devotedly attached to Lord 
 Hervey : her heart was bound up in him ; his death drove her 
 into a permanent retreat from the world. No debasing con- 
 nection existed between them ; but it is misery, it is sin enough 
 to love another woman's husband — and that sin, that misery, 
 was the lot of the royal and otherwise virtuous Caroline. 
 
 The Princess Mary, another victim to conventionalities, was 
 united to Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse Cassel ; a barbarian, 
 from whom she escaped, whenever she could, to come, with a 
 
Evenings at St. jfames's. 183 
 
 bleeding heart, to her EngUsh home. She was, even Horace 
 Walpole allows, ' of the softest, mildest temper in the world,' 
 and fondly beloved by her sister Caroline, and by the ' Butchei 
 of CuUoden,' William, Duke of Cumberland. 
 
 Louisa became Queen of Denmark in 1746, after some years" 
 marriage to the Crown Prince. ' We are lucky,' Horace Walpole 
 writes on that occasion, ' in the death of kings.' 
 
 The two princesses who were still under the paternal roof 
 were contrasts. Caroline was a constant invalid, gentle, sincere, 
 unambitious, devoted to her mother, whose death nearly killed 
 her. Amelia affected popularity, and assumed the esprit fort — 
 was fond of meddling in pohtics, and after the death of her 
 mother, joined the Bedford faction, in opposition to her father. 
 But both these princesses were outwardly submissive when Lord 
 Hervey became the Queen's chamberlain. 
 
 The evenings at St. James's were spent in the same way as 
 those at Kensington. 
 
 Quadrille formed her majesty's pastime, and, whilst Lord 
 Hervey played pools of cribbage with the Princess Caroline and 
 the maids of honour, the Duke of Cumberland amused himself 
 and the Princess Amelia at ' buffet.' On Mondays and Fridays 
 there were drawing-rooms held ; and these receptions took 
 place, very wisely, in the evening. 
 
 Beneath all the show of gaiety and the freezing ceremony of 
 those stately occasions, there was in that court as much misery 
 as family dissensions, or, to speak accurately, family hatreds can 
 engender. Endless jealousies, which seem to us as frivolous as 
 they were rabid ; and contentions, of which even the origin is 
 still unexplained, had long severed the queen from her eldest 
 son. George II. had always loved his mother : his affection for 
 the unhappy Sophia -Dorothea was one of the very few traits of 
 goodness in a character utterly vulgar, sensual, and entirely sel- 
 fish. His son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, on the other hand, 
 hated his mother. He loved neither of his parents : but the 
 queen had the preeminence in his aversion. 
 
 The king, during the year 1736, was at Hanover. His return 
 was announced, but under circumstances of danger. A tre- 
 mendous storm arose just as he was prepared to embark at 
 
184 Frederick, Prince of Wales. 
 
 Helvoetsluys. All London was on the look out, weather-cocks 
 were watched ; tides, winds, and moons formed the only sub 
 jects of conversation ; but no one of his majesty's subjects was 
 so demonstrative as the Prince of Wales, and his cheerfulness, 
 and his triumph even, on the occasion, were of course resent 
 fully heard of by the queen. 
 
 During the storm, when anxiety had almost amounted to 
 fever. Lord Hervey dined with Sir Robert Walpole. Their 
 conversation naturally turned on the state of affairs, prospec- 
 tively. Sir Robert called the prince a ' poor, weak, irresolute, 
 false, lying, contemptible wretch.' Lord Hervey did not defend 
 him, but suggested that Frederick, in case of his father's death, 
 might be more influenced by the queen than he had hitherto 
 been. ' Zounds, my lord !' interrupted Sir Robert, ' he would 
 tear the flesh off her bones with red-hot irons sooner ! The 
 distinctions she shows to you, too, I believe, would not be for- 
 gotten. Then the notion he has of his great riches, and the 
 desire he has of fingering them, would make him pinch her, 
 and pinch her again, in order to make her buy her ease, till she 
 had not a groat left.' 
 
 What a picture of a heartless and selfish character! The 
 next day the queen sent for Lord Hervey, to ask him if he knew " 
 the particulars of a great dinner which the prince had given to 
 the lord mayor the previous day, whilst the whole country, and 
 the court in particular, was trembling for the safety of the king, 
 his father. Lord Hervey told her that the prince's speech at 
 the dinner was the most ingratiating piece of popularity ever 
 heard ; the healths, of course, as usual. ' Heavens !' cried the 
 queen : ' popularity always makes me sick, but Fritz's popu- 
 larity makes me vomit ! I hear that yesterday, on the prince's 
 side of the House, they talked of the king's being cast away with 
 the same sangfroid as you would talk of an overturn ; and that 
 my good son strutted about as if he had been already king. 
 Did you mark the airs with which he came into my drawing- 
 room in the morning ? though he does not think fit to honour 
 me with his presence, or ennui me with his wife's, of an even- 
 bg? I felt something here in my throat that swelled and half- 
 choked me.' 
 
Amelia Sophia Walmoden. 185 
 
 Poor Queen Caroline ! with such a son, and such a husband, 
 «he must have been possessed of a more than usual share o! 
 German imperturbability to sustain her cheerfulness, writhing, as 
 she often was, under the pangs of a long-concealed disorder, of 
 which eventually she died. Even on the occasion of the king's 
 return in time to spend his birthday in England, the queen's 
 temper had been sorely tried. Nothing had ever vexed her 
 more than the king's admiration for Amelia Sophia Walmoden, 
 who, after the death of Caroline, was created Countess of Yar- 
 mouth. Madame Walmoden had been a reigning belle among 
 the , married women at Hanover, when George II. visited that 
 country in 1 735. Not that her majesty's aifections were wounded ; 
 it was her pride that was hurt by the idea that people would 
 think that this Hanoverian lady had more influence than she 
 had. In other respects the king's absence was a relief: she had 
 the eclat of the regency; she had the comfort of having the 
 hours which her royal torment decreed were to be passed in 
 amusing his dulness, to herself; she was free from his ' quoti- 
 dian sallies of temper, which,' as Lord Hervey relates, ' let it 
 be charged by what hand it would, used always to discharge its 
 hottest fire, on some pretence or other, upon her.' 
 
 It is quite true that from the first dawn of his preference for 
 Madame Walmoden, the king wrote circumstantial letters of 
 fifty or sixty pages to the queen, informing her of every stage 
 of the affair ; the queen, in reply, saying that she was only one 
 woman, and an old woman, and adding, ' that he might loi 
 more and younger women.^ In return, the king wrote, ' Yon 
 must love the Walmoden, for she loves you;'' a civil insult, which 
 he accompanied with so minute a description of his new favou 
 rite, that the queen, had she been a painter, might have drawn 
 her portrait at a hundred miles' distance. 
 
 The queen, subservient as she seemed, felt the humiliation. 
 Such was the debased nature of George II. that he not only 
 wrote letters unworthy of a man to write, and unfit for a woman 
 to read, to his wife, but he desired her to show them to Sir 
 Robert Walpole. He used to ' tag several paragraphs,' as Lord 
 Hervey expresses it, with these words, ' Montrez ceci, et consultes 
 lordessus de gros homme,' meaning Sir Robert. But this was 
 
1 86 Poor Queen Caroline ! 
 
 only a portion of the disgusting disclosures made by the vulgar, 
 licentious monarch to his too degraded consort 
 
 In the bitterness of her mortification the queen consulted 
 Lord Hervey and Sir Robert as to the possibility of her losing 
 her influence, should she resent the king's delay in returning. 
 They agreed, that her taking the 'fiire turn' would ruin her 
 with her royal consort ; Sir Robert adding, that if he had a 
 mind to flatter her into her ruin, he might talk to her as if she 
 were twenty-five, and try to make her imagine that she could 
 bring the king back by the apprehension of losing her affection. 
 He said it was now too late in her life to try new methods ; she 
 must persist in the soothing, coaxing, submissive arts which had 
 been practised with success, and even press his majesty to bring 
 this woman to England ! ' He taught her,' says Lord Hervey, 
 ' this hard lesson till she wejit.' Nevertheless, the queen ex- 
 pressed her gratitude to the minister for his advice. ' My 
 lord,' said Walpole to Hervey, ' she laid her thanks on me so 
 thick that I found I had gone too far, for I am never so much 
 afraid of her rebukes as of her commendations.' 
 
 Such was the state of afiairs between this singular couple. 
 Nevertheless, the queen, not from attachment to the king, but 
 from the horror she had of her son's reigning, felt such fears of 
 the prince's succeeding to tJie throne as she could hardly ex- 
 press. He would, she was convinced, do all he could to ruin 
 and injure her in case of his accession to the throne. 
 
 The consolation of such a friend as Lord Hervey can easily 
 be conceived, when he told her majesty that he had resolved, 
 in case the king had been lost at sea, to have retired from her 
 service, in order to prevent any jealousy or irritation that might 
 arise from his supposed influence with her majesty. The queen 
 stopped him short, and said, ' No, my lord, I should never 
 have suffered that ; you are one of the greatest pleasures of my 
 life. But did I love you less than I do, or less like to have 
 you about me, I should look upon the suffering you to be taken 
 from me as such a meanness and baseness that you should not 
 have stirred an inch firom me. You,' she added, ' should have 
 gone with me to Somerset House ;' (which was hers in case of 
 the king's death). She then told him she should have begged 
 
Nocturnal Diversions of Maids of Honour. \ 87 
 
 Sir Robert Walpole on her knees not to have sent in hif 
 resignation. 
 
 The animosity of the Prince of Wales to Lord Hervey aug- 
 mented, there can be no doubt, his unnatural aversion to the 
 queen, an aversion which he evinced early in life. There was 
 a beautiful, giddy maid of honour, who attracted not only the 
 attention of Frederick, but the rival attentions of other suitors, 
 and among them, the most favoured was said to be Lord 
 Hervey, notwithstanding that he had then been for some years 
 tlie husband of one of the loveHest ornaments of the court, the 
 sensible and virtuous Mary Lepel. Miss Vane became eventu- 
 ally the avowed favourite of the prince, and after giving birth 
 to a son, who was christened Fitz-Frederick Vane, and who 
 died in 1736, his unhappy mother died a few months after- 
 wards. It is melancholy to read a letter from Lady Hervey to 
 Mrs. Howard, portraying the frolic and levity of this once joy- 
 ous creature, among the other maids of honour ; and her stric- 
 tures show at once the unrefined nature of the pranks in which 
 they indulged, and her once sobriety of demeanour. 
 
 She speaks, on one occasion, in which, however, Miss Vane 
 did not share the nocturnal diversion, of some of the maids of 
 honour being out in the winter all night in the gardens at Ken- 
 sington — opening and rattUng the windows, and trjdng to 
 frighten people out of their wits ; and she gives Mrs. Howard a 
 hint that the queen ought to be informed of the way in which 
 her young attendants amused themselves. After levities such 
 as these, it is not surprising to find poor Miss Vane writing to 
 Mrs. Howard, with complaints that she was unjustly aspersed, 
 and referring to her relatives. Lady Betty Nightingale and Lady 
 Hewet, in testimony of the falsehood of reports which, un- 
 happily, the event verified. 
 
 The prince, however, never forgave Lord Hervey for being 
 his rival with Miss Vane, nor his mother for her favours to 
 Lord Hervey. In vain did the queen endeavour to reconcile 
 Fritz, as she called him, to his father ; — nothing could be done 
 in a case where the one was all dogged selfishness ; and where 
 the other, the idol of the opposition party, as the prince had 
 ever been, so leglre de fete as to swallow all the adulation offered 
 
1 88 Neighbour Georges Orange-Chest. 
 
 to him, and to believe himself a demigod. 'The queen's dread 
 of a rival,' Horace Walpole remarks, 'was a feminine weakness : 
 the behaviotir of her eldest son was a real thorn.' Some time 
 before his marriage to a princess who was supposed to augment 
 his hatred of his mother, Frederick of Wales had contemplated 
 an act of disobedience. Soon after his arrival in England, 
 Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, hearing that he was in want of 
 money, had sent to offer him her granddaughter. Lady Diana 
 Spencer, with a fortune of ;^i 00,000. The prince accepted 
 the young lady, and a day was fixed for his marriage in the 
 duchess's lodge at the Great Park, Windsor. But Sir Robert 
 Walpole, getting intelligence of the plot, the nuptials were 
 stopped. The duchess never forgave either Walpole or the 
 royal family, and took an early opportunity of insulting the 
 latter. When the Prince of Orange came over to marry the 
 Princess Royal, a sort of boarded gallery was erected from the 
 windows of the great drawing-room of the palace, and was con- 
 structed so as to cross the garden to the Lutheran chapel in 
 the Friary, where the duchess lived. The Prince of Orange 
 being ill, went to Bath, and the marriage was delayed for some 
 weeks. Meantime the widows of Marlborough House were 
 darkened by the gallery. ' I wonder,' cried the old duchess, 
 ' when my neighbour George will take away his orange-chest 1' 
 The structure, with its pent-house roof, really resembhng an 
 orange-chest. 
 
 Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, whose attractions, great as they 
 were, proved insufficient to rivet the exclusive admiration of 
 the accomplished Hervey, had become his wife in 1720, some 
 time before her husband had been completely enthralled with 
 the gilded prison doors of a court. She was endowed with that 
 intellectual beauty calculated to attract a man of talent : she 
 was highly educated, of great talent ; possessed of savcir faire, 
 infinite good temper, and a strict sense of duty. She also 
 derived from her father. Brigadier Lepel, who was of an ancient 
 family in Sark, a considerable fortune. Good and correct as 
 she w^as. Lady Hervey viewed with a fashionable composure 
 the various intimacies formed during the course of their married 
 life by his lordship. 
 
Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 189 
 
 The fact is, that the aim of both was not so much to insure 
 their domestic felicity as to gratify their ambition. Probably 
 they were disappointed in both these aims — certainly in one 
 of them ; talented, indefatigable, popular, lively, and courteous. 
 Lord Hervey, in the House of Commons, advocated in vain, in 
 brilliant orations, the measures of Walpole. Twelve years, 
 fourteen years elapsed, and he was left in the somewhat subor- 
 dinate position of vice-chamberlain, in spite of that high order 
 of talents which he possessed, and which would have been dis- 
 played to advantage in a graver scene. The fact has been 
 explained : the queen could not do without him ; she confided 
 in him ; her daughter loved him ; and his influence in that 
 court was too powerful for Walpole to dispense with an aid so 
 valuable to his own plans. Some episodes in a life thus frit- 
 tered away, until, too late, promotion came, alleviated his exis- 
 tence, and gave his wife only a passing uneasiness, if even 
 indeed they imparted a pang. 
 
 One of these was his dangerous passion for Miss Vane ; 
 another, his platonic attachment to Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu. 
 
 Whilst he lived on the terms with his wife which is described 
 even by the French as being a ' Minage de Paris,' Lord Her- 
 vey, found in another quarter the sympathies which, as a 
 husband, he was too well-bred to require. It is probable that 
 he always admired his wife more than any other person, for she 
 had qualities that were quite congenial to the tastes of a wit 
 and a beau in those times. Lady Hervey was not only singu- 
 larly captivating, young, gay, and handsome j but a complete 
 model also of the poUshed, courteous, high-bred woman of 
 fashion. Her manners are said by Lady Louisa Stuart to have 
 ' had a foreign tinge, which some called affected ; but they were 
 gentle, easy, and altogether exquisitely pleasing.' She was in 
 secret a Jacobite — and resembled in that respect most of the 
 fine ladies in Great Britain. Whiggery and Walpolism were 
 vulgar : it was haut ton to take offence when James II. was 
 anathematized, and quite good taste to hint that some people 
 wished well to the Chevalier's attempts : and this way of speak- 
 ing owed its fashion probably to Frederick of Wales, whose 
 
IQO Rivalry. 
 
 interest in Flora Macdonald, and whose concern for the exiled 
 family, were among the few amiable traits of his disposition. 
 Perhaps they arose from a wish to plague his parents, rather 
 than from a greatness of character foreign to this prince. 
 
 Lady Hervey was in the bloom of youth, Lady Mary in the 
 zenith of her age, when they became rivals : Lady Mary had 
 once excited the jealousy of Queen Caroline when Princess of 
 Wales. 
 
 ' How becomingly Lady Mary is dressed to-night,' whispered 
 George II. to his wife, whom he had called up from the card- 
 table to impart to her that important conviction. ' Lady Mary 
 always dresses well,' was the cold and curt reply. 
 
 Lord Hervey had been married about seven years when 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu re-appeared at the court of Queen 
 Caroline, after her long residence in Turkey. Lord Hervey 
 was thirt)'-three years of age ; Lady Mary was verging on forty. 
 She was still a pretty woman, with a piquant, neat-featured face ; 
 which does not seem to have done any justice to a mind at 
 once masculine and sensitive, nor to a heart capable of benevo- 
 lence — capable of strong attachments, and of bitter hatred. • 
 
 Like Lady Hervey, she lived with her husband on well-bred 
 terms : there existed no quarrel between them ; no avowed 
 ground of coldness ; it was the icy boundary of frozen feeling 
 that severed them ; the sure and lasting though polite destroyer 
 of all bonds, indifference. Lady Mary was full of repartee, of 
 poetry, of anecdote, and was not averse to admiration ; but she 
 was essentially a woman of common sense, of views enlarged 
 by travel, and of ostensibly good principles. A woman of 
 delicacy was not to be found in those days, any more than other 
 productions of the nineteenth century : a telegraphic message 
 would have been almost as startHng to a courtly ear as the 
 refusal of a fine lady to suffer a double entendre. Lady Mary 
 was above all scruples, and Lord Hervey, who had lived too 
 long with George II. and his queen to have the moral sense in 
 her perfection, liked her all the better for her courage — ^her 
 merry, indelicate jokes, and her putting things down by theii 
 right names, on which Lady Mary plumed herself : she was 
 what they term in the north of England, ' Emancipated.' They 
 
4 Hervefs Intimacy with Lady Mary. 191 
 
 formed an old acquaintance with a confidential, if not a tender 
 friendship J and that their intimacy was unpleasant to Lady 
 Hervey was proved by her refiisal — ^when, after the grave had 
 closed over Lord Hervey, late in life, Lady Mary ill, and broken 
 down by age, returned to die in England — to resume an ac- 
 quaintance which had been a painful one to her. 
 
 I/Ord Hervey was a martyr to illness of an epileptic character ; 
 and Lady Mary gave him her sympathy. She was somewhat 
 of a doctor — and being older than her friend, may have had the 
 art of soothing sufferings, which were the worse because they 
 were concealed. Whilst he writhed in pain, he was obliged to 
 give vent to his agony by alleging that an attack of cramp bent 
 him double : yet he lived by rule — a rule harder to adhere to 
 than that of the most conscientious homoeopath in the present 
 day. In the midst of court gaieties and the duties of office, he 
 thus wrote to Dr. Cheyne : — 
 
 ... 'To let you know that I continue one of your most pious 
 TOtaries, and to tell you the method I am in. In the first place, 
 I never take wine nor malt drink, nor any liquid but water and 
 milk-tea ; in the next, 1 eat no meat but the whitest, youngest, 
 and tenderest, nine times in ten nothing but chicken, and never 
 more than the quantity of a small one at a meal. I seldom eat 
 any supper, but if any, nothing absolutely but bread and water ; 
 two days in the week I eat no flesh ; my breakfast is dry biscuit, 
 not sweet, and green tea ; I have left off butter as bilious ; I 
 eat no salt, nor any sauce but bread-sauce.' 
 
 Among the most cherished relaxations of the royal house- 
 hold were visits to Twickenham, whilst the court was at Rich- 
 mond. The River Thames, which has borne on its waves so 
 much misery in olden times — ^which was the highway from the 
 Star-chamber to the tower — ^which has been belaboured in our 
 days with so much wealth, and sullied with so much impurity ; 
 that river, whose current is one hour rich as the stream of a gold 
 river, the next hour, foul as the pestilent churchyard, — was then, 
 especially between Richmond and Teddington, a glassy, placid 
 stream, reflecting on its margin the chestnut-trees of stately 
 
192 Bacon's Opinion of Twickenham. 
 
 Ham, and the reeds and wild flowers which grew undisturbed 
 in the fertile meadows of Petersham. 
 
 Lord Hervey, with the ladies of the court, Mrs. Howard ai 
 their chaperon, delighted in being wafted to that village, so rich 
 in names which give to Twickenham undying associations with 
 the departed great. Sometimes the effeminate valetudinarian, 
 Hervey, was content to attend the Princess Caroline to Marble 
 Hill only, a villa residence built by George II. for Mrs. Howard, 
 and often referred to in the correspondence of that period. 
 Sometimes the royal barge, with its rowers in scarlet jackets, 
 was seen conveying the gay party ; ladies in slouched hats, 
 pointed over fair brows in front, with a fold of sarsenet round 
 them, terminated in a long bow and ends behind — with deep 
 falling mantles over dresses never cognizant of crinoline : gen- 
 tlemen, with cocked-hats, their bag-wigs and ties appearing 
 behind ; and beneath their puce-coloured coats, delicate silk 
 tights and gossamer stockings were visible, as they trod the 
 mossy lawn of the Palace Gardens at Richmond, or, followed 
 by a tiny greyhound, prepared for the lazy pleasures of the 
 day. 
 
 Sometimes the visit was private ; the sickly Princess Caroline 
 had a fancy to make one of the group who are bound to Pope's 
 villa. Twickenham, where that great little man had, since 1715, 
 established himself, was pronounced by Lord Bacon to be the 
 finest place in the world for study. ' Let Twitnam Park,' he 
 wrote to his steward, Thomas Bushell, 'which I sold in my 
 younger days, be purchased, if possible, for a residence for 
 such deserving persons to study in, (since I experimentally 
 found the situation of that place much convenient for the trial 
 of my philosophical conclusions) — expressed in a paper sealed, 
 to the trust — which I myself had put in practice and settled the 
 same by act of parliament, if the vicissitudes of fortune had not 
 intervened and prevented me.' 
 
 Twickenham continued, long after Bacon had penned this 
 injunction, to be the retreat of the poet, the statesman, the 
 scholar; the haven where the retired actress, and broken 
 novelist found peace ; the abode of Henry Fielding, who lived 
 in one of the back -streets ; the temporary refuge, from the world 
 
A Visit to Pope's Villa. 193 
 
 of London, of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the life-long 
 home of Pope. 
 
 Let us picture to ourselves a visit from the princess to Pope's 
 villa : — Ks the barge, following the gentle bendings of the river, 
 nears Twickenham, a richer green, a summer brightness, indi- 
 cates it is approaching that spot of which even Bishop War- 
 burton says that ' the beauty of the owner's poetic genius ap- 
 peared to as much advantage in the disposition of these ro- 
 mantic materials as in any of his best-contrived poems.' And 
 the loved toil which formed the quincunx, which perforated 
 and extended the grotto until it extended across the road to a 
 garden on the opposite side — the toil which showed the gentler 
 parts of Pope's better nature — has been respected, and its 
 effects preserved. The enamelled lawn, green as no other 
 grass save that by the Thames side is green, was swept until 
 late years -by the light boughs of the famed willow. Every 
 memorial of the bard was treasured by the gracious hands 
 into which, after 1 744, the classic spot fell — those of Sir William 
 Stanhope. 
 
 In the subterranean passage this verse appears ; adulatory it 
 must be confessed : — 
 
 * The humble roof, the garden's scanty line, 
 111 suit the genius of the bard divine ; 
 But fancy now assumes a fairer scope, 
 And Stanhope's plans unfold the soul of Pope." 
 
 It should have been Stanhope's ' gold,' — a metal which was not 
 so abundant, nor indeed so much wanted in Pope's time as in 
 our own. Let us picture to ourselves the poet as a feost. 
 
 As the barge is moored close to the low steps which lead up 
 from the river to the villa, a diminutive figure, then in its prime, 
 (if prime it ever had), is seen moving impatiently forward. By 
 that young-old face, with its large lucid speaking eyes that light 
 it up, as does a rushlight in a cavern — ^by that twisted figure 
 with its emaciated legs — by the large, sensible mouth, the 
 pointed, marked, well-defined nose — by the wig, or hair pushed 
 off in masses from the broad forehead and falling behind in 
 tresses — ^by the dress, that loose, single-breasted black coat — 
 by the cambric band and plaited shirt, without a frill, but fine 
 
 13 
 
194 The Little Nightingale. 
 
 and white, for the poor poet has taken infinite pains that day 
 in self-adomment — ^by the delicate ruffle on that large thin hand, 
 and still more by the clear, most musical voice which is heard 
 welcoming his royal and noble guests, as he stands bowing low 
 to the Princess Caroline, and bending to kiss hands — by that 
 voice which gained him more especially the name of the little 
 nightingale — is Pope at once recognized, and Pope in the per 
 fection of his days, in the very zenith of his fame. 
 
 One would gladly have been a sprite to listen from some twig 
 of that then stripling willow which the poet had planted with 
 his own hand, to talk of those who chatted for a while under 
 its shade, before they went in-doors to an elegant dinner at the 
 usual hour of twelve. How delightful to hear, unseen, the 
 repartees of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who comes down, it 
 is natural to conclude, from her villa near to that of Pope. 
 How fine a study might one not draw of the fine gentleman and 
 "■.he wit in Lord Hervey, as he is commanded by the gentle 
 Princess Caroline to sit on her right hand ; but his heart is 
 across the table, with Lady Mary ! How amusing to observe 
 the dainty but not sumptuous repast contrived with Pope's ex- 
 quisite taste, but regulated by his habitual economy— for his 
 late father, a worthy Jacobite hatter, erst in the Strand, dis- 
 dained to invest the fortune he had amassed, firom the extensive 
 sale of cocked-hats, in the Funds, over which an Hanoverian 
 stranger ruled ; but had lived on his capital of ^^20,000 (as 
 spendthrifts do, without either moral, religious, or political 
 reasons), as long as it lasted him ; yet he was no spendthrift. 
 Let us look, therefore, with a liberal eye, noting, as we stand, 
 how that fortune, in league with nature, who made the poet 
 crooked, had maimed two of his fingers, such time as, passing 
 a bridge, the poor little poet was overturned into the river, and 
 he would have been drowned, had not the postilion broken the 
 coach window and dragged the tiny body through the aperture. 
 We mark, however, that he generally contrives to hide this 
 defect, as he would fain have hidden every other, from the 
 lynx eyes of Lady Mary, who knows him, however, thoroughly, 
 and reads every line of that poor little heart of his, enamoured 
 of her as it was. 
 
POPE AT HIS VILLA — DISTINGUISHED VISITORS. 
 
The Essence of Small- Talk. r 9 5 
 
 Then the conversation ! How gladly would we catch here 
 some drops of what must have been the very essence of small- 
 talk, and small-talk is the only thing fit for early dinners ! 
 Our host is noted for his easy address, his engaging manners, 
 his delicacy, politeness, and a certain tact he had of showing 
 every guest that he was welcome in the choicest expressions 
 and most elegant terms. Then Lady Mary ! how brilliant is 
 her slightest turn ! how she banters Pope — how she gives double 
 aitendre for double aitendre to Hervey ! How sensible, yet how 
 gay is all she says ; how bright, how cutting, yet how polished 
 is the equivoque of the witty, high-bred Hervey ! He is happy 
 that day — away from the coarse, passionate king, whom he 
 hated with a hatred that burns itself out in his lordship's 
 ' Memoirs ;' away from the somewhat exacting and pitiable 
 queen ; away from the hated Pelham, and the rival Grafton. 
 
 And conversation never flags when all, more or less, are con- 
 genial; when all are well-informed, well-bred and resolved to 
 please. Yet there is a canker in that whole assembly; that 
 cnnker is a want of confidence; no one trusts the other; Lady 
 Mary's encouragement of Hervey surprises and shocks the 
 Princess Caroline, who loves him secretly ; Hervey's attentions 
 to the queen of letters scandalizes Pope, who soon afterwards 
 makes a declaration to Lady Mary. Pope writhes under a lash 
 just held over him by Lady Mary's hand. Hervey feels that 
 the poet, though all suavity, is ready to demolish him at any 
 moment, if he can ; and the only really happy and complacent 
 person of the whole party is, perhaps. Pope's old mother, who 
 sits in the room next to that occupied for dinner, industriously 
 spinning. 
 
 This happy state of things came, however, as is often the 
 case, in close intimacies, to a painful conclusion. There was 
 too little reahty, too little earnestness of feeling, for the friend- 
 ship between Pope and Lady Mary, including Lord Hervey, to 
 last long. His lordship had his affectations,. and his effeminate 
 nicety was proverbial. One day being asked at dinner if he 
 would take some beef, he is reported to have answered, ' Beef? 
 oh no ! faugh ! don't you know I never eat beef, nor horse, nor 
 curry, nor any of those things ?' Poor man ! it was probably a 
 
J 96 Pope's Quarrel with Hervey and Lady Mary. 
 
 pleasant way of turning off what he may have deemed an assault 
 on a digestion that could hardly conquer any solid food. This 
 affectation offended Lady Mary, whose mot, that there were 
 three species, 'Men, women, and Herveys' — implies a perfect 
 perception of the eccentricities even of her gifted friend. Lord 
 Herv'ey, whose mother's friend she had been, and the object of 
 whose admiration she undoubtedly was. 
 
 Pope, who was the most irritable of men, never forgot or for- 
 gave even the most trifling offence. Lady Bolingbroke truly 
 said of him that he played the poUtician about cabbages and 
 salads, and everybody agrees that he could hardly tolerate the 
 wit that was more successful than his own. It was about the 
 year 1725, that he began to hate Lord Hervey with such a 
 hatred as only he could feel ; it was unmitigated by a single 
 touch of generosity or of compassion. Pope afterwards owned 
 that his acquaintance with Lady Mary and with Hervey was 
 discontinued, merely because they had too much wit for him. 
 Towards the latter end of 1732, ' The Imitation of the Second 
 Satire of the First Book of Horace,' appeared, and in it Pope 
 attacked Lady Mary with the grossest and most indecent coup- 
 let ever printed : she was called Sappho, and Hervey, Lord 
 Faimy ; and all the world knew the characters at once. 
 
 In retaliation for this satire, appeared 'Verses to the Imitator 
 of Horace;' said to have been the joint production of Lord 
 Hervey and Lady Mary. This was followed by a piece entitled 
 ' Letter from a Nobleman at Hampton Court to a Doctor of 
 Divinity.' To this composition Lord Hervey, its sole author, 
 added these lines, by way, as it seems, of extenuation. 
 
 Pope's first reply was in a prose letter, on which Dr. Johnson 
 has passed a condemnation. ' It exhibits,' he says, ' nothing 
 but tedious malignity.' But he was partial to the Herveys, 
 Thomas and Henry Hervey, Lord Hervey's brothers, having 
 been kind to him — ' If you call a dog Hervey^ he said to Bos- 
 well, ' I shall love him.' 
 
 Next came the epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, in which every in- 
 firmity and peculiarity of Hervey are handed down in calm, 
 cruel irony, and polished verses, to posterity. The verses are 
 almost too disgusting to be revived in an age which disclaims 
 
Herve^s Duel with Pulteney. 197 
 
 scurrility. After the most personal rancorous invective, he thus 
 writes of Lord Hervey's conversation : — 
 
 His wit all see-saw between this and that — 
 Now high, now low — now master up, now misi — 
 And he himself one vile antithesis. 
 
 • » « * 
 
 Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board, 
 
 Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord. 
 
 Eve's tempter, thus the rabbins have expressed — 
 
 A cherub's face — a reptile all the rest. 
 
 Beauty that shocks you, facts that none can trust, 
 
 Wit that can creep, amd pride that bites the dust." 
 
 ' It is impossible,' Mr. Croker thinks, ' not to admire, how- 
 ever we may condemn, the art by which acknowledged wit, 
 beauty, and gentle manners — the queen's favour — and even a 
 valetudinary diet, are travestied into the most odious offences.' 
 
 Pope, in two lines, pointed to the intimacy between Lady 
 Mary and Lord Hervey : — 
 
 ' Once, and but once, this heedless youth was hit. 
 And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit.' 
 
 Nevertheless, he afteT-wards pretended that the name Sappho 
 was not applied to Lady Mary, but to women in general ; and 
 acted with a degree of mean prevarication which greatly added 
 to the amount of his offence. 
 
 The quarrel with Pope was not the only attack which Lord 
 Hervey had to encounter. Among the most zealous of his 
 foes was Pulteney, afterwards Lord Bath, the rival of Sir Robert 
 Walpole, and the confederate with Bolingbroke in opposing 
 that minister. The ' Craftsman,' contained an attack on Pul- 
 teney, written, with great ability, by Hervey. It provoked a 
 Reply from Pulteney. In this composition he spoke of Hervey 
 as ' a thing below contempt,' and ridiculed his personal appear- 
 ance in the grossest terms. A duel was the result, the parties 
 meeting behind Arlington House, in Piccadilly, where Mr. 
 Pulteney had the satisfaction of almost running Lord Hervey 
 through with his sword. Luckily the poor man slipped down, 
 so the blow was evaded, and the seconds interfered : Mr. Pul- 
 teney then embraced Lord Hervey, and expressing his regret 
 for their quarrel, declared that he would never again, either in 
 
198 ' The Death of Lord Hervey : A Drama! 
 
 speech or writing, attack his lordship. Lord Hervey onJy 
 bowed, in silence ; and thus they parted. 
 
 The queen having observed what an alteration in the palace 
 Lord Hervey's death would cause, he said he could guess how 
 it would be, and he produced ' The Death of Lord Hervey ; 
 0/, a Morning at Court ; a Drama :' the idea being taken it is 
 thought, from Swift's verses on his own death, of which Hervey 
 might have seen a surreptitious copy. The following scene 
 will give some idea of the plot and structure of this amusing 
 little piece. The part allotted to the Princess Caroline is 
 in unison with the idea prevalent of her attachment to Lord 
 Hervey : — 
 
 ACT I. 
 Scene : The Queen's Gallery, The time, nine in the, morning. 
 
 Enter the QxsZEn, Princess Emily, Princess Caroiahz, followed by 'Lo'RT) 
 LiFFORD, aud Mrs. Purcel. 
 
 Queen. Mon Dieu, quelle chaleur ! en \inti on ^touffe. Pray open a little 
 those windows. 
 
 Lord Lifford. Hasa your Majesty heara de news ? 
 
 Queen. What news, my dear Lord? 
 
 Lord Lifford. Dat my Lord Hervey, as he was coming last night to tone, was 
 rob and murdered by highwaymen and tron in a ditch. 
 
 Princess Caroline. Eh ! grand Dieu ! 
 
 Queen [striking her hand upon her knee.] Comment est-il vdritablement mort ? 
 Purcel, my angel, shall 1 not have a little breakfast ? 
 
 Afrs. Purcel. What would your Majesty please to have ? 
 
 Queen. A Httle chocolate, my soul, if you give me leave, and a little sour 
 cream, and some fruit. \Exit Mrs. Purcel. 
 
 Queen [to Lord Lifford.^ Eh bien ! my Lord Lifford, dites-nous un peu com- 
 ment cela est arriv^. I cannot imagine what he had to do to be putting his nose 
 there. Seulement pour un sot voyage avec ce petit mousse, eh bien ? 
 
 Lord Lifford. Madame, on scait quelque chose de celui de Mon. Maran, qui 
 d'abord qu'il a vu les voleurs s'est enfin venu i grand galoppe k Londres, and 
 after dat a waggoner take up the body and put it in his cart. 
 
 Queen, [to Princess Emily.] Are you not ashamed, Amalie, to laugh? 
 
 Princess Emily. I only laughed at the cart, mamma. 
 
 Queen. Oh ! that is a very fade plaisanterie. 
 
 Princess Emily. But if I may say it, mamma, I am not very sorry. 
 
 Queen. Oh ! fie done ! Eh bien I my Lord Lifford ! My God I where is this 
 chocolate, Purcel? 
 
 As Mr. Croker remarks. Queen Caroline's breakfast-table, 
 and her parentheses, reminds one of the card-table conversation 
 of Swift :— 
 
 ' The Dean's dead : (pray what are trumps ?) 
 Then Lord have mercy on his soul I 
 (Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.) 
 Six Deans, they say, must bear the pal) ; 
 (I wish I knew what king to call.)' 
 
Queen Carolines last Drawing-Room. 199 
 
 Fragile as was Lord Hervey's constitution, it was his lot to 
 witness the death-bed of the queen, for whose amusement he 
 had penned the jeu d'esprit just quoted, in which there was, 
 perhaps, as much truth as wit. 
 
 The wretched Queen Caroline had, during fourteen years, con- 
 cealed from every one, except Lady Sundon, an incurable dis- 
 order, that of hernia. In November (1737) she was attacked 
 with what we should now call English cholera. Dr. Tessier, her 
 house-physician, was called in, and gave her Daffey's elixir, 
 which was not likely to afford any relief to the deep-seated 
 cause of her suflferings. She held a drawing-room that night 
 for the last time, and played at cards, even cheerfully. At 
 length she whispered to Lord Hervey, ' I am not able to enter- 
 tain people.' ' For heaven's sake, madam,' was the reply, ' go 
 to your room : would to heaven the king would leave off talk- 
 ing of the Dragon of Wantley, and release you !' The Dragon 
 of Wantley was a burlesque on the Italian opera, by Henry 
 Carey, and was the theme of the fashionable world. 
 
 The next day the queen was in fearful agony, very hot, and 
 willing to take anything proposed. Still she did not, even to 
 Lord Hervey, avow the real cause of her illness. None of the 
 most learned court physicians, neither Mead nor Wilmot, were 
 called in. Lord Hervey sat by the queen's bed-side, and tried to 
 soothe her, whilst the Princess Caroline joined in begging him 
 to give her mother something to relieve her agony. A.t length, 
 in utter ignorance of the case, it was proposed to give her some 
 snakeroot, a stimulant, and, at the same time. Sir Walter Ra- 
 leigh's cordial ; so singular was it thus to find that great mind 
 still influencing a court. It was that very medicine which was 
 administered by Queen Anne of Denmark, however, to Prince 
 Henry ; that medicine which Raleigh said, ' would cure him, or 
 any other, of a disease, except in case of poison.' 
 
 However, Ranby, house-surgeon to the king, and a favourite 
 of Lord Hervey's, assuring him that a cordial with this name 
 or that name was mere quackery, some usquebaugh was given 
 instead, but was rejected by the queen soon afterwards. At 
 last Raleigh's cordial was administered, but also rejected about 
 an hour afterwards. Her fever, after taking Raleigh's cordial, 
 
200 Her Illness and Agony, 
 
 was so much increased, that she was ordered instantly to be 
 bled. 
 
 Then, even, the queen never disclosed the fact that could 
 alone dictate the course to be pursued. George II., with more 
 feeling than judgment, slept on the outside of the queen's bed 
 all that night ; so that the unhappy invalid could get no rest, 
 nor change her position, not daring to irritate the king's temper. 
 
 The next day the queen said touchingly to her gentle, affec- 
 tionate daughter, herself in declining health, ' Poor Caroline ! 
 you are very ill, too : we shall soon meet again in another 
 place.' 
 
 Meantime, though the queen declared to every one that she 
 was sure nothing could save her, it was resolved to hold a levee. 
 The foreign ministers were to come to court, and the king, in 
 the midst of his real grief, did not forget to send word to his 
 pages to be sure to have his last new ruffles sewed on the shirt 
 he was to put on that day ; a trifle which often, as Lord Hervey 
 remarks, shows more of the real character than events of im- 
 portance, from which one frequently knows no more of a per- 
 son's state of mind than one does of his natural gait from 
 his dancing. 
 
 Lady Sundon was, meantime, ill at Bath, so that the queen's 
 secret rested alone in her own heart. ' I have an ill,' she said, 
 one evening, to her daughter Caroline, 'that nobody knows of ' 
 Still, neither the princess nor Lord Hervey could guess at the 
 full meaning of that sad assertion. 
 
 The famous Sir Hans Sloane was then called in ; but no 
 remedy except large and repeated bleedings were suggested, 
 and blisters were put on her legs. There seems to have been 
 no means left untried by the faculty to hasten the catastrophe — 
 thus working in the dark. 
 
 The king now sat up with her whom he had so cruelly 
 wounded in every nice feeling. On being asked, by Lord 
 Hervey, what was to be done in case the Prince of Wales 
 should come to inquire after the queen, he answered in the 
 following terms, worthy of his ancestry — worthy of himself It 
 is difficult to say which was the most painful scene, that in the 
 chamber where the queen lay in agony, or without, where the 
 
A Painful Scene. 201 
 
 curse of family dissensions came like a ghoul to hover near the 
 bed of death, and to gloat over the royal corpse. This was the 
 royal dictum : — ' If the puppy should, in one of his impertinent 
 airs of duty and affection, dare to come to St. James's, I order 
 you to go to the scoundrel, and tell him I wonder at his im- 
 pudence for daring to come here ; that he has my orders al- 
 ready, and knows my pleasure, and bid him go about his 
 business ; for his poor mother is not in a condition to see him 
 act his false, whining, cringing tricks now, nor am I in a hu- 
 mour to bear with his impertinence ; and bid him trouble me 
 with no more messages, but get out of my house.' 
 
 In the evening, whilst Lord Hervey sat at tea in the queen's 
 outer apartment with the Duke of Cumberland, a page came to 
 the duke to speak to the prince in the passage. It was to 
 prefer a request to see his mother. This message was conveyed 
 by Lord Hervey to the king, whose reply was uttered in the 
 most vehement rage possible. ' This,' said he, ' is like one of 
 his scoundrel tricks ; it is just of a piece with his kneeling down 
 in the dirt before the mob to kiss her hand at the coach door 
 when she came home from Hampton Court to see the Princess, 
 though he had not spoken one word to her during her whole 
 visit. I always hated the rascal, but now I hate him worse 
 than ever. He wants to come and insult his poor dying mo- 
 ther ; but she shall not see him : you have heard her, and all 
 my daughters have heard her, very often this year at Hampton 
 Court desire me if she should be ill, and out of her senses, that 
 I would never let him come near her ; and whilst she had her 
 senses she was sure she should never desire it. No, no ! he 
 shall not come and act any of his silly plays here.' 
 
 In the afternoon the queen said to the king, she wondered 
 the Grty, a nickname she gave to the prince, had not sent to 
 inquire after her yet ; it would be so like one of his paroit7-es. 
 ' Sooner or later,' she added, ' I am sure we shall be plagued 
 with some message of that sort, because he will think it will have 
 a good air in the world to ask to see me ; and, perhaps, hopes 
 I shall be fool enough to let him come, and give him the plea- 
 sure of seeing the last breath go out of my body, by which 
 
202 The Truth Discovered. 
 
 means he would have the joy of knowing I was dead five 
 
 minutes sooner than he could know it in Pall Mall.' 
 
 She afterwards declared that nothing would induce her to see 
 him except the king's absolute commands. 'Therefore, if 1 
 grow worse,' she said, ' and should I be weak enough to talk of 
 seeing him, I beg you, sir, to conclude that I doat — or rave.' 
 
 The king, who had long since guessed at the queen's disease, 
 urged her now to permit him to name it to her physicians. She 
 begged him not to do so ; and for the iirst time, and the last, 
 the unhappy woman spoke peevishly and warmly. Then Ranby, 
 the house-surgeon, who had by this time discovered the truth, 
 said, ' There is no more time to be lost ; your majesty has con- 
 cealed the truth too long : I beg another surgeon may be called 
 in immediately.' 
 
 The queen, who had, in her passion, started up in her bed, 
 lay down again, turned her head on the other side, and, as the 
 king told Lord Hervey, ' shed the only tear he ever saw her 
 shed whilst she was ill.' 
 
 At length, too late, other and more sensible means were re- 
 sorted to : but the queen's strength was failing fast. It must 
 have been a strange scene in that chamber of death. Much as 
 the king really grieved for the queen's state, he was still suffici- 
 ently collected to grieve also lest Richmond Lodge, which was 
 settled on the queen, should go to the hated Griff:* and he 
 actually sent Lord Hervey to the lord chancellor to inquire 
 about that point. It was decided that the queen could make a 
 will, so the king informed her of his inquiries, in order to set 
 her mind at ease, and to assure her it was impossible that the 
 prince could in any way benefit pecuniarily from her death. The 
 Princess Emily now sat up with her mother. The king went to 
 bed. The Princess Caroline slept on a couch in the ante- 
 chamber, and Lord Hervey lay on a mattress on the floor at 
 the foot of the Princess Caroline's couch. 
 
 On the following day (four after the first attack) mortification 
 came on, and the weeping Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey 
 were informed that the queen could not hold out many hours. 
 Lord Hervey was ordered to withdraw. The king, the Duke 
 
 • Prince Frederick. 
 
The Queen's Dying Bequests. 203 
 
 of Cumberland, and the queen's four daughters alone remained. 
 the queen begging them not to leave her until she expired ; yet 
 her life was prolonged many days. 
 
 When alone with her family, she took from her finger a 
 ruby ring, which had been placed on it at the time of the coro- 
 nation, and gave it to the king. 'This is the last thing,' she 
 said, ' I have to give you ; naked I came to you, and naked I 
 go from you ; I had everything I ever possessed from you, and 
 to you whatever I have I return.' She then asked for her keys, 
 and gave them to the king. To the Princess Carohne she in- 
 trusted the care of her younger sisters ; to the Duke of Cum- 
 berland, that of keeping up the credit of the family. ' Attempt 
 nothing against your brother, and endeavour to mortify him by 
 showing superior merit,' she said to him. She advised the king 
 to marry again ; he heard her in sobs, and with much difficulty 
 got out this sentence : ' Non, faurai des mattresses.'' To which 
 the queen made no other reply than ' Ah, man Dieu I cela 
 riempkhe pas? ' I know,' says Lord Hervey, in his Memoirs, 
 ' that this episode will hardly be credited, but it is literally 
 true.' 
 
 She then fancied she could sleep. The king kissed her, 
 and wept over her ; yet when she asked for her watch, which 
 hung near the chimney, that she might give him the seal to take 
 care of, his brutal temper broke forth. In the midst of his tears 
 he called out, in a loud voice, ' Let it alone ! nwn Dieu I the 
 queen has such strange fancies ; who should meddle with your 
 seal ? It is as safe there as in my pocket.' 
 
 The queen then thought she could sleep, and, in fact, sank to 
 rest. She felt refireshed on awakening and said, ' I wish it was 
 over ; it is only a reprieve to make me suffer a little longer ; I 
 cannot recover, but my nasty heart will not break yet.' She had 
 an impression that she should die on a Wednesday : she had, 
 she said, been bom on a Wednesday, married on a Wednesday, 
 crowned on a Wednesday, her first child was born on a Wed- 
 nesday, and she had heard of the late king's death on a Wed- 
 nesday. 
 
 On the ensuing day she saw Sir Robert Walpole. ' My good 
 Sir Robert,' she thus addressed him, ' you see me in a very in- 
 
204 Archbishop Potter is seritfor. 
 
 different situation. I have nothing to say to you but to re- 
 commend the king, my children, and the kingdom to youi 
 care.' 
 
 Lord Hervey, when the minister retired, asked him what he 
 thought of the queen's state. 
 
 ' My lord,' was the reply, ' she is as much dead as if she was 
 in her coffin ; if ever I heard a corpse speak, it was just now 
 in that room !' 
 
 It was a sad, an awful death-bed. The Prince of Wales 
 having sent to inquire after the health of his dying mother, the 
 queen became uneasy lest he should hear the true stAe of her 
 case, asking ' if no one would send those ravens,' meaning the 
 prince's attendants, out of the house. ' They were only,' she 
 said, ' watching her death, and would gladly tear her to pieces 
 wliilst she was alive.' Whilst thus she spoke of her son's cour- 
 tiers, that son was sitting up all night in his house in Pall Mall, 
 and saying, when any messenger came in from St. James's, 
 ' Well, sure, we shall soon have good news, she cannot hold out 
 much longer.' And the princesses were writing letters to pre- 
 vent the Princess Royal from coming to England, where she 
 was certain to meet with brutal unkindness from her father, who 
 could not endure to be put to any expense. Orders were, in- 
 deed, sent to stop her if she set out. She came, however, 
 on pretence of taking the Bath waters ; but George II., furious 
 at her disobedience, obliged her to go direct to and from Bath 
 without stopping, and never forgave her. 
 
 Notwithstanding her predictions, the queen survived the fatal 
 Wednesday. Until this time no prelate had been called in to 
 pray by her majesty, nor to administer the Holy Communion 
 and as people about the court began to be scandalized by this 
 omission, Sir Robert Walpole advised that the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury should be sent for : his opinion was couched in the 
 following terms, characteristic at once of the man, the times, 
 and the court : — 
 
 ' Pray, madam,' he said to the Princess Emily, ' let this farce 
 be played ; the archbishop will act it very well. You may bid 
 him be as short as you will : it will do the queen no hurt, no 
 more than any good j and it will satisfy all the wise iand good 
 
Tlie Duty of Reconciliation. 205 
 
 fools, who will call us atheists if we don't pretend to be as great 
 fools as they are.' 
 
 Unhappily, Lord Hervey, who relates this anecdote, was 
 himself an unbeliever ; yet the scoffing tone adopted by Sir 
 Robert seems to have shocked even him. 
 
 In consequence of this advice. Archbishop Potter prayed by 
 the queen morning and evening, the king always quitting the 
 room when his grace entered it. Her children, however, knelt 
 by her bedside. Still the whisperers who censured were unsa- 
 tisfied — the concession was thrown away. Why did not the 
 queen receive the communion ? Was it, as the world believed, 
 either ' that she had reasoned herself into a very low and cold 
 assent to Christianity ?' or ' that she was heterodox ?' or ' that 
 the archbishop refused to administer the sacrament until she 
 should be reconciled to her son ?' Even Lord Hervey, who 
 rarely left the antechamber, has only by his silence proved that 
 she did not take the communion. That antechamber was 
 crowded with persons who, as the prelate left the chamber of 
 death, crowded around, eagerly asking, ' Has the queen re- 
 ceived ?' ' Her majesty,' was the evasive reply, ' is in a heavenly 
 disposition :' the public were thus deceived. Among those who 
 were near the queen at this solemn hour was Dr. Butler, author 
 of the ' Analogy.' He had been made clerk of the closet, and 
 became, after the queen's death, Bishop of Bristol. He was in 
 a remote living in Durham, when the queen, remembering that 
 it was long since she had heard of him, asked the Archbishop 
 of York ' whether Dr. Butler was dead ?' — ' No, madam,' re- 
 plied that prelate (Dr. Blackburn), ' but he is buried ;' upon 
 which she had sent for him to court. Yet he was not courageous 
 enough, it seems, to speak to her of her son and of the duty of 
 reconciliation ; whether she ever sent the prince any message or 
 not is uncertain ; Lord Hervey is silent on that point, so that it 
 is to be .feared that Lord Chesterfield's line — 
 
 ■ And, unforgiving, unforgiven, dies !' 
 
 had but too sure a foundation in fact ; so that Pope's sarcastic 
 verses — 
 
 ' Hang the sad verse on Carolina's urn. 
 And hail her passage to the realms of rest ; 
 pan farts performed and all her children blest,' 
 
2o6 TIu Death of Queen Caroline. 
 
 may have been but too just, though craelly bitter. The queen 
 lingered till the 20th of November. During that interval of 
 agony her consort was perpetually boasting to every one of her 
 virtues, her sense, her patience, hei softness, her delicacy ; and 
 ending with the praise, ' Comme elk soutenoit sa dignite avec grace, 
 avec poliiesse, avec douceur 1' Nevertheless he scarcely ever went 
 into her room. Lord Hervey states that he did, even in this 
 moving situation, snub her for something or other she did or said. 
 One morning, as she lay with her eyes fixed on a point in the air, 
 as people sometimes do when they want to keep their thoughts 
 from wandering, the king coarsely told her ' she looked like a 
 calf which had just had its throat cut' He expected her to 
 die in state. Then, with all his bursts of tenderness he always 
 mingled his own praises, hinting that though she was a good 
 wife he knew he had deserved a good one, and remarking, when 
 he extolled her understanding, that he did not ' think it the 
 worse for her having kept him company so many years.' To all 
 this Lord Hervey listened with, doubtless, well-concealed dis- 
 gust ; for cabals were even then forming for the future influence 
 that might or might not be obtained. 
 
 The queen's life, meantime, was softly ebbing away in this 
 atmosphere of selfishness, brutality, and unbelief One even- 
 ing she asked Dr. Tessier impatientiy how long her state might 
 continue. 
 
 ' Your Majesty,' was the reply, ' will soon be released.' 
 
 ' So much the better,' the queen calmly answered. 
 
 At ten o'clock that night, whilst the kipg lay at the foot of 
 her bed, on the floor, and the Princess Emily on a couch-bed 
 in the room, the fearful death-rattle in the throat was heard. 
 Mrs. Purcell, her chief and old attendant, gave the alarm : the 
 Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey were sent for; but the 
 princess was too late, her mother had expired before she arrived. 
 All the dying queen said was, ' I have now got an asthma ; open 
 the window :' then she added, 'PrayP That was her last 
 word. As the Princess Emily began to read some prayers, the 
 sufferer breathed her last sigh. The Princess Caroline held a 
 looking-glass to her lips, and finding there was no damp on it, 
 said, ' 'Tis over !' Yet she shed not one tear upon the arrival of 
 
A Change in Hervey's L ife. 207 
 
 that event, the prospect of which had cost her so many heart- 
 rending sobs. 
 
 The king kissed the lifeless face and hands of his often- 
 injured wife, and then retired to his owri apartment, ordering 
 that a page should sit up with him for that and several other 
 nights, for his Majesty was afraid of apparitions, and feared to 
 be left alone. He caused himself, however, to be buried by 
 the side of his queen, in Henry VII. 's chapel, and ordered 
 that one side of his coffin and of hers should be withdrawn ; 
 and in that state the two coffins were discovered not many 
 years ago. 
 
 With the death of Queen Caroline, Lord Hervey's life, as to 
 court, was changed. He was afterwards made lord privy seal, 
 and had consequently to enter the political world, with the dis- 
 advantage of knowing that much was expected from a man of 
 so high a reputation for wit and learning. He was violently 
 opposed by Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, who had been adverse 
 to his entering the ministry, and since, with Walpole's favour, 
 it was impossible to injure him by fair means, it was resolved 
 to oppose Lord Hervey by foul ones. One evening, when 
 he was to speak, a party of fashionable Amazons, with two 
 duchesses — her grace of Queensberry and her grace of Ancas- 
 ter — at their head, stormed the House of Lords and disturbed 
 the debate with noisy laughter and sneers. Poor Lord Hervey 
 was completely daunted, and spoke miserably. After Sir Ro- 
 bert Walpole's fall Lord Hervey retired. The following letter 
 from him to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu fully describes his 
 position and circumstances : — 
 
 ' I must now,' he writes to her, ' since you take so friendly a 
 part in what concerns me, give you a short account of my natural 
 and political health ; and when I say I am still alive, and still 
 privy seal, it is all I can say for the pleasure of one or the 
 honour of the other ; for since Lord Orford's retiring, as I am 
 too proud to offer my service and friendship where I am not 
 sure they will be accepted of, and too inconsiderable to have 
 those advances made to me (though I never forgot or failed to 
 return any obligation I ever received), so I remain as illustrious 
 a nothing in this office as ever filled it since it was erected. 
 
20^ Lord Hervey's Death. 
 
 There is one benefit, however, I enjoy from this loss of my 
 court interest, which is, that all those flies which were buzzing 
 about me in the summer sunshine and full ripeness of that 
 interest, have all deserted its autumnal decay, and from think- 
 ing my natural death not far off, and my political demise 
 already over, have all forgot the death-bed of the one and the 
 coffin of the other.' 
 
 Again he wrote to her a characteristic letter : — 
 
 ' I have been confined these three weeks by a fever, which 
 is a sort of annual tax my detestable constitution pays to oui 
 detestable climate at the return of every spring ; it is now much 
 abated, though not quite gone off.' 
 
 He was long a helpless invalid ; and on the 8th of August, 
 1743, his short, unprofitable, brilliant, unhappy life was closed. 
 He died at Ickworth, attended and deplored by his wife, who 
 had ever held a secondary part in the heart of the great wit 
 and beau of the court of George II. After his death his son 
 George returned to Lady Mary all the letters she had written to 
 his father : the packet was sealed : an assurance was at the 
 same time given that they had not been read. In acknowledg- 
 ing this act of attention, Lady. Mary wrote that she could 
 almost regret that he had not glanced his eye over a corre- 
 spondence which might have shown him what so young a man 
 might perhaps be inclined to doubt — ' the possibihty of a long 
 and steady firiendship subsisting between two persons of different 
 sexes without the least mixture of love.' 
 
 Nevertheless some expressions of Lord Hervey's seem to 
 have bordered on the tender style, when writing to Lady Mary 
 in such terms as these. She had complained that she was too 
 old to inspire a passion (a sort of challenge for a compliment), 
 on which he wrote : ' I should think anybody a great fool that 
 said he liked spring better than' summer, merely because it is 
 further from autumn, or that they loved green fruit better than 
 ripe only because it was further from being rotten. I ever did, 
 and believe ever shall, like woman best — 
 
 • "Just in the noon of life — ^those golden days, 
 When the mind ripens ere the form decays." ' 
 
 Catainly this looks very unlike a pure Platonic, and it is not 
 
Memoirs of his Own Time. 209 
 
 to be wondered at that Lady Hervey refused to call on Lady 
 Mary, when, long after Lord Hervey's death, that fascinating 
 woman returned to England. A wit, a courtier at the very 
 fount of all politeness. Lord Hervey wanted the genuine source 
 of all social qualities — Christianity. That moral refrigerator 
 which checks the kindly current of neighbourly kindness, and 
 which prevents all genial feeling from expanding, produced its 
 usual effect — misanthropy. Lord Hervey's lines, in his ' Satire 
 after the manner of Persius,' describe too well his own mental 
 canker: — 
 
 * Mankind I know, their motives and their art, 
 Their vice their own, their virtue best apart, 
 Till played so oft, that all the cheat can tell, 
 And dangerous only when 'tis acted welL' 
 
 Lord Hervey left in the possession of his family a manuscript 
 work, consisting of memoirs of his own time, written in his 
 own autograph, which was clean and legible. This work, which 
 has furnished many of the anecdotes connected with his court 
 life in the foregoing pages, was long guarded from the eye of 
 any but the Hervey family, owing to an injunction given in his 
 will by Augustus, third Earl of Bristol, Lord Hervey's son, that 
 it should not see the Jight until after the death of his Majesty 
 George IH. It was not therefore published until 1848, when 
 they were edited by Mr. Croker. They are referred to both by 
 Horace Walpole, who had heard of them, if he had not seen 
 them, and by Lord Hailes, as affording the most intimate por- 
 traiture of a court that has ever been presented to the English 
 people. Such a delineation as Lord Hervey has left ought to 
 cause a sentiment of thankfulness in every British heart for not 
 being exposed to such influences, to such examples as he gives, 
 in the present day, when goodness, affection, purity, benevo- 
 lence, are the household deities of the court of our beloved, 
 inestimable Queen Victoria. 
 
 »4 
 
PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, 
 FOURTH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 
 
 The King of Table Wits. — Early Years. — Hervey's Description of his Person. — 
 ResSutions and Pursuits. — Study of Oratory. — ^The Duties of an Am- 
 bassador. — King George II.'s Opinion of his Chroniclers. — Life in the 
 Country. — Melusina, Countess of Walsingham. — George II. and his 
 Father's Will. — Dissolving Views. — Madanie du Bouchet. — The Broad- 
 Bottomed Administration. — Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in Time of Peril. — 
 Reformation of the Calendar.— Chesterfield House.— Exclusiveness.— Re- 
 commending 'Johnson's Dictionary.' — 'Old Samuel,' to Chesterfield. — 
 Defensive Pride. — ^The Glass of Fashion. — Lord Scarborough's Friendship 
 for Chesterfield.— The Death of Chesterfield's Son. — His Interest in his 
 Grandsons. — ' I must go and Rehearse my Funeral." — Chesterfield's Will. — 
 What is a Friend ? — Les Maniires Nobles. — Letters to his Son. 
 
 HE subject of this memoir may be thought by some 
 rather the modeller of wits than the original of that 
 class ; the great critic and judge of manners ratlier 
 
 than the delight of the dinner-table : but we are told to the 
 contrary by one who loved him not. Lord Hervey says of 
 Lord Chesterfield that he was ' allowed by everybody to have 
 more conversable entertaining table-wit than any man of his 
 time ; his propensity to ridicule, in which he indulged himself 
 with infinite humour and no distinction ; and his inexhaustible 
 spirits, and no discretion ; made him sought and feared — ^liked 
 and not loved — by most of his acquaintance.' 
 
 This formidable personage was born in London on the 2ni 
 day of September, 1694. It was remarkable that the father of 
 a man so vivacious, should have been of a morose temper ; all 
 the wit and spirit of intrigue displayed by him remind us of the 
 frail Lady Chesterfield, in the time of Charles II.* — that lady 
 who was looked on as a martyr because her husband was 
 
 * The Countess of Chesterfield here alluded to was the second wife of Philip, 
 second Earl of Chesterfield. PhiUp Dormer, fourth Earl, was grandson of tha 
 second Karl by his third wife. 
 
The King of Table Wits — Early Years. 211 
 
 jealous of her: ' a prodigy,' says De Gramraont, 'in the city of 
 London,' where indulgent critics endeavoured to excuse his 
 lordship on account of his bad education, and mothers vowed 
 that none of their sons should ever set foot in Italy, lest they 
 should ' bring back with them that infamous custom of laying 
 restraint on their wives.' 
 
 Even Horace Walpole cites Chesterfield as the ' mtty earl :' 
 apropos to an anecdote which he relates of an Italian lady, who 
 said that she was only four-and-twenty ; ' I suppose,' said Lord 
 Chesterfield, ' she means four-and-twenty stone.' 
 
 By his father the future wit, historian, and orator was utterly 
 neglected ; but his grandmother, the Marchioness of Halifax, 
 supplied to him the place of both parents, his mother — ^her 
 daughter. Lady Elizabeth Saville — ^having died in his childhood. 
 At the age of eighteen, Chesterfield, then Lord Stanhope, was 
 entered at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. It was one of the features 
 of his character to fall at once into the tone of the society into 
 which he happened to be thrown. One can hardly imagine his 
 being ' an absolute pedant,' but such was, actually, his own 
 account of himself : — ' When I talked my best, I quoted Horace; 
 when I aimed at being facetious, I quoted Martial ; and when 
 I had a mind to be a fine gentleman, I talked Ovid. I was 
 convinced diat none but the ancients had common sense; that 
 the classics contained everything that was either necessary, 
 useful, or ornamental to men; and I was not even without 
 thoughts of wearing the toga viriUs of the Romans, instead of 
 the vulgar and illiberal dress of the moderns.' 
 
 Thus, again, when in Paris, he caught the manners, as he 
 had acquired the language, of the Parisians. ' I shall not give 
 you my opinion of the French, because I am very often taken 
 for one of them, and several have paid me the highest compli- 
 ment they think it in their power to bestow — ^which is, " Sir, 
 you are just like ourselves." I shall only. tell you that I am 
 insolent ; I talk a great deal ; I am very loud and peremptory ; 
 I sing and dance as I walk along ; and, above all, I spend an 
 immense sum in hair-powder, feathers, and white gloves.' 
 
 Although he entered Parliament before he had attained the 
 legal age, and was expected to make a great figure in that 
 
212 Hervefs Description of his Person, 
 
 assembly, Lord Chesterfield preferred the reputation of a wit 
 and a beau to any other distinction. ' Call it vanity, if you 
 will,' he wrote in after-life to his son, ' and possibly it was so ; 
 but my great object was to make every man and every woman 
 love me. I often succeeded: but why ? by taking great pains.' 
 
 According to Lord Hervey"s account he often even sacrificed 
 his interest to his vanity. The description given of Lord 
 Chesterfield by one as bitter as himself implies, indeed, that great 
 pains were requisite to counterbalance the defects of nature. 
 Wilkes, one of the ugliest men of his time, used to say, that 
 with an hour's start he would carry off the affections of any 
 woman from the handsomest man breathing. Lord Chcter- 
 field, according to Lord Hervey, required to be still longer in 
 advance of a rival. 
 
 ' With a person,' Hervey writes, ' as disagreeable, as it was 
 possible for a human figure to be without being deformed, he 
 affected following many women of the first beauty and the most 
 in fashion. He was very short, disproportioned, thick and 
 clumsily made; had a broad, rough-featured, ugly face, with 
 black teeth, and a head big enough for a Polyphemus. One 
 Ben Ashurst, who said a few good things, though admired for 
 many, told Lord Chesterfield once, that he was like a stunted 
 giant — which was a humorous idea and really apposite.' 
 
 Notwithstanding that Chesterfield, when young, injured both 
 soul and body by pleasure and dissipation, he always found 
 time for serious study : when he could not have it otherwise, he 
 took it out of his sleep. How late soever he went to bed, he 
 resolved always to rise early ; and this resolution he adhered 
 to so faithfully, that at the age of fifty-eight he could declare 
 that for more than forty years he had never been in bed at nine 
 o'clock in the morning, but had generally been up before eight. 
 He had the good sense, in this respect, not to exaggerate even 
 this homely virtue. He did not rise with the dawn, as many early 
 risers pride themselves in doing, putting all the engagements of 
 ordinary life out of their usual beat, just as if the clocks had 
 been set two hours forward. The man in ordinary society, who 
 rises at four in this countiy, and goes to bed at nine, is a social 
 and family nuisance. 
 
Resolutions and Pursuits — Study of Oratory. 213 
 
 Strong good sense characterized Chesterfield's early pursuits. 
 Desultory reading he abhorred. He looked on it as one of the 
 resources of age, but as injurious to the young in the extreme. 
 ' Throw away,' thus he writes to his son, ' none of your time 
 upon those trivial, futile books, published by idle necessitous 
 authors for the amusement of idle and ignorant readers.' 
 
 Even in those days such books ' swarm and buzz about one :' 
 ' flap them away,' says Chesterfield, ' they have no sting.' The 
 earl directed the whole force of his mind to oratory, and be- 
 came the finest speaker of his time. Writing to Sir Horace 
 Mann, about the Hanoverian debate (in 1743, Dec. 15), 
 Walpole praising the speeches of Lords Halifax and Sandwich, 
 adds, 'I was there, and heard Lord Chesterfield make the 
 finest oration I have ever heard there.' This from a man who 
 had listened to Pulteney, to Chatham, to Cateret, was a singu- 
 larly valuable tribute. 
 
 Whilst a student at Cambridge, Chesterfield was forming an 
 acquaintance with the Hon. George Berkeley, the youngest 
 son of the second Earl of Berkeley, and remarkable rather as 
 being the second husband of Lady Suffolk, the favourite of 
 George II., than from any merits or demerits of his own. 
 
 This early intimacy probably brought Lord Chesterfield into 
 the close friendship which afterwards subsisted between him and 
 Lady Suffolk, to whom many of his letters are addressed. 
 
 His first public capacity was a diplomatic appointment : he 
 afterwards attained to the rank of an ambassador, whose duty 
 it is, according to a witticism of Sir Henry Wotton's ' to lie 
 abroad for the good of his country ;' and no man was in this 
 respect more competent to fulfil these requirements than Ches- 
 terfield. Hating both wine and tobacco, he had smoked and 
 drunk ,at Cambridge, ' to be in the fashion ;' he gamed at the 
 Hague, on the same principle ; and, unhappily, gaming became 
 a habit and a passion. Yet never did he indulge it when act- 
 ing, afterwards, in a ministerial capacity. Neither when Lord- 
 Lieutenant of Ireland, or as Under-secretary of State, did he 
 allow a gaming-table in his house. On the very night that he 
 resigned office he went to Whitis. 
 
214 King George II.' s Opinion of his Chroniclers. 
 
 The Hague was then a charming residence : among othars 
 who, from poUtical motives, were living there, were John Duke 
 of Marlborough and Queen Sarah, both of whom paid Ches- 
 terfield marked attention. Naturally industrious, with a ready- 
 insight into character — a perfect master in that art which bids 
 us keep one's thoughts close, and our countenances open, 
 Chesterfield was admirably fitted for diplomacy. A master of 
 modem languages and of history, he soon began to like busi- 
 ness. When in England, he had been accused of having ' a 
 need of a certain proportion of talk in a day :' ' that,' he wrote 
 to Lady Suffolk, ' is now changed into a need of such a pro- 
 portion of writing in a day.' 
 
 In 1728 he was promoted ; being sent as -ambassador to the 
 Hague, where he was popular, and where he believed his stay 
 would be beneficial both to soul and body, there being ' fewer 
 temptations, and fewer opportunities to sin,' as he wrote to Lady 
 Sufiblk, ' than in England.' Here his days passed, he asserted, 
 in doing the king's business, very ill — and his own still worse : — 
 sitting down daily to dinner with fourteen or fifteen people ; 
 whilst at five the pleasures of the evening began witli a lounge 
 on the Voorhoot, a pubKc walk planted by Charles V. : — then, 
 either a very bad French play, or a ' reprise quadrille^ with 
 three ladies, the youngest of them fifty, and the chance of 
 losing, perhaps, three florins (besides one's time) — lasted till 
 ten o'clock ; at which time ' His Excellency' went home, ' re- 
 flecting with satisfaction on the innocent amusements of a well- 
 spent day, that left nothing behind them,' and retired to bed at 
 eleven, ' with the testimony of a good conscience.' 
 
 All, however, of Chesterfield's time was not passed in this 
 serene dissipation. He began to compose ' The History of the 
 Reign of George II.' at this period. About only half a dozen 
 chapters were written. The intention was not confined to 
 Chesterfield : Carteret and Bolingbroke entertained a similai 
 design, which was completed by neither. When the subject 
 was broached before George II., he thus expressed himself; 
 and his remarks are the more amusing as they were addressed 
 to Lord Hervey, who was, at that very moment, making his 
 
Life in the Country. 215 
 
 notes for that bitter chronicle of his majesty's reign, which has 
 been ushered into the world by the late Wilson Croker— ' They 
 will all three,' said King George II., 'have about as much 
 truth in them as the Milk et Une Nuits. Not but I shall like 
 to read Bolingbroke's, who of all those rascals and knaves that 
 have been lying against me these ten years has certainly the 
 best parts, and the most knowledge. He is a scoundrel, but 
 he is a scoundrel of a higher class than Chesterfield. Chester- 
 field is a little, tea-table scoundrel, that tells little womanish 
 lies to make quarrels in families : and tries to make women 
 lose their reputations, and make their husbands beat them, 
 without any object but to give himself airs ; as if anybody 
 could believe a woman could like a dwarf baboon.' 
 
 Lord Hervey gave the preference to Bolingbroke ; stating as 
 his reason, that ' though Lord Bolingbroke had no idea of wit, 
 his satire was keener than any one's. Lord Chesterfield, on the 
 other hand, would have a great deal of wit in them ; but, in 
 every page you see he intended to be witty : every paragraph 
 would be an epigram. Polish, he declared, would be his bane ;' 
 and Lord Hervey was perfectly right. 
 
 In 1732 Lord Chesterfield was obliged to retire from his 
 embassy on the plea of ill-health, but probably, from some po- 
 litical cause. He was in the opposition against Sir Robert WaJ- 
 pole in the Excise Bill ; and felt the displeasure of that all- 
 powerful minister by being dismissed from his office of High 
 Steward. 
 
 Being badly received at court he now lived in the country ; 
 sometimes at Buxton, where his father drank the waters, where 
 he had his recreations, when not persecuted by two young 
 brothers. Sir William Stanhope and John Stanhope, one ot 
 whom performed ' tolerably ill upon a broken hautboy, and the 
 other something worse upon a cracked flute.' There he won 
 three half-crowns from the curate of the place, and a shilling 
 from ' Gaffer Foxeley" at a cock-match. Sometimes he sought 
 relaxation in Scarborough, where fashionable beaux ' danced 
 with the pretty ladies all night,' and hundreds of Yorkshire 
 country bumpkins ' played the inferior parts ; and, as it were, 
 only tumble, whilst the others dance upon the high ropes of 
 
2i6 Melusina, Countess of Walsingham. 
 
 gallantry.* Scarborough was full of Jacobites: the popular 
 feeling was then all rife against Sir Robert Walpole's excise 
 scheme. Lord Chesterfield thus wittily satirized that famous 
 measure : — 
 
 ' The people of this town are, at present, in great consterna- 
 tion upon a report they have heard from London, which, if 
 true, they think will ruin them. They are informed, that con- 
 sidering the vast consumption of these waters, there is a design 
 laid of excising them next session ; and, moreover, that as bath- 
 ing in the sea is become the general practice of both sexes, 
 and as the kings of England have always been allowed to be 
 masters of the seas, every person so bathing shall be gauged, 
 and pay so much per foot square, as their cubical bulk amounts 
 to.' 
 
 Ill 1733) Lord Chesterfield married Melusina, the supposed 
 niece, but, in fact, the daughter of the Duchess of Kendal, the 
 mistress of George I'. This lady was presumed to be a great 
 heiress, from the dominion which her mother had over the 
 king. Melusina had been created (for life) Baroness of Aid- 
 borough, county Suffolk, and Countess of Walsingham, county 
 Norfolk, nine years previous to her marriage. 
 
 Her father being George I., as Horace Walpole terms him, 
 ' rather a good sort of man than a shining king,' and her mo- 
 ther ' being no genius,' there was probably no great attraction 
 about Lady Walsingham, except her expected dowry. 
 
 During her girlhood Melusina resided in the apartments at 
 St. James's — opening into the garden ; and here Horace Wal- 
 pole describes his seeing George I., in the rooms appropriated 
 to the Duchess of Kendal, next to those of Melusina Schu- 
 lemberg, or, as she was then called, the Countess of Walsing- 
 ham. The Duchess of Kendal was then very ' lean and ill- 
 favoured.' ' Just before her,' says Horace, ' stood a tall, elderly 
 man, rather pale, of an aspect rather good-natured than august : 
 in a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff- 
 coloured doth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue 
 riband over all. That was George L' 
 
 The Duchess of Kendal had been maid of honour to the 
 Electress Sophia, the mother of George I. and the daughter of 
 

 fcC-^ 
 
 
 
 A ROYAL ROHBER. 
 
George tl. and his Father's Will. 217 
 
 Elizabeth of Bohemia. The duchess was always frightful ; so 
 much so that one night the electress, who had acquired a little 
 English, said to Mrs. Howard, afterwards Lady Suffolk, — glanc- 
 ing at Mademoiselle Schulemberg — ' Look at that mawkin, and 
 think of her being my son's passion !' 
 
 The duchess, however, like all the Hanoverians, knew how 
 to profit by royal preference. She took bribes : — she had a 
 settlement of ;^3,ooo a year. But her daughter was eventu- 
 ally disappointed of the expected bequest from her father, the 
 king.* 
 
 In the apartments at St. James's Lord Chesterfield for some 
 time lived, when he was not engaged in office abroad; and 
 there he dissipated large sums in play. It was here, too, that 
 Queen Caroline, the wife of George II., detected the intimacy 
 that existed between Chesterfield and Lady Suffolk. There 
 was an obscure window in Queen Caroline's apartments, which 
 looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at 
 night. One Twelfth Night Lord Chesterfield, having won a 
 large sum at cards, deposited it with Lady Suffolk, thinking it 
 not safe to carry it home at night. He was watched, and his 
 intimacy with the mistress of George II. thereupon inferred. 
 Thenceforth he could obtain no court influence ; and, in des- 
 peration, he went into the opposition. 
 
 On the death of George I., a singular scene, with which 
 Lord Chesterfield's interests were connected, occurred in the 
 Privy Council. Dr Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, produced 
 the king's will, and delivered it to his successor, expecting that 
 it would be opened and read in the council ; what was his con- 
 sternation, when his Majesty, without saying a word, put it into 
 his pocket, and stalked out of the room with real German im- 
 perturbability ! Neither the astounded prelate nor the subser- 
 vient council ventured to utter a word. The will was never 
 more heard of : and rumour declared that it was burnt. The 
 
 • In the 'Annual Register, ' for 1774, p. 20, it is stated that as George I. had 
 left Lady Walsingham a legacy which his successor did not thinlc proper to de- 
 liver, the Earl of Chesterfield was determined to recover it by a suit in Chancery, 
 had not his Majesty, on questioning the Lord Chancellor on the subject, and 
 being answered that he could give no opinion extrajudicially, thought proper to 
 fulfil the bequest. 
 
2i8 Dissolving Views. 
 
 contents, of course, never transpired; and the legacy of 
 ;^4o,ooo, said to have been left to the Duchess of Kendal, 
 was never more spoken of, until Lord Chesterfield, in i733> 
 married the Countess of Walsingham. In 1743, it is said, he 
 claimed the legacy — in right of his wife — the Duchess of 
 Kendal being then dead : and was ' quieted' with ^^20,000, 
 and got, as Horace Walpole observes, nothing firom the duchess 
 — ' except his wife.' 
 
 The only excuse that was urged to extenuate this act on the 
 part of George II., was that his royal father had burned two 
 wills which had been made in his favour. These were sup- 
 posed to be the wills of the Duke and Duchess of Zell and erf 
 the Electress Sophia. There was not even common honesty in 
 the house of Hanover at that period. 
 
 Disappointed in his wife's fortune, Lord Chesterfield seems 
 to have cared very little for the disappointed heiress. Their 
 union was childless. His opinion of marriage appears very 
 much to have coincided with that of the world of malcontents 
 who rush, in the present day, to the court of Judge Cresswell, 
 with ' dissolving views.' On one occasion he writes thus : ' I 
 have at last done the best office that can be done to most mar- 
 ried people ; that is, I have fixed the separation between my 
 brother and his wife, and the definitive treaty of peace will be 
 proclaimed in about a fortnight.' 
 
 Horace Walpole related the following anecdote of Sir Wil- 
 liam Stanhope (Chesterfield's brother) and his lady, whom he 
 calls ' a fond couple.' After their return from Paris, when they 
 arrived at Lord Chesterfield's house at Blackheath, Sir William, 
 who had, like his brother, a cutting, polite wit, that was pro- 
 bably expressed with the ' allowed simper' of Lord Chesterfield, 
 got out of the chaise and said, with a low bow, ' Madame, I 
 hope I shall never see your face again.' She replied, ' Sir, I 
 will take care that you never shall ;' and so they parted. 
 
 There was little probability of Lord Chesterfield's participat- 
 ing in domestic felicity, when neither his heart nor his fancy 
 were engaged in the union which he had formed. The lady to 
 whom he was really attached, and by whom he had a son, re- 
 sided in the Netherlands : she passed by the name of Madame 
 
Madame du Bouchet. 2ig 
 
 du Bouchet, and survived both Lord Chesterfield and her son. 
 A permanent provision was made for her, and a sum of five 
 hundred pounds bequeathed to her, with these words : ' as a 
 small reparation for the injury I did her.' ' Certainly,' adds 
 Lord Malion, in his Memoir of his illustrious ancestor, ' a small 
 one.' 
 
 For some time Lord Chesterfield remained in England, and 
 his letters are dated fi'om Bath, from Tonbridge, from Black- 
 heath. He had, in 1726, been elevated to the House of Lords 
 upon the death of his father. In that assembly his great elo- 
 quence is thus well described by his biographer : — * 
 
 ' Lord Chesterfield's eloquence, the fruit of much study, was 
 less characterized by force and compass than by elegance and 
 perspicuity, and especially by good taste and urbanity, and a 
 vein of delicate irony which, while it sometimes inflicted severe 
 strokes, never passed the limits of decency and propriety. It 
 was that of a man who, in the union of wit and good sense 
 with politeness, had not a competitor. These qualities were ma- 
 tured by the advantage which he assiduously sought and obtained, 
 of a familiar acquaintance with almost all the eminent wits and 
 writers of his time, many of whom had been the ornaments of 
 a preceding age of literature, while others were destined to be- 
 come those of a later period.' 
 
 The accession of George II., to whose court Lord Chester- 
 field had been attached for many years, brought him no poli- 
 tical preferment. The court had, however, its attractions even 
 for one who owed his polish to the belles of Paris, and who 
 was almost always, in taste and manners, more foreign than 
 English. Henrietta, Lady Pomfret, the daughter and heiress 
 of John, Lord Jeffreys, the son of Judge Jeffreys, was at that 
 time the leader of fashion. 
 
 Six daughters, one of them, Lady Sophia, surpassingly lovely 
 recalled the perfections of that ancestress, Arabella Fermor 
 whose charms Pope has so exquisitely touched in the ' Rape of 
 the Lock.' Lady Sophia became eventually the wife of Lord 
 Carteret, the minister, whose talents and the charms of whose 
 
 • XjsA Mahon, now Earl of Stanhope, if not the most eloquent, one of the 
 most honest historians of our time. 
 
220 TIte Broad-Bottomed Administration. 
 
 eloquence constituted him a sort of rival to Chesterfield. With 
 all his abilities, Lord Chesterfield may be said to have failed 
 both as a courtier and as a political character, as far as perma- 
 nent influence in any ministry was concerned, until in 1744, 
 when what was called the ' Broad-bottomed administration' was 
 formed, when he was admitted into the cabinet, In the follow- 
 ing year, however, he went, for the last time, to Holland, as 
 ambassadoij and succeeded beyond the expectations of his 
 party in the purposes of his embassy. He took leave of the 
 States-General just before the battle of Fontenoy, and hastened 
 to Ireland, where he had been nominated Lord-Lieutenant pre- 
 vious to his journey to Holland. He remained in that country 
 only a year ; but long enough to prove how liberal were his 
 views — how kindly the dispositions of his heart. 
 
 Only a few years before Lord Chesterfield's arrival in Dublin, 
 the Duke of Shrewsbury had given as a reason for accepting 
 the vice-regency of that country, (of which King James I. had 
 said, there was 'more ado' than with any of his dominions,) 
 ' that it was a place where a man had business enough to keep 
 him from falling asleep, and not enough to keep him awake.' 
 
 Chesterfield, however, was not of that opinion. He did more 
 in one year than the duke would have accomplished in five. 
 He began by instituting a principle of impartial justice. For- 
 merly, Protestants had alone been employed as ' managers ;' 
 the Lieutenant was to see with Protestant eyes, to hear with 
 Protestant ears. 
 
 ' I have determined to proscribe no set of persons whatever,' 
 says Chesterfield, ' and determined to be governed by none. 
 Had the Papists made any attempt to put themselves above the 
 law, I should have taken good care to have quelled them again. 
 It was said my lenity to the Papists had wrought no alteration 
 either in their religious or their political sentiments. I did not 
 expect that it would : but surely that was no reason for cruelty 
 towards them.' 
 
 Often by a timely jest Chesterfield conveyed a hint, or even 
 shrouded a reproof One of the ultra-zealous informed him 
 that his coachman was a Papist, and went every Sunday to 
 
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in Time of Peril. 22 1 
 
 mass. ' Does he indeed ? I will take care he never drives me 
 there,' was Chesterfield's cool reply. 
 
 It was at this critical period, when the Hanoverian dynasty 
 was shaken almost to its downfall by the insurrection in Scot- 
 land of 1745, that Ireland was imperilled: 'With a weak or 
 wavering, or a fierce and headlong Lord-Lieutenant — with a 
 Grafton or a Strafford,' remarks Lord Mahon, 'there would 
 soon have been a simultaneous rising in the Emerald Isle.' 
 But Chesterfield's energy, his lenity, his wise and just adminis- 
 tration saved the Irish from being excited into rebellion by the 
 emissaries of Charles Edward, or slaughtered, when conquered, 
 by the ' Butcher,' and his tiger-like dragoons. When all was 
 over, and that sad page of history in which the deaths of so 
 many faithful adherents of the exiled family are recorded, had 
 been held up to the gaze of bleeding Caledonia, Chesterfield 
 recommended mild measures, and advised tlie establishment of 
 schools in the Hgh'ands ; but the age was too narrow-minded 
 to adopt his views. In January, 1748, Chesterfield retired from 
 public life. ' Could I do any good,' he wrote to a friend, ' I 
 would sacrifice some more quiet to it ; but convinced as I am 
 that I can do none, I will indulge my ease, and preserve my 
 character. I have gone through pleasures while my constitution 
 and my spirits would allow me. Business succeeded them; 
 and I have now gone through every part of it without liking it 
 at all the better for being acquainted with it. Like many other 
 things, it is most admired by those who know it least. ... I 
 have been behind the scenes both of pleasure and business ; I 
 have seen all the coarse pulleys and dirty ropes which exhibit 
 and move all the gaudy machines ; and I have seen and smelt 
 the tallow candles which illuminate the whole decoration, to the 
 astonishment and admiration of the ignorant multitude. . . . 
 My horse, my books, and my friends will divide my time pretty 
 equally.' 
 
 He still interested himself in what was useful ; and carried a 
 Bill in the House of Lords for the Reformation of the Calendar, 
 in 1 751. It seems a small matter for so great a mind as his to 
 accomplish, but it was an achievement of infinite difficulty. 
 Many statesmen had shrunk from the undertaking; and even 
 
222 Reformation of the Calendar. 
 
 Chesteifield found it essential to prepare the public, by writing 
 in some periodical papers on the subject. Nevertheless the 
 vulgar outcry was vehement : ' Give us back the eleven days we 
 have been robbed of!' cried the mob at a general election. 
 WJien Bradley was dying, the common people ascribed his suf- 
 ferings to a judgment for the part he had taken in that ' impious 
 transaction,' the alteration of the calendar. But they were not 
 less bornts in their notions than the Duke of Newcastle, then 
 prime minister. Upon Lord Chesterfield giving him notice of 
 his Bill, that bustling premier, who had been in a hurry for forty 
 years, who never ' walked but always ran,' greatly alarmed, 
 begged Chesterfield not to stir matters that had been long quiet; 
 adding, that he did not like ' new-fangled things.' He was, as 
 we have seen, overruled, and henceforth the New Style was 
 adopted ; and no special calamity has fallen on the nation, as 
 was expected, in consequence. Nevertheless, after Chesterfield 
 had made his speech in the House of Lords, and when every 
 one had complimented him on the clearness of his explana- 
 tion — ' God knows,' he wrote to his son, ' I had not even at- 
 tempted to explain the Bill to them; I might as soon have 
 talked Celtic or Sclavonic to them as astronomy. They would 
 have understood it full as well.' So much for the ' Lords' in 
 those days ! 
 
 After his furore for politics had subsided, Chesterfield re- 
 turned to his ancient passion for play. We must linger a little 
 over the still brilliant period of his middle life, whilst his hear- 
 ing was spared; whilst his wit remained, and the charming 
 manners on which he had formed a science, continued ; and 
 before we see him in the mournful decline of a life wholly given 
 to the world. 
 
 He had now established himself in Chesterfield House. 
 Hitherto his progenitors had been satisfied with Bloomsbury 
 Square, in which the Lord Chesterfield mentioned by De Gram- 
 mont resided ; but the accomplished Chesterfield chose a site 
 near Audley Street, which had been built on what was called 
 Mr. Audle/s land, lying between Great Brook Field and the 
 ' Shoulder of Mutton Field.' And near this locality with the 
 elegant name, Chesterfield chose his spot, for which he had to 
 
Chesterfield House. 223 
 
 wrangle and fight with the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, 
 who alsked an exorbitant sum for the ground. Isaac Ware, the 
 editor of ' Palladio,' was the architect to whom the erection of 
 this handsome residence was intrusted. Happily it is still un- 
 touched by any renovating hand. Chesterfield's favourite apart- 
 ments, looking on the most spacious private garden in London, 
 are just as they were in his time ; one especially, which he 
 termed the ' finest room in London,' was furnished and deco- 
 rated by him. ' The walls,' says a writer in the ' Quarterly 
 Review,' ' are covered half way up with rich and classical stores 
 of literature ; above the cases are in close series the portraits 
 of eminent authors, French and English, with most of whom 
 he had conversed ; over these, and immediately under the 
 massive cornice, extend all round in foot-long capitals the 
 Horatian lines : — 
 
 ' Nunc . veteran . libris . Nunc . somno . et . inertibus . Horia. 
 Lucen . solicter . jucunda . oblivia . vitea. 
 
 ' On the mantel-pieces and cabinets stand busts of old orators, 
 interspersed with voluptuous vases and bronzes, antique or 
 Italian, and airy statuettes in marble or alabaster of nude or 
 semi-nude opera nymphs.' 
 
 What Chesterfield called the ' cannonical pillars' of the house 
 were columns brought from Cannons, near Edgeware, the seat 
 of the Duke of Chandos. The antechamber of Chesterfield 
 House has been erroneously stated as the room in which John- 
 son waited the great lord's pleasure. That state of endurance 
 was probably passed by ' Old Samuel' in Bloomsbury. 
 
 In this stately abode — one of the few, the very few, that 
 seem to hold noblesse apart in our levelling metropolis — Ches- 
 terfield held his assemblies of all that London, or indeed Eng- 
 land, Paris, the Hague, or Vienna, could furnish of what was 
 polite and charming. Those were days when the stream of 
 society did not, as now, flow freely, mingling with the grace of 
 aristocracy the acquirements of hard-working professors ; there 
 was then a strong line of demarcation ; it had not been broken 
 down in the same way as now, when people of rank and wealth 
 live in rows, instead of inhabiting hotels set apart Paris has 
 
224 Exclusiveness. 
 
 sustained a similar revolution, since lier gardens were built over, 
 and their green shades, delicious, in the centre of that hot city, 
 are seen no more. In the very Faubourg St. Germain, the grand 
 old hotels are rapidly disappearing, and with them something of 
 the exclusiveness of the higher orders. Lord Chesterfield, how- 
 ever, triumphantly pointing to the fruits of his taste and distribu- 
 tion of his wealth, witnessed, in his library at Chesterfield House, 
 the events which time produced. He heard of the death of 
 Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and of her bequest to him 
 of twenty thousand pounds, and her best and largest brilliant 
 diamond ring, ' out of the great regard she had for his merit, 
 and the infinite obligations she had received from him.' He 
 witnessed the change of society and of politics which occurred 
 when George II. expired, and the Earl of Bute, calling himself 
 a descendant of the house of Stuart, 'and humble enough to 
 be proud of it,' having quitted the isle of Bute, which Lord 
 Chesterfield calls ' but a little south of Nova Zembla,' took 
 possession, not only of the affections, but even of the senses 
 of the young king, George III., who, assisted by the widowed 
 Princess of Wales (supposed to be attached to Lord Bute), was 
 ' lugged out of the seraglio,' and ' placed upon the throne.' 
 
 Chesterfield lived to have the honour of having the plan of 
 ' Johnson's Dictionary ' inscribed to him, and the dishonour of 
 neglecting the great author. Johnson, indeed, denied the truth 
 of the story which gained general belief, in which it was asserted 
 that he had taken a disgust at being kept waiting in the earl's 
 antechamber, the reason being assigned that his lordship ' had 
 company with him ;' wlien at last the door opened, and forth 
 came Colley Gibber. Then Johnson — so report said — indignant, 
 not only for having been kept waiting but also for whom, went 
 away, it was affirmed, in disgust ; but this was solemnly denied 
 by the doctor, who assured Boswell that his wrath proceeded 
 from continual neglect on the part of Chesterfield. 
 
 Whilst the Dictionary was in progress, Chesterfield seemed 
 to forget the existence of him, whom, together with the other 
 literary men, he affected to patronize. 
 
 He once sent him ten pounds, after which he forgot John- 
 son's address, and said 'the great author had changed his 
 
' Old Samuel' to Chesterfield. 225 
 
 lodgings.' People who really wish to benefit others can always 
 discover where they lodge. The days of patronage were then 
 expiring, but they had not quite ceased, and a dedication was 
 always to be in some way paid for. 
 
 When the publication of the Dictionary drew near, Lord 
 Chesterfield flattered himself that, in spite of all his neglect, the 
 great compliment of having so vast an undertaking dedicated 
 to him would still be paid, and wrote some papers in the 
 ' World,' recommending the work, more especially referring to 
 the ' plan,' and terming Johnson the ' dictator,' in respect to 
 language : ' I will not only obey him,' he said, 'as my dictator, 
 like an old Roman, but like a modem Roman, will implicitly 
 believe in him as my pope.' 
 
 Johnson, however, was not to be propitiated by those 
 'honeyed words.' He wrote a letter couched in what he 
 called ' civil terms,' to Chesterfield, from which we extract the 
 following passages : 
 
 ' When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your 
 lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the 
 enchantmen. of your address ; and could not forbear to wish 
 that I might boast myself vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre — 
 that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world con- 
 tending \ but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that 
 neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. 
 When I had once addressed your lordship in publick, I had 
 exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly 
 scholar can possess. I had done all that I could ; and no man 
 is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. 
 
 ' Seven years, my lord, have now past, since I waited in your 
 outward room, or was repulsed from your door, during which 
 time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of 
 which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to 
 the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one 
 word of encouragement, or one smile of favour : such treatment 
 I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. ... Is 
 not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man 
 who is struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached 
 ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you 
 
 IS 
 
226 Defensive Pride. 
 
 Save been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had 
 been kind ; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and 
 cannot enjoy it ; till I am solitary and cannot impart it ; till I 
 am known and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical 
 asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been 
 received, or to be unwilling that the publick should consider me 
 as owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to 
 do for myself.' 
 
 The conduct of Johnson, on this occasion, was approved by 
 most manly minds, except that of his publisher, Mr. Robert 
 Dodsley ; Dr. Adams, a friend of Dodsley, said he was sorry 
 that Johnson had written that celebrated letter (a very 
 model of poKte contempt). Dodsley said he was sorry too, for 
 he had a property in the Dictionary, to which his lordship's 
 patronage might be useful. He then said that Lord Chester- 
 field had shown him the letter. ' I should have thought,' said 
 Adams, ' that Lord Chesterfield would have concealed it' 
 ' Pooh !' cried Dodsley, ' do you think a letter from Johnson 
 could hurt Lord Chesterfield ? not at all, sir. It lay on his table, 
 where any one might see it. He read it to me ; said, " this man 
 has great powers," pointed out the severest passages, and said, 
 " how well they were expressed." ' The art of dissimulation, in 
 which Chesterfield was perfect, imposed on Mr. Dodsley. 
 
 Dr. Adams expostulated with the doctor, and said Lord 
 Chesterfield declared he would part with the best servant he 
 had, if he had known that he had turned away a man who was 
 ' always welcome.' Then Adams insisted on Lord Chesterfield's 
 affability, and easiness of access to literary men. But the sturdy 
 Johnson replied, ' Sir, that is not Lord Chesterfield ; he is 
 the proudest man existing.' 'I think,' Adams rejoined, 'I 
 know one that is prouder ; you, by your owp account, are the 
 prouder of the two.' ' But mine,' Johnson answered, with one 
 of his happy turns, 'was defensive pride.' 'This man,' he after- 
 wards said, referring to Chesterfield, ' I thought had been a lord 
 among wits, but I find he is only a wit among lords.' 
 
 In revenge, Chesterfield in his Letters depicted Johnson, it 
 is said, in the character of the 'respectable Hottentot.' Amongst 
 Other tlvngs, he observed of the Hottentot, ' he throws his meat 
 
DR. JOHNSON AT LORD CHESTERFIELD'S. 
 
77^1? Glass of Fashion. 227 
 
 anywhere but down his throat.' This being remarked to John- 
 son, who was by no means pleased at being immortalized as the 
 Hottentot — ' Sir,' he answered, ' Lord Chesterfield never saw 
 me eat in his life.' 
 
 Such are the leading points of this famous and lasting con- 
 troversy. It is amusing to know that Lord Chesterfield was 
 not always precise as to directions to his letters. He once 
 directed to Lord Pembroke, who was always swimming ' To the 
 Earl of Pembroke, in the Thames, over against Whitehall. 
 This, as Horace Walpole remarks, was sure of finding him 
 within a certain fathom.' 
 
 Lord Chesterfield was now admitted to be the very ' glass of 
 fashion,' though age, and, according to Lord Hervey, a hideous 
 person, impeded his being the ' mould of form.' ' I don't know 
 why,' writes Horace Walpole, in the dog-days, from Strawberry 
 Hill, ' but people are always more anxious about their hay than 
 their com, or twenty other things that cost them more : I sup- 
 pose my Lord Chesterfield, or some such dictator, made it 
 fashionable to care about one's hay. Nobody betrays solicitude 
 about getting in his rents.' ' The prince of wits,' as the same 
 authority calls him — ' his entrance into the world was announced 
 by his bon-mots, and his closing lips dropped repartees that 
 sparkled with his juvenile fire.' 
 
 No one, it was generally allowed, had such a force of table- 
 wit as Lord Chesterfield] but while the ' Graces ' were ever his 
 theme, he indulged himself without distinction or consideration 
 in numerous saUies. He was, therefore, at once sought and 
 feared ; liked but not loved ; neither sex nor relationship, nor 
 rank, nor iriendship, nor obligation, nor profession, could shield 
 his victim from what Lord Hervey calls, ' those pointed, glitter 
 ing weapons, that seemed to shine only to a stander-by, but cut 
 deep into those they touched.' 
 
 He cherished 'a voracious appetite for abuse;' fell upon 
 every one that came in his way, and thus treated each one of 
 his companions at the expense of the other. To him Hervey, 
 who had probably often smarted, applied the lines of Boileau— 
 
 ' Mais e'est un petit fou qui se croit tout permisj 
 Et qui pour un bon mot va peidre vingt amis.' 
 
228 Lord Scarborough's Friendship for Chesterfield. 
 
 Horace Walpole (a more lenient judge of Chesterfield's merits) 
 observes that ' Chesterfield took no less pains to be the phoenix 
 of fine gentlemen, than Tully did to qualify himself as an 
 orator. Both succeeded : Tully immortalized his name ; Ches- 
 terfield's reign lasted a little longer than that of a fashionable 
 beauty.' It was, perhaps, because, as Dr. Johnson said, all Lord 
 Chesterfield's witty sayings were puns, that even his brilliant 
 wit failed to please, although it amused, and surprised its 
 hearers. 
 
 Notwithstanding the contemptuous description of Lord Ches- 
 terfield's personal appearance by Lord Hervey, his portraits re- 
 present a handsome, though hard countenance, well-marked 
 features, and his figure and air appear to have been elegant. 
 With his commanding talents, his wonderful brilliancy and 
 fluency of conversation, he would perhaps sometimes have been 
 even tedious, had it not been for his invariable cheerfulness. 
 He was always, as Lord Hervey says, ' present' in his company. 
 Amongst the few friends who really loved this thorough man of 
 the world, was Lord Scarborough, yet no two characters were 
 more opposite. Lord Scarborough had judgment, without wit : 
 Chesterfield wit, and no judgment ; Lord Scarborough had 
 honesty and principle ; Lord Chesterfield had neither. Every- 
 body liked the one, but did not care for his company. Every 
 one disliked the other, but wished for his company. The fact 
 was, Scarborough was 'splendid and absent.' Chesterfield 
 ' cheerful and present :' wit, grace, attention to what is passing, 
 the surface, as it were, of a highly-cultured mind, produced a 
 fascijiation with which all the honour and respectability in the 
 Court of George H. could not compete. 
 
 In the earlier part of Chesterfield's career. Pope, Bolingbroke, 
 Hervey, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and, in fact, all that 
 could add to the pleasures of the then early dinner-table, illu- 
 mined Chesterfield House by their wit and gaiety. Yet in the 
 midst of this exciting life, Lord Chesterfield found time to de- 
 vote to the improvement of his natural son, Philip Stanhope, a 
 great portion of his leisure. His celebrated Letters to that son 
 did not, however, appear during the earl's life j nor were they 
 
The Death of Chesterfield's Son. 229 
 
 in any way the source of his popularity as a wit, which was due 
 to his merits in that Hne alone. 
 
 The youth to whom these letters, so useful and yet so ob- 
 jectionable, were addressed, was intended for a diplomatist. 
 He was the very reverse of his father : learned, sensible, and 
 dry ; but utterly wanting in the graces, and devoid of eloquence. 
 As an o^-ator, therefore, he failed ; as a man of society, he must 
 also have failed; and his death, in 1768, some years before that 
 of his father, left that father desolate, and disappointed. Philip 
 Stanhope had attained the rank of envoy to Dresden, where he 
 expired. 
 
 During the five years in which Chesterfield dragged out a 
 mournful life after this event, he made the painful discovery that 
 his son had married without confiding that step to the father to 
 whom he owed so much. This must have been almost as trying 
 as the awkward, ungraceful deportment of him whom he 
 mourned. The world now left Chesterfield ere he had left the 
 world. He and his contemporary Lord Tjrrawley were now old 
 and infirm. ' The fact is,' Chesterfield wittily said, ' Tyrawley 
 and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to 
 have it known.' 
 
 ' The Bath,' he wrote to his friend Dayrolles, ' did me more 
 good than I thought anything could do me ; but all that good 
 does not amount to what builders call half-repairs, and only 
 keeps up the shattered fabric a Httle longer than it would 
 have stood without them ; but take my word for it, it will stand 
 but a very little while longer. I am now in my grand climac- 
 teric, and shall not complete it. Fontenelle's last words at a 
 liundred and three were, Je souffre d'Ure . deaf and infirm as I 
 am, I can with truth say the same thing at sixty-three. In my 
 mind it is only the strength of our passions, and the weakness 
 of our reason, that makes us so fond of life ; but when the 
 former subside and give way to the latter, we grow weary of 
 being, and willing to withdraw. I do not recommend this train 
 of serious reflections to you, nor ought you to adopt them. 
 . . . You have children to educate and provide for, you have 
 all your senses, and can enjoy all the comforts both of domestic 
 and social life. I am in every sense isoU, and have wound up 
 
230 His Interest in his Grandsons. 
 
 all my bottoms ; I may now walk off quietly, without missing 
 nor being missed.' 
 
 The kindness of his nature, corrupted as it was by a life 
 wholly worldly, and but little illumined in its course by reli- 
 gion, shone now in his care of his two grandsons, the offspring 
 of his lost son, and of their mother, Eugenia Stanhope. To 
 her he thus wrote : — 
 
 ' The last time I had the pleasure of seeing you, I was so 
 taken up in playing with the boys, that I forgot their more im- 
 portant affairs. How soon would you have them placed at 
 school ? When I know your pleasure as to that, I will send to 
 Monsieur Pemy, to prepare everything for their reception. In 
 the mean time, I beg that you will equip them thoroughly with 
 clothes, linen, &c., all good, but plain ; and give me the amount, 
 which I will pay ; for I do not intend, from this time forwards, 
 the two boys should cost you one shilling.' 
 
 He lived, latterly, much at Blackheath, in the house which, 
 being built on Crown land, has finally become the Ranger's 
 lodge ; but which still sometimes goes by the name of Chester- 
 field House. Here he spent large sums, especially on pictures, 
 and cultivated Cantelupe melons ; and here, as he grew older, 
 and became permanently afflicted with deafness, his chief com- 
 panion was a useful friend, Solomon Dayrolles — one of those 
 indebted hangers-on whom it was an almost invariable custom 
 to find, at that period, in great houses — and perhaps too fre- 
 quently in our own day. 
 
 Dayrolles, who was employed in the embassy under Lord 
 Sandwich at the Hague, had always, to borrow Horace Wal- 
 pole's ill-natured expression, ' been a led-captain to the Dukes 
 of Richmond and Grafton, used to be sent to auctions for them, 
 and to walk in the parks with their daughters, and once went 
 dry-nurse in Holland with them. He has belonged, too, a good 
 deal to my Lord Chesterfield, to whom I believe he owes this 
 new honour, " that of being minister at the Hague," as he had 
 before made him black-rod in Ireland, and gave the ingenious 
 reason that he had a black face.' But the great ' dictator' in the 
 empire of politeness was now in a slow but sure decline. Not 
 long before his death he was visited by Monsieur Suard, a 
 
' / must go and Rehearse my Funeral^ 23 1 
 
 French gentleman, who was anxious to see ' I'homme le plm 
 aimable, le plus poli et le plus spirituel des trois royaumes,' but 
 who found him fearfully altered ; morose from his deafness, yet 
 still anxious to please. ' It is very sad,' he said, with his usual 
 politeness, ' to be deaf, when one would so much enjoy listening. 
 I am not,' he added, ' so philosophic as my friend the President 
 de Montesquieu, who says, " I know how to be blind, but I do 
 not yet know how to be deaf." ' 'We shortened our visit,' says 
 M. Suard, ' lest we should fatigue the earl.' ' I do not detain 
 you,' said Chesterfield, ' for I must go and rehearse my funeral.' 
 It was thus that he styled his daily drive through the streets of 
 London. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield's wonderful memory continued till his latest 
 hour. As he lay, gasping in the last agonies of extreme de- 
 bility, his friend, Mr. Dayrolles, called in to see him half an 
 hour before he expired. The politeness which had become part 
 of his very nature did not desert the dying earl. He managed 
 to say, in a low voice, to his valet, ' Give Dayrolles a chair.' 
 This little trait greatly struck the famous Dr. Warren, who was 
 at the bedside of this brilliant and wonderful man. He died on 
 the 24th of March, 1773, in the 79th year of his age. 
 
 The preamble to a codicil (Feb. ir, 1773) contains the fol- 
 lowing striking sentences, written when the intellect was 
 impressed with the solemnity of that solemn change which 
 comes alike to the unreflecting and to the heart stricken, holy 
 believer : — 
 
 ' I most humbly recommend my soul to the extensive mercy of that Eternal, 
 Supreme, Intelligent Being who gave it me ; most earnestly at the same time 
 deprecating his justice. Satiated with the pompous follies of this life, of which 
 I have had an uncommon share, I would have no posthumous ones displayed 
 at my funeral,- and therefore desire to be buried in the next burying-place to 
 the place where I shall die, and hmit the whole expense of my funeral to ;^ioo.' 
 
 His body was interred, according to his wish, in the vault 
 of the chapel in South Audley Street, but it was afterwards 
 removed to the family burial-place in -Shelford Church, Not- 
 tinghamshire. 
 
 In his will he left legacies to his servants." ' I consider 
 them,' he said, ' as unfortunate friends ; my equals by nature, 
 
 * Two years' wages were left to the servants. 
 
232 Chesterfield's Will. 
 
 and ray inferiors only in the difference of our fortunes.' There 
 was something lofty in the mind that prompted that sentence. 
 
 His estates reverted to a distant kinsman, descended from 
 a younger son of the first earl ; and it is remarkable, on look- 
 ing through the Peerage of Great Britain, to perceive how often 
 this has been the case in a race remarkable for the absence of 
 virtue. Interested marriages, vicious habits, perhaps account 
 for the fact ; but retributive justice, though it be presumptuous 
 to trace its course, is everywhere. 
 
 He had so great a horror in his last days of gambling, that 
 in bequeathing his possessions to his heir, as he expected, and 
 godson, Philip Stanhope, he inserts this clause : — 
 
 ' In case my said godson, Philip Stanhope, shall at any time hereinafter keep, 
 or be concerned in keeping of, any race-horses, or pack of hounds, or reside one 
 night at Newmarket, that infamous seminary of iniquity and ill-manners, during 
 the course of the races there ; or shall resort to the said races ; or shall lose, in 
 any one day, at any game or bet whatsoever, the sum of £500, then, in any the 
 cases aforesaid, it is my express will that he, my said godson, shall forfeit and 
 pay, out of my estate, the sum of ^^5,000 to and for the use of the Dean and 
 Chapter of Westminster.' 
 
 When we say that Lord Chesterfield was a man who had no 
 friend, we sum up his character in those few words. Just after 
 his death a small but distinguished party of men dined to- 
 gether at Topham Beauclerk's. There was Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds ; Sir William Jones, the orientalist ; Bennet Langton ; 
 Steevens ; Boswell ; Johnson. The conversation turned on 
 Garrick, who, Johnson said, had friends, but no friend. Then 
 Boswell asked, ' vfhat is a friend ?' ' One who comforts and 
 supports you, while others do not.' ' Friendship, you know, sir, 
 is the cordial drop to make the nauseous draught of life go 
 down.' Then one of the company mentioned Lord Chester- 
 field as one who had no friend ; and Boswell said : ' Garrick 
 was pure gold, but beat out to thin leaf. Lord Chesterfield 
 was tinsel.' And, for once, Johnson did not contradict him. 
 But not so do we judge Lord Chesterfield. He was a man who 
 acted on false principles through life ; and those principles gra- 
 dually undermined ever)fthing that was noble and generous in 
 character ; just as those deep under-ground currents, noiseless 
 in their course, work through fine-grained rock, and produce a 
 chasm, Everything with Chesterfield was self: for self, and 
 
Les Maniires Nobles. 233 
 
 self alone, were agreeable qualities to be assumed ; for self, was 
 the country to be served, because that country protects and 
 serves us : for self, were friends to be sought and cherished, as 
 useful auxiliaries, or pleasant accessories : in the very core of 
 the cankered heart, that advocated this corrupting doctrine of 
 expediency, lay unbelief ; that worm which never died in the 
 hearts of so many illustrious men of that period — the refriger- 
 ator of the feelings. 
 
 One only gentle and genuine sentiment possessed Lord Ches- 
 terfield, and that was his love for his son. Yet in this affection 
 the worldly man might be seen in mournful colours. He did 
 not seek to render his son good ; his sole desire was to see him 
 successful : every lesson that he taught him, in those matchless 
 Letters which have carried down Chesterfield's fame to us when 
 his other productions have virtually expired, exposes a code of 
 dissimulation which Philip Stanhope, in his marriage, turned 
 upon the father to whom he owed so much care and advance- 
 ment. These Letters are, in fact, a complete exposition of Lord 
 Chesterfield's character and views of life. No other man could 
 have written them ; no other man have conceived the notion 
 of existence being one great effort to deceive, as well as to 
 excel, and of society forming one gigantic lie. It is true they 
 were addressed to one who was to enter the maze of a diplo- 
 matic career, and must be taken, on that account, with some 
 reservation. 
 
 They have justly been condemned on the score of immo- 
 rality ; but we must remember that the age in which they were 
 written was one of lax notions, especially among men of rank, 
 who regarded all women accessible, either from indiscretion or 
 inferiority of rank, as fair game, and acted accordingly. But 
 whilst we agree with one of Johnson's bitterest sentences as to 
 the immorality of Chesterfield's letters, we disagree with his 
 styling his code of manners the manners of a dancing-master. 
 Chesterfield was in himself a perfect instance of what he calls 
 les manieres nobles; and this even Johnson allowed. 
 
 'Talking of Chesterfield,' Johnson said, 'his manner was 
 exquisitely elegant, and he had more knowledge than I ex- 
 pected.' Boswell : ' Did you find, sir, his conversation to be of 
 
234 Letters to his Son. 
 
 a superior sort ?' — Johnson : ' Sir, in the conversation which 1 
 had with him, I had the best right to superiority, for it was 
 upon philology and literature.' 
 
 It was well remarked how extraordinary a thing it was that a 
 man who loved his son so entirely should do all he could to 
 make him a rascal. And Foote even contemplated bringing 
 on the stage a father who had thus tutored his son ; and in- 
 tended to show the son an honest man in everything else, but 
 practising his father's maxims upon him, and cheating him. 
 
 ' It should be so contrived,' Johnson remarked, referring to 
 Foote's plan, ' that the father should be the only sufferer by the 
 son's villany, and thus there would be poetical justice.' ' Take 
 out the immorality,' he added, on another occasion, ' and the 
 book (Chesterfield's Letters to his Son) should be put into the 
 hands of every young gentleman.' 
 
 We are inclined to differ, and to confess to a moral taint 
 throughout the whole of the Letters ; and even had the immo- 
 rality been expunged, the false motives, the deep, invariable 
 advocacy of principles of expediency, would have poisoned 
 what otherwise might be of effectual benefit to the minor 
 virtues of polite society. 
 
THE ABBE SCARRON, 
 
 An Eastern Allegory. — ^Who comes Here ? — ^A Mad Freak and its Consequences. 
 — Making an Ahbi of him. — ^The May-Fair of Paris.— Scarron's Lament to 
 Pellisson. — The Office of the Queen's Patient. — ' Give me a Simple Bene- 
 fice." — Scarron's Description of Himself. — Improvidence and Servility. — 
 The Society at Scarron's. — The Witty Conversation. — Francoise D'Aubig- 
 ni's D^but. — ^The Sad Story" of La Belle Indienne. — Matrimonial Consider- 
 ations. — 'ScEirron's Wife will live for ever.' — Petits Soupers.— -Scarron's last 
 Moments. — ^A Lesson for Gay and Grave. 
 
 j|HERE is an Indian or Chinese legend, I forget which, 
 from which Mrs. Shelley may have taken her hideous 
 idea of Frankenstein. We are told in this allegory 
 that, after fashioning some thousands of men after the most ap- 
 proved model, endo^ng them with all that is noble, generous, 
 admirable, and loveable in man or woman, the eastern Prome- 
 theus grew weary in his work, stretched his hand for the beer- 
 can, and draining it too deeply, lapsed presently into a state 
 of what Germans call ' other-man-ness.' — There is a simpler 
 Anglo-Saxon term for this condition, but I spare you. The 
 eastern Prometheus went on seriously with his work, and still 
 produced the same perfect models, faultless alike in brain and 
 leg. But when it came to the delicate finish, when the last 
 touches were to be made, his hand shook a little, and the more 
 delicate members went awry. It was thus that instead of the 
 power of seeing every colour properly, one man came out with 
 a pair of optics which turned everything to green, and this ver- 
 dancy probably transmitted itself to the intelligence. Another, 
 to continue tlie allegory, whose tympanum had slipped a little 
 under the unsteady fingers of the man-maker, heard everything 
 in a wrong sense, and his life was miserable, because, if you 
 sang his praises, he believed you were ridiculing him, and if 
 
236 An Eastern Allegory. 
 
 you heaped abuse upon him, he thought you were telling lies 
 of him. 
 
 But as Prometheus Orientalis grew more jovial, it seems to 
 have come into his head to make mistakes on purpose. ' I'll 
 have a friend to laugh with,' quoth he ; and when warned by 
 an attendant Yaksha, or demon, that men who laughed one 
 hour often wept the next, he swore a lusty oath, struck his 
 thumb heavily on a certain bump in the skull he was complet- 
 ing, and holding up his little doll, cried, ' Here is one who 
 will laugh at everything !' 
 
 I must now add what the legend neglects to tell. The 
 model laugher succeeded well enough in his own reign, but he 
 could not beget a large family. The laughers who never weep, 
 the real clowns of life, who do not, when the curtain drops, 
 retire, after an infinitesimal allowance of ' cordial,' to a half- 
 starved, complaining family, with brats that cling round his 
 parti-coloured stocking.s, and cry to him — not for jokes — but 
 for bread, these laughers, I say, are few and far between. You 
 should, therefore, be doubly grateful to me for introducing to 
 you now one of the most famous of them ; one who with all 
 right and title to be lugubrious, was the merriest man of his 
 age. 
 
 On Shrove Tuesday, in the year 1638, the good city of Mans 
 was in a state of great excitement : the carnival was at its 
 height, and everybody had gone mad for one day before turn- 
 ing pious for the long, dull forty days of Lent. The market- 
 place was filled with maskers in quaint costumes, each wilder 
 and more extravagant than the last. Here were magicians with 
 high peaked hats covered with cabalistic signs, here Eastern 
 sultans of the medieval model, with very fierce looks and very 
 large scimitars : here Amadis de Gaul with a wagging plume a 
 yard high, here Pantagruel, here harlequins, here Huguenots 
 ten times more lugubrious than the despised sectaries they 
 mocked, here Caesar and Pompey in trunk hose and Roman 
 helmets, and a mass of other notabilities who were great fa- 
 vourites in that day, appeared. 
 
 But who comes here ? What is the meaning of these roars of 
 laughter that greet the last mask who runs into the market- 
 
WAo Comes Here ? 237 
 
 place ? Why do all the women and children huny together, 
 calling up one another, and shouting with delight ? What is 
 this thing ? Is it some new species of bird, thus covered with 
 feathers and down ? In a few minutes the little figure is sur- 
 rounded by a crowd of boys and women, who begin to pluck 
 him of his borrowed plumes, while he chatters to them like a 
 magpie, whisdes like a song-bird, croaks like a raven, or in his 
 natural character showers a mass of funny nonsense on them, 
 till their laughter makes their sides ache. The little wretch is 
 literally covered with small feathers from head to foot, and even 
 his face is not to be recognized. The women pluck him be- 
 hind and before ; he dances round and tries to evade their 
 fingers. This is impossible ; he breaks away, runs down 'the 
 market pursued by a shouting crowd, is again surrounded, and 
 again subjected to a plucking process. The bird must be 
 stripped ; he must be discovered. Little by little his back is 
 bared, and little by little is seen a black jerkin, black stock- 
 ings, and, wonder ujjon wonder ! the bands of a canon. 
 Now they have cleared his face of its plumage, and a cry of 
 disgust and shame hails the disclosure. Yes, this curious 
 masker is no other than a reverend abbe, a young canon of the 
 cathedral of Mans ! ' This is too much — it is scandalous — it 
 is disgraceful. The church must be respected, the sacred order 
 must not descend to such frivolities.' The people, lately laugh- 
 ing, are now furious at the shameless abbd and not his liveliest 
 wit can save him ; they threaten and cry shame on him, and in 
 terror of his life, he beats his way through the crowd, and takes 
 to his heels. The mob follows, hooting and savage. The little 
 man is nimble ; those well-shaped legs — qui ont si bien danse — 
 stand him in good stead. Down the streets, and out of the 
 the town go hare and hounds. The pursuers gain on him — a 
 bridge, a stream filled with tall reeds, and delightfully miry, are 
 all the hope of refuge he sees before him. He leaps gallantly 
 from the bridge in among the oziers, and has the joy of listen- 
 ing to the disappointed curses of the mob, when reaching the 
 stream, their quarry is nowhere to be seen. The reeds conceal 
 him, and there he lingers till nightfall, when he can issue from 
 his lurking-place, and escape from the town. 
 
238 A Mad Freak and its Consequences. 
 
 Such was the mad freak which deprived the Abbd Scarron 
 of the use of his limbs for Ufa. His health was already ruined 
 when he indulged this caprice ; the damp of the river brought 
 on a violent attack, which closed with palsy, and the gay young 
 abbd had to pay dearly for the pleasure of astonishing the 
 citizens of Mans. The disguise was easily accounted for — he 
 had smeared himself with honey, ripped open a feather-bed, 
 and rolled himself in it. 
 
 This little incident gives a good idea of what Scarron was in 
 his younger days — ready at any time for any wild caprice. 
 
 Paul Scarron was the son of a Conseiller du Parlement of 
 good family, resident in Paris. He was bom in 1610, and his 
 early days would have been wretched enough, if his elastic 
 spirits had allowed him to give way to misery. His father was 
 a good-natured, weak-minded man, who on the death of his 
 first wife married a second, who, as one hen will peck at 
 another's chicks, would not, as a step-mother, leave the little 
 Paul in peace. She was continually putting her own children 
 forward, and ill-treating the late ' anointed ' son. The father 
 gave in too readily, and young Paul was glad enough to be set 
 free from his unhappy home. There may be some excuse in this 
 for the licentious living to which he now gave himself up. He 
 was heir to a decent fortune, and of course thought himself 
 justified in spending it before-hand. Then, in spite of his 
 quaint little figure, he had something attractive about him, for 
 his merry face was good-looking, if not positively handsome. 
 If we add to this, spirits as buoyant as an Irishman's — a mind 
 that not only saw the ridiculous wherever it existed, but could 
 turn the most solemn and awful themes to laughter, a vast deal 
 of good-nature, and not a little assurance — we can understand 
 that the young Scarron was a favourite with both men and 
 women, and among the reckless pleasure-seekers of the day 
 soon became one of the wildest. In short, he was a fast young 
 Parisian, with as little care for morality or religion as any youth 
 who saunters on the Boulevards of the French capital to this day. 
 
 But his stepmother was not content with getting rid of young 
 Paul, but had her eye also on his fortune, and therefore easily 
 persuaded her husband that the service of the church was pre- 
 
Making an A bbe of Him . 259 
 
 cisely the career for which the young reprobate was fitted. 
 There was an uncle who was Bishop of Grenoble, and a canonry 
 could easily be got for him. The fast youth was compelled to give 
 in to this arrangement, but declined to take full orders ; so that 
 while drawing the revenue of his stall, he had nothing to do 
 with the duties of his calUng. Then, too, it was rather a 
 fashionable thing to be an abb^, especially a gay one. The 
 position placed you on a level with people of all ranks. Half 
 the court was composed of love-making ecclesiastics, and the 
 soutane was a kind of diploma for wit and wickedness. Viewed 
 in this light, the church was as jovial a profession as the army, and 
 the young Scarron went to the full extent of the letter allowed 
 to the black gown. . It was only such stupid superstitious louts 
 as those of Mans, who did not know anylfaing of the ways of 
 Paris Ufe, who could object to such little freaks as he loved to 
 indulge in. 
 
 The merry little abb6 was soon the delight of the Marais. 
 This distinct and antiquated quarter of Paris was then the May- 
 fair of that capital. Here lived in ease, and contempt of the 
 bourgeoisie, the great, the gay, the courtier, and the wit. Here 
 Marion de Lorme received old Cardinals and young abb^s ; 
 here were the salons of Madame de Martel, of the Comtesse de 
 la Suze, who changed her creed in order to avoid seeing her 
 husband in this world or the next, and the famous — or infamous 
 — Ninon de I'Enclos ; and at these houses young Scarron met 
 the courtly Saint-Evremond, the witty Sarrazin, and the learned 
 but arrogant Voiture. Here he read his skits and parodies, 
 here travestied Virgil, made epigrams on Richelieu, and poured 
 out his indelicate but always laughable witticisms. But his 
 indulgences were not confined to intrigues ; he also drank deep, 
 and there was not a pleasure within his reach which he ever 
 thought of denying himself. He laughed at religion, thought 
 morality a nuisance, and resolved to be merry f.t all costs. 
 
 The little account was brought in at last. At the age of five- 
 and-twenty his constitution was broken up. Gout and rheuma- 
 tism assailed him alternately or in leash. He began to feel the 
 annoyance of the constraint they occasioned ; he regretted 
 those legs which liad figured so well in a ronde or a minuet, 
 
240 Tlie May-Fair of Paris. 
 
 and those hands which had played the lute to dames more iaii 
 than modest ; and to add to this, the pain he suffered was not 
 slight. He sought relief in gay society, and was cheerful in 
 spite of his sufferings. At length came the Shrove Tuesday 
 and the feathers ; and the consequences were terrible. He was 
 soon a prey to doctors, whom he believed in no more than in 
 the church of which he was so great a light. His legs were no 
 longer his own, so he was obliged to borrow those of a chair. 
 He was soon tucked down into a species of dumb-waiter on 
 castors, in which he could be rolled about in a party. In front 
 of this chair was fastened a desk, on which he wrote ; for too 
 wise to be overcome by his agony, he drove it away by cultivating 
 his imagination, and in this way some of the most fantastic pro- 
 ductions in French literature were composed by this quaint 
 litde abbe. 
 
 Nor was sickness his only trial now. Old Scarron was a 
 citizen, and had, what was then criminal, sundry ideas of the 
 liberty of the nation. He saw with disgust the tyranny of 
 RicheUeu, and joined a party in the Parliament to oppose the 
 cardinal's measures. He even had the courage to speak openly 
 against one of the court edicts ; and the pitiless cardinal, who 
 never overlooked any offence, banished him to Touraine, and 
 naturally extended his animosity to the conseiller's son. This 
 happened at a moment at which the cripple believed himself to 
 be on the road to favour. He had already won that of Madame 
 de Hautefort, on whom Louis XIII. had set his affections, and 
 this lady had promised to present him to Anne of Austria. The 
 father's honest boldness put a stop to the son's intended servility, 
 and Scarron lamented his fate in a letter to Pellisson : 
 
 O mille ^cus, par malheur retranchfe, 
 Que vous pouviez m'^pargner de p^ch& ! 
 Quand un valet me dit, tremblant et h^ve, 
 Nous n'avons plus de bliches dans la cave 
 Que pour aller jusqu'i demain matin, 
 Je peste alors sur mon chien de destin, 
 Sur le grand froid, sur le bois de la grfeve, 
 Qu'on vend si cher, et qui si-t6t s'ach^ve. 
 Je jure alors, et mSme je m(Sdis 
 De Taction de mon p6re ^tourdi, 
 Quand sans songer i ce qu'il allait faire 
 11 m'^baucha sous un astre contraire, 
 Et m'acheva par un discours maudit 
 Qu'il fit depuis sur un certain ^dit.' 
 
The Office of the Queen's Patient. 34 1 
 
 The father died in exile : his second wife had spent the 
 greater part of the son's fortune, and secured the rest for her 
 own children. Scarron was left with a mere pittance, and, to 
 complete his troubles, was involved in a lawsuit about the pro- 
 perty. The cripple, with his usual impudence, resolved to 
 plead his own cause, and did it only too well ; he made the 
 judges laugh so loud that they took the whole thing to be a 
 farce on his part, and gave — most ungratefully — judgment 
 against him. 
 
 Glorious days were those for the penniless, halcyon days for 
 the toady and the sycophant. There was still much of the old 
 oriental munificence about the court, and sovereigns like Maza- 
 rin and Louis XIV. granted pensions for a copy of flattering 
 verses, or gave away places as the reward of a judicious speech. 
 Sinecures were legion, yet to many a holder they were no sine- 
 cures at all, for they entailed constant servility and a complete 
 abdication of all freedom of opinion. 
 
 Scarron was nothing more than a merry buffoon. Many 
 another man has gained a name for his mirth, but most of them 
 have been at least independent. Scarron seems to have cared 
 for nothing that was honourable or dignified. He laughed at 
 everything but money, and at that he smiled, though it is only 
 fair to say that he was never avaricious, but only cared for ease 
 and a little luxury. 
 
 When Richelieu died, and the gentler, but more subtle Maza- 
 rin mounted his throne, Madame de Hautefort made another 
 attempt to present hex protege to the queen, and this time suc- 
 ceeded. Anne of Austria had heard of the quaint little man 
 who could laugh over a lawsuit in which his whole fortune was 
 staked, and received him graciously. He begged for some 
 place to support him. What could he do ? What was he fit 
 for? ' Nothing, your majesty, but the important office of The 
 Queen's Patient ; for that I am fully qualified.' Anne smiled, 
 and Scarron from that time styled himself ' par la grace de Dieu,' 
 le malade de la Reine.' But there was no stipend attached to 
 this novel office. Mazarin procured him a pension of 500 
 crowns. He was then publishing his ' Typhon, or the Gigan- 
 tomachy,' and dedicated it to the cardinal, with an adulatory 
 
 16 
 
242 ' Give me a Simple Beneficed 
 
 sonnet. He forwarded the great man a splendidly bound copy, 
 which was accepted with nothing more than thanks. In a rage 
 the author suppressed the sonnet and substituted a satire. This 
 piece was bitterly cutting, and terribly true. It galled Mazarin 
 to the heart, and he was undignified enough to revenge himself 
 by cancelling the poor little pension of ;^6o per annum which 
 had previously been granted to the writer. Scarron having lost 
 his pension, soon afterwards asked for an abbey, but was re- 
 fused. ' Then give me,' said he, ' a simple benefice, so simple, 
 indeed, that all its duties will be comprised in believing in God.' 
 But Scarron had the satisfaction of gaining a great name among 
 the cardinal's many enemies, and with none more so than De 
 Retz, then coadjuteur* to the Archbishop of Paris, and already 
 deeply implicated in the Fronde movement. To insure the 
 favour of this rising man, Scarron determined to dedicate to 
 him a work he was just about to publish, and on which he 
 justly prided himself as by far his best. This was the ' Roman 
 Comique,' the only one of his productions which is still read. 
 That it should "be read, I can quite understand, on account not 
 only of the ease of its style, but of the ingenuity of its im- 
 probable plots, the truth of the characters, and the charming 
 bits of satire which axe found here and there, like gems amid a 
 mass of mere fun. The scene is laid at ' Mans, the town in 
 which the author had himself perpetrated his chief folhes ; and 
 many of the characters were probably drawn from life, while it 
 is likely enough that some of the stories were taken from facts 
 which had there come to his knowledge. As in many of the 
 romances of that age, a number of episodes are introduced into 
 the main story, which consists of the adventures of a strolling 
 company. These are mainly amatory, and all indeHcate, while 
 some are as coarse as anything in French literature. Scarron 
 had litde of the clear wit of Rabelais to atone for this ; but he 
 makes up for it, in a measure, by the utter absurdity of some 
 oi his incidents. Not the least curious part of the book is the 
 Preface, in which he gives a description of himself, in order to 
 contradict, as he affirms, the extravagant reports circulated 
 
 ' Coadjuteur.— K high office in the Church of Rome. 
 
Scarroris Description of Himself . 24 ^ 
 
 about him, to the effect that he was set upon a table, in a cage, 
 or that his hat was fastened to the ceiling by a pulley, that he 
 might ' pluck it up or let it down, to do compliment to a friend, 
 who honoured him with a visit.' This description is a tolerable 
 specimen of his style, and we give it in the quaint language of 
 an old translation, published in 1741 : — 
 
 ' I am past thirty, as thou may'st see by the back of my 
 Chair. If I live to be forty, I shall add the Lord knows how 
 many Misfortunes to those I have already suffered for these 
 eight or nine Years past. There was a Time when my Stature 
 was not to be found fault with, tho' now 'tis of the smallest. 
 My Sickness has taken me shorter by a Foot. My Head is 
 somewhat too big, considering my Height ; and my Face is full 
 enough, in all Conscience, for one that carries such a Skeleton 
 of a Body about him. I have Hair enough on my Head not 
 to stand in need of a Peruke ; and 'tis gray, too, in spite of the 
 Proverb. My Sight is good enough, tho' my Eyes are large ; 
 they are of a blue Colour, and one of them is sunk deeper into 
 my Head than the other, which was occasion'd by my leaning 
 on that Side. My Nose is well enough mounted. My Teeth, 
 which in the Days of Yore look'd like a Row of square Pearl, 
 are now of an Ash^n Colour ; and in a few Years more, will 
 have the Complexion of a Small-coal Man's Saturday Shirt. I 
 have lost one Tooth and a half on the left Side, and two and a 
 half precisely on the right ; and I have two more that stand 
 somewhat out of their Ranks. My Legs and Thighs, in the 
 first place, compose an obtuse Angle, then a right one, and 
 lastly an acute. My Thighs and Body make another ; and my 
 Head, leaning perpetually over my Belly, I fancy makes me 
 not very unlike the Letter Z. My Arms are shortened, as well 
 as my Legs ; and my Fingers as well as my Arms. In short, 
 I am a living Epitome of human Misery. This, as near as I 
 can give it, is my Shape. Since I am got so far, I will e'en tell 
 thee something of my Humour. Under the Rose, be it spoken. 
 Courteous Reader, I do this only to swell the Bulk of my Book, 
 at the Request of the Bookseller — the .poor Dog, it seems, 
 being afraid he should be a Loser by this Impression, if he did 
 not give Buyer enough for his Money.' 
 
244 Improvidence and Servility. 
 
 This allusion to the publisher reminds us that, on the sup- 
 pression of his pension — on hearing of which Scarron only 
 said, ' I should like, then, to suppress myself — he had to live 
 on the profits of his works. In later days it was Madame 
 Scarron herself who often carried them to the bookseller's, when 
 there was not a penny in the house. The publisher was Quinet, 
 and the merry wit, when asked whence he drew his income, used 
 to reply with mock haughtiness, ' De mon Marquisat de Quinet.' 
 His comedies, which have been described as mere burlesques — 
 I confess I have never read them, and hope to be absolved — 
 were successful enough, and if Scarron had known how to keep 
 what he made, he might sooner or later have been in easy cir- 
 cumstances. He knew neither that nor any other art of self- 
 restraint, and, therefore, was in perpetual vicissitudes of riches 
 and penury. At one time he could afford to dedicate a piece 
 to his sister's greyhound, at another he was servile in his address 
 to some prince or duke. 
 
 In the latter spirit, he humbled himself before Mazarin, in 
 spite of the publication of his ' Mazarinade,' and was, as he 
 might have expected, repulsed. He then turned to Fouquet, 
 the new Surintendant de Finances, who was liberal enough with 
 the public money, which he so freely embezzled, and extracted 
 from him a pension of i,6oo francs (about ^^64). In one way 
 or another, he got back a part of the property his stepmother 
 had alienated from him, and obtained a prebend in the diocese 
 of Mans, which made up his income to something more re- 
 spectable. 
 
 He was now able to indulge to the utmost his love of society. 
 In his apartment, in the Rue St. Louis, he received all the 
 leaders of the Fronde, headed by De Retz, and bringing with 
 them their pasquinades on Mazarin, which the easy Italian read 
 and laughed at and pretended to heed not at all. Politics, 
 however, was not the staple of the conversation at Scarron's. 
 He was visited as a curiosity, as a clever buffoon, and those 
 who came to see, remained to laugh. He kept them all alive 
 by his coarse, easy, impudent wit ; in which there was more 
 vulgarity and dirtiness than ill-nature. He had a fund of bon- 
 hommie, which set his visitors at their ease, for no one was 
 
The Society at Scarrotis. 245 
 
 afraid of being bitten by the chained dog they came to pat. 
 His salon became famous ; and the admission to it was a di- 
 ploma of wit. He kept out all the dull, and ignored all the 
 simply great. Any man who could say a good thing, tell a 
 good story, write a good lampoon, or mimic a fool, was a welcome 
 guest. Wits mingled with pedants, courtiers with poets. Abb^s 
 and gay women were at home in the easy society of the cripple, 
 and circulated freely round his dumb-waiter. 
 
 The ladies of the party were not the most respectable in 
 Paris, yet some who were models of virtue met there, without 
 a shudder, many others who were patterns of vice. Ninon de 
 I'Enclos — tlien young — though age made no alteration in 
 her — and already slaying her scores, and ruining her hundreds 
 of admirers, there met Madame de Sevignd, the most respect- 
 able, as well as the most agreeable, woman of that age. Ma- 
 demoiselle de Scud^ry, leaving, for the time, her twelve-volume 
 romance, about Cyrus and Ibrahim, led on a troop of Molifere's 
 Prdcieuses Ridicules, and here recited her verses, and talked 
 pedantically to PeUisson, the ugliest man in Paris, of whom 
 Boileau wrote : 
 
 ' L'or mSme k Pellisson donne un teint de beauts. ' 
 Then there was Madame de la Sablifere, who was as masculine 
 as her husband the marquis was effeminate ; the Duchesse de 
 Lesdiguiferes, who was so anxious to be thought a wit that she 
 employed the Chevalier de Merd to make her one ; and the 
 Comtesse de la Suze, a clever but foolish woman. 
 
 The men were poets, courtiers, and pedants. Manage with 
 his tiresome memory, Montreuil and Marigni the song-writers, 
 the elegant De Grammont, Turenne, Coligni, the gallant Abbd 
 Tetu, and many another celebrity, thronged the rooms where 
 Scarron sat in his curious wheelbarrow. 
 
 The conversation was decidedly light ; often, indeed, obscene, 
 in spite of the presence of ladies ; but always witty. The hos- 
 tility of Scarron to the reigning cardinal was a great recom- 
 mendation, and when all else flagged^ or the cripple had an 
 unusually sharp attack, he had but to start with a line of his 
 ' Mazarinade,' and out came a fresh lampoon, a new caricature, 
 or fresh rounds of wit fired off at the Italian, from the well-filled 
 
246 The Witty Conversation 
 
 cartridge-boxes of the guests, many of whom kept their mott 
 ready made up for dischaxge. 
 
 But a change came over the spirit of the paralytic's dream. 
 In the Rue St. Louis, close to Scarron's, lived a certain Madame 
 Neuillant, who visited him as a neighbour, and one day excited 
 his curiosity by the romantic history of a mother and daughter, 
 who had long lived in Martinique, who had been ruined by the 
 extravagance and follies of a reprobate husband and father; 
 and were now living in great poverty — the daughter being sup- 
 ported by Madame de Neuillant herself. The good-natured 
 cripple was touched by this story, and begged his neighbour to 
 bring the unhappy ladies to one of his parties. The evening 
 came ; the abbd was, as usual, surrounded by a circle of lady 
 wits, dressed in the last fashions, flaunting their fans, and laugh- 
 ing merrily at his salHes. Madame de Neuillant was announced, 
 and entered, followed by a simply-dressed lady, with the melan- 
 choly face of one broken-down by misfortunes, and a pretty girl 
 of fifteen. The contrast between the new-comers and the 
 fashionable habitukes around him at once struck the abbd The 
 girl was not only badly, but even shabbily dressed, and the 
 shortness of her gown showed that she had grown out of it, 
 and could not afford a new one. The grandes dames turned 
 upon her their eye-glasses, and whispered comments behind 
 their fans. She was very pretty, they said, very interesting, 
 elegant, lady-like, and so on ; but, parMeu I how shamefully 
 mal mise ! The new-comers were led up to the cripple's dumb- 
 waiter, and the grandes dames drew back their ample petticoats 
 as they passed. The young girl was overcome with shame, 
 their whispers reached her ; she cast down her pretty eyes, and 
 growing more and more confused, she could bear it no longer, 
 and burst into tears. The abbd and his guests were touched by 
 her shyness, and endeavoured to restore her confidence. Scarron 
 himself leant over, and whispered a few kind words in her ear ; 
 then breaking out into some happy pleasantry, he gave her time 
 to recover her composure. Such was the first debut in Parisian 
 society of Frangoise d'Aubign^ who was destined, as Madame 
 Scarron, to be afterwards one of its leaders, and, as Madame 
 de Maintenon, to be its ruler. 
 
a 
 
 H 
 
 n 
 
 a; 
 
 o 
 
 d 
 
 Bi 
 
Franfoise d^Aubigni's Dibut. 247 
 
 Some people are cursed with bad sons — some with erring 
 daughters. Frangoise d'Aubignd was long the victim of a wicked 
 father. Constans d'Aubignd belonged to an old and honourable 
 family, and was the son of that famous old Huguenot general, 
 Thdodore-Agrippa d'Aubignd, who fought for a long time under 
 Henry of Navarre, and in his old age wrote the history of his 
 times. To counterbalance this distinction, the son Constars 
 brought all the discredit he could on the family. After a reck- 
 less life, in which he squandered his patrimony, he married a 
 rich widow, and then, it is said, contrived to put her out of the 
 way. He was imprisoned as a murderer, but acquitted for want 
 of evidence. The story goes, that he was liberated by the 
 daughter of the governor of the gaol, whom he had seduced in 
 the prison, and whom he married when free. He sought to re- 
 trieve his fortune in the island of Martinique, ill-treated his 
 wife, and eventually ran away, and left her and her children to 
 their fate. They followed him to France, and found him again 
 incarcerated. Madame d'Aubignd was foolishly fond of her 
 good-for-nothing spouse, and lived with him in his cell, where 
 the little Fran^oise, who had been bom in prison, was now 
 educated. 
 
 Rescued from starvation by a worthy Huguenot aunt, Madame 
 de Vilette, the little girl was brought up as a Protestant, and a 
 very stanch one she proved for a time. But Madame d'Au- 
 bign^, who was a Romanist, would not allow her to remain 
 long under the Calvinist lady's protection, and sent her to be 
 converted by her godmother, the Madame de Neuillant above 
 mentioned. This woman, who was as merciless as a woman 
 can be, literally broke her into Romanism, treated her like a 
 servant, made her groom the horses, and comb the maid's hair, 
 and when all these efforts failed, sent her to a convent to be 
 finished off. The nuns did by specious reasoning what had 
 been begun by persecution, and young Fran9oise, at the time 
 she was introduced to Scarron, was a highly respectable mem- 
 ber of ' the only true church.' 
 
 Madame d'Aubignd was at this time supporting herself by 
 needlework. Her sad story won the sympathy of Scarron's 
 guests, who united to relieve her wants. La belle Indienne, as 
 
248 Matrimonial Considerations. 
 
 the cripple styled her, soon became a favourite at his i)artiei, 
 and lost her shyness by degrees. Ninon de I'Enclos, who did 
 not want heart, took her by the hand, and a friendship thus 
 commenced between that inveterate Lais and the future wife 
 of Louis XIV. which lasted till death. 
 
 The beauty of Franfoise soon brought her many admirers, 
 among whom was even one of Ninon's slaves ; but as marriage 
 was not the object of these attentions, and the young girl would 
 not relinquish her virtue, she remained for some time unmarried 
 but respectable. Scarron was particularly fond of her, and well 
 knew that, portionless as she was, the poor girl would have but 
 little chance of making a match. His kindness touched her, 
 his wit charmed her ; she pitied his infirmities, and as his 
 neighbour, frequently saw and tried to console him. On the 
 other hand the cripple, though forty years old, and in a state 
 of health which it is impossible to describe, fell positively in 
 love with the young girl, who alone of all the ladies who visited 
 him combined wit with perfect modesty. He pitied her desti- 
 tution. There was mutual pity, and we all know what passion 
 that feeling is akin to. 
 
 Still, for a paral)ftic, utterly unfit for marriage in any point of 
 view, to offer to a beautiful young girl, would have seemed 
 ridiculous, if not unpardonable. But let us take into account 
 the difference in ideas of matrimony between ourselves and the 
 French. We must remember that marriage has always been 
 regarded among our neighbours as a contract for mutual benefit, 
 into which the consideration of money of necessity entered 
 largely. It is true that some qualities are taken as equivalents 
 for actual cash : thus, if a young man has a straight and well- 
 cut nose he may sell himself at a higher price than a young man 
 there with the hideous pug ; if a girl is beautiful, the marquis 
 will be content with some thousands of francs less for her 
 dower than if her hair were red or her complexion iixeclaimably 
 brown. If Julie has a pretty foot, a svelte waist, and can play 
 the piano thunderingly, or sing in the charmingest soprano, her 
 ten thousand francs are quite as acceptable as those of stout, 
 awkward, glum-faced Jeannette. The faultless boots and yel- 
 
' Scarron's Wife will live for liver.' ^49 
 
 low kids of young Adolphe counterbalance the somewhat apo- 
 cryphal vicomtd of ill-kempt and ill-attired Henri. 
 
 But then there must be some fortune. A Frenchman is so 
 much in the habit of expecting it, that he thinks it almost a 
 crime to fall in love where there is none. Fran^oise, pretty, 
 clever, agreeable as she was, was penniless, and even worse, 
 she was the daughter of a man who had been imprisoned on 
 suspicion of murder, and a woman who had gained her liveli- 
 hood by needlework. All these considerations made the fancy 
 of the merry abbd less ridiculous, and Fran^oise herself, being 
 sufficiently versed in the ways of the world to understand the 
 disadvantage under which she laboured, was less amazed and 
 disgusted than another girl might have been, when, in due 
 course, the cripple offered her himself and his dumb-waiter. 
 He had little more to give — his pension, a tiny income from 
 his prebend and his Marquisat de Quinet. 
 
 The offer of the little man was not so amusing as other epi- 
 sodes of his life. He went honestly to work ; represented to 
 her what a sad lot would hers be, if Madame de Neuillant died, 
 and what were the temptations of beauty without a penny. 
 His arguments were more to the point than delicate, and he 
 talked to the young girl as if she was a woman of the world. 
 Still, she accepted him, cripple as he was. 
 
 Madame de Neuillant made no objection, for she was only 
 too glad to be rid of a beauty, who ate and drank, but did not 
 marry. 
 
 On the making of the contract, Scarron's fun revived. When 
 asked by the notary what was the young lady's fortune, he re- 
 plied : ' Four louis, two large wicked eyes, one fine figure, one 
 pair of good hands, and lots of mind.' 'And what do you give 
 her ?' asked the lawyer. — ' Immortality,' replied he, with the 
 air of a bombastic poet. ' The names of the wives of kings die 
 with them — that of Scarron's wife will live for ever !' 
 
 His marriage obliged him to give up his canonry, which he 
 sold to Mdnage's man-servant, a little bit of simony which was 
 not even noticed in those days. It is amusing to find a man 
 who laughed at all religion, insisting that his wife should make 
 a formal avowal of the Romish faith. Of the character of this 
 
250 Petits Soupers. 
 
 marriage we need say no more than that Scarron had at thai 
 time the use of no more than his eyes, tongue, and hands. Yet 
 such was then, as now, the idea of matrimony in France, that 
 the young lady's friends considered her fortunate. 
 
 Scarron in love was a picture which amazed and amused the 
 whole society of Paris, but Scarron married was still more curious. 
 The queen, when she heard of it, said that Frangoise would be 
 nothing but a useless bit of furniture in his house. She proved 
 not only the most useful appendage he could have, but the sal- 
 vation alike of his soul and his reputation. The woman who 
 charmed Louis XIV. by her good sense, had enough of it to 
 see Scarron's faults, and prided herself on reforming him as far 
 as it was possible. Her husband had hitherto been the great 
 Nestor of indelicacy, and when he was induced to give it up, 
 the rest followed his example. Madame Scarron checked the 
 licence of the abba's conversation, and even worked a benefi- 
 cial change in his mind. 
 
 The joviaHty of their parties still continued. Scarron had 
 always been famous for his petits soupers, the fashion of which 
 he introduced, but as his poverty would not allow him to give 
 them in proper style, his friends made a pic-nic of it, and each 
 one either brought or sent his own dish of ragout, or whatevei 
 it might be, and his own bottle of wine. This does not seem 
 to have been the case after the marriage, however ; for it is re- 
 lated as a proof of Madame Scarron's conversational powers, 
 that, when one evening a poorer supper than usual was served, 
 the waiter whispered in her ear, 'Tell them another story, 
 Madame, if you please, for we have no joint to-night.' Still 
 both guests and host could well afford to dispense with the 
 coarseness of the cripple's talk, which might raise a laugh, but 
 must sometimes have caused disgust, and the young wife of 
 sixteen succeeded in making him purer both in his conversation 
 and his writings. 
 
 The household she entered was -indeed a villainous one. 
 Scarron rather gloried in his early delinquencies, and, to add 
 to this, his two sisters had characters far from estimable. One 
 of them had been maid of honour to the Princesse de Conti, 
 but had sfiven up her appointment to become the mistress of 
 
Scarrotis last Moments. 25 1 
 
 the Due de TrSmes. The laugher laughed even at his sister's 
 dishonour, and allowed her to live in the same house on a 
 higher Hage. When, on one occasion, some one called on him 
 to solicit the lady's interest with the duke, he coolly said, ' You 
 are mistaken ; it is not I who know the duke ; go up to the 
 next storey.' The offspring of this connection he styled ' his 
 nephews after the fashion of the Marais.' Frangoise did her 
 best to reclaim this sister and to conceal her shame, but the 
 laughing abb^ made no secret of it. 
 
 But the laugher was approaching his end. His attacks be- 
 came more and more violent : still he laughed at them. Once 
 he was seized with a terrible choking hiccup, which threatened 
 to suffocate him. The first moment he could speak he cried, 
 ' If I get well, I'll write a satire on the hiccup.' The pnests 
 came about him, and his wife did what she could to bring him 
 to a sense of his future danger. He laughed at the priests and 
 at his wife's fears. She spoke of hell. ' If there is such a 
 place,' he answered, ' it won't be for me, for without you I must 
 have had my hell in this life.' The priests told him, by way of 
 consolation, that ' God had visited him more than any man.' — 
 ' He does me too much honour,' answered the mocker. ' You 
 should give him thanks,' urged the ecclesiastic. ' I can't see 
 for what,' was the shameless answer. 
 
 On his death-bed he parodied a will, leaving to Comeille 
 ' two hundred pounds of patience ; to Boileau (with whom he 
 had a long feud), the gangrene; and to the Academy, the 
 power to alter the French language as they liked.' His legacy 
 in verse to his wife is grossly disgusting, and quite unfit for 
 quotation. Yet he loved her well, avowed that his chief grief 
 in dying was the necessity of leaving her, and begged her to 
 remember him sometimes, and to lead a- virtuous life. 
 
 His last moments were as jovial as any. When he saw his 
 friends weeping around him he shook his head and cried, ' I 
 shall never make you weep as much as I have made you laugh.' 
 A little later a softer thought of hope came across him. . ' No 
 more sleeplessness, no more gout,' he murmured ; ' the Queen's 
 patient will be well at last' At length the laugher was sobered. In 
 the presence of death, at the gates of a new world, he muttered, 
 
252 A j^esson for Gay and Grave 
 
 half afraid, ' I never thought it was so easy to laugh at death,' 
 and so expired. This was in October, 1660, when the cripple 
 had reached the age of fifty. 
 
 Thus died a laugher. It is unnecessary here to trace the 
 story of his widow's strange rise to be the wife of a king. Scar- 
 ron was no honour to her, and in later years she tried to forget 
 his existence. Boileau fell into disgrace for merely mentioning 
 his name before the king. Yet Scarron was in many respects 
 a better man than Louis ; and, laugher as he was, he had a 
 good heart. There is a time for mirth and a time for mourning, 
 the Preacher tells us. Scarron never learned this truth, and 
 he laughed too much and too long. Yet let us not end the 
 laugher's life in sorrow : 
 
 ' It is well to be merry and wise,' &a 
 
 Let us be merry as the poor cripple, who bore his sufferings so 
 well, and let us be wise too. There is a lesson for gay and 
 grave in the life of Scarron, the laugher. 
 
FRANCOIS DUG DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT 
 AND THE DUG DE SAINT-SIMON. 
 
 Rank and Good Breeding. — ^The H6tel de Rochefoucault. — Racine and his 
 Plays. — La Rochefoucault's Wit and Sensibility.— Saint Simon's Youth. — 
 Looking out for a Wife. — Saint-Simon's Court Life. — ^The History of Louise 
 de la Valliire. — ^A mean Act of Louis Quatorze. — ^All has passed away. — 
 Saint-Simon's Memoirs of His Own Time. 
 
 |HE precursor of Saint-Simon, the model of Lord 
 Ghesterfield, this ornament of his age, belonged, as 
 well as Saint-Simon, to that state of society in 
 France which was characterised — as Lord John Russell, in his 
 ' Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans,' tells us — by an idolatry 
 of power and station. ' God would not condemn a person of 
 that rank,' was the exclamation of a lady of the old rtgime, on 
 hearing, that a notorious sinner, ' Pair de France,' and one 
 knows not what else, had gone to his account impenitent and 
 unabsolved ; and though the sentiment may strike us as profane, 
 it was, doubtless, genuine. 
 
 Rank, however was often adorned by accomplishments 
 which, like an exemption from rules of conduct, it almost 
 claimed as a privilege. Good-breeding was a science in France ; 
 natural to a peasant, even, it was studied as an epitome of all 
 the social virtues. ' N'ttre fas poll ' was the sum total of all 
 dispraise : a man could only recover from it by splendid valour 
 or rare gifts; a woman could not hope to rise out of that 
 Slough of Despond to which good-breeding never came. We 
 were behind all the arts of civilization in England, as Fran5ois 
 de Rochefoucault (we give the orthography of the present day) 
 was in his cradle. This brilliant personage, who combined the 
 
254 Rank and Good Breeding. 
 
 wit and the moralist, the courtier and the soldier, the man of 
 literary tastes and the ^trv^ra&TxXz&sX par excellence, was bom in 
 1613. In addition to his hereditary title of due, he had the 
 empty honour, as Saint-Simon calls it, of being Prince de Mar- 
 sUlac, a designation which was lost in that of Dela Rochefoucault 
 — so famous even to the present day. As he presented himself 
 at the court of the regency, over which Anne of Austria nomi- 
 nally presided, no youth there was more distinguished for hia 
 elegance or for the fame of his exploits during the wars of the 
 Fronde than this youthful scion of an illustrious house. En- 
 dowed by nature with a pleasing countenance, and, what was 
 far more important in that fastidious region, an air of dignity, 
 he displayed wonderful contradictions in his character and 
 bearing. He had, says Madame de Maintenon, ' beawoup 
 d' esprit, et peu de savoir;' an expressive phrase. ' He was,' she. 
 adds, 'pliant in nature, intriguing, and cautious;' nevertheless 
 she never, she declares, possessed a more steady friend, nor one 
 more confiding and better adapted to advise. Brave as he was, 
 he held personal valour, or affected to do so, in light estimation. 
 His ambition was to rule others. Lively in conversation, 
 though naturally pensive, he assembled around him all that 
 Paris or Versailles could present of wit and intellect. 
 
 The old Hotel de Rochefoucault, in the Rue de Seine, in 
 the Faubourg St. Germain, in Paris, still grandly recalls the 
 assemblies in which Racine, Boileau, Madame de Sdvignd, the 
 La Fayettes, and the famous Duchesse de Longueville, used to 
 assemble. The time honoured family of De la Rochefoucault 
 still preside there; though one of its fairest ornaments, the 
 young, lovely, and pious Duchesse de la Rochefoucault of our 
 time, died in 1852 — one of the first known victims to diphtheria 
 in France, in that unchanged old locality. There, when the 
 De Longuevilles, the Mazarins, and those who had formed the 
 famous council of state of Anne of Austria had disappeared, the 
 poets and wits who gave to the age of Louis XIV". its true 
 brilliancy, collected around the Due de la Rochefoucault. What 
 a scene it must have been in those days, as Buffon said of the 
 earth in spring ' tout four-mille de vie 1' Let us people the salon 
 of the H6tel de Rochefoucault with visions of the past j see 
 
The Hdtel de Rochefoucault. 255 
 
 the host there, in his chair, a martyr to the gout, which he bore 
 with all the cheerfulness of a Frenchman, and picture to our- 
 selves the great men who were handing him his cushion, or 
 standing near his/auieui/. 
 
 Racine's joyous face may be imagined as he comes in fresh 
 from the College of Harcourt. Since he was bom in 1639, he 
 had not arrived at his zenith till La Rochefoucault was almost 
 past his prime. For a man at thirty-six in France can no 
 longer talk prospectively of the departure of youth ; it is gone. 
 A single man of thirty, even in Paris, is ' un vietix garfon :' life 
 begins too soon and ends too soon with those pleasant sinners, 
 the French. And Racine, when he was first routed out of 
 Port Royal, where he was educated, and presented to the 
 whole Faubourg St. Germain, beheld his patron, La Rochefou- 
 cault, in the position of a disappointed man. An early adven- 
 ture of his youth had humbled, perhaps, the host of the Hotel 
 de Rochefoucault. At the battle of St. Antoine, where he had 
 distinguished himself, ' a musket-ball had nearly deprived him of 
 sight. On this occasion he had quoted these lines, takeii 
 from the tragedy of ' Akyonnee^ It must, however, be pre- 
 mised that the famous Duchess de Longueville had urged him 
 to engage in the wars of the Fronde. To her these lines were 
 addressed : — 
 
 ' Pour m^riter son cceur, pour plaire k ses beaux yeux, 
 J'ai fait la guerre aux Rois, je I'aurais faite aux dieux.' 
 
 But now he had broken off his intimacy with the duchesse, 
 and he therefore parodied these lines : — 
 
 * Pour ce coeur inconstant, qu'enfin je connais mieux, 
 J'ai fait la guerre aux Rois, j'en ai perdue les yeux.' 
 
 Nevertheless, La Rochefoucault was still the gay, charming, 
 witty host and courtier. Racine composed, in 1660, his 'Nymphe 
 de Seine! in honour of the marriage of Louis XIV., and was 
 then brought into notice of those whose notice was no empty 
 compliment, such as, in our day, illustrious dukes pay to more 
 illustrious authors, by asking them to be jumbled in a crowd at 
 a time when the rooks are beginning to caw. We catch, as 
 they may, the shadow of a dissolving water-ice, or see tne exit 
 
as6 Racine and his Plays. 
 
 of an unattainable tray of negus. No ; in the days of Racine, 
 as in those of Halifax and Swift in England, solid fruits grew 
 out of fulsome praise ; and Colbert, then minister, settled a 
 pension of six hundred livres, as francs were called in those 
 days (twenty-four pounds), on the poet. And with this the 
 former pupil of Port Royal was fain to be content. Still he 
 was so poor that he almost went into the church, an uncle offer 
 ing to resign him a priory of his order if he would become a 
 regular. He was a candidate for orders, and wore a sacerdotal 
 dress when he wrote the tragedy of ' Theagenes,' and that of 
 the 'Frferes Ennemis,' the subject of which was given him by 
 Molifere. 
 
 He continued, in spite of a quarrel with the saints of Port 
 Royal, to produce noble dramas from time to time, but quitted 
 theatrical pursuits after bringing out (in 1677) 'Phfedre,' that chef- 
 d'osuvre not only of its author, but, as a performance, of the 
 unhappy but gifted Rachel. Corneille was old, and Paris 
 looked to Racine to supply his place, yet he left the theatrical 
 world for ever. Racine had been brought up with deep religious 
 convictions ; they could not, however, preserve him from a 
 mad, unlawful attachment. He loved the actress Champmesle : 
 but repentance came. He resolved not only to wiite no more 
 plays, but to do penance for those already given to the world. 
 He was on the eve of becoming, in his penitence, a Carthusian 
 friar, when his religious director advised marriage instead. He 
 humbly did as he was told, and united himself to the daughter 
 of a treasurer for France, of Amiens, by whom he had seven 
 children. It was only at the request of Madame de Maintenon 
 that he wrote ' Esther' for the convent of St. Cyr, where it was 
 first acted. 
 
 His death was the result of his benevolent, sensitive nature. 
 Having drawn up an excellent paper on the miseries of the 
 people^ he gave it to Madame de Maintenon to read it to the 
 king. Louis, in a transport of ill-humour, said, ' What ! does 
 he suppose because he is a poet that he ought to be minister 
 of state ?' Racine is said to have been so wounded by this 
 speech that he was attacked by a fever and died. His decease 
 
La Rochefoticaulf s Wit and Sensibility. 257 
 
 took place in 1699, nineteen years after that of La Rochefou- 
 cault, who died in 1680. 
 
 Amongst the circle whom La Rochefoucault loved to as- 
 semble were Boileau— Despre'aux, and Madame de Sevign6 — 
 the one whose wit and the other whose grace completed the 
 delights of that salon. A life so prosperous as La Rochefou- 
 cault's had but one cloud — the death of his son who was killed 
 during the passage of the French troops over the Rhme. We 
 attach to the character of this accomplished man the charms 
 of wit ; we may also add the higher attractions of sensibility. 
 Notwithstanding the worldly and selfish character which is 
 breathed forth in his ' Maxims and Reflections,' there lay at 
 the bottom of his heart true piety. Struck by the death of a 
 neighbour, this sentiment seems even on the point of being 
 expressed ; but, adds Madame de S^vignd, and her phrase is 
 untranslatable, ' iliiest pas effleuri.' 
 
 All has passed away ! the Fronde has become a memory, not 
 a realized idea. Old people shake their heads, and talk of 
 Richelieu ; of his gorgeous palace at Rueil, with its lake and 
 its prison thereon, and its mysterious dungeons, and its avenues 
 of chestnuts, and its fine statues ; and of its cardinal, smiling, 
 whilst the worm that never dieth is eating into his very heart ; 
 a seared conscience, and playing the fine gentleman to fine 
 ladies in a rich stole, and with much garniture of costiy lace : 
 whilst beneath all is the hair shirt, that type of penitence and 
 sanctity which he ever wore as a salvo against all that passion 
 and ambition that almost burst the beating heart beneath that 
 hair shirt. Richelieu has gone to his fathers. Mazarin comes 
 on the scene ; the wily, grasping Italian. He too vanishes ; 
 and forth, radiant in youth, and strong in power, comes Louis, 
 and the reign of politeness and periwigs begins. 
 
 The Due de Saint-Simon, perhaps the greatest portrait- 
 painter of any time, has familiarized us with the greatness, the 
 littleness, the graces, the defects of that royal actor on the 
 stage of Europe, whom his own age entitled Louis the Great. 
 A wit, in his writings, of the first order — if we comprise under 
 the head of wit the deepest discernment, the most penetrating 
 natire — Saint-Simon was also a soldier, philosopher, a reformer, 
 
 17 
 
J5& Saint-Simotis Youth. 
 
 a Trappist, and, aventually, a devotee. Like all young men who 
 wished for court favour, he began by fighting : Louis cared little 
 for carpet knights. He entered, however, into a scene which 
 he has chronicled with as much fidelity as our journalists do 
 a police report, and sat quietly down to gather observations — 
 not for his own fame, not even for the amusement of his chil- 
 dren or grandchildren — but for the edification of posterity yet 
 a century afar off his own time. The treasures were buried 
 until 1829. 
 
 A word or two about Saint-Simon and his youth. At nine- 
 teen he was destined by his mother to be married. Now every 
 one knows how marriages are managed in France, not only in 
 the time of Saint-Simon, but even to the present day. A mother 
 or an aunt, or a grandmother, or an experienced friend, looks 
 out ; be it for son, be it for daughter, it is the business of her 
 life. She looks and she finds : family, suitable ; fortune, con- 
 venient ; person, pas mal; principles, Catholic, with a due ab- 
 horrence of heretics, especially English ones. After a time, 
 the lady is to be looked at by the unhappy /ri?/««^22/ a church, 
 a mass, or vespers, being very often the opportunity agreed. 
 The victim thinks she will do. The proposal is discussed by 
 the two mammas ; relatives are called in ; all goes well ; the con- 
 tract is signed ; then, a measured acquaintance is allowed : but 
 no tUe-h-tUes ; no idea of love. * What ! so indelicate a sentiment 
 before marriage ! Let me not hear of it,' cries mamma, in a 
 sanctimonious panic. 'Love! Quelle Mtise P bA6s mon pire. 
 
 But Saint-Simon, it seems, had the folly to wish to make a 
 marriage of inclination. Rich, pair de France, his father — an 
 old roue, who had been page to Louis XIII. — dead, he felt ex- 
 tremely alone in the world. He cast about to see whom he 
 could select. The Due de Beauvilliers had eight daughters ; a 
 misfortune, it may be thought, in France or anywhere else. 
 Not at all : three of the young ladies were kept at home, to be 
 married ; the other five were at once disposed of, as they passed 
 the unconscious age of infancy, in convents. Saint-Simon was, 
 howev'*' disappointed. He offered, indeed ; first for the eldest, 
 who was not then fifteen years old ; and finding that she had a 
 vocation for a conventual life, went on to the third, and was 
 
Saint- Simon's Court Life. 259 
 
 going through the whole family, when he was convinced that 
 his suit was impossible. The eldest daughter happened to be 
 a disciple of Fdndlon's, and was on the very eve of being vowed 
 to heaven. 
 
 Saint-Simon went off to La Trappe, to console himself for his 
 disappointment. There had been an old intimacy between 
 Monsieur La Trappe and the father of Saint-Simon ; and this 
 friendship had induced him to buy an estate close to the ancient 
 abbey where La Trappe still existed. The friendship became 
 hereditary ; and Saint-Simon, though still a youth, revered and 
 loved the penitent recluse of Ferte au Vidame, of which Lamar- 
 tine has written so grand and so poetical a description. 
 
 Let us hasten over his marriage with Mademoiselle de Lorges, 
 who proved a good wife. It was this time a grandmother, the 
 Mardchale de Lorges, who managed the treaty; and Saint- 
 Simon became the happy husband of an innocent blonde, with 
 a majestic air, though only fifteen' years of age. Let us hasten 
 on, passing over his presents ; his six hundred louis, given in a 
 corbeiUe full of what he styles ' gallantries ;' his mother's dona- 
 tion of jewellery; the midnight mass, by which he was linked 
 to the child who scarcely knew him ; let us lay all that aside, 
 and turn to his court life. 
 
 At this juncture Louis XIV., who had hitherto dressed with 
 great simplicity, indicated that he desired his court should ap- 
 pear in all possible magnificence. Instantly the shops were 
 emptied. Even gold and silver appeared scarcely rich enough. 
 Louis himself planned many of the dresses for any public occa- 
 sion. Afterwards he repented of the extent to which he had per- 
 mitted magnificence to go, but it was then impossible to check 
 the excess. 
 
 Versailles, henceforth in all its grandeur, contains an apart- 
 ment which is called, from its situation, and the opportunities 
 it presents of looking down upon the actors of the scene around, 
 L^ CEil de Bxuf. The revelations of the CEil de Bceuf, during 
 the reign of Louis XV., form one of the most amazing pic- 
 tures of wickedness, venahty, power misapplied, genius pol- 
 luted, that was ever drawn. No one that reads that infamous 
 book can wonder at the 1 evolution of 1789. Let us conceive 
 
26o The History of Louise de la Vallikre. 
 
 Saint-Simon to have taken his stand here, in this region, pure 
 in the time of Louis XIV., comparatively, and note we down 
 his comments on men and women. 
 
 He has^ journeyed up to court from La Trappe, which has 
 fallen into confusion and quarrels, to which the most saintly 
 precincts are peculiarly liable. 
 
 The history of Mademoiselle de la Vallibre was not, as he 
 tells us, of his time. He hears of her death, and so indeed 
 does the king, with emotion. She expired in 1710, in the Rue 
 St Jacques, at the Carmelite convent, where, though she was in 
 the heart of Paris, her seclusion from the world had long been 
 complete. Amongst the nuns of the convent none was so hum- 
 ble, so penitent, so chastened as this once lovely Louise de la 
 Vallifere, now, during a weary term of thirty-five years, ' Marie 
 de la Mis^ricorde.' She had fled from the scene of her fall at 
 one-and-thirty years of age. Twice had she taken refuge among 
 the ' blameless vestals,' whom she envied as the broken-spirited 
 envy the passive. First, she escaped from the torture of wit 
 nessing the king's passion for Madame de Montespan, by hiding 
 herself among the Benedictine sisters at St. Cloud. Thence 
 the king fetched her in person, threatening to order the cloister 
 to be burnt. Next, Lauzun, by the command of Louis, sought 
 her, and brought her avec mam forte. The next time she fled 
 no more ; but took a public farewell oi ail she had too fondly 
 loved, and throwing herself at the feet of the queen, humbly 
 entreated her pardon. Never since that voluntary sepulture 
 had she ceased, during those long and weary years, to lament — 
 as the heart-stricken can alone lament — her sins. In deep con- 
 trition she learned the death of her son by the king, and bent 
 her head meekly beneath the chastisement. 
 
 Three years before her death the triumphant Athende de 
 Montespan had breathed her last at Bourbon. If Louis XIV. 
 had nothing else to repent of, the remorse of these two women 
 ought to have wrung his heart. Athdnde de Montespan was a 
 youthful, innocent beauty, fresh from the seclusion of provincial 
 life, when she attracted- the blighting regards of royalty. A 
 fUe was to be given ; she saw, she heard that she was its ob- 
 ject. She entreated her husband to take her back to his estate 
 
A Mean Act of Louis Quatorze. 261 
 
 in Guyenne, and to leave her there till the king had forgotten 
 her. Her husband, in fatal confidence, trusted her resistance, 
 and refused her petition. It was a life-long sorrow ; and he 
 soon found his mistake. He lived and died passionately at- 
 tached to his wife, but never saw her after her fall. 
 
 When she retired from court, to make room for the empire 
 of the subtle De Maintenon, it was her son, the Due de Maine, 
 who induced her, not from love, but from ambition, to with- 
 draw. She preserved, even in her seclusion in the country, the 
 style of a queen, which she had assumed. Even her natural 
 children by the king were never allowed to sit in her presence, 
 on a fauteuil, but were only permitted to have small chairs. 
 Every one went to pay her court, and she spoke to them as if 
 doing them an honour ; neither did she ever return a visit, even 
 from the royal family. Her fatal beauty endured to the last : 
 nothing could exceed her grace, her tact, her good sense in 
 conversation, her kindness to every one. 
 
 But it was long before her restless spirit could find real peace. 
 She threw herself on the guidance of the Abbd de la Tour ; for 
 the dread of death was ever upon her. He suggested a terrible 
 test of her penitence. It was, that she should entreat her hus- 
 band's pardon, and return to him. It was a fearful struggle 
 with herself, for she was naturally haughty and high spirited ; 
 but she consented. After long agonies of hesitation, she wrote 
 to the injured man. Her letter was couched in the most humble 
 language ; but it received no reply. The Marquis de Montes- 
 pan, through a third person, intimated to her that he would 
 neither receive her, nor see her, nor hear her name pronounced. 
 At his death she wore widow's weeds ; but never assumed his 
 arms, nor adopted his liveries. 
 
 Henceforth, all she had was given to the poor. When Louis 
 meanly cut down her pension, she sent word that she was sorry 
 for the poor, not for herself; they would be the losers. She 
 then humbled herself to the very dust : wore the hardest cloth 
 next her fair skin ; had iron bracelets ; and an iron girdle, which 
 made wounds on her body. Moreover, she punished the most 
 unruly members of her fi-ame : she kept her tongue in bounds ; 
 she ceased to slander; she learned to bless. The fear of death 
 
262 A II lias passed away ! 
 
 still haunted her ; she lay in bed with every curtain drawn, che 
 room lighted up with wax candles ; whilst she hired watchers to 
 sit up all night, and insisted that they should never cease talking 
 or laughing, lest, when she woke, the fear of death might come 
 over her affrighted spirit. 
 
 She died at last after a few hours' illness, having just time to 
 order all her household to be summoned, and before them to 
 make a public confession of her sins. As she lay expiring, 
 blessing God that she died far away from the children of her 
 adulterous connection, the Comte d'Antin, her only child by 
 the Marquis de Montespan, arrived. Peace and trust had then 
 come at last to the agonized woman. She spoke to him about 
 her state of mind, and expired. 
 
 To Madame de Maintenon the event would, it was thought, 
 be a relief: yet she wept bitterly on hearing of it. The king 
 showed, on the contrary, the utmost indifference, on learning 
 that one whom he had once loved so much was gone for ever. 
 
 All has passed away ! The CEil de Bauf is now important 
 only as being pointed out to strangers ; Versailles is a show- 
 place, not a habitation. Saint-Simon, who lived until 1775, 
 was truly said to have turned his back on the new age, and to 
 live in the memories of a former world of wit and fashion. He 
 survived until the era of the ' Encyclopedic ' of Voltaire, and 
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He lived, indeed, to hear that Mont- 
 esquieu was no more. How the spirit of Louis XIV. spoke in 
 his contemptuous remarks on Voltaire, whom he would only 
 call Arouet ; ' The son of my father's and my own notary.' 
 
 At length, after attaining his eightieth year, the chronicler, 
 who knew the weaknesses, the vices, the peculiarities of man- 
 kind, even to a hair's breadth, expired ; having long given up 
 the court and occupied himself, whilst secluded in his country 
 seat, solely with the revising and amplification of his wonderful 
 Memoirs. 
 
 No works, it has been remarked, since those of Sir Walter 
 Scott, have excited so much sensation as the Memoirs of his 
 own time, by the soldier, ambassador, and Trappist, Due de 
 Saint-Simon. 
 
j^ 4. 
 
 
 > 4 " "^.J I. 
 
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