Court Beauties of Old Whitehall Part 14

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

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

It was comparatively easy to get what she wanted out of Charles. Nell Gwynn had declared that she would be content with five hundred a year, but she managed to mulct the Treasury of sixty thousand pounds in one year and get her son created Duke of St. Albans, with suitable revenues to maintain the dignity. But the spoils of Nell were modest compared with those of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth. She was never addicted to gambling to the same extent as the Mazarin and the Cleveland, but she could afford to lose five thousand pounds at one sitting, as she once did. The drafts she made on the national exchequer were enormous. Her allowance of ten thousand pounds was generally swollen to forty thousand, and one year she succeeded in drawing the huge sum of 136,668. Like the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland, she sold every office that fell vacant; but she went a step further than her Grace, and took commissions on the bribes with which Louis bought his creatures in England, trafficked in royal pardons, and did a good business in selling convicts to West Indian planters. This rapacity never flagged during her reign.

Immediately after Charles's death she put in a claim for ten thousand pounds of her pension, which was in arrears, and his successor did not hesitate to pay it.

The furniture that she acc.u.mulated in her apartments at Whitehall represented a fortune far greater than her father had ama.s.sed in the wool trade.

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

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

But even more important to this curious "little Keroual," of the "childish, simple, and baby face," than the acc.u.mulation of plunder in England was the feathering of a nest in France. Much as she valued her English ducal t.i.tle, in spite of the mockery heaped upon it, there was an honour in her own country that she valued far more. To this thoroughly patriotic Frenchwoman to be d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth was a small thing in comparison with the right to a _tabouret_ at Versailles. This was the supreme ambition of a Frenchwoman in the _ancien regime_.

Volumes could be written on the intrigues that the desire to obtain this distinction caused. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that some of the greatest events in European history have arisen in the quest of a _tabouret_. "To think," said Sobieski, the hero-king of Poland, who had married a Frenchwoman whose life was spent in the attempt to get this supreme feminine honour--"to think how she longs for that miserable stool on which n.o.body can sit at ease!"

The intrigues of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth to win her _tabouret_ at Versailles might be likened to a game of bridge in which she and Charles II.--whose hand she played--were opposed to Louis XIV. and his Amba.s.sador, Colbert de Croissy (a brother of the famous Colbert). In this diplomatic bridge the cards were so evenly distributed that the odd trick was only to be won by the most careful play. In any case, from the start the honours, so to speak, were held by the d.u.c.h.ess and Charles. We have stated that in recognition for her services at Euston, of which the immediate effect was the declaration by England of war on Holland, Louis XIV. had conferred on his spy the t.i.tle of d.u.c.h.esse d'Aubigny. The history of this duchy is rather interesting, and the t.i.tle was an ace in her Grace's hand.

Aubigny was a French ducal fief that two hundred and fifty years before had been conferred by a King of France upon a cadet of the House of Stuart. It was to return to the French Crown on the demise of the last male heir of the line, and this event had just taken place by the death of La Belle Stuart's husband, who was the last Duke of Richmond as well as of Aubigny. The latter t.i.tle having been conferred on Louise de Keroual by Louis, and both having for so long been borne by the head of the same family, she determined to secure the former for her son by Charles, who would thus as her heir once more reunite the two. This, in fact, was effected without the least trouble, and the Dukes of Richmond are also Ducs d'Aubigny down to the present day. But the empty t.i.tle of d.u.c.h.esse d'Aubigny by no means satisfied this cunning woman. She wished the ducal _terres_ as well. To possess them was to possess the coveted _tabouret_ at Versailles, to win the odd trick in this game of bridge.

For to be able to have the sublime distinction of sitting on a stool in the presence of the King of France one must not only be a d.u.c.h.ess in name but own one's duchy in fact. This, then, was the manner in which the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth sought to provide against a rainy day at Whitehall.

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

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

Louis XIV., having taken the opportunity while England and Holland were at war to plunder Spain of Flanders, was now anxious to swallow the Franche Comte and the Palatinate. Hereupon all Europe became terrified, and England and Holland hastened to patch up their differences. All the Ministers and Members of Parliament whom Louis had bought suddenly turned against him. The patriotism of the whole nation was profoundly stirred. Even Buckingham turned Puritan--for a time. With his broncho bucking like this Charles was obliged to exert all his skill to save himself from being thrown. He disbanded the regiments, to keep up which, in case he should need them, Louis had paid him eight million livres.

Moreover, at this critical time, when the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth was of the utmost consequence to Louis, she fell seriously ill. The less said of this illness the better, it was anything but creditable to her royal lover. Misfortune seldom comes alone, and to discourage her Grace still more a large sum of money and her jewels were stolen, while at the same time the d.u.c.h.esse de Mazarin arrived and fascinated Charles. Never had Louise de Keroual been so near utter ruin. Even Louis began to neglect her now. "She who was so plucky and fertile in resources," says Forneron, "began to lose courage. Courtin wrote to Louis to communicate to him a scene that took place in her apartment. He went to visit her at Whitehall and found her weeping. She opened her heart to him in the presence of her two French maids, who stood with downcast eyes close to the wall, as if glued to it. Tears flowed from their mistress's eyes; sighs and sobs interrupted her speech. M. Courtin stayed with her until midnight, trying to soothe her wounded spirit. Louvois made fun of her troubles, and coa.r.s.ely wrote that the scene of _la Signora adolorata_ had vastly amused his Majesty."

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

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

"This is how Gwynn argues: 'That hoity-toity French d.u.c.h.ess sets up to be of grand quality. Every one of rank in France is her cousin. The moment some grand lord or lady over there dies, she orders a suit of deep mourning. Well, if she's of such high station, why is she such an (unprintable)? She ought to be ashamed of herself! If I were reared to be a lady, I am sure I should blush for myself. But it's my trade to be a (likewise unprintable), and I was never anything else. The King keeps me; ever since he has done so I have been true to him. He has had a son by me, and I'm going to make him own the brat, for he is as fond of me as of his French miss.'"

She had to endure Nell Gwynn just as Queen Catherine had to endure herself and the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland.

It is not likely that Courtin was touched by the sight of her dejection when he paid her the visit mentioned above. Louis XIV.'s Amba.s.sadors in England never wasted sympathy on those who were falling from power. But an event unexpectedly occurred at this critical juncture that proved advantageous to the spy. The d.u.c.h.esse de Mazarin, "that female Buckingham," as Mrs. Jameson very aptly calls her, recklessly threw her great opportunity away by falling madly in love with the Prince of Monaco, "who came to England for two weeks and prolonged his visit for two years." Hereupon the sly Courtin advised her Grace of Portsmouth to dry her eyes and entertain. This advice was followed with considerable success, and Charles's lukewarmness was once more turned to boiling heat when Louise, who had gone away to Bath to take the waters, returned more blooming than ever. With the restoration of her health all her energy and cunning returned. Feeling the need of powerful English friends, and perhaps, too, from the devotion she always showed to her family, she sent to France for her sister Henriette, and married her to the Earl of Pembroke, on which occasion Charles gave the bride away, and a handsome dowry as well. Her power over her royal lover being once more established, and as an incentive to her loyalty of which at such a critical situation Louis had more need than ever, he now bestowed on her the ducal estates of Aubigny, with the right of transmission to her son, and the coveted _tabouret_. About the same time Charles created the issue of this amour Duke of Richmond.

The cunning of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth was never better displayed than on this occasion. For Charles, who was still afraid of her Grace of Cleveland, in order to allay her jealousy, had created his eldest son by this former mistress Duke of Grafton. But far from allaying the jealousy of the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland, it aroused that of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth as well. Each determined that her own son should take precedence of the other's; this could only be settled by one woman getting the letters patent signed before the other. The d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth now gave evidence of the ingenuity she possessed, for learning that the Minister whose duty it was to affix the seals to these patents was starting for Bath, she went to him at night just as he was stepping into his carriage, and thus "did" her rival, who arrived the first thing the next morning to find him gone and her object defeated.

History does not relate her Grace of Cleveland's language on this occasion.

Fortune once more smiling on "Madam Carwell," she worked for Louis with a right good will. "It is to her," says Forneron very fittingly, "more than to any statesman, that France is indebted for French Flanders, the Franche Comte, her twice secular possession of Alsace, her old owners.h.i.+p of the valley of the Mississippi and Canada, and her lately revived claim on Madagascar." Louis thoroughly understood that if his dream of empire was ever to be realised, it could only be by the aid of England.

But the English people were in a white rage with France, due to the unblus.h.i.+ng policy of Louis, which directly menaced the existence of England. And political fear was kept alive by religious hate. "They will vote anything against us in the House of Commons," reported Courtin, "and they say they are ready to sell their s.h.i.+rts off their backs to keep the Netherlands from being seized by us. These are the very words they make use of." Active a.s.sistance, an alliance, was clearly out of the question. And the temper of the English people being such, could even their pa.s.sive aid be counted on, would they be content merely to look on angrily while Louis carved up the map of Europe to suit him?

To Courtin this seemed improbable. "Make haste to conquer what you can,"

he wrote to Louvois dejectedly. "Clearly not the man for the delicate work he has to do," thought Louis. So Courtin was recalled, like Colbert de Croissy and Ruvigny before him. All three were men of exceptional ability--men trained in the school of Mazarin to specialise their talents, and to each of them the Court of Whitehall proved a labyrinth whose man-devouring Minotaur was the Imperial policy of Louis Quatorze.

Courtin was succeeded by Barillon, who, says Forneron, "was master in the art of corrupting men, and of hiding his contempt for those whom he corrupted. He resembled those Amba.s.sadors of Phillip II. who showered doubloons on the Catholic conspirators, affected interest in the democracy of the League, saw their heads fall without a shudder, and when the game was lost, prepared coolly for a new one." As if to render the Machiavellian abilities of this man still more dangerous, nature had gifted him with warm human affections and an exquisite sense of the Beautiful! Barillon is probably the greatest Amba.s.sador that ever represented a foreign nation at the English Court.

He came to do what Courtin had considered improbable, and what would have been impossible but for the help he received from the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth. Between Barillon and the spy there was the most perfect understanding. Only a miracle could keep England pa.s.sive while Louis XIV. crossed the Rhine, but the two magicians performed it. With all his cunning Charles II. had at last over-reached himself in his dealings with the nation. He had squandered his Fortunatus' purse of power and, like all spendthrifts, he was forced to go to the usurers. There were only two in Europe able to advance Charles the sums he required. These were his partner, England, and Louis Quatorze. The usury exacted by the former became with each call higher and higher; by this fortuitous means the English people were gradually recovering the liberties they had allowed themselves to be swindled out of at the beginning of the reign.

At each session of Parliament Charles was obliged by his extravagance to relinquish more and more power. He had so fallen into the hands of this usurer that it was even proposed in the House of Lords to impeach the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth. Whereupon one peer cynically remarked "that they ought rather to erect statues to the ladies who made their lover dependent on Parliament for his subsistence."

Charles was faced with the humiliating prospect of sinking from the head of the firm to the position of mere clerk, when Barillon and the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth offered to set him on his feet again. They stipulated for one condition only: that he would calmly look on while Louis ate up Spain, Holland, Germany, and even the Pope. To have escaped from the hands of the Parliament Charles would willingly have consented if Louis had proposed to make himself master of Asia, Africa, and America as well. But the sum he required to clear him of his difficulties staggered Louis; there was such a thing as paying too big a price even for Europe.

"The plea," says Mrs. Jameson, "used by Charles to persuade Louis to come to his terms was, 'that it would render England for ever dependent on him, and put it out of the power of the English to oppose him.'

_These were the King's own words._" France had already spent immense sums in bribes without any satisfactory remuneration, but Louis now exacted usury for the money he advanced. The English Parliament was to be dissolved _sine die_, in order that Charles should do Louis' bidding without the remonstrance of his subjects. In return for this independence Charles was to receive four million pounds, the receipt of which he was to acknowledge duly. In this way if Charles tried to be slippery Louis could threaten him with exposure. Barillon admits that he had orders to blackmail him the moment he attempted to be independent.

Charles's receipts are still to be seen in the French Archives. He had fallen from the frying-pan into the fire with a vengeance. One had to have one's wits about one to get the better of Louis XIV.

The rage of the English people at finding themselves "done" in this way by their King was overmastering. Totally ignorant of Charles's compact with Louis, they nevertheless beheld the result in the triumph of France against coalesced Europe. Nor was England's rage at this triumph lessened by the knowledge that it was due to her own neutrality. "The English people," says Forneron, "were carried away against the Catholics by one of those frenzies of contagious hatred which sometimes take hold of a nation like an epidemic. When a nation is possessed by a fit of such fury, there is always a statesman ready to pander to it."

It is not here that we can describe the character of Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, and all the details of that tissue of iniquity known as the Popish Plot. For this English Dreyfus Affair the reader is recommended to any History of England. "s.h.i.+ftsbury," or "the most vicious dog in England," as Charles called him, was a seventeenth-century opportunist with a truly marvellous faculty of recognising psychological moments. He was also that exceedingly rare individual, a genuinely bad man. He organised the Popish Plot, and sprung it on the nation at the ripe moment to clear the road for his own ambition. On the wave of terror it created he was carried to power. In the intense excitement of the time the life of no Catholic in the country was safe, and Shaftesbury's creature, t.i.tus Oates, accused even poor Queen Catherine. The Catholic Duke of York, like the coward he was, fled from England; the King himself, for his own security, dismissed his band of French musicians and was ready, if necessary at a moment's notice, to abandon his favourites to the popular fury. Revolution was shaking the throne. Among the strange phenomena that were witnessed in this period of chaos not the least curious was that of Nell Gwynn, posing as the head of the Protestants. It is, perhaps, not too much to say that the part she played in this religious convulsion of the English people explains the leniency, closely resembling popularity, with which she alone of Charles's mistresses is regarded by posterity. Of all the volumes that have been written on the Restoration no light has ever been shed so clearly on the character of the times as the _fact_ that Protestant England could hail with acclaim a king's mistress as its champion. A while before it had been the d.u.c.h.esse de Mazarin, now it was Nell's turn. The atmosphere of the Restoration had contaminated even morality itself.

In such a state of affairs the position of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth was very grave. Both Houses of Parliament demanded her impeachment, and the people clamoured that she should be executed in the Tower along with the fallen minister, Danby, who was already there. She fell ill from sheer fright. Barillon, however, alone of mortals, kept his head. He advised her, if possible, to make friends with Shaftesbury, and this, as if to make confusion still more confounded, she succeeded in doing. But in this hour of unparalleled success Shaftesbury made the first blunder of his political career. A severe attack of malignant fever threatening the King's life, the question of the succession became acute. Shaftesbury proposed the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, the King's eldest b.a.s.t.a.r.d, as the heir to the throne in place of the Duke of York, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth got drawn into this Monmouth intrigue. Hereupon the Prince of Orange, afterwards William III., as a Protestant and the next legitimate _male_ heir after the Duke of York, appeared on the scene--the Prince of Orange, a cold Northern Machiavelli, with an openly avowed and undying hatred of Louis XIV. and France. Shaftesbury and the Popish Plot had turned England into a pandemonium.

"I believe," wrote Barillon to Louis, "each now wishes to save himself at the cost of the others."

A profound darkness seemed to have fallen on the frenzied nation, in which for a time Barillon and the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth became separated. Monmouth was effaced by the lampoons which, owing to the imprudence of her Grace's maid, Mrs. Wall, connected him with the hated d.u.c.h.ess. Shaftesbury was dislodged from power by his rival Sunderland, who maintained himself largely by the aid of the cunning Frenchwoman who by her devotion, by the knowledge she had of Charles's shameful secret understanding with Louis, and by her ability, with which she deeply impressed her royal lover, still continued _maitresse en t.i.tre_ and spy of the Court of France at Whitehall.

But in the darkness in which all groped the adventures of none were more curious than Louis'. He bribed lavishly every one he stumbled against, so to speak, to show him the way towards the light. No price was too great to pay, no abas.e.m.e.nt too shameless, that would keep the Prince of Orange from succeeding Charles II. History has revealed the extraordinary spectacle of the Presbyterians hobn.o.bbing with his Most Christian Majesty, the Republican party in England allied to the French tyrant!

"Baber continues to work the Presbyterians," wrote Barillon. "It is through him that I have gained two popular preachers who can insinuate things that it would never do to say openly. I know that they have spoken in the pulpit of a matter which would not count anywhere else, unless here, but which in England is no trifle. _It is that the Prince of Orange hunts on Sundays._"

Barillon had got into the skin of the nation to which he was accredited.

Whether Louis laughed at the depth of religious hypocrisy that took his bribes and objected to hunting on Sundays, is not recorded; perhaps not, the situation was too serious even for his sardonic humour.

The first to emerge from the labyrinth of the Popish Plot was the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth. On her heels came Louis and Barillon. Behind them in the dark groped Shaftesbury and Sunderland, Monmouth and the Prince of Orange, and a host of "faith and freedom" men who were taking French money and salving their consciences by trying to cheat those who gave it to them. The tide of revolution was ebbing fast; a calm succeeded the tempest. Whitehall recovered its gaiety and levity; the Restoration its license; King Charles his health and cynicism. By the help of Louis he believed himself secure for the rest of his life, and he did not care in the least what happened to England and the House of Stuart afterwards.

Reresby has given us the following account of a typical day in his life at Newmarket about this time: "He walked in the morning till ten o'clock, then he went to the c.o.c.k-pit till dinner-time. About three he went to the horse-races; at six he returned to the c.o.c.k-pit for an hour only. Then he went to the play, though the actors were but of a terrible sort; from thence to supper, then to the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth's till bedtime, and so to his own apartment to take his rest."

In this distribution of his time it will be seen that no mention is made of business. As a matter of fact he did none, because, Parliament being dissolved indefinitely, there was none. Such routine work as there was Sunderland and the d.u.c.h.ess did between them. The only business that the English King was called upon to transact was the signing of the receipt for his French subsidy every quarter, which he managed to get paid in advance. The extraordinary indifference he manifested in his deportment accounts entirely for the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth's continued favour. She had long ceased to be his mistress in anything but name, yet never was her position so secure. She had become one of the habits to which Charles had enslaved himself. The dream of her life had been to appear at Versailles for a brief moment and have the exquisite satisfaction of sitting on her _tabouret_, and compelling the proud, contemptuous ladies of the French Court to treat her as their equal. And it was now that, absolutely confident of her place, she dared to run the risk of losing it by visiting France. She, however, took the precaution to draw her quarter's pension in advance. Her reception at the Court of France was triumphal. "There has never been a parallel for the treatment she meets with," says Saint-Simon. "When, on a high holiday, she went to visit the Capucines in the Rue St. Honore, the poor monks, who were told beforehand of her intention, came out processionally to receive her, with cross, holy-water, and incense. They received her just as if she had been the Queen, which threw her all in a heap, as she did not expect so much honour." Perhaps it was at this time that "her portrait as the Madonna with her son as the Child was painted for a rich convent in France, and used as an altar-piece."

Her Grace's ostensible reason for visiting her native country had been to take the waters of Bourbon, and on completing her cure she gave herself the pleasure of visiting Aubigny. So pleased was she with her feudal castle, feudal rights, and feudal acres that she could have received the worst news from England with but little genuine distress.

Her presence, however, was required at Whitehall as much by Charles as Louis, and after a four months' holiday she returned to England. Her visit was not without profit. Among the items of private business she transacted during her absence were the investing of her English fortune in French securities; the wheedling of an abbey out of Louis for one of her aunts who was a nun; and her recognition of the Duke of York's right to the Succession, whereby she made a friend of James, whose star was once more in the ascendant.

The splendour of her social success in France was, on her return to Whitehall, reflected in the cordiality with which she was welcomed by the great English peeresses who had formerly snubbed her. Far from losing ground during her absence, she had gained it if possible. The English Court regarded her quite as one of the royal family. She received the foreign envoys even before they presented their credentials to the King. For speaking slightingly of her the Dutch Amba.s.sador was obliged to apologise in person; while for the same reason she complained to Queen Catherine of one of her maids of honour, who was punished for her insolence by the loss of a quarter's salary. She effaced Charles's unfortunate consort more completely even than had the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland. In justice to her, however, it must be confessed that her conduct to Catherine was nearly always respectful. From the time of the Popish Plot to the end of the reign, nothing of any importance transpired without her initiative or sanction. When Louis decided that it was time to marry the Princess Anne, the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth provided the necessary husband in Prince George of Denmark. It is true she had many enemies, notably the d.u.c.h.ess of York, who despised her, but none of them dared offend her. She was virtually the proconsul whom Louis XIV. had appointed to govern England, which he had reduced to a "province of France."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PHILIPPE DE VENDoME, GRAND PRIEUR DE FRANCE.

_From an old print in the British Museum._]

So complete was her power that her life dragged monotonously till there came one to colour it in the person of Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prieur de France. This man was the grandson of Henri IV. and the Charmante Gabrielle, and his mother was Mazarin's eldest niece, Laure Mancini, the only one about whom there was never any scandal, and who had died shortly after his birth. He was, consequently, a nephew of the d.u.c.h.esse de Mazarin. He was also the younger brother of the famous Duc de Vendome of whom Saint-Simon has said so many infamous things. But perhaps his special attraction in the eyes of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth was that he was the nephew of the Duc de Beaufort, her first lover, and the man who had given her her first start in life. He had been banished from France, for what reason is not clear. Perhaps it was for the cowardice he had displayed in action, for he was an arrant coward and braggart. "He slipped out of a duel," says Forneron, "about the d.u.c.h.esse de Ludre with M. de Vivonne by riding off to the country and out of the army on the eve of the battle in which Turenne was killed." Be this as it may, he had been obliged to quit France. Like most exiles in the seventeenth century, his personal knowledge of the various countries of Europe was extensive and intimate--especially of the "night-life" of Courts and capitals. Among his adventures was the partners.h.i.+p, terminable without notice, that he formed at Rome with his cousin, the d.u.c.h.esse de Mazarin's daughter, the Marquise de Richelieu, "a wanderer like himself." If one may believe Saint-Simon, whose portraits of the Vendome brothers are of the kind that one is inclined to consign to the flames with the tongs, the Grand Prieur "never went to bed sober during thirty years, but was always carried there dead drunk; was a liar, a swindler, and a thief; a rogue to the marrow of his bones, rotted with vile diseases, the most contemptible and yet most dangerous fellow in the world."

Saint-Simon made these agreeable remarks about the Grand Prieur many years after his visit to England. At the time the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth "retained him in London with a tenderness so undisguised as to excite the raillery of the whole Court," he was a handsome and attractive rake of twenty-eight. At first mere love of notoriety made him pay his attentions to the d.u.c.h.ess, who, from some motive best known to herself, appeared to be flattered by them, whereupon King Charles did the Grand Prieur the honour to be jealous of him. As a scandal was the last thing the prematurely worn-out epicurean Charles wished, he dared not show his jealousy openly by ordering Vendome out of the country. He preferred to apply to Barillon to help him get rid of his odious rival. Barillon, at once alarmed at the consequences the King's jealousy might have upon the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth's position, expostulated with the Grand Prieur.

But the grandson of Henri IV. and the charming Gabrielle, recognising from Charles's jealousy and Barillon's anxiety to what profit to himself he could put certain letters her Grace had had the imprudence to write him, refused to quit Whitehall. Tableau: Charles in a white-hot rage (very, very rare with him); the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth in terror; Barillon in a state of stupefaction. Louis, however, helped her Grace out of her sc.r.a.pe by paying the blackmailing Grand Prieur his price, which was the privilege to return to France.

There is no proof whatever that the d.u.c.h.ess was guilty in this affair of anything more serious than the indiscretion of confiding to paper the fascination her das.h.i.+ng countryman had for her. And though her name was coupled wantonly with the Duke of Monmouth, Sunderland, and her favourite minister Danby, it is perhaps safe to say that the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth was the most faithful to Charles of all his mistresses.

Certainly, in spite of the _ennui_ the security of her power might have induced, she never again ran the risk of dissipating it by flirtations with unprincipled Grand Prieurs.

_Ennui_, however, was not an emotion that even a d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth, sated with power, could long experience at such a Court as Whitehall.

Shortly after her Vendome fright came the Rye House Plot. This plot within a plot had for its object the guaranteeing of the Protestant Succession. It was really the backwash of the Popish Plot, and was the last vain effort of Shaftesbury to regain power by compelling Charles to summon a Parliament, in which he and his party intended by a _coup d'etat_ to humble or, if necessary, to banish the dynasty. By some fatality a group of fanatical Protestants were at the same time independently conspiring to bring about Shaftesbury's end by murdering both Charles and the Duke of York. One of their number proved a traitor.

Charles was warned and the a.s.sa.s.sins captured. The Court, which was perfectly aware of the political aspirations of Shaftesbury and his party, unscrupulously but adroitly seized the opportunity to implicate the princ.i.p.al members of the Protestant or Whig party in the a.s.sa.s.sination Plot of which they were wholly ignorant. Never was a triumph more remorseless and complete. With Shaftesbury fled and the others beheaded, the Catholics more than got their revenge for what they had suffered at the time of the Popish Plot. There was no longer any question but that the Duke of York would succeed his brother and France continue to direct the policy of England. Louis XIV. promptly seized Luxemburg. The Grand Siecle was now at its zenith.