The intoxication of Charles was complete, and the man who had supported patiently the furious outbreaks of Barbara Palmer[10] and the saucy petulence of Nell Gwynne, was the more able to appreciate “les grâces décentes” of the foreign maid-of-honour, who, in the profaned walls of Whitehall, diffused the delicate odour of Versailles.
The purpose of her receiving an appointment at the Court of St. James’s was apparently foretold, for Madame de Sévigné thus writes to her daughter:—“Ne trouvez-vous pas bon de savoir que Querouaille dont l’étoile avait été devineé avant qu’elle partit, l’a suivie très-fidèlement? Le roi d’Angleterre l’a aimée, elle s’est trouvée avec une légère disposition à ne le pas haïr.”[11]
It is doubtful, however, whether Charles did immediately enjoy his conquest. If it be noted that the Duke of Richmond only came into the world in 1672, we may be led to suppose that Mademoiselle Querouaille did not yield without hesitation to the desires of her royal lover; and that supposition becomes almost a certitude, when one reads this passage of a letter which Saint-Evremond addressed to his fair countrywoman:—
“Suffer yourself rather to follow the bent of your temptation, instead of listening to your pride. Your pride would soon cause you to be sent back to France, and France would fling you, as has been the lot of many others, into some convent. But allowing that you should choose of your own free will that dismal kind of retreat, still it would be necessary beforehand to render yourself worthy of entering therein. What a figure you would cut there, if you had not the character of a penitent! True penitence is that which afflicts and mortifies us at the recollection of our faults. Of what has a good girl to be penitent who has done nothing wrong? You would appear ridiculous in the eyes of the other nuns, who, repenting from just motives, should discover that your repentance was only grimace.”
Louise committed the error of not only approving the advice of that equivocal monitor, but the greater error of following it. Experience came very soon to open her eyes.
In 1672, as has been said, the Querouaille having presented the King with a son, her favour increased considerably. In 1673 she was created Duchess of Portsmouth, and at the close of the same year Louis XIV., alike to flatter the King of England, and to confirm him in his alliance with himself against Holland, as to reward the good offices of Louise Querouaille, conferred upon the latter the domain of D’Aubigny, in Berry. This domain given, in 1422, by Charles VII. to John Stuart, “as a token of the great services which he had rendered in war to that King,” had reverted to the crown of France. In the letter of donation which Louis sent to Charles, it stated that “after the death of the Duchess of Portsmouth, the demesne of Aubigny shall pass to such of the natural children of the King of Great Britain as he shall nominate.” Charles II. nominated Charles Lennox (his son by Querouaille), and created him Duke of Richmond on the 19th of August, 1675.
Although maîtresse-en-titre, and favourite mistress as she became, she could not, however, prevent the unworthy and frequent resort of the debauched prince to rivals of a lower grade, and Madame de Sévigné penned some amusing lines on the subject of those duplicate amours:—“Querouaille has been in no way deceived; she had a mind to be the King’s mistress, she has her wish. He passes almost every evening in her company, in presence of the whole Court. She has a child which has just been acknowledged, and on whom two duchies have been bestowed. She amasses wealth, and makes herself feared and respected wherever she can; but she could not foresee finding a young actress in her path by whom the King is bewitched.... He shares his attentions, his time, and his health between them both. The actress is quite as proud as the Duchess of Portsmouth: she spites her, makes wry faces at her, assails her, and often carries the King off from her. She boasts of those points in which she is preferable—that she is young, silly, bold, debauched, and agreeable; that she can sing, dance, and play the part de bonne foi. She has a son by the King, and is determined that he shall be acknowledged. Here are her reasons:—‘This Duchess,’ she says, ‘acts the person of quality; she pretends that she is related to everybody in France. No sooner does any grandee die, than she puts on mourning. Ah well! if she is such a great lady, why did she condescend to become a catin? She ought to expire with shame: for myself, it is my profession; I don’t pique myself on anything else. The King keeps me; I am at present his solely. I have brought him a son, whom I intend he shall acknowledge, and I am assured that he will, for he loves me quite as well as he does his Portsmouth.’ This creature takes the top of the walk, and embarrasses and puts the Duchess out of countenance in a most extraordinary manner.”
In Mrs. Nelly, with all her good qualities, Charles had not found exactly a rose without thorns to stick in his button-hole. In her too wild fun, or spirit of mockery, she was apt, as most others, to give demonstration of all the variety of her woman’s nature and her woman’s wit, and to make her baffled and humbled sovereign wish in his inmost heart that he had never had anything to do with her.
Such were the annoyances—doubtless unforeseen by Mademoiselle Querouaille on quitting France, and to which La Vallière and Montespan were not exposed in the Court of the Grand Monarque, where vice itself put on airs of grandeur and majesty. It must be owned, however, that Madame de Sévigné exaggerates when she pretends to establish a sort of equilibrium between the position of the actress and that of the Duchess. The triumphs of Nell Gwynne were triumphs of the alcove; whilst her Grace of Portsmouth reigned without a rival over the realm of diplomacy. Charles II. was in the habit of passing a great portion of his time in her apartments, where often, in the midst of a joyous circle, he met Barillon, the French Ambassador, who, from his agreeable manners, was freely admitted to all the amusements of the indolent monarch. It was by means of these frequent conversations that, seizing the favourable moment, the Duchess and the Ambassador succeeded in obtaining an order which suddenly changed the face of Europe, by bringing about the signature of the Treaty of Niméguen, and more than once it fell to her lot to obtain a success of the same kind, to which neither her arrogant Grace of Cleveland nor the piquant Nelly could ever pretend. In political affairs the Querouaille held her own triumphantly over all her rivals, and obtained a dominion that ended only with the life of Charles. Too sensible to exact a strict fidelity from the King, the Duchess of Portsmouth was content to sigh in silence so long as her womanly feelings alone were sported with; but when it seemed likely that the influence which she strove to utilise to the profit of France might be trenched upon, her resentment broke forth in sudden and sweeping ebullitions which even the dread of a public scandal was impotent to repress. The correspondence of Bussy-Rabutin furnishes us with a scene of that description:—
“It is rumoured that Querouaille has been sermonising the King, crucifix in hand, as well both to wean him from other women as to bring him back to Christianity: in fact, it appears that she herself has been very near the point of death. However, three or four days afterwards, finding herself better, she rose from her bed, and dragged herself into the box where the King was seeing a play in company with Madame de Mazarin, and there she overwhelmed him with endless reproaches for his infidelity. Love and jealousy are strong passions.”