The King's Highway

by G. P. R. James

We shall not pause to investigate whether it was that greater purity of thought, or any other cause, which produced a far more extensive liberty of action, especially in the female part of society, than that which is admitted at present. It is certain, however, that it was so, and that there was something in virtue and innocence which in those days was a very strong safeguard against the attacks of scandal, calumny, and malice. In the present day, even the servants of virtue are found to be the absolute slaves of decorum; but in those days, so long as they obeyed the high commands of their rightful mistress, they had but little occasion to apprehend that the scourge of calumny, or the fear thereof, would drive them continually back into one narrow and beaten path.

It is, indeed, the greatest satire upon human nature which the world has ever produced, that acts perfectly innocent, high, and pure as God's holy light, cannot be permitted to persons even of tried virtue, simply because they would afford the opportunity of doing ill. It is, in fact, to say, that no one is to be trusted; that there is nothing which keeps man or woman virtuous but want of opportunity. It is a terrible satire; it is more than a satire; it is a foul libel, aimed by the vicious against those who are better than themselves.

Such things did not exist in the days whereof I write, or existed in a very, very small degree. It is true, from time to time, a woman's reputation might suffer falsely; but it was in general from her having approached very near the confines of evil, and the punishment that ensued, though perhaps even then disproportioned to the fault, had no tendency whatever to diminish the innocent liberty of others. We find from all the writers who painted the manners of those days—Addison, Swift, Steele, and others—that a lady, especially an unmarried lady, feared no risk to her reputation in going hither or thither, either perfectly alone, or with any friend with whom she was known to be intimate. She might venture upon an excursion into the country, a party of pleasure, nay, a journey itself in many instances, with any gentleman of honour and reputation, without either friends or enemies casting an imputation upon her character, or the world immediately giving her over to him in marriage.

It was left indeed to her own judgment whom she would choose for her companion, and the most innocent girl might have gone anywhere unreproved with a man of known honour and virtue, who would have ruined her own character had she placed herself in the power of a Rochester or a Bucking ham. These were rational boundaries; but perhaps the liberty of those days went somewhat beyond even that. In the early part of the eighteenth century, many of the habits of the Continent were introduced into England at a time that continental society was so corrupt as to require licence instead of liberty, and so far from attending to propriety, to give way to indecency itself. It became common in the highest circles of society for ladies, married and single alike, to dispense almost entirely with a female attendant, and following that most indecent and beastly of all continental habits, to permit all the offices of a waiting woman to be performed for them by men. The visits of male acquaintances were continually received in their bed-rooms, and that, also, before they had risen in the morning. This, perhaps, was too much, though certainly far less indecent than the other most revolting of all immodest practices which I have just mentioned. Others, again, admitted no visitors further than their dressing-room, and thought themselves very scrupulous; but there were others, as there must be at all times, who, with feelings of true modesty and perfect delicacy, hesitated not to use all proper and rational liberty, yet shrunk instinctively from the least coarseness of thought or language, and never yielded to aught that was immodest in custom or demeanour.

Of these was Lady Laura Gaveston; and though she had no fear of becoming the talk of the town, or losing the slightest particle of a bright and pure reputation, by treating one who had rendered her important services in all respects as she would a brother, by being seen with him often and often alone, by showing herself with him in public places, or by any other act of the kind that her heart prompted her to, she in no way gave in to the evil practices which the English had learned from their continental neighbours, and, indeed, never thought or reasoned upon the subject, feeling that decency as well as morality is a matter of sentiment and not of custom.

The peculiar situation in which the Duke and Wilton were placed towards each other; the Duke's repeated entreaties that Wilton would see him every day, if possible; the intimacy that had arisen from services rendered and received, produced that constant and continual intercourse which was necessary to the happiness of two people who loved as Wilton and Laura did; not a day passed without their seeing each other, scarcely a day passed without their being alone together, sometimes even for hours; and every moment that they thus spent in each other's society increased their feelings of love and tenderness for each other, their hopes, their confidence, their esteem.

Not a secret of Laura's bosom was now concealed from him she loved, not a thought, not a feeling. She delighted to tell him all: with whatever subject her mind was employed, with whatever bright thing her fancy sported, Wilton was always made the sharer; and it was the same with him. The course that their thoughts pursued was certainly not always alike, but they generally arrived at the same conclusion, she by a longer and a softer way, he by a more rapid, vigorous, and direct one. It was like the passing of a hill by two different roads; the one, for the bold climber, over the steepest brow; the other, for gentler steps, more easy round the side.

In the meantime, the Duke proceeded with his young friend even as he had commenced. He treated him as his most intimate and dearest confidant; he gradually went on to consult and trust him, not alone with regard to the immediate subject of his situation, as affected by the conspiracy, but upon a thousand other matters; and as Wilton's advice, clear-sighted and vigorous, was always judicious, and generally successful, the Duke, one of whose greatest weaknesses was the habit of putting his own judgment under the guidance of others, learned to lean upon his young companion, as he had at first done upon his wife, and then upon his daughter.

The various changes and events of the day, as they kept the Duke's mind in a state of frequent suspense and anxiety, made him more often recur to Wilton than otherwise would have been the case. London was filled with rumours of every kind regarding the discovery of the plot, and the persons implicated. The report of Lady Laura's having been carried off by the Jacobites, for the purpose of inducing her father to join in their schemes, spread far and wide, and filled Beaufort House, during a great part of the morning, with a crowd of visitors, all anxious to hear the facts, and to retail them with what colouring they thought fit.

Some argued, that though the Duke had always been thought somewhat of a Jacobite, at least he had now proved his adherence to the existing dynasty, beyond all manner of dispute, by what he and his daughter had suffered from their resistance to the Jacobites. Others, again, curled the malicious lip, and declared that the Duke must have given the conspirators some encouragement, or they would never have ventured upon such deeds. All, however, to the Duke himself, affected to look upon him and his family as marked by the enmity of the other faction; and he, on his part, perhaps, did feel his importance in a little degree increased by the sort of notoriety which he had acquired.