If one could include royal personages in the rather gay than worthy category of the 'wits and beaux of society,' Charles II. should figure at their head. He was the most agreeable companion, 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 commencement 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 adversity, with a heart unsoured by that 'stern nurse,' with a gaiety that was always kindly, never uncourteous, ever more French than English; 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 distingué 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, recognize 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 melancholy 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 English. 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 government. 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 'psalm' 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 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 punctilios of the region over which Louis XIV. presided. Wherever Charles was, his palace appeared to resemble a large hospitable 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.