Lady Villiers seems both to have foreseen all these defects, and to have prognosticated the atoning graces in her son. She acted as a needy and ambitious woman was likely to act. Instead of supplying the deficiencies of her son’s character and intellect by a sound education, she directed his attention to dancing, fencing, and the other exercises, styled by Lord Clarendon “the conservative qualities and ornaments of youth.”[youth.”][[28]] And in these pursuits so rapid a progress was made, that the tutors of all the three brothers were obliged to restrain the progress of George Villiers in order that their other pupils should not be disheartened by his proficiency. Meantime, his expanding beauty of form and face seemed to his proud mother to render her son worthy of a higher culture than that which she could bestow upon him at Godby. Her jointure was very small, and although Godby, where she resided, was a suitable abode for the widow of Sir George Villiers, the Manor House being large enough to receive James the First and his retinue during a royal progress, yet her poverty obliged her to live in great retirement. A rigid economy must have been necessary to regulate its household. Lady Villiers had only two hundred a-year, both for herself and her family, and that income was to cease at her death, when her orphan children would have but a pittance besides their beauty and their talents.[[29]] Impelled, as it is hinted by several historians, by a desire to benefit her children, the widowed lady, still young and fair, resolved to marry again. Sir Thomas Marquin was first the object of her choice, and after his death, she bestowed her hand upon Sir Thomas Compton, Knight of the Bath, and brother of Lord Compton, First Earl of Northampton, whose marriage with the daughter of Sir John Spencer, Lord Mayor of London, and commonly called “rich Spencer,” had brought an increase of honour and influence to his family. This union was the more important to Lady Villiers and her children, because their half-brothers and sisters looked upon them with no good will, and were little disposed to further their interests.
It was at that time the custom to send our young nobility, and even their inferiors, to France to complete their education. Lady Villiers resolved to afford her son George this advantage. She selected him from her other children partly from partiality, for it is expressly stated that “he who was debarred from his father’s estate was happy in his mother’s love;”[[30]] and partly on account of his singular beauty of person. He is said, indeed, to have had, when he reached man’s estate, “no blemish from head to foot,” save that his eyebrows are stated to have been somewhat over pendulous, a defect which some of his admirers thought to be redeemed by the uncommon brilliancy of the eyes which flashed beneath them.[[31]] The Earl of Essex, to whom Villiers is compared, was taller, and of an “abler body” than the favourite of James I. But Villiers had the “neater limbs and freer delivery, he carried his well-proportioned body well, and every movement was graceful.” Nor does Lord Clarendon, who thus describes him, think it beneath the dignity of his subject to remark that Villiers “exceeded in the daintiness of his leg and foot,” whilst Essex was celebrated for his hands, which, says his panegyrist, though it be but feminine praise, “he took from his father.”[[32]] The complexion of George Villiers was singularly clear and beautiful, his forehead high and smooth, his eyes dark and full of intelligence and sweetness, whilst the perfect oval of his face, and delicate turn of features, fine, yet noble, and the air of refinement which characterised both his countenance and his bearing, rendered him one of the most attractive of human beings. As he attained to maturity, a peculiar courtesy of manner, a frankness and merriment which diverged at times into a total forgetfulness of forms, a power of throwing off the appearance of all oppressing business and secret cares, although of these he had his share, and of assuming “a very pleasant and vacant face,” a love of social life, and certain traits of character, half folly, half romance, won upon everyone that approached him before prosperity had changed courtesy into arrogance, or political intrigues marred the open expression of a physiognomy on which none could look without admiration.
The youth, whose promise, even at a very early age, augured the results which I have anticipated, reached Paris after the death of Henry IV.[[33]]
It was probably in the autumn that Villiers repaired to the Continent, since it is expressly stated that he was eighteen when he undertook that journey, and he had not attained that age until August, 1610. It seems, therefore, likely that Villiers beheld France under a strange aspect, that of a universal state of despair. Protestants and Catholics were alike overwhelmed by the recent calamity; the former might well dread a fresh massacre, but the grief of their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen dispelled that apprehension. The excess of lamentation, expressed somewhat theatrically—the cries of widows and orphans in the streets—the sight of women rushing through the mourners at the funeral, screaming—the orations, interrupted by sobs, in which the virtues of the deceased monarch were panegyrized—these must have ceased before Villiers visited Paris; but the Huguenots still sheltered themselves in the Arsenal, where the great Sully mourned his royal master and friend.[[34]]
In Paris, Villiers remained three years, prosecuting his studies, which consisted of French, and the practice of polite and martial exercises. His education tended, indeed, to increase his failings, to heighten his taste for display and love of pleasure, and to weaken his reasoning faculties. He had, according to the acknowledgment of his great partisan, Sir Henry Wotton, “little grammatical foundation;” and French appears to have been the only foreign language that he ever acquired; nevertheless, it is remarkable what application to business he evinced during the last few years of his life; his punctuality in correspondence, and the clear and simple style of his letters, prove how easily his mind might have been trained to higher pursuits than those on which his mother, worldly, but not wise, based her expectations of his future fortunes.
Paris, which Villiers was destined twice to revisit under circumstances very dissimilar to those of his first residence there, was then the resort of foreigners. The youth, who had emerged from the quiet haunts of Goadby Grange, took his first lessons in life in the city which Howell, in his familiar letters, styles, the “huge magazine of men.” “Its buildings,” says that writer, “were indifferently fair; its streets as foul during all the four seasons of the year; a perpetual current of coaches, carts, and horses encumbering them, narrow and dirty as they were, and were sometimes so entangled that it was an hour or more before they could proceed. In such a stop,” as Howell terms it, “was Ravaillac‘s[Ravaillac‘s] fatal opportunity afforded, and the great Henry slain.”[[35]] The plague[[36]] settled perpetually in one corner or another of Paris, but Villiers escaped that risk; he returned, apparently exempt from foreign vices, unscathed by a more fearful contagion than the plague; at least, thus may we infer from the assertion of Sir Henry Wotton. “He came home,” says that writer, “in his natural plight, without affected forms, the ordinary disease of travellers.”[[37]] It may reasonably be presumed that the young man who retains his simplicity of deportment, still possesses a corresponding integrity of character.
Villiers was now twenty-one years old; his accomplishments may shortly be summed up: he was an excellent fencer, an incomparable dancer, he understood the arrangement of costume and the art of dressing well, but those valuable acquirements lay dormant in one who possessed no wardrobe, for he went to France poor, and his family had not been enriched during his absence. Villiers was, in addition to these graces, a perfectly well-bred man. Lord Clarendon describes him to have been “a fair-spoken gentleman, of a sweet and accostable nature.” At present, his constitution, which afterwards gave way beneath the pressure of business, or in consequence of the excitements of his dazzling career, was in full vigour. Such was the youth who now returned to gratify his mother’s ambitious hopes, by that career to which the efforts of the young aristocracy of England were then chiefly directed. It may be here remarked as singular, that Villiers was trained to no specific profession; he had not been initiated into those elements of learning necessary to qualify him for the church or the bar; he had not served in the army; but was, in fact, literally brought up to follow his fortunes at the Court of James the First. It appears to those in modern times a bold speculation, but the character of the monarch upon whose peculiarities it was based accounts for the scheme, apparently so chimerical, of qualifying a son for nothing better than to depend merely upon the chances of an hour, for, had opportunity been wanting, the graces and accomplishments of George Villiers might have been for ever concealed, or disregarded.
But it is not improbable that Lady Villiers, especially after her second marriage, had certain dependence upon the exertions of personal friends, through whose agency she trusted to advance her son’s interests at Court. From them, too, she probably learned that the disgrace of Somerset was at hand.
When Villiers returned to England, he found no better prospect before him than to pass some time at Goadby, under the “wing and counsel of his mother.”[[38]] In this retreat, he had leisure to study the temper of the times, and to view from afar the characteristics of that sphere for which he was destined.
It appears to have been the fashion of the day to rush to London, and to desert those country seats to which James the First and his son Charles endeavoured by proclamations and harangues to restrain the gentry. The innovation was severely reproved by James in the summer of 1616, when he made that memorable speech in the Star Chamber, in which he censured the custom, attributing it, of course, to the wives and daughters of the offenders. “Thus,” remarked James, “do they neglect the country hospitality, and cumber the city.” He next complained of the new and sumptuous buildings in the metropolis, of the coaches, lacqueys, and fine clothes in which the higher classes indulged, comparing them to “Frenchmen,” or, as if that were not harsh enough, declaring that they “lived miserably in their houses, like Italians, becoming apes to other nations.” Finally, he proposed to remedy these evils by an edict of the Star Chamber.