“1667, April 11th. To White Hall, thinking there to have seen the Duchesse of Newcastle’s coming this night to Court to make a visit to the Queene, the King having been with her yesterday to make her a visit since her coming to town. The whole story of this lady is a romance, and all she does is romantic. Her footmen in velvet coats, and herself in an antique dress, as they say, and was the other day at her own play ‘The Humourous Lovers’; the most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote, but yet she and her Lord mightily pleased with it; and she, at the end, made her respects to the players from her box, and did give them thanks. There is as much expectation of her coming to Court, that so people may come to see her, as if it were the Queene of Sweden, but I lost my labour, for she did not come this night.”
On the 26th of the same month, Pepys was more fortunate.
“Met my Lady Newcastle going with her coaches and footmen all in velvet: herself (whom I never saw before) as I have heard her often described (for all the town-talk is now-a-days of her extravagancies), with her velvet cap, her hair about her ears; many black patches, because of pimples about her mouth; naked-necked, without any thing about it, and a black just-au-corps. She seemed to me a very comely woman: but I hope to see more of her on May-day.”
The Duchess seems to have “got upon his brain,” to make use of a phrase which came into use long after his own days; for on 1 May he wrote:—
“That which we and almost all went for, was to see my Lady Newcastle: which we could not, she being followed and crowded upon by coaches all the way she went, that nobody could come near her: only I could see she was in a large black coach adorned with silver instead of gold, and so white curtains, and everything black and white, and herself in her cap”.
Pepys fairly hunted the poor Duchess through the streets of London. A week later he made the following entry:—
“Drove hard towards Clerkenwell, thinking to have overtaken my Lady Newcastle, whom I saw before us in her coach, with 100 boys and girls running looking upon her; but I could not: and so she got home before I could come up to her. But I will get a time to see her.”
And he did “get a time to see her”.