["LA BELLE STUART," DUCHESS OF RICHMOND]
A PRUDE OF THE RESTORATION
LA BELLE STUART! The glamour of the Restoration is in that romantic name. At the sound of it our thoughts at once rush back to childhood, when we learnt English History out of story-books and picture-books; and old, half-forgotten tales of the Merry Monarch, and the gay doings of cavaliers with periwigs and swords, of maids of honour all lace and perfume, crowd upon the memory. La Belle Stuart! To the very children of the Board Schools—if Imagination be a faculty looked upon with favour at those practical seats of municipal learning—must come visions of a far-off romantic time. And even now in maturer life, when the naughty gossip of Mr. Pepys and Hamilton's wit have torn off the magic veil that hid the truth from us, the name still fascinates, and our fancy delights to be lured back from the utilitarian virtues and Philistine vices of to-day to the joie de vivre of the Restoration. No, we have not the heart to scold La Belle Stuart; for childhood's sake she is still dear to us.
But enough of reflection. To the story, and as the giant Moulineau said on a similar occasion, "Bélier, mon ami, commencez au commencement."
Frances Theresa Stuart was one of the daughters of a Scotch cavalier, whose capital consisted of a sword broken in the royal cause and a pedigree dipped in royal blood. After the capture or execution of King Charles, England being clearly no longer a country in which any one bearing the name of Stuart could live in safety, Stuart of Blantyre fled with his family to France. Broken swords and pedigrees were capital of a sort in those days across the Channel, and the starving cavalier applied for the interest on his to Queen Henrietta Maria. Her exiled Majesty, who was so poor herself that but for the pity of Cardinal de Retz she would have passed a winter without a fire in her apartment at the Louvre, could not do much for the ruined loyalist, but she did what she could. Stuart of Blantyre, like many another, was provided with a new sword by Condé or Turenne, and his year-old daughter, Frances, was adopted by the ex-Queen.
Much water was to flow under the bridge before the Stuarts and their followers were to come to their own again, and it was more French than English that La Belle Stuart arrived at Whitehall in her sixteenth year. As the protégée of Henrietta Maria she had enjoyed superior advantages, and it is not surprising that, brought up at the Louvre in constant intercourse with the best society of France, she should have spoken French as if it were her native tongue, and acquired that breeding and air de parure which in that day of French pre-eminence gave the possessor a peculiar distinction. Perfect manners and a perfect taste in dress have of themselves been known to redeem the looks of many a plain woman, but to these attractions Nature had bestowed on Frances Stuart the most perishable but most highly prized of all her gifts—beauty; beauty in its perfection, exquisite, statuesque, éblouissante. There was but one flaw in this chef d'œuvre, according to the critics, and that was the lack of sense. "It was hardly possible," said Hamilton, "for a woman to have less wit or more beauty."
The opinion of this judge, who was capable of twisting, exaggerating, or suppressing the truth if by so doing he could polish a period, has passed unchallenged, presumably because many of La Belle Stuart's actions seem to confirm it. Yet nothing would be easier than to prove the contrary. It is quite true that she lacked the gift of saying smart, witty things, and the ambition to grasp at dazzling shadows, like the majority of her contemporaries. But she never lost sight of the main chance, and as she had the patience to wait for it, the courage to seize it, and the skill to take advantage of it, there is no exaggeration in saying that no more artful and calculating woman stepped at Whitehall than this canny Scot, whose mother, said Pepys, "is one of the most cunning women in the world."
It is quite useless to predict what would have been her fate had there been no Restoration; but from her apparently witless refusal of Louis XIV.'s splendid offer to provide for her suitably if she would remain and adorn his Court instead of returning to England with the Stuarts, it may be taken for granted that the inducement was not as attractive as it seemed. In spite of Louis XIV. and his promises, no one knew better than Frances Stuart and her "cunning mother" that it required something more than a pretty face, a taste in dress, and a bel air to induce a French lord worth having to marry a penniless girl. But in England men were less fastidious, and if she played her cards cleverly there was no reason why her attractions should not secure her the husband she wanted. The Restoration was Frances Stuart's first opportunity, so, gracefully declining Louis' offer and accepting his valuable present, she went to England in the train of Henrietta Maria. Shortly afterward, through her protectress's influence, her own beauty, and her family's claims, she was appointed maid of honour to Queen Catherine. At the Court of Charles II. such an appointment was equivalent to that filled by the houris who luxuriate behind the ivory and ebony lattices of the Imperial seraglio at Stamboul.
Frances Stuart assumed her post at Whitehall with the firm intention of winning a husband; the supreme object of her life was marriage. She did not ask for love, or even great wealth, but rank, prestige. To have lovers galore, or even to be a king's mistress, made no appeal to her. Any woman with a pretty face could have the former and the To-morrows of the latter——!