Court Beauties of Old Whitehall: Historiettes of the Restoration

by W. R. H. Trowbridge

The passion of the King for La Belle Stuart, kept at fever heat by her prudish resistance to his advances, made the possibility of Catherine's death a stepping-stone to the throne. During a short and severe illness of the Queen it was openly hinted that Frances Stuart was to be her successor. There can be no doubt but that she, trusting in Charles's absorbing passion and her kinship to the House of Stuart, did at this time hope to step into Catherine's shoes. "She was greatly pleased," said Hamilton, "with herself for the resistance she had made; a thousand flattering hopes of greatness and glory filled her heart, and the additional respect that was universally paid her contributed not a little to increase them."

But the Queen recovered. Charles, however, who saw no means of reducing the fortress of virtue he had so long and unsuccessfully stormed, now began to think of divorce. He went so far as to ask Archbishop Sheldon "if the Church would put any obstacle in the way of his putting away a wife who was sterile." Sheldon promised to consider the matter, but as he was the creature of Clarendon, and the Chancellor was the friend of Catherine, whatever real hope Charles might have had was dashed. Intrigue, however, was still busy. The Duke of Buckingham, who had not yet indiscreetly placed himself in the power of the "simpleton" whose influence he was courting, suggested to the King a plan for abducting the Queen and carrying her off to the West Indies, where it would be easy to get rid of her! Charles, to his credit, instantly scorned the suggestion, and the rôle of Anne Boleyn became less and less possible for La Belle Stuart.

The part she played in this situation, when, surrounded with enemies, one false step might have ruined her utterly, was admirable. She gave no one the slightest opportunity of injuring her, and, whatever her hopes or disappointments, satisfied the Queen at any rate that her intentions were honest. Without doubt, if the road to the throne had been open she would have taken it; but it was not from lack of ability or courage to set out to open it that she failed. It was never really a possibility, and she was cunning enough to appreciate the fact.

During this period La Belle Stuart had to parry the hate with which she was assailed by Lady Castlemaine with all the energy of which that fury was capable. The danger from first to last that she ran from the maîtresse en titre was always more present than the chance of succeeding the Queen. There was but one way for Frances Stuart to crush Lady Castlemaine, and that was at the cost of her virtue. It was the condition on which the King promised to dismiss the termagant. But the beauty, who was as obstinate as she was cunning, was firmly resolved to be no man's mistress, she wished to make a grand match, and it was certainly not at the Court of Charles II. that an ex-mistress was likely to find a duke to marry her. The value she set upon virtue was that of all prudes who angle in a muddy stream. She had her price—it was marriage—and she took care to publish the fact. It was her way of cleansing her reputation of the stains left on it by the King's attentions. So as she elected to put up with Lady Castlemaine she was obliged to continue to defend herself from her. She would not have been human if she had not tried to score off a rival from whom she had to endure so much.

One of their many quarrels convulsed the Court, and afforded Hamilton an opportunity for the display of his caustic wit. It was known as the "Affair of the Calash." This ridiculous feminine enmity, of which the following description by Count Hamilton is not to be improved, was one of the beautiful prude's ways of testing her power over the King:—

"Coaches with glass were then a late invention; that which was made for the King not being remarkable for its elegance, the Chevalier de Gramont was of opinion that something ingenious might be invented, which should partake of the ancient fashion, and likewise prove preferable to the modern; he therefore sent away Termes privately with all the necessary instructions to Paris; the Duke of Guise was likewise charged with this commission; and the courier, having by the favour of Providence escaped the quicksand, in a month's time brought safely over to England the most elegant and magnificent calash that had ever been seen, which the Chevalier presented to the King.... The Queen, imagining that so splendid a carriage might prove fortunate for her, wished to appear in it first, with the Duchess of York. Lady Castlemaine, who had seen them in it, thinking that it set off a fine figure to greater advantage than any other, desired the King to lend her this wonderful calash to appear in it the first fine day in Hyde Park. Miss Stuart had the same wish, and requested to have it on the same day. As it was impossible to reconcile these two goddesses, whose former union was turned into mortal hatred, the King was very much perplexed. Lady Castlemaine was with child, and threatened to miscarry if her rival was preferred. Miss Stuart threatened that she never would be with child if her request was not granted. This menace prevailed, and Lady Castlemaine's rage was so great that she had almost kept her word."

Hamilton added that this triumph was believed to have cost the prude her virtue. But this was merely the malice of gossip. Miss Stuart had the art of granting small favours and of holding out alluring hopes without really conceding anything. Charles, tantalised to desperation, continued more devoted than ever.

Royal admiration, while it invariably serves to recruit desirable partis who might otherwise evince no inclination to confer the blessing of matrimony upon a young and portionless beauty, is not without great disadvantages. In the case of La Belle Stuart the attentions she received from her sovereign tended to defeat the very object for which she was trying to employ them. "Point de raillerie avec le maître, c'est à dire, point de lornerie avec la maîtresse" was a maxim particularly applicable to the present situation. For Charles, who laughed cynically at the numerous rivals a Duchess of Cleveland gave him, had no intention of bearing patiently with those a Frances Stuart might offer him. In this instance he let it be clearly understood that he would brook no competitors in the game he had afield. Such suitors as she longed to treat seriously were conspicuous by their absence; fear of incurring the royal displeasure, and perhaps the imputations to which the royal favour had exposed her, prevented those she would have deemed eligible from coming forward. The possibility of a grand match, as time went by, must have seemed to her as remote as that of being obliged to yield to the impatient King must have seemed imminent. In her despair she was reduced to the necessity of declaring that she would marry "any man with fifteen hundred a year who would have her."

Two infatuated younger sons would have been only too willing to take her at her word, and dare the King's rage, if the beautiful prude could have made up her mind to abandon her grand desires, which she never could. One was George Hamilton, a younger brother of the famous Anthony, a brilliant, dashing, devil-me-care Irishman, as poor and blue-blooded as the Stuart herself. The other was Francis Digby, a younger son of the Earl of Bristol. This brave, handsome youth was consumed with one of those ardent and tender passions over which a sentimental world, revelling in romance, always drops a tear. Never was a cause more hopeless, never beauty colder, more obdurate. Digby worshipped his fair for six or seven years as men with strong, deep feelings worship women, and then in his despair, life being no longer tolerable, rushed off to the Dutch War and found the death he recklessly courted in a naval battle. This event and the circumstances which occasioned it were widely known, and Dryden tried to shed some poetical tears over poor Digby in the song, "Farewell, fair Armida." But his attempt at weeping was so poor, that Buckingham, ever seeking some one or something on which to practise his powers of ridicule, burst into mockery of poet, lover, and beauty in his own clever satire "The Rehearsal."

George Hamilton was, however, of the moth species, and after flitting round the flame for a time took de Gramont's advice and flew off before he was even singed. This hare-brained, fascinating young fellow was never happy unless he was in love, but his idea of a passion differed vastly from Digby's. The Irishman's was of the earth. One evening at a party in Frances Stuart's apartments at Whitehall his head was turned by the sight of the beauty's ankles, which in her childish and innocent way she displayed with such an artless lack of reflection as to strike the reckless George, as he afterwards told de Gramont, that "it would not be difficult to induce her to strip naked." He at once conceived one of his daredevil passions for the "inanimate statue," and boldly set out to attract her attention. His means were characteristic. Having noticed that the lady was "like to die with laughing" in her "silly way" at the sight of an old gentleman with a lighted candle in his mouth, young Hamilton, who had a fairly large mouth, "put two lighted tapers into it and walked three times round the room without their going out."