After this exhibition he was admitted to the prude's select coterie, and advanced to the point of persuading her to accept the gift of "one of the prettiest horses in England." La Belle Stuart looked her best on horseback. Pepys once had the good fortune to behold her at Whitehall on the return of a Court riding-party, and from some coign of vantage, very modest we may be sure, the chattering snob watched "all the ladies talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying on one another's and laughing. But it was the finest sight to me, considering their great beauty and dress, that ever I did see in all my life. But, above all, Miss Stuart in this dress with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eye, little Roman nose, and excellent taille, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw I think in all my life."
These riding and hawking parties, of which Miss Stuart was very fond, afforded Hamilton the opportunity of wooing her under the pretext of teaching her how to manage the horse he had given her. Not that the beauty had need of lessons in horsemanship; she had made herself a mistress of the art before she left France, where in those days Frenchwomen were noted for their grace and skill on horseback. Such a flirtation could not pass unobserved, and people who knew the cold nature of the dazzling prude laughed or shook their heads and wondered, perhaps, how long George Hamilton's would be safe on his shoulders. For the wild young Irishman, who had begun his love-making with no more honourable intention than to outwit a beautiful girl and turn marble to life, ended by being enchanted by Armida.
This fatal spell was broken, fortunately, as stated above, by the ubiquitous Chevalier de Gramont, who kept a large supply of charity and good sense under his Joseph's coat of flippancy. Seeing the noose into which the infatuated brother of the future Comtesse de Gramont had thrust his head, he said to him one day with cynical levity, with which, if one wishes to make a present of advice to such a temperament as George Hamilton's, a warning is most effectively wrapped: "Friend George, point de raillerie avec le maître, c'est à dire, point de lorgnerie avec la maîtresse. I myself wanted to play the agreeable in France, with a little coquette whom the King did not care about, and you know how dearly I paid for it. I confess she gives you fair play, but do not trust her. All the sex feel an unspeakable satisfaction at having men in their train, whom they care not for, and to use them as their slaves of state, merely to swell their equipage. Would it not be a great deal better to pass a week or ten days incognito at Peckham with the philosopher Wetenhall's wife, than to have it inserted in the Dutch Gazette, 'We hear from Bristol that So-and-So is banished the Court on account of Miss Stuart, and that he is going to make a campaign in Guinea on board the fleet that is fitting out for the expedition under the command of Prince Rupert'?" And Hamilton, more lucky than Digby, escaped in time.
But these were not the only men whose heads were turned by La Belle Stuart. Charles, wishing to flatter and soften her in every imaginable way, decided that the memory of her loveliness should be commemorated on the medals and coins minted during his reign. The brothers Rotier, the famous medallists, who at the Restoration had been invited to England by the King and given the post of the Cromwellian Simon at the Royal Mint, received notice to prepare a medal engraved with Miss Stuart as Britannia, to commemorate the Peace of Breda. This commission was executed by the youngest of the Rotiers, Phillipe, an inflammable genius who had but recently joined his brothers. It is not to be supposed that the beautiful, passionless prude who could successfully keep a fascinating King at arm's length, and on whom neither a George Hamilton nor a Francis Digby could make an impression, was the woman to succumb to a medallist of the Royal Mint. La Belle Stuart had not the instincts of a Duchess of Cleveland. During the sittings that she gave the young artist she probably never honoured him with a thought. But he, from gazing upon her, became so devoured with Beauty-hunger as to nearly fit himself for Bedlam.
The medal, like most works of genius conceived in despair, was a chef d'œuvre. Rotier's Britannia became to him what Calais was to Queen Mary. The vision he had had of faultless beauty, at once blessed and baleful, was engraved upon his heart and brain. It stamped itself upon all the fine works that came from his hands, and found its way from that first glorious medal of Breda down to the humblest coins. Britannia has since had various faces and forms, but it is to be doubted if any have been so fair as the original. Poor Rotier's romance is now well-nigh forgotten, but his La Belle Stuart still survives, and is likely to for many a day, in a more or less imitative form on all the copper coinage of the realm.
It was during these very days when she was unconsciously turning the head of the medallist that the chance she had so long and almost hopelessly sought presented itself. Her cousin, the Duke of Richmond, on the death of his second wife made her an offer of marriage. This nobleman, notwithstanding his wealth and lineage, which made his rank second to none, was one of the most insignificant men at Court. To the King, of whom he stood in the greatest awe, he was particularly odious; although Charles, who in case the Duke died childless would as next of kin be his heir, had heaped honours and riches upon him. All the brilliant qualities for which the Stuarts of Richmond-d'Aubigny had been conspicuous had degenerated in this last representative of the line. The present Duke had none of the spirit or sense of his ancestors, and was, moreover, a dipsomaniac. In a Court like that of Whitehall, brimful of wit and malice, such a man was treated as a clown. "To court his Majesty's favour," wrote Hamilton gibingly, "he thought proper to fall in love with Miss Stuart." The fact that his passion, which he divided pretty equally between the beauty and the bottle, should have excited the jealousy of a man so callous as Charles may be taken as a proof of the strength of the spell La Belle Stuart had cast upon the King. But as the Duke of Richmond had a wife he could not be considered an eligible parti, and consequently the cunning prude treated her ducal admirer with her customary indifference.
The unexpected death of the Duchess, however, completely altered the aspect of things. Her Grace was scarcely cold when the Duke asked his lovely cousin to be his third wife. The offer was not one that La Belle Stuart had the slightest intention of refusing, but its acceptance, owing to the King's passion for her and dislike of the Duke, made her hesitate like one who recule pour sauter mieux. Before pledging herself to her infatuated cousin, to whom love and drink seemed to have lent their audacity for the occasion, she persuaded him to ask the King boldly for permission to marry her. Charles, who knew exactly the state of the Duke of Richmond's finances, concealed his rage under cover of a demand for a settlement that it was beyond the Duke's power to make. To the beautiful maid of honour, who had tantalised him for four years with her prudery and now implored him to allow her to marry honourably—not because she loved the Duke, as she confessed, but from a "desire to reform him"!—the King tempered his refusal with dazzling bribes. She should be a duchess in her own right; she should have her drafts to any amount on the Treasury or Post Office or Customs honoured like my Lady Castlemaine's; she might shop with the Privy Purse; he would send away Lady Castlemaine and give up his Nell Gwynns and Moll Davises; in fine, he would do anything in the world she asked, provided she would consent to be his maîtresse en titre. La Belle Stuart's reply is, perhaps, the only instance of the refusal of such an offer on record. "I hope I may live to see you old and willing," retorted the baffled King, from whom consent to this marriage at any price was not to be wrung.
To a man of the mental calibre of the Duke of Richmond the position in which he had placed himself was well qualified to damp his ardour. To prevent such an undesirable eventuality, Miss Stuart, while seeking a happy end to her troubles, was in the habit of giving her ducal lover midnight assignations, which though of a strictly virtuous type, be it understood, kept the heat in him. It was one of these secret interviews that brought matters to a head. For Lady Castlemaine, having learnt from one of her spies, of whom she kept a well-paid staff at Whitehall, of these midnight meetings, made her plans accordingly. One night, as Charles was returning in very ill-humour from Miss Stuart's, who had pleaded a headache as an excuse for refusing to see him, Lady Castlemaine waylaid him and informed him in her vixenish fashion of the cunning with which his "angelic Stuart" was duping him. As the termagant swore she could prove her words, Charles at once returned to the prude's apartments. At his wholly unexpected reappearance some maids opposed his entrance instead of trying to warn their mistress, but the King pushed them aside roughly, and entered La Belle Stuart's bedroom, where he found the Duke of Richmond sitting at her bedside. The anger of Charles was only equalled by the consternation of the others. The Duke, speechless and petrified from the torrent of abuse poured upon him, had thoughts of jumping from the window, but as he reflected that if he did so he would probably fall into the Thames which flowed beneath it, he chose to make a discreet rather than a valorous exit and left the room in silence.