This attack on the Duke gave Miss Stuart time to compose herself, and after his departure, instead of attempting to justify herself, she gave the surprised Charles such a talking to as perhaps he had never had before, save from my Lady Castlemaine. "If," she said, "she were not allowed to receive visits from a man of the Duke of Richmond's rank, who came with honourable intentions, she was a slave in a free country; that she knew of no engagements that could prevent her from disposing of her hand as she thought proper; but, however, if this was not permitted her in his dominions, she did not believe that there was any power on earth that could hinder her from going over to France and throwing herself into a convent to enjoy there the peace which was denied her in his Court." And she ended by asking him to be good enough "to leave her in repose, at least for the remainder of that night."
Such effrontery dumfounded the King. He went off in a towering rage. We are not told what sort of, if any, "repose," after such a scene, the maid of honour got that night; but the next morning, with a craft worthy of a Madame de Maintenon, she appealed to the Queen with the due tears to help her to retire to a convent. So well did she play her part that Catherine, who had every reason to hate her, wept with her; but reflecting that if she were to have a rival, such an innocent Magdalene as Miss Stuart would be infinitely preferable to a Lady Castlemaine, her Majesty actually brought about a reconciliation between her husband and her maid of honour! It was exactly what La Belle Stuart desired; under cover of this reconciliation she had time to prepare her plans without exciting suspicion.
One "foul night" the beautiful prude stole from her room at Whitehall and joined the Duke of Richmond, who, the day after that surprise visit of the King's had fled the Court without waiting to be banished. The assignation on this occasion was at the Bear Tavern by London Bridge, where the Duke had a chaplain and a coach ready. And here, having at last been properly made a duchess by the chaplain, her Grace and her husband, who one suspects from his habits must have kept up his courage artificially for this occasion, "stole away into Kent" in the coach.
Charles's anger, when he discovered the flight of the prude, may be imagined. Its consequences were far-reaching. On coming from the cage from which his beautiful bird had flown, the King chanced to meet a certain Lord Cornbury in the door. The sight of this man, who was the son of Clarendon, at such a time and place confirmed the suspicions aroused in him by Lady Castlemaine of the Chancellor's complicity in a plot to help La Belle Stuart marry the Duke of Richmond. And it is, perhaps, no exaggeration to say that at that moment Charles's opposition to the many enemies in Court, Parliament, and the country of the ablest of his Ministers, to whom also he not a little owed his throne, was finally broken down. On the morrow of this "marriage affair" of La Belle Stuart's the great Clarendon fell.
As for the happy couple, they were banished the Court, whereupon her Grace saw fit to return his Majesty the trifling presents she had allowed herself to accept from him, and to justify her conduct by what, from the notoriety given it, was practically a public confession of innocence preserved against great odds. And this subtle and calculating woman has been called by Hamilton, and those who have taken his mockery literally, a brainless, childish simpleton, with just sense enough to capture a Duke of Richmond! No doubt in a day when Gwynns, Castlemaines, and Portsmouths were fleecing the nation and making and unmaking Ministers, a woman who had only had a few jewels and a fixed salary of £700 a year for her services to the Queen, and took no interest in politics, must seem both virtuous and a fool. The "explanation," however, of her line of action at Whitehall produced a favourable effect. The public readily acquitted her of all the base imputations that had been cast upon her.
At Whitehall no one benefited by the absence of the beautiful and "wronged" Duchess of Richmond but Lady Castlemaine. She, indeed, was now established more firmly than ever in the Council and the Treasury, but La Belle Stuart was missed. When new beauties appeared at Court people compared them with the faultless loveliness of her who was banished for her virtues to the country. They remembered the charming grace with which she had danced and walked and rode; the elegance of her mode of dressing; the polished refinement of her manners. Poor Queen Catherine, who had to endure the insolence of Lady Castlemaine, sighed for the maid of honour who had always shown her respect, and "was never known to speak ill of any one." And even the King, who had never been able to love a woman as he had loved La Belle Stuart, longed to see her once more. So in the following year she was forgiven and came back triumphantly, as lady of the bedchamber to the Queen, with splendid apartments at Somerset House, where Catherine was living.
The Duke and Duchess of Richmond were now people of the highest consequence; and if scandal, as it did, chose to busy itself with her Grace, she, no doubt, endured it philosophically. At least, from personal experience, she was able to draw comparisons between the quality and quantity of the mud flung at a duchess and that with which a destitute maid of honour is bespattered. What effect marriage produced on the prudery of this beautiful creature we cannot learn. Slander had it that the King once, when drunk, boasted to the Duke of Richmond that the Duchess was no longer indifferent to him. A similar imputation was cast upon his Grace's appointment as Ambassador to Denmark. As his wife did not go with him, people said he was sent there to get him out of the way. And we require something more than the word of Mr. Pepys's "Mr. Pierce," before we accept as proved the statement and all that it implies, that Charles "did on a sudden take a pair of oars or a sculler, and all alone, or but one with him, go to Somerset House (from Whitehall), and there, the garden door not being open, himself clamber over the wall to make a visit to her (the Duchess), which is a horrid shame."
What, however, can be vouched for as true is that some time after her Grace returned to Court the King appeared as devoted as ever. His attention was especially solicitous during a severe illness when she was attacked by the small-pox. Notwithstanding the danger he ran of catching the disease, he visited her once, at least, in her sickroom, nor did his admiration for her appear to wane on her recovery, when her looks were so altered that Pepys was shocked to see her, and Ruvigny wrote to Louis XIV. that "her matchless beauty was impaired beyond recognition, one of her brilliant eyes being nearly quenched for ever."
The Duchess, however, bore the loss of her beauty with indifference, and consoled herself, if one may judge from tastes of which she had apparently given no previous evidence, with the cultivation of the artistic sense. Nat Lee, the tragic poet, whose "Rival Queens" long held the stage, owed much of his success to her encouragement. In dedicating his "Theodosius" to her he enthusiastically acknowledged her love of dramatic art as well as her kindness to himself. "Your extraordinary love," he wrote, "for heroic poetry is not the least argument to show the greatness of your mind. Your Grace shall never see a play of mine that shall give offence to Modesty and Virtue. My Genius was your favourite when the Poet was unknown, and I openly received your smiles before I had the honour to pay your Grace the most submissive gratitude for so illustrious and advantageous a protection. You brought Her Royal Highness just at the exigent time, whose single presence on the poet's day (benefit performance of 'Theodosius') is a subsistence for him all the year after." Her letters to her husband that have been preserved, it may be added, are evidence of her sound common sense. Of painting, too, she had a keen appreciation. After her death "her fine collection of original drawings of da Vinci, Raphael, and others, together with miniatures and engravings, was sold at auction." Such instances of artistic taste and kindness of heart go far to disprove Mrs. Jameson's statement as to the "frivolity of her mind and shallowness of her character."