With the coming of Louise de Kéroual all the scandal about the Duchess of Richmond and her royal lover ceased. The new and fresher beauty completely supplanted her in the King's affections. But La Belle Stuart had the consolation, if she required it, of proving that prudery fares better in the day of adversity than the courtezan. The ducal rank for which she had intrigued so questionably in her youth gave her a great prestige, which she enjoyed till her death. She continued, in spite of Louise de Kéroual, to be lady of the bedchamber—a post equivalent to that of Mistress of the Robes of the present day—to Catherine of Braganza during the rest of the reign; while on his accession James II. appointed her in the same capacity to his Queen. It was in fulfilling the duties of this office that she witnessed the birth of that Prince of Wales who was afterwards to be known as the "Old Pretender."
On the coming of William of Orange her services were dispensed with, but she passed the remainder of her life without suffering the misfortunes of exile and confiscation that fell upon so many Jacobites. As she had never taken the least interest in politics the troubles of the party to which she belonged by birth did not apparently concern her. The years rolled by serenely. While Jacobites were plotting she lived quietly among her pictures and books and a crowd of cats. At the coronation of Anne she emerged from her retirement for the occasion. It was her last public appearance. Shortly after she died, "devout in her way," and was buried, as she had requested, in her peeress's robes in the vault of the Dukes of Richmond at Westminster Abbey.
Her will revived public interest in the forgotten beauty of the past generation, and afforded many a gibe at her expense. Instead of dying comparatively poor, as was expected, it was found that she had accumulated a considerable fortune, saved out of the wreck of her husband's, whom she had survived thirty years. The bulk of it she left to her favourite nephew, Lord Blantyre, to purchase an estate to be called "Lennox's love to Blantyre." She had always been particularly proud of the fact that she was not only Duchess of Richmond, but of Lennox as well. This seat is still known as "Lennox-love."
But this reminder of the cunning prudery with which La Belle Stuart had hooked a double duchy out of the quagmire of Whitehall afforded the wits less amusement than the legacies she left her cats. Pope set the town a-laughing with his line, "Die, and endow a college—or a cat!" But there were some, perhaps, whose laughter turned to tears when a certain Lord Hailes, who had known her, declared "that the annuities she left to support her cats was a delicate way of providing for some poor and proud Jacobite gentlewomen, who had the care of them, without making them feel that they owed their livelihood to mere liberality."
It may, perhaps, be of interest to add that the beauty for which La Belle Stuart was so celebrated ran in her family. Her sister, Sophia, who was also a favourite at Court, and after the Revolution of 1688 a loyal adherent of the Stuarts, excited the admiration, among others, of Mr. Pepys, who pronounced her "very handsome." The daughters of the handsome Sophia, who married not so well as her sister Frances, were distinguished by the friendship of the famous Hamilton. The eldest, Ann, was particularly lovely. As the wife of the Maréchal Duc de Berwick, the right noble son of James II. and the sister of the Great Marlborough, she was long known at the French Court as "La Belle Nanette."
["LA BELLE HAMILTON," COMTESSE DE GRAMONT]
A GOOD WOMAN OF THE RESTORATION
THE masterpiece of Sir Peter Lely, which forms the frontispiece to this book, scarcely needs the charming testimony of Anthony Hamilton to assure us that the fair subject of this historiette was a good woman. The portrait breathes goodness and refinement. The Court of Charles II. had no ornament so flawless. La Belle Hamilton was as chaste as Lady Castlemaine was polluted, as pure as La Belle Stuart was designing. If the "Mémoires de Gramont" has kept the recollection of the Restoration more vivid than that of perhaps any other period of English history, its heroine, more than all the characters who enliven its inimitable pages, has unquestionably aided the author in his wonderful effort to refine vice of its grossness. Her perfume seems to sweeten the noxious air of her times and to linger subtly in the memory of the unclean palace in which it was spilt.
If it be granted that rules may be proved by their exceptions, one wishing to defend the truth of the cynical aphorism that virtue, like happy nations, has no history, could choose no more convincing argument than to cite La Belle Hamilton. She seems, one is tempted to say, to have been born for the express purpose of proving that purity could exist undefiled in the vicious atmosphere of Whitehall. Her story cannot be compressed into the space of a footnote. It is too closely interwoven with that of her brilliant brother, his fascinating book, and her extraordinary husband.