Of all the qualifications he lacked, by the possession of which alone one would have said he would have been acceptable to so charming a creature, he was at least, in point of birth, second to none of her suitors. The de Gramonts were one of the oldest and proudest feudal families in Europe, long settled in Navarre. The Chevalier, who was a younger son, boasted that he was descended from Henri IV. through his grandmother, "La Belle Corisande," one of the many mistresses of that gallant King. His eldest brother was the Maréchal Duc de Gramont, the head of the family, whose ancestral seat was the lordly Château de Gramont "at Bidache on the Bidouze." The titles of this stately house comprised a marquisate borne by the second brother, Louvigny, and a countship, which, together with a large fortune possessed by the third, Toulongeon, were to go in case he died without heirs to the Chevalier, the cadet of the family. Philibert, having nothing but expectations, which seemed extremely doubtful of ever being realised, was destined for the Church. His boyhood was spent at the Château de Seméat, the property of his luckier brother, the Comte de Toulongeon, in preparation for this career. But a trip to Paris made him turn his thoughts from the Church to the army. Like most of the well-born young men of his time, he had the honour of serving under the great Condé and Turenne, and distinguished himself for his insouciante bravery in numerous battles and sieges.
One of the many stories told of him at this period is very characteristic. While besieging some small fortress which capitulated after a short defence the governor, who was surprised at the easy conditions he received, said to him—
"I will tell you a secret, Chevalier; my only reason for capitulating was because I was short of powder."
"And I will tell you another," replied de Gramont; "my only reason for granting you such easy terms was because I was short of ball."
His incurable flippancy, however, stood in the way of his promotion and finally ruined him. For his colossal egotism made him dispute out of bravado the affections of Mademoiselle de la Motte-Houdancourt, whom he did not love, with the young Louis XIV., who promptly banished him. Like many who have been driven into exile, he carried with him nothing but his illustrious birth. At Whitehall, whither he came, he was, however, instantly welcomed by Charles, who never tired of his company. His brilliant wit and manners soon made him generally popular, and he was received everywhere on terms of intimacy. Among his closest friends was St. Evremond, who had preceded him a year, and in whom he was in the habit of confiding his impressions and troubles with that gaiety with which he knew how to captivate La Belle Hamilton and make her disdain splendid offers to marry him, who had neither character nor means of existence, save by gambling, at which he was an adept.
His fascination for the society of the Restoration is easily comprehended. The Chevalier de Gramont had the luck to be born at the right time. This mauvais sujet de l'esprit, as he has been called, was the first appearance in modern Europe of the Petronian cynic and arbiter elegantiarum of which there have been since so many examples. He was the immediate forerunner of the Regent d'Orléans and the Maréchal de Richelieu, the historical father of countless Brummels, d'Orsays, and Oscar Wildes. His wit, said Saint-Simon, who was jealous of it, was "mainly of the sort which shows itself in pleasantry and repartee; it was bold enough to detect a failing and describe it in one or two ineffaceable sentences. He was like a mad dog from whom none escaped. He had wonderful animal spirits and invulnerable self-complacency, never entertaining a serious feeling or a deep thought." This is the character given him by Bussy-Rabutin and St. Evremond, who were his friends, as well as by his brother-in-law, Anthony Hamilton. The portrait of him by the last, who has immortalised him, he himself applauded.
For when the "Mémoires de Gramont" were submitted to the censor Fontenelle before their publication he was so scandalised that he flatly refused his approval. The Chevalier on hearing this at once went to Fontenelle and asked him in his characteristic way "what business he had to be more solicitous of his reputation than he was himself, and demanded that the book should pass if the freedom with which his character was drawn was the only objection." As Mrs. Jameson has very aptly remarked, "Fontenelle might have replied to him as de Gramont did on another occasion to Madame de Hérault. The Count had visited this lady to pay her his condolence on the death of her husband; she received him with an air of extreme coldness, upon which, suddenly changing his tone, he exclaimed gaily, 'Is that the way you take your loss? Well, to tell you the truth, I don't care any more about it than you do!'"
Such an Epicurean as de Gramont scarcely needed the advice of St. Evremond. No one knew the world better than he, or was more deeply acquainted with all its vice, at which, without seriously polluting himself with it, he laughed in the gayest, most cynical way. He had so little religion that once in old age, when his wife in an attempt to convert him recited the Lord's Prayer, he remarked, "That is very fine, who wrote it?" His moral sense was entirely lacking. Women meant to him an amour, nothing more. And even La Belle Hamilton, whose virtue, to his credit be it said, he never attempted to attack, had so little real hold of his affections that on being pardoned by Louis he would have gone back to France without marrying her had it not been for her brothers. Two of them, who had no intention of letting her be compromised by such a desertion, rode after him and overtook him at Dover. "Chevalier," they cried, galloping up and addressing him in his own fashion, "haven't you forgot something in London?"
"Excuse me," he replied gaily, "I have forgotten to marry your sister."
He returned and married her, making her, it must be confessed, the best of husbands. His conduct when married was in this respect in striking contrast with that of the de Gramonts of his time generally. For his brother the Maréchal was notoriously brutal; while the private lives of the Comte de Guiche and the Princess of Monaco, his nephew and niece, could not in the present day be exposed in print.
Many people have often tried to guess the secret of the fascination of this Chevalier de Gramont for La Belle Hamilton, a woman on whom slander never breathed. Without ourselves entering the lists of those who vainly attempt to explain the mysteries of human emotions, we should suggest that a mutual sense of humour was not without its effect on first attracting each to the other. Both were gifted with a very keen sense of the ridiculous. The picture of Miss Hamilton in the exercise of hers is one of the most entertaining incidents in the "Mémoires de Gramont."
A splendid masked ball, which the Queen gave in honour of the King, afforded Miss Hamilton an excellent opportunity to amuse herself innocently at the expense of two silly women of the Court. These persons, whose actions and appearance certainly marked them as victims for the practical joker, were Miss Blague, a maid of honour, and Lady Muskerry. As Miss Hamilton, said her brother, "liked to do things in order, she began with her cousin Muskerry, on account of her rank." The appearance of her ladyship was ridiculous in the extreme. Her face, which was ludicrously plain, matched her figure, which seemed without being so to be perpetually enceinte. This deformity was further heightened by a limp, occasioned by an inequality in the length of her legs. But Lady Muskerry, far from being aware of her defects, was exceedingly vain. "Her two darling foibles were dress and dancing. Magnificence of dress was intolerable with her figure; and though her dancing was still more insupportable, she never missed a ball at Court; and the Queen had so much complaisance for the public as always to make her dance. But in a function so important and splendid as this masquerade it was impossible to give her a part. However, she was dying with impatience for an invitation, which she expected."
It was this impatience on the part of Lady Muskerry that gave Miss Hamilton her opportunity. She sent her ladyship an invitation, as if from the Queen, with the request that she should appear at the ball as a Babylonian princess. Lord Muskerry, who was particularly afraid of ridicule, and aware of the absurd figure his wife would cut if she were present at the ball, had begged her on no account to think of accepting the invitation in case she should receive it. But Lady Muskerry, believing that her husband had taken measures to prevent her being invited, was so exasperated that she had determined to go to the Queen unbeknown to him and ask for an invitation. It was at this juncture that the invitation arrived. She promptly decided to conceal the fact from Lord Muskerry, and "immediately got into her coach in order to get information of the merchants who traded to the Levant as to how the ladies of quality dressed in Babylon."
The practical joke that Miss Hamilton prepared to play upon Miss Blague was of a totally different kind. She had noticed that the maid of honour was in love with the Marquis de Brisacier, a Frenchman as insipid and silly as herself, who was visiting England and paying her considerable attention. Miss Blague had quarrelled with another maid of honour, Miss Price, over some man whom Miss Blague believed had been "drawn away" from her by Miss Price. With this material the inventive mind of La Belle Hamilton prepared to play. The gloves of Martial, a Parisian maker, were then the rage, and Miss Hamilton, who had several pairs of them, sent one to Miss Blague together with some yellow ribbon and a note from the Marquis de Brisacier, couched in the most ridiculous and affectionate language, asking the maid of honour to wear them at the masked ball as the means by which he might recognise her. Then, giving a similar pair of gloves and a piece of yellow ribbon to Miss Price, the merry mischief-maker induced her to wear them by letting her only so far into the secret as to make Miss Blague's enemy determined to cut her out with Brisacier as she had previously done with the former admirer.
To Miss Hamilton's intense delight, as well as that of the persons she had taken into her confidence, both jokes succeeded admirably, and without the betrayal of their originator. But Lady Muskerry got no nearer the ball-room than the state entrance to Whitehall. As it was understood that all the ladies who were to dance in the Queen's quadrille, of whom Lady Muskerry had no doubt that she was one, would be met at the entrance to the palace by their partners, and as in the secrecy she was obliged to practise to prevent her husband from knowing that she had been invited to the ball she had not been able to learn who her partner was, she was still patiently waiting when the Chevalier de Gramont passed her. His costume and the late hour at which he arrived attracted universal attention, and the King asking him the reason of his delay, de Gramont seized the occasion in his characteristic way to tell a witty story, concluding as follows:
"À propos, Sire, I had forgotten to tell you, that to increase my ill-humour" (at the cause of his late arrival), "I was stopped, as I was getting out of my chair, by the devil of a phantom in masquerade dress, who wished by all means to persuade me that the Queen had commanded me to dance with her; and, as I excused myself with the least rudeness possible, she charged me to inquire who was to be her partner, and desired me to send him to her immediately. Your Majesty will, therefore, do well to give orders about it, for she has placed herself in ambush in a coach, to seize upon all who pass through Whitehall."
The Chevalier went on to describe the costume worn by the mask, whose appearance must indeed have been laughable; for poor Lady Muskerry, not having the least idea how a lady of quality dressed in Babylon, had adopted from a crowd of different opinions she had consulted something of each. The Chevalier's description of this fantastic unknown not only amused those who heard it, but excited the greatest curiosity, inasmuch as the Queen declared that all whom she had invited were present. They began to wonder who it could be. The King, whose sense of the ridiculous was much more mocking than Miss Hamilton's, guessed it was the Duchess of Newcastle—a woman even more absurd than Lady Muskerry. For she was afflicted with a dramatic cacoethes scribendi to such a pitch that she would only wear theatrical costumes, and kept a secretary, who, according to Walpole, was often roused in the night to register the Duchess's conceptions, "which," added this English de Gramont of a later generation, "were all of a literary kind, for her Grace left no children."
But Miss Hamilton, thoroughly satisfied with the success of her joke, had no desire to expose her victim to the laughter of the Court by seeing her suddenly appear as a Princess of Babylon. It was therefore with a sense of relief that she saw Lord Muskerry, dreading lest the ridiculous mask should prove to be his wife, go off to ascertain her identity before, exhausted with waiting for her partner, she should come in search of him. The interview at the entrance to Whitehall between the husband and wife was not, as reported to Miss Hamilton, the least amusing feature of her joke. For when the Princess of Babylon at last found her partner, she showed a decided inclination to wait for another, till Lord Muskerry, terrified at the bare thought of the ridicule to which she was exposing him, was obliged to use force in order to get her to return home!
As for the joke played at Miss Blague's expense, its success was sufficient to complete Miss Hamilton's satisfaction and to divert the whole Court. This silly maid of honour, with her "pig's eyes" and long white lashes, in response to the note she had received from the equally silly Marquis de Brisacier, wore the gloves and the ribbon. But it was not until after the stately French dances, with which the ball opened, were over and the country dances and real fun began that La Belle Hamilton and those in her confidence had the pleasure of watching the working of their joke. They observed with the greatest amusement that Miss Blague's "pale hair was stuffed with the citron-coloured ribbon, while to inform Brisacier of his fate she often raised to her head her victorious hands, adorned with the gloves we have before mentioned. However, if the others were surprised to see her in a head-dress that made her look more wan than ever, she herself was far more surprised to see Miss Price share Brisacier's present with her in every particular. Her surprise soon turned to jealousy; for her rival had not failed to join in conversation with him; nor did Brisacier fail to return her first advances, without paying the least attention to the fair Blague, nor to the signs which, exerting herself to desperation, she made to inform him of his happy destiny."
To make matters worse, the Duke of Buckingham innocently brought up Brisacier to Miss Blague, with the request to dance with her on the King's behalf. But Brisacier, who could not dance the English dances, and preferred to sit them out with Miss Price, who could not dance at all, excused himself. This was the last straw to Miss Blague. Feeling herself despised by the man she loved, and cut out by her mortal enemy, "she began to dance, without knowing what she was doing"—a sight that, no doubt, convulsed Miss Hamilton, of whose fondness for practical jokes other examples than those already mentioned could be cited.
How her sense of humour was affected by the circumstances stated above which made her the wife of de Gramont, it is impossible to guess. That the story of the Chevalier in flight from the altar of Hymen and forcibly brought back to it—if true, of which there appears to be some doubt—did not make Madame de Gramont ridiculous in the eyes of the world may be assumed from the high esteem in which she must have been held. For in that age of lampoons the incident is not one that would have been suffered to pass unnoticed. The silence of the coffee-houses on the subject may, therefore, be taken as an eloquent tribute to the popularity La Belle Hamilton enjoyed. Perhaps it is not too much to state that this reputation of his beautiful wife, who was twenty years his junior, was of great assistance to de Gramont's relations in procuring his pardon. Louis XIV. was induced to permit the Chevalier shortly after his marriage to return to his native country, where, with the exception of several visits to England, which altogether ceased on the overthrow of the Stuarts, he and Madame de Gramont remained for the rest of their lives.
The death of his brother, the Comte de Toulongeon, made the Chevalier himself a count and one of the richest men in France. The Comtesse de Gramont was now much at Versailles, and in spite of the jealousy of certain Court ladies, who were inclined to sneer at the English lady-in-waiting of the Queen of France, she succeeded in winning the respect of Louis. He made her a present of a villa in the neighbourhood of Versailles, which became such a fashionable resort that de Gramont declared he should be obliged to ask the King to pay his bills for entertaining, which the acceptance of the royal gift entailed. We are not told if Louis took the hint. Such wit as de Gramont's was not of the sort that the French King appreciated; it was too familiar. He would, for instance, never have laughed, like Charles II., when that King one day dining in state asked de Gramont to observe that he was served on one knee, a mark of respect not usual at other Courts, to which de Gramont replied, "I thank your Majesty for the explanation; I thought they were begging pardon for giving you so bad a dinner."
But, on the other hand, no one knew better than the Comte de Gramont that the way to make his wit acceptable to Louis was to wrap it in flattery. The following anecdote is in striking contrast with the one just related. They both prove the cunning with which the Comte read character. We are told that once when Louis XIV. was playing backgammon he disputed a throw with his opponent. The King appealed to those who were watching the game, but they, not daring to give against him, sought refuge from their dilemma by appealing to de Gramont, who from the other end of the room declared against the King.
"But you have not heard the case," cried Louis.
"Ah, Sire," replied de Gramont, seizing his opportunity, "if your Majesty had but a shadow of right, would these gentlemen have failed to decide in your favour?"
No wonder that people were afraid of his nimble repartees, or that to the end he knew how to stand well with his master.
The flight of James II. brought a host of Jacobites to France, and among them some of the brothers of the Comtesse de Gramont. One, Anthony, found a refuge with his sister, and to him de Gramont at the age of eighty, but still the same flippant, cynical wit that he was when he had first fascinated the Court of Charles II., suggested that they should write the Chevalier's memoirs. De Gramont, who was exceedingly vain of the reputation he had acquired, and anxious to transmit its memory to posterity, was incapable of the literary effort necessary to this end.
This man, who in conversation could sparkle as few have ever done, could not string two sentences together on paper. His wit completely deserted him when he took a pen in his hand. The opposite was the case with Hamilton. His brother-in-law's suggestion appealed to him, and the result of their curious partnership, in which, so to speak, de Gramont furnished the capital and Hamilton the brains, was the famous classic, "Les Mémoires de Gramont."
Of all the high praise that has been heaped upon this "bréviaire de la jeune noblesse" that of the French critics is the most notable. To us, "the adventure of the soul among masterpieces" that we experience when reading it cannot be so great a pleasure as it must have been to Hamilton in his own lifetime to be told that he, a foreigner, had written a book in the French language which in style, atmosphere, wit, what you will, was French to the core—a chef d'œuvre of French literature! Everybody has heard of Count Hamilton's "Mémoires du Comte de Gramont." How many have ever read it? Is it because it is thought to be that ponderous thing, a classic? Without attempting to express our opinions on this curious work we are daring enough to seize this opportunity of answering a question heard everywhere, "What shall I read?" by replying, "The Memoirs of Gramont." Do not be afraid of it because it is a classic; all classics are not tedious because many stupid books have usurped the label of immortality. A true classic is never tedious. The character of the Chevalier de Gramont as conceived by Anthony Hamilton is one of the great creations of literature.
Hamilton also occupied his time in France with writing other things. His fairy tales, very much goûté in their day, would make very dull reading now. One of the best, that of Bélier and the Giant Moulineau, was written to please his sister. It is interesting to note that Hamilton was nearly sixty when he wrote his masterpiece, and past middle life when he first turned his attention to literature. Considering the active military life he had led it was not strange that he should have made his literary début so late. In fact, had it not been for the Revolution of 1688 he might possibly never have written at all. Before that date he had been first, as a youth, in the French army, which he left at the Restoration to serve in that of his own country. Roman Catholic and Jacobite by birth and association, England had for him after the Battle of the Boyne, as for many another, no shelter. A soldier by instinct, he once more turned to France for employment. Of his career in the French service little is known, beyond that he was an officer in Louis' gens d'armes anglais and received the title of count, presumably in lieu of salary; for such money as the French King had to spare he gave to the last of the Stuarts.
At middle life one does not start a new career with the light heart of youth. Hamilton came to France a disappointed man, and such hopes as he may still have cherished must have been quickly dispelled at James's Court at St. Germain. Here, as in all exiled Courts, poverty, quarrelling, and despair cast their shadows, rendered all the more sombre by the melancholy bigotry of the fallen King. The noble mother of that handsome, unfortunate youth who lived to be known as the Old Pretender alone faced the future with dauntless courage and dignity. How could a Hamilton with a spark of chivalry desert such a woman in such a crisis? It was now that the soldier turned author, like old St. Evremond before him in a similar strait. Hamilton took to literature not as a profession—it is uncertain if he ever earned a sou by his pen, all the profits of the "Mémoires de Gramont" at least went into his brother-in-law's pockets—but as a pastime. Writing was to him the only means he had of killing the intolerable ennui of exile.
But life was not without its compensations; there was the home of the de Gramonts to brighten him. His books brought him fame and friends; his society was courted by an illustrious Duke of Berwick and his "Belle Nanette" and her sister; by the too brilliant Duchesse de Maine, whose court at Sceaux was known as "the galleys of the brain," because the clever people she gathered round her were constantly required to furnish proof of their wit. All this fame, however, brought no financial independence with it, and after the death of the Comtesse de Gramont poor Hamilton had to live on the charity of a niece and to welcome death as a late release for his proud spirit. Perhaps to none of the Jacobites broken in the cause of the bigot James was death so welcome as to this cold, sombre man, who could describe the joie de vivre of the ancien régime with a gaiety which has never been rivalled.
The Comte de Gramont whom he immortalised predeceased him many years. This singular man died at the age of eighty-six, frivolous to the last. Like the celebrated Maréchal de Richelieu of the next generation, who closely resembled him, de Gramont had scarcely ever known what it was to be ill. He used to say that "he hated sick people and only loved them when they recovered their health." His flippancy and irreligion as he grew old alarmed the Comtesse de Gramont, who was very devout, for the safety of his soul. Her attempts to convert him must, serious as they were, have amused her, if she still retained her sense of humour. Once Louis XIV. himself tried to assist her and sent the strict Marquis de Dangeau to offer him religious advice.
"Comtesse," said de Gramont, turning to his wife on learning his visitor's errand, "if you don't look out Dangeau will cheat you out of my conversion."
Madame de Gramont, however, had the satisfaction of bringing her husband to a deathbed repentance, and followed him herself to the grave in a year. Her life, passed in two of the most dissolute Courts in Europe, was from first to last stainless. Of her two daughters, one took the veil, while the other married the Jacobite Earl of Stafford, and inherited all her mother's beauty and virtue and her father's wit.
The great Gramont fortune, which the Chevalier inherited from his brother the Comte de Toulongeon, passed to his nephew, a younger brother of the notorious Comte de Guiche, who had died without a son. This man, whose life is said to have been as scandalous as his brother's, also inherited the fortune and dukedom of his father the Maréchal. It is from him that the de Gramonts of the present day are descended. The tombs of their ancestors are still to be seen amongst the picturesque ruins of the once famous Château de Gramont "at Bidache on the Bidouze," which was destroyed in the Terror.
IF the fairies, as is believed in fairyland, come to christenings, we have a fancy that five were present at Frances Jennings's, and that each in turn addressed her thus in fairy fashion, as they clustered round her with their gifts:—
"I bring thee Coquetry, it shall gain thee hearts."
"I bring thee Malice, it shall gain thee enemies."
"I bring thee Virtue, it shall gain thee respect."
"I bring thee Ambition, it shall gain thee power."
"And I," frowned the Wicked Fairy—it is de rigueur that there should be a wicked fairy at christenings—"I bring thee Beauty; thou shalt lose it and all that thou gainest from the gifts of the others."
Those who care to follow the fortunes of the Lovely Jennings will learn that everything came to pass just as the fairies predicted.
But from fancy to fact. The Duchess of York, in order to refute the imputation cast upon her own looks by the ugliness of her maids of honour, decided to form a new Court. And that none but beauties should compose it, she resolved to see all the applicants herself and choose those who pleased her, regardless of their recommendations. Frances Jennings, then about sixteen, was one of those thus selected. Her father was an insignificant country squire of small fortune, and her mother a woman, as we say nowadays, "with a past." We are not told the nature of her excursions into the realms of the unconventional or disreputable, but are left to infer that they were such as even in that day of license were not to be tolerated. Nevertheless, though Mrs. Jennings was not received at Court, the fact was apparently no bar to the advancement of her family. She managed somehow to secure royal patronage for her daughters, Frances and Sarah, who in their turn managed to use it as a stepping-stone by means of which they climbed to very exalted stations.
The elder of the two sisters had no sooner appeared at Court than she attracted the attention of the Duke of York, who regarded his duchess's maids of honour as the sine quâ non of his seraglio. The lovely odalisque, however, had already, young as she was, formed a very decided resolution as to the line of conduct she intended to adopt. Like La Belle Stuart, she meant to use Whitehall as a trap in which to catch a husband. Being naturally sensible, she was aware that the freedom which certain ladies enjoyed at Court was the exception, not the rule; and that, while a Lady Castlemaine or a Countess of Shrewsbury might with impunity, by reason of personality and rank, defy decency, a humble maid of honour in attempting to copy them would very quickly be given her congé. This reasoning was demonstrated by many instances, the latest being that of Miss Price, whose conduct had obliged the Queen to dismiss her. Moreover, to emphasise the value of a good reputation she had that of her mother constantly before her eyes as a warning.
So the Lovely Jennings turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of the royal tempter. But as the world is ever more ready to believe evil than good of one—a platitude especially applicable to a maid of honour at Whitehall—the mere consciousness of being virtuous is not enough for the world. Of virtue the world always demands proofs. It was impossible to believe that a mere chit of a maid of honour—with such a mother too!—could resist a royal duke. He, however, clumsy at love-making as at everything else he undertook, himself furnished the world with proofs of Miss Jennings's innocence. "He thought that writing might perhaps succeed, though ogling, speeches, and embassies had failed. Paper is made to serve many uses, but it unfortunately happened that she had no use for it. Every day notes, containing the tenderest expressions and most magnificent promises, were slipped into her pockets or muff. This, however, could not be done unperceived, and the malicious little creature took care that those who saw them slip in should likewise see them fall out unopened. She had only to shake her muff or pull out her handkerchief as soon as his back was turned, and his notes rained about her for any one to pick up who chose. The Duchess was frequently a witness of this conduct, but could not find it in her heart to chide her maid of honour for want of respect to the Duke. Thus the charm and virtue of Miss Jennings were the only subject of conversation in the two Courts; people could not understand how a young creature fresh from the country should so soon become the ornament of the Court by her attractions and its example by her conduct."
This discreet behaviour soon rid the maid of honour of her troublesome admirer, for the Duke of York, unlike his brother King Charles, very quickly lost interest in the women who resisted him. Finding the Lovely Jennings prove invincible, James turned his attention to one of her more complaisant companions in attendance on his duchess, and as a consequence had, many years later at St. Germain, the, to him, morbid satisfaction of doing penance for, among other sins, the ruin of Arabella, young John Churchill's sister. James's repentance in this instance, however, was not unnaturally tempered with a just pride, for if ever there was a royal bastard worthy of admiration and honour it was James Fitz-James, Duke of Berwick, the son of the complaisant Miss Churchill and the Duke of York. Without exaggeration it may be said that there were few men of any rank in his day more knightly in the true sense than this illustrious nephew of the Great Marlborough.
But while Frances Jennings had successfully avoided one of the most treacherous pitfalls at Whitehall, she very nearly tumbled into another equally dangerous. The King, whose curiosity was fired by the maid of honour's reputation, piqued himself on succeeding where his brother had failed.
"God knows," said Hamilton, "what might have been the consequence; for he greatly excelled in wit, and besides he was King—two qualities of no small consideration. The resolutions of the Lovely Jennings were commendable and very judicious; but wit had great charms for her, and—royal majesty at the feet of a young person is very persuasive. Miss Stuart, however, would not consent to the King's project."
That cunning prude, to whom the royal admiration was the bait with which she hoped to catch her ducal husband, had strong objections to others with a similar purpose using her bait and fishing in the same stream. Charles allowed himself to be deluded with false hopes by La Belle Stuart, and the Lovely Jennings, though she lost the chance of becoming a maîtresse en titre—a position to which her ambition may have led her fancy—added both to her reputation and admirers by this adventure.
But of all the various kinds of fish that were angled for at Whitehall, husbands were the most difficult to catch. The beauties who hooked theirs out of that fishpond only succeeded in landing them after much practice. Miss Jennings's first attempt might be described as a graceful failure. The fish on her hook, so to speak, was the son of Lionne, Louis XIV.'s Minister for Foreign Affairs. This statesman, rightly considering that the Court of Charles II. was the place par excellence in which a very gauche and shy youth of nineteen would have unrivalled opportunities to "form" himself, had sent his son, the Marquis de Berni, there under Courtin, when that diplomatist went to England for the first time as French Ambassador. The details of the young man's progress have been preserved in the official despatches that Courtin sent to Lionne.
"Your son," wrote the Ambassador, "begins as an honest man; he is a little abashed, but we have given him courage, and M. d'Irval (of the Embassy) has so well seconded him that he has at last"—after a month in London—"made his declaration. It has been very well received by one of the finest girls in England—Miss Jennings, of the household of the Duchess of York. She is small, but with a fine figure, a splendid complexion, the hair such as you remember Madame de Longueville's was, brilliant, keen eyes, and the whitest, smoothest skin I ever saw."
The "forming" of the gauche, shy Berni proceeded apace. Under the influence of the Lovely Jennings he displayed "more ease in conversation, and greater care of his person, and less shyness in society. He arranges to see her every day, and sends her strawberries every evening." As to these graceful practices he added that of following the Duchess of York wherever she went in order to catch a glimpse of her lovely maid of honour, it was soon evident to the whole Court that he was madly in love, and Miss Jennings began to picture herself as a French marquise with a tabouret at Versailles. Whereupon Courtin became alarmed, for marriage was not in the Lionne programme, especially with a paltry Miss Jennings. He tried to impress M. le Marquis with a sense of the fitness of things, and that even an attaché of an Embassy had certain lesser duties to perform besides the supreme one of love-making. M. le Marquis was ordered to draft a despatch. He began, but could never finish it. How could he with the Lovely Jennings ever in his thoughts? Courtin then thought the time had come to send him back to France. "We have sometimes to contend with his timidity," he wrote the anxious father, "and sometimes with his presumption; very often with his sloth, but above all with his vanity, which is fed by all the honours paid to him. I think you would do well to destine him for the Bar!"
Lionne, on receipt of this, promptly and angrily ordered his son to return home, and M. le Marquis went off after three months in England, faithful to the last. "He will be greatly regretted at this Court," wrote Courtin, trying to appease Lionne's anger, "being, as he is, appreciated by the King and Queen and dearly loved by the prettiest young lady in England. Thursday evening the King, in my presence, very much teased Miss Jennings on the subject of your son; the young girl reddened; she never appeared more beautiful. His Majesty told me that your son had asked M. Porter to let him know how she looked on the day he was gone; and at the same time his Majesty assured me that he had never seen such a picture of sadness and desolation as the young gallant offered when on board the yacht of the Queen Mother. He was right, I can tell you, for the young lady loved him dearly." Thus ended Miss Jennings's first romance.
Life, however, was to have others in store for her, and the Frenchman had not long departed when all thoughts of him—the tenderness of which we are inclined to attribute to Courtin's imagination rather than to Miss Jennings's heart—were obliterated by the arrival of a dazzling Irishman. "Dick" Talbot, as he was called, was about twenty years older than the lovely Jennings, and not far off forty when he first met her. Already his life contained, in romance and adventure, sufficient material to equip an incipient Dumas for a literary career. He was a sort of living serial with many a thrilling chapter yet to run before the finish. As he was destined to be the means by which the prophecy of the imaginary Wicked Fairy at Miss Jennings's christening was fulfilled, an epitome of Dick Talbot's romantic past is necessary before describing its still more romantic sequel. His family had been settled for centuries in Ireland—since its conquest by Henry II. Time, the great assimilator, had made them Celts to the core, and "Dick," the last of five sons of a younger branch, was the Irishman par excellence. He was a soldier from necessity and an adventurer from inclination. His birth and poverty made him the former, and the times in which he lived the latter. He was only a boy when Ireland rose against Cromwell, but he enlisted and served, if not with distinction, at least with the characteristic Irish intrepidity. During the bloody defence of Drogheda he was wounded and left for dead on the battlefield, but was succoured by one of Cromwell's officers, who being charged with the burial of the dead noticed signs of returning consciousness in the corpse. On his recovery he managed to escape from his prison disguised as a woman, and joining a relation, under whom he had served, followed him to Spain, whence, possibly as a volunteer in the Spanish army, he made his way to Flanders. Here he found many Royalist fugitives, among whom was his brother Peter, afterwards the Archbishop of Dublin, who introduced him to the Duke of York.
One may easily picture the temper of the exiled Cavaliers. As it is natural, if immoral, that the vanquished should hate their conquerors, it is not at all surprising or, to our mind, shocking that the Duke of York should have wished to have Cromwell assassinated, or that others should have conspired to this end, or that young Dick Talbot should have offered his services for the purpose. Much ignominy has been heaped on Talbot for the ready willingness with which he lent himself to this assassination scheme. But while we personally by no means advocate assassination, we confess we are unable to understand the reasoning that makes the thought of assassinating Cromwell so much more horrible than that of assassinating any other tyrant. When the People, of whom so much insincerity is talked and written, make tyranny impossible there will be no question as to the crime or virtue of assassination.
Young Talbot was sent to England on his terrible errand, where he was arrested, and examined by Cromwell himself at Whitehall. While detained in the palace to await the decision as to his fate, he made the Puritan servants drunk, and, slipping from a window into the Thames, hid on a ship in the river. Rumour had it that, being in reality a spy in his pay, Cromwell had aided him to escape. As Dick Talbot was an expert duellist, and "ready to fight on the smallest provocation or none at all," it is easy to guess how such a calumny, which he denied with oaths, got its quietus. Among the spadassins who composed the Duke of York's regiment, of which, after the above adventure, he got the command in spite of great opposition, Talbot's sword, so quick to fly from its scabbard, gained him the discipline due to fear. With the Duke of York he was always a great favourite, and at the Restoration followed him to England as his gentleman of the bedchamber. None of the Cavaliers were more fortunate, for he had left his country a poor, insignificant lad, and returned at thirty possessed of royal favour which he knew well how to turn to his advantage.
If, as has been wittily said, William of Orange is the hero of the historical romance known as Macaulay's "History of England," the villain is unquestionably Dick Talbot. In those false, fascinating pages he is a consummate scoundrel, "a mere cringing courtier and a pimp." To refute the malevolent prejudices of Macaulay is easy, and he has been exposed over and over again. We know now that his brilliantly arresting portrait of Talbot was no more like him than was the Great Frederick to an equally haunting portrait by the same master. The Talbot of Macaulay's "History" is, as Jusserand says, a caricature. Perhaps, without placing any more confidence in Hamilton—who drew a very flattering picture of him—than in Macaulay, a certain little-known portrait by the Duke of Berwick comes nearest the truth. It utterly refutes the imputation that he lent himself to the scheme to take away the character of the Duchess of York in order that the Duke, who was tired of her, might divorce her. Likewise the charge that he used his influence to enrich himself at the expense of his fellow-countrymen, whose confiscated estates he got returned to them after deducting his commission, falls to the ground. His fellow-countrymen, whose popular representative he was at Whitehall, willingly gave him money for the purpose. "Though he had acquired great possessions," wrote the Duke of Berwick, "it could not be said that he had employed improper means."
But enough of historical recriminations over this almost forgotten man. Hero or villain, he was when Frances Jennings first beheld him one of the tallest and handsomest men in England. Macaulay at least did justice to his looks when he spoke of "that form which had once been the model for statuaries." With his striking appearance and fascinating manners were combined reckless courage, an emotional, passionate temperament, and the Irishman's ready wit. There is an anecdote of the latter which, as an example of thrust and parry in double entente, is hardly to be matched. Once Louis XIV., struck with the handsome Irishman's likeness to himself, on which many had remarked, asked him with a subtle insolence if his mother had not been at the Court of the late King (Louis' father).
"Non, Sire," was Dick Talbot's instant reply; "mais mon père y était."
A man, one would say, with a wit as quick and dangerous as his sword, for which he was noted.
His reputation had been still further increased by a liaison with the notorious Countess of Shrewsbury, and when Miss Jennings met him he had just come back from Ireland, whither he had gone to forget La Belle Hamilton, who had refused him. He was, in fact, very susceptible where the fair sex was concerned, and the ambitious Miss Jennings, having cast a shrewd glance at his two thousand a year in landed property and the valuable royal favour he enjoyed, was not long in bringing him to her feet. The match having been approved by the Duchess of York, Talbot and the beauty were as good as betrothed. This engagement, however, did not last long. Miss Jennings's intimacy with Miss Price occasioned the chivalrous Talbot much concern. Believing his lady-love to be above reproach, and wishing her to remain so, he talked to her with more affection than tact as to the impropriety of making a friend of one who, having been dismissed by the Queen for misconduct, now enjoyed the doubtful distinction of companion to my Lady Castlemaine.
Miss Jennings, who was not the least in love with Talbot, whom she regarded from a purely mercenary point of view as being more eligible than any other of her admirers, objected to be lectured on her choice of friends; and as the society of Miss Price, whatever her reputation, was most amusing company, she haughtily bade her lover mind his own business. This quarrel under ordinary circumstances, owing to the impulsive and generous nature of Talbot, would not have been of long duration. But it chanced to occur just at the time that the "invincible" Jermyn returned to Court after a long absence in the country. Having heard sufficient of the Lovely Jennings to excite his curiosity, he at once paid her court with his customary dishonourable motive. The beauty, however, without adding another to this frivolous coxcomb's many triumphs, nevertheless encouraged his attentions with a shrewd and mercenary eye to his twenty thousand a year. Poor Talbot, who would have forgiven the siren that had bewitched him anything, made several attempts to win back the heart of his fair, but the coquette only laughed at him, and used the quarrel as a means of exchanging one suitor for another more eligible.
The Duchess of York, whose esteem Miss Jennings had cleverly won, was persuaded by the designing maid of honour to sound Jermyn as to his intentions, and succeeded in drawing from him the most satisfactory assurances. The jilting of Talbot and conquest of Jermyn were soon the chief topics of the Court, and the artful beauty flattered herself on the aptitude she showed for intrigue. But Jermyn though hooked was not caught. The irony in the compliments he received on being snared by a girl he had tried to snare cooled his infatuation. He delayed to become a Benedict, and the steps that Miss Jennings took to hasten him constitute one of the best-known episodes in the "Mémoires de Gramont."
One of the customs much in vogue at the time was that of going about the streets masked. "Both the King and Queen and all the Court," says Burnet, "went about masked, and came into houses unknown, and danced there, with a great deal of wild frolic. In all this people were so disguised that, without being in the secret, none could distinguish them." The same form of amusement was popular at the French Court, whence no doubt it had been imported into England. It was, therefore, not surprising that a fast Miss Price or a circumspect Miss Jennings, in the desire to pass a weary hour or two, should have found many a precedent to excuse a frolic to which the risk of discovery gave an additional zest. "Having well considered the matter," said Hamilton, "the best disguise they could think of was to dress themselves like the girls who sell oranges in the theatres and public promenades. This was soon managed; they attired themselves alike, each taking a basket of oranges, and having embarked in a hackney coach, they committed themselves to fortune without any other escort than their own caprice and indiscretion."
Their objective was the motive which had inspired the frolic. Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, the famous wit and rake, having by mistake handed Charles II. a clever, filthy lampoon on himself for one on some one else, had been banished the Court. In his temporary exile he had conceived the idea of disguising himself so that his nearest friends could not have known him, and had established himself near the Tower as a German doctor possessed of "wonderful secrets and infallible remedies." His success was astonishing, and the fame of him having reached the Court, it occurred to Miss Price and Miss Jennings to consult him; the former out of sheer wanton love of excitement, the latter—as the German doctor was also a fortune-teller—to discover, if possible, why Jermyn delayed to marry her. On their way to the fortune-teller's they passed the theatre known as the Duke's House, "where the Queen and the Duchess of York were seated in state." Hereupon Miss Price, with the boldness characteristic of her, suggested to Miss Jennings that they should hawk their oranges in the theatre under the Royal box. Miss Jennings rather timidly consented, and as they were crossing the lobby they encountered a man whom they knew, Killigrew, to whom they offered their oranges. He, not recognising them, but struck with the grace of Miss Jennings's figure, chucked her under the chin, squeezed her, and asked her to come to his lodgings. The beauty was so indignant and frightened that she very nearly betrayed herself, but the more experienced Price got her away in safety.
This little contretemps somewhat dashed their spirits, but they proceeded nevertheless to the fortune-teller's in their cab. Within a few doors of his house they ordered the driver to stop, and having alighted and left their orange-baskets in the cab till their return, they were proceeding on foot when the roué Brounker stopped them. At first "he had no doubt but that Miss Jennings was a young courtezan upon the look-out, and that Miss Price was her business woman." But they, knowing his reputation, no sooner beheld him than they gave themselves up for lost. Their manner betrayed them, and Brounker immediately recognised them, without, however, letting them know of his discovery. "The old fox possessed wonderful self-command on such occasions, and having teased them a little longer to remove all suspicions, he quitted them, telling Price that she was a great fool to refuse his offers, and that the little creature would not, perhaps, get so much in a year as she might with him in one day; that the times were greatly changed since the Queen's and the Duchess's maids of honour nowadays came to the same market as the poor women of the town!"
Brounker, who would not have taken a thousand guineas for this meeting, having passed on, the now thoroughly terrified girls, abandoning all thought of the fortune-teller, returned to their cab, to find the coachman engaged in a fight with some roughs who were trying to steal their oranges. The honest fellow was with the greatest difficulty pacified, and the orange girls, having left their wares to the mob that had collected, drove back to the palace. But, owing to the malice of Brounker, the story of their escapade was soon spread abroad with much exaggeration. Lady Castlemaine, whose sins were seventy times seven, made a taunting comment to the effect that the only one of her sex at Court whose virtue could not be impugned was her infant daughter. But fortunately for Miss Jennings her previous honourable reputation prevented any stigma from attaching to her, and the favour she enjoyed with the Duchess of York saved her from the disgrace and dismissal that might otherwise have overtaken her.
Jermyn, however, already weary of a conquest from which he had gained nothing but ridicule, took advantage of the scandal caused by the frolic to release himself from his entanglement. The means he took were malicious, but his malice recoiled on himself and made him ridiculous. Having for some time pretended to be ill in order to delay his marriage, he suddenly sought and obtained the King's consent to serve as a volunteer in the expedition to Guinea that was fitting out under the command of Prince Rupert. Whereupon he came himself to acquaint Miss Jennings of his heroical project. She quickly realised that the husband she had so cleverly angled for had for the third time escaped capture. Nor did she have the satisfaction of knowing that her wiles could entice back Talbot, whose ardour must have contrasted very unpleasantly now with Jermyn's cold-blooded desertion. For Talbot in a fit of pique had married another. The curse of the Wicked Fairy had begun to work, and for the first time in her life the coquetry, malice, virtue, and ambition bestowed on her by the other fairies were brought to nought.
But in this hour of humiliation she bore herself with all the haughtiness and disdain for which she was afterwards to be noted. "There appeared," says Hamilton, "so much indifference and ease in the raillery with which she complimented Jermyn on his voyage, that he was entirely disconcerted, and so much the more so as he had prepared all the arguments he thought capable of consoling her, upon announcing to her the fatal news of his departure." She told him "that nothing could be more glorious for him, who had triumphed over the liberty of so many persons in Europe, than to go and extend his conquests in other parts of the world; and she advised him to bring home with him all the female captives he might make in Africa, in order to replace those beauties whom his absence would bring to the grave." Her resentment did not, however, stop here, for shortly afterward, the expedition to Guinea being abandoned, she wrote a clever lampoon on Jermyn, which was circulated all over London and covered him with ridicule.
At this juncture, attracted, so to speak, by the blaze of all this, George Hamilton, a moth drawn to every pretty face that smiled on him, fluttered round her. Pique made her encourage him, for though he was good-looking and well-born and fascinating, it was hardly likely that an ambitious girl who had set her cap for Talbots and Jermyns would otherwise have contented herself with an impecunious younger son. Enchanted by his friendly reception, Hamilton quickly forgot La Belle Stuart, Lady Chesterfield, and the others for whom he had sighed in vain, and imagining, as he always did, that his heart was made of the wood with which the fire of a grande passion is kindled, he besought the Lovely Jennings to be his wife. They were married almost immediately, and Hamilton, having been knighted by Charles II., who did not evince an inclination to bestow on him further and more substantial honours, crossed to France with his wife and offered his services to Louis XIV.
Judging from what we know of Lady Hamilton's character, it seems justifiable to attribute to her energy his rapid advancement in the French army. For though George Hamilton was brave, he could hardly be called brilliant, and in order to account for the honours Louis XIV. gave him it must have been due in no small degree to his clever wife that the powerful interest of the Gramonts, to whom he was so closely related, was exerted.
Of the life of the Countess Hamilton, to give her her French title, in France we know nothing. But it did not last long, for a few years after her marriage her husband was killed in Flanders. Once again, with every prospect of winning a brilliant station in life her schemes were upset, and she was left a widow with three little daughters and a petty pension from the French Government on which to eke out a miserable existence. But her courage was not broken; she still had youth, beauty, and ambition—three qualifications with which a clever woman may make a successful bid for fortune. She returned to England, and it was not long before her star was again in the ascendant. Evelyn recorded in his Diary that on the occasion when he went as far as Dover with the new English Ambassador to Paris "there was in the company of my Lady Ambassadress my Lady Hamilton, a sprightly young lady much in the good graces of the family."
It was now when travelling in the suite of these exalted persons that the charming widow met her old lover Dick Talbot, who had been obliged to leave England on account of his supposed implication in the Popish Plot. It was nearly fifteen years since they had met: he was now close on fifty, but still the same handsome, passionate, generous Talbot of the old days, and she was nearly thirty, with the glamour of misfortune to excite sympathy for her beauty. Talbot, whose wife had recently died, at once fell under the old spell, and this time he was not refused. If she could not love him as he loved her, she knew how to satisfy him, and gave him the full benefit of her cunning and ambition in the stormy days in store for them. Just before the death of Charles II. they managed to return to England. The Duke of York, with whom Talbot was always a favourite, at once reinstated him in his old post of groom of the bedchamber, while the new Duchess of York (Mary of Modena) made as much of his beautiful wife as the late one had done of the Lovely Jennings.
The accession of James II. gave the Talbots their opportunity. The favourite was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and sent to Ireland in command of the army. His wife accompanied him, and now there began for them the culminating and most critical period of their lives. Already the shadow of the ruin of the Stuart dynasty could be discerned outlined in the ferment of the times. The spirit of the approaching Revolution of 1688, which cost James II. his crown, was more religious than political; and it was in Catholic Ireland, which had groaned under the iron heel of the Puritans, that the struggle for which all were preparing was to be decided. In that distracted kingdom, with the passionate Papist Talbot in command of the military, and the sleek Protestant Clarendon (the great Chancellor's son) in command of the civil power, the very difference in temper, character, and politics of the two men was enough to lash the factions they represented to fury. The tactics by which Talbot crushed his rival and set the Catholics, eager for revenge, at the throat of the Protestants caused his name to be execrated in England. But terrible as they were, it should be remembered that the revered Cromwell's were not a whit less ruthless. Talbot was the enfant perdu of a doomed faith and a doomed nation; his name has been covered with infamy because he failed, and Macaulay, in making him the villain of his romantic "History," was merely expressing the opinion of triumphant Protestant England.