FREAKS OF ROYALTY
It is impossible to account, in many cases, for the strange and
extraordinary freaks of bygone sovereigns on any other ground than
eccentricity or madness. It is true that Charles the Fat used to excuse
himself for the atrocities into which he plunged, by asserting that he
was possessed of a devil, but this, of course, was in banter rather than
sincerity. But, whatever the motives which prompted such peculiar
vagaries on the part of certain monarchs, foibles of this kind, if not
instructive, are certainly amusing.
Thus it is related of Marie Casimire, wife of Sobieski, King of Poland,
that one of her amusements was to let herself be drenched by the rain,
although at the time she might be magnificently dressed. On one
occasion, when Monsieur le Comte de Teil, Conseiller du Parlement de
Paris, who had been sent to Poland by the King of England, happened to
be near the Queen when it rained very heavily, she said to him,
“Monsieur l’Envoi, let us take a walk”--a request which he did not dare
to refuse. He wore on that day a fine wig; nevertheless he endured the
rain for some time, and then said to her, “Madam, your Majesty is
getting wet.” “Say, rather,” answered the Queen, “that you are learning
how to spoil your fine wig,” and she continued walking in the rain
maliciously a full half-hour.
This, however, was a comparatively trivial and harmless amusement
compared with the cruel and outrageous freaks of the Russian Emperor,
Ivan IV., who has been described as “one of the most savage, yet one of
the most enlightened monarchs that ever reigned.” He was only in his
teens when he had one of his attendants worried to death by dogs on the
public highway; and in one of the so-called frolicsome moods he would
let slip wild bears among the affrighted citizens in the streets, and
would calmly say his prayers whilst gazing at the slaughter, making
compensation “for any irregularity in the matter by flinging a few coins
to the wounded after he rose from his knees.” It is even said that Ivan
went so far in his insane freaks as to compel parents to slay their
children, and children one another; and where there was a survivor, “the
amiable monarch, if he was not too weary, would slay him himself, and
would laugh at this conclusion to so excellent a joke.” It is not
surprising that partial madness eventually overtook him, for what can be
said of a ruler who is reported to have sent to the city of Moscow “to
provide for him a measure full of fleas for a medicine.” They answered
it was impossible; and if they could get them, yet they could not
measure them, because of their leaping out. Upon which he set a mulct
upon the city of 7000 roubles.
But Ivan IV. was not the only Russian monarch who indulged in freaks of
an irrational nature, although his successors did not stoop to the same
cruelty. In the case of Peter III. intemperance has been assigned as the
probable cause of some of the absurd actions with which his name has
been associated in contemporary memoirs. Rulhière, for instance, who was
an eye-witness of the Revolution of the year 1762, tells us that his
military mania knew no bounds; he wished that a perpetual noise of
cannon should give him in representation a foretaste of war.
Accordingly, he one day gave orders that one hundred large pieces of
cannon should be fired simultaneously, so that he might have some idea
of the noise of battle. And it was necessary, in order to prevent the
execution of this whim, to represent to him that such an act would shake
the city to the centre. Oftentimes he would rise from table to prostrate
himself on his knees, with a glass in his hand, before a portrait of
Frederick of Prussia, exclaiming, “My brother, we will conquer the
universe together.”
In some instances the conduct of the Russian Emperor Paul was most
eccentric, and his vagaries were so extraordinary that they have been
explained on the theory of madness. One of the most curious stories
about him is related by Kotzebue. He was summoned into the presence of
the Emperor, who said to him in German, “You know the world too well not
to be adequately informed about political occurrences, and must,
therefore, have learned how I have figured in it. I have often made
rather a foolish exhibition of myself, and,” continued he, laughing,
“it’s right that I should be punished, and I have imposed on myself a
chastisement. I want this”--he held a paper in his hand--“to be inserted
in the _Hamburg Gazette_ and other newspapers.” He then took him
confidentially by the arm, and read to him the following paper which he
had written in French:--
“On apprend de Petersbourg que l’Empereur de Russie voyant que les
puissances de l’Europe ne pouvoit s’accorder entre elle et voulant
mettre fin à une guerre qui la desoloit depuis onse ans vouloit proposer
un lieu ou il inviteroit touts les autres souverains de se rendre et y
combattre en champ clos ayant avec eux pour ecuyer juge de camp, et
héros d’armes leurs ministres les plus éclairés et les generaux les plus
habiles tels que Messrs. Thugust, Pitt, Bernstoff, lui même se proposant
de prendre avec lui les generaux C. de Palen et Kutusof, on ne sçait si
on doit y ajouter foi, toute fois la chose ne paroit pas destituée de
fondement en portant l’empreinte de ce dont il a souvent été taxé.”[3]
We may compare this eccentricity with that of Charles I. of England, who
would bind himself to a particular line of conduct by a secret
obligation. One day he drew aside Dr. Sheldon, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury, and placed in his hands a paper which detailed certain
measures he proposed to adopt for the glory of God and for the
advancement of the Church, intimating that he “had privately bound
himself by the most awful vow to ensure their accomplishment.” And one
particular obligation which the document contained was to perform public
penance for the injustice he had been guilty of to Lord Strafford, in
consenting to his death. In delivering this paper to Dr. Sheldon,
Charles solemnly conjured him to remind him of his contract, should he
hereafter ever find him in a condition to perform any one of the
articles which it contained.
In his moments of irritation Peter the Great, like William III. of
England, would not hesitate to strike the person who had given him
offence, whatever might be his rank; and, as his Majesty was easily
upset, he was at times very lavish of his blows. His subjects, it is
said, did not consider a blow from the Emperor an affront, and thought
themselves honoured by an apology. But this was not the case with
foreigners, for Le Blond, a French architect whom the Czar had invited
into his dominions, having received the stroke of a cane in the first
transport of imperial anger, took it so much to heart that he sickened
of a fever and died.
The Czar Nicholas was fond of frightening or fascinating people by his
eyes, and it is said that one of his terrible glances once terrified a
Swedish admiral into the Russian service. On another occasion, we are
told how happening to encounter a poor fellow who had strolled into the
private part of the Imperial Park, Nicholas gazed at him with so fierce
a glance that the trespasser was stricken with brain-fever. This strange
peculiarity of the Czar reminds us of Augustus, who, according to
Suetonius, was always well pleased with those persons who, when
addressing him, looked upon the ground, as though there were a divine
splendour in his eyes, too dazzling for them to gaze upon.
Eric XIV. of Sweden in early life was stunned by a violent fall, a
circumstance which, it is said, in after years accounted for his lack of
judgment, and occasional eccentricity of conduct. His highly suspicious
turn of mind made him at times morose, and almost maniacal, causing him
to interpret “the most natural and insignificant of gestures as some
dreadful telegraphing of hideous treason. At such seasons his violence
was frantic, and, after a day marked by acts of frightful outrage, he
would make record against himself in his journal that he had sinned, and
would then start to commit further crime.” By a terrible irony of fate,
when deposed by his brother John, he was thrown into a horrible dungeon,
and “there were placed over him men whom he had offended, and who
claimed to be avenged. The vengeance which they exacted was diabolical,
for they aggravated as far as in them lay the horrors of his
position--one of them fastening to his crippled limbs a mass of iron
which may yet be seen in the museum at Abo.”[4] But can this be wondered
at, when it is remembered how Eric when possessed of power had in his
moments of frenzy and freaks of passion sent innocent men to the
scaffold, and like a lunatic had, after the performance of some
diabolical act, wandered about the fields likening himself to Nero, and
heaping execration upon his own head. He was his own enemy, and as such
incurred his own destruction.
Some of the characteristics of one of his successors on the throne--the
celebrated Christina--were uncommon, for having been educated by men,
and brought up under the guardianship of men, she gradually imbibed a
dislike of all that was womanly. Her ambition seems to have been to be
as much like a man as possible, and nothing seems to have pleased her
more than to don male attire. For womanly refinements, too, she had the
most profound contempt, and it only coincided with this trait of
character that she expressed her conviction of the utter disability of
woman to conduct the affairs of a nation. In short, it is said that
there was nothing of the woman in her save her sex, and that her
presence, voice, and manners, were altogether masculine. Many of her
strange freaks of conduct were attributable to this peculiar whim, in
accordance with which she not only swore like a dragoon, but encouraged
conversation of a by no means refined character. Thus a writer states
that one of his friends used to entertain her with stories of a very
unseemly nature, with which she was abundantly delighted, and adds, “Yet
because there were some of his narrations which did sometimes require
more modest expressions than the genuine or natural, chiefly before a
Royal Majesty and in a maid’s presence, as she saw him going about his
circumlocutions and seeking civil terms, she would boldly speak out the
words, though they were never so filthy, which modesty forbids me to
write here.” Indeed, her own acknowledgment that she was never nice of
speech more or less corresponded with her personal habits, inasmuch as
Manneschied, the confessor of Pimentelli, the Spanish ambassador at the
Swedish Court, and a great admirer of the Queen, thus wrote of her: “She
never combs her hair but once a week, and sometimes lets it go untouched
for a fortnight. On Sundays her toilet takes about half-an-hour, but on
other days it is despatched in a quarter.” Manneschied then adds, “Her
linen was ragged and much torn.” And occasionally, when a bold person
would hint at the salubrity of cleanliness she would reply, “Wash!
that’s all very well for people who have nothing else to do!”
Nothing, again, pleased Christina more than to indulge in some
outrageous freak whereby she would astonish and horrify those around
her. When visiting, for instance, the French Court, she startled the
stately ladies there by her strange conduct; and according to Madame de
Motteville, “In presence of the King, Queen, and the whole Court, she
flung her legs up on a chair as high as that on which she was seated,
and she altogether exhibited them a great deal too freely.” Then, again,
her impatience and irreverence at church were not infrequently matter of
public comment. She would use two chairs, one of purple velvet in which
she was seated, and one in front of her, “over the back of which she
would lean her head or arms, thinking of divers matters.” If the sermon
was a trifle long and somewhat prosy, she would begin playing with the
two spaniels which usually accompanied her, or she would chat with some
gentleman-in-waiting; and, if the sermon did not come to a close, she
would rattle her fan on the back of the chair before her, and distract
the attention of the congregation, if she could not stop the preacher.
But she was perfectly indifferent as to what the public thought of her
conduct, and almost up to the end of her life she adhered to the same
freedom and laxity of manners. It was towards the close of the year 1688
that she received an anonymous letter intimating that her death was not
far off, and that she would do well to set her house in order, which she
could commence by destroying the indecent paintings and statues with
which her mansion was crowded.
But this note of warning had no effect on Christina, and with a smile
she put it in the fire, little anticipating that the prediction would be
fulfilled the following year. Despite her many foibles and follies,
Christina was a great and remarkable woman, a riddle indeed to many who
have read her history. She had a masterful character, and, however much
her various eccentricities and habits of life may have created disgust,
her intellectual powers, on the other hand, were of no mean order. But
one reason, perhaps, which induced her to indulge in such extraordinary
freaks of conduct was her supreme contempt for the parade and symbols of
worldly power, and the conventionalities of society.
It was no matter of surprise that Gustavus IV. proved an incapable and
unreliable monarch, developing eccentricity of character bordering on
insanity. What could be expected of one who in his young life was so
overdone with religious teaching that “he pored over the Book of
Revelations till he became nearly insane, recognised himself as one
mysteriously alluded to in Scripture, and hailed in his own person that
‘coming man’ who as prophet, priest, and king was to rule the world”?
Thus on his wedding-day, at the completion of the marriage ceremony, he
took his bride, Princess Frederica of Baden, to her apartment, and
opening the Book of Esther, bade her read aloud the first chapter.
She obeyed, and then wonderingly asked for an explanation of his strange
conduct. Gustavus at once expounded the passage, warning the Queen that
should she ever disobey her lord and master she would be punished as
Vashti had been, and her dignity would be given to another. This was not
a happy inauguration of married life, and the young Queen soon found to
her bitter disappointment what a miserable existence was enforced upon
her. On one occasion, when Gustavus discovered his young wife having a
romp with her German maids, he immediately dismissed her playful
attendants, and introduced in their place cold and formal aged Swedish
ladies, who would have scorned even the idea of such frivolities. But it
was in his public as well as his private life that Gustavus indulged in
these strange freaks, alienating by his conduct the sympathies of the
aristocracy, many of whom, “to mark their indignation, threw up their
patents of nobility,” while the people generally did not shrink from
showing in an unmistakable manner their annoyance and disgust. The
climax of his follies and freaks was reached when he absented himself
from his kingdom--from 1803 to 1806--so that he was advertised for on
the walls of Stockholm as a stray king, a suitable recompense being
promised to any who should restore him to his “disconsolate subjects.”
Ultimately, as is well known, he was deposed--his uncle, the Duke of
Sudermania, ascending the throne as Charles XIII.--and imprisoned in the
Castle of Gripsholm, where he amused himself by drawing “a portrait of
himself seated on a white horse, trampling upon the Beast”![5]
The Duke d’Alençon, afterwards Duke of Anjou, and his brother Henry III.
regarded each other with puerile hatred, a circumstance which led to the
most absurd rivalry between themselves. Each bestowed his favour and
time, and lavished his resources, on a band of young, handsome,
swaggering gallants, to whom the King especially set the example of
great extravagance, and, at the same time, effeminacy of dress. The
freaks of folly they committed seem scarcely credible, for it is
reported that they painted their cheeks, adorned their necks with the
most outrageous frills of enormous dimensions, and curled their hair
with a nicety and care which exceeded male pretensions. Indeed, Henry
III. carried this absurdity so far as actually to appear accoutred in a
female garb. “These acts of idiotcy,” writes Crowe,[6] “the people
construed to be indicative not merely of perverted taste, but of
degrading crime; and the King’s _mignons_ were the object of such
universal execration that when they perished by the hands of each other,
or of more invidious foes, and when Henry III. consoled himself for
their loss by the performance of splendid funeral rites, and the
erection of superb mausoleums, the public applauded the acts of
vengeance by which these base parasites were slain.” But, contemptible
as such conduct was, it certainly lacked the brutality of his
predecessor, Charles IX., who, when engaged in the chase, is said to
have pursued wild beasts more with the fury of their species than the
excitement of man. Thus it is recorded that he would cut off the heads
of donkeys, embowel pigs, and would take a pleasure in arranging their
entrails butcher-fashion.
Another of the freaks of Charles IX. consisted in his hiring ten young
thieves, whom he brought to the Louvre, where he set them to rob the
guests of their swords and jewellery, laughing heartily “as he witnessed
their success, or saw the unconsciousness of the victims, or beheld
their surprise and indignation after they had been despoiled.” These
young thieves, says Dr. Doran, who were amply rewarded for the exercise
of their ability, “rank among the most singular of hirelings paid to
excite laughter in a gloomy king.”
The Comte d’Artois, a brother of Louis XVI., was noted for his frivolous
pursuits and his unbecoming follies. One anecdote about him shows the
levity of his conduct; and, as it has been observed, a royal duke “who
had tried the same jest in England would have been summoned before the
next Justice of the Peace”:--
“The Comte d’Artois has taken it into his head to pull down a country
house in the Bois de Boulogne, and to rebuild it from top to bottom. It
is to be newly furnished, and a fête is to be given there to the Queen.
Everybody thought it absurd to attempt to finish such a piece of work in
six or seven weeks; yet it has been done--nine hundred workmen having
been employed day and night. The most extraordinary part of the case is
that, as there was a deficiency of materials, especially of stones,
lime, and plaister, and that time was not to be lost in procuring them
elsewhere, M. le Comte d’Artois gave orders that patrols of the Swiss
Guards should search the main roads, and seize every cart containing
materials of this kind which they came across.”
At sixty years of age, Louis I., or Ludwig, King of Bavaria, took under
his protection the notorious dancing-woman, Lola Montes, under whose
wretched influence the misguided monarch was guilty of the most
inconceivable follies. She so outraged every idea of propriety, that on
one occasion the mob threatened to pull her house to the ground. But she
treated the matter with a high hand; and, to show her contempt for the
crowd, flung a dog among them, and she is even said to have thrust her
tongue in her cheek at the people. And, when it is remembered that there
was scarcely a freak of folly which Ludwig did not do at her bidding, it
is not surprising that the public indignation was unbounded. She
succeeded, however, in dragging the weak-minded King with her in her
fall, whose position, after the terrible scandal and disgrace, had
become so unbearable that he found himself forced to abdicate, which
took place in the year 1848. In his time of retirement one of the
pleasantest associations of his past was the velvet-covered mattress
stuffed with beards and moustaches, which the soldiers of his father’s
regiment had cut off for the express purpose, and presented to him.
But one of the strangest and most eccentric of modern kings was Ludwig
II., known as the “Mad King” of Bavaria, who from his earliest youth
appears to have been a dreamer and a visionary. The romantic legends
which charmed him as a boy retained their influence over him in after
years, and he grew up with the most morbid propensities, never taught to
control himself, or to keep his nerves in check. He disliked physical
exertion, and an aversion to anything disagreeable became in him a
monomania, for he could not endure even the sight of a cripple or of an
ill-formed person.[7]
As a boy, we are told, the Castle of Hohenschwangau in the Bavarian Alps
fascinated his imagination, for “knights in armour spoke to him; Rhine
maidens drew him into their arms; he saw his ancestors, the old
Wittelsbach heroes, seated upon their war-horses, their swords drawn,
fighting their way into Rome, or resting under the palms by the banks of
the Nile.” At two and twenty he betrothed himself to his cousin, Sophie
Charlotte--daughter of Maximilian of Bavaria and sister of the Empress
of Austria--who afterwards became Duchesse d’Alençon, and perished in
the fire at the Bazar de la Charité. But for some reason the match was
broken off, and henceforth he became “more melancholy and more enamoured
of solitude,” dwelling “in pathetic loneliness, with little society save
his brooding dreams--his days, or rather his nights, for he had already
begun to invert the division of the twenty-four hours, peopled with the
heroes and legends of myth.”
Once only, it is said, did he really rouse himself, when he threw in his
lot with Prussia in 1870. But after all it was only a fictitious
enthusiasm, for he would not accompany his army, backing out on the plea
that he had strained a sinew. He grew tired of life and disgusted with
everything, and there seems to have been in his unbalanced mind some
jealousy of the Crown Prince Frederick, who had performed the deeds
which had ever been the subject of his dreams. And his extraordinary
eccentricities got gradually worse, and he acquired the habit of
drinking a mixture of champagne and Rhenish wine in which violets
floated, consorting only with his servants. Finally, when it was
announced to him that his deposition had been decided, he exclaimed,
“Let the traitors be thrown into the deepest dungeon, loaded with
chains, and leave them to die of starvation.” But not very long
afterwards he was removed to the Château of Berg, where he was
mysteriously drowned in the Starnberg Lake.
At an early age Alfonso VI. of Portugal had the misfortune to have his
limbs and his reason partially paralysed by fever--a circumstance which
must account for his wicked and vicious life in after years. On any
other ground it is impossible to excuse his conduct, which was infamous
and contemptible. But some of his freaks were so outrageous as to be
attributable only to insanity, and it is surprising that they should
have been tolerated for any length of time. What would be said of a
monarch at the present day who, with a set of ruffianly companions,
roamed the streets at night, “assaulted passengers, fired into the
coaches of the nobles, and routed religious processions at the point of
the sword.” We nowadays can scarcely realise a responsible ruler
attending midnight orgies of the most disreputable and repulsive kind,
and afterwards returning to his palace with flaunting females of the
most dissolute and repulsive character. On one occasion, however, in one
of his mad freaks he encountered two passengers, and drawing his sword
attacked them; but they drew in return, and, after giving his Majesty
far more than he bargained for, they left him to be picked up by his
followers, who carried him home to bed. A humiliation of this kind was
lost on a monarch who was too depraved to have any feeling of
self-respect; for, when he was summoned to the bedside of his dying
mother, he tarried so long on the way to amuse himself, that when he
arrived she had lost the power of sight and speech.
Despite his natural gifts, which were great, there can be no doubt that
the texture of Don Sebastian’s mind was inwoven with the threads of that
hereditary insanity which broke out so tragically in his cousin, Don
Carlos. One of his eccentric freaks was to have the body of John II.
lifted from its quiet resting-place in the Abbey of Batalha, where it
had lain three-quarters of a century; and which, being found entire and
uncorrupted, was placed erect on its feet, clad in kingly robes, and was
armed with the rusty sword it had once wielded. Whereupon the Duke of
Aveiro was commanded as a token of homage to kiss the withered hand of
the corpse, and Sebastian, exclaiming, “Behold the best officer of our
kingly office!” turned away to pursue his sepulchral visitations
elsewhere.
Not long before his death, Charles II. of Spain had one of those strange
funereal yearnings, so distinctive of the last days of nearly every
member of the Austrian House of Spain. Thus, Juana la Loca would not
surrender the embalmed body of her husband, and Philip II., shortly
before he died, called for a skull and placed a crown upon it. Philip
IV. went and lay in the niche destined for him in the Pantheon. And
similarly, a weird sepulchral fancy animated the decaying brain of
Charles II. To indulge his morbid and diseased feelings, he would
descend into the royal mausoleum, open the coffins, and look face to
face on the chiefs of his race who had worn his crown before him. He
went down by the light of torches into the dark vault of the Pantheon,
the huge _candelabrum_ was lit, and all the coffins, beginning with that
of Charles V., were opened for him in order. Charles V. was much
decayed; the features of Philip II. were distorted; Philip III. was
nearly perfectly preserved in form, but crumbled into dust as soon as
his body was touched. After the kings he passed to the queens, and when
that of his first queen was opened, and he saw the form and still
charming features of her who had glorified his dark life and brain for a
while, his throat was convulsed, tears streamed from his eyes, and he
fell with outstretched arms on the bier, crying, “My queen, my queen,
before a year is past I will come and join you.”[8] This visit of the
last descendant of the House of Austria to view the corpses of his race
is one of the strangest scenes in history.
Charles V. had his funeral rites celebrated before him, but, as Dr.
Doran writes, the spectacle of the ex-Emperor celebrating his own
funeral service has been divested of much of its apparent absurdity by
the simple statements of eye-witnesses and modern writers who have
reproduced their statements. It was a ceremony, however, on which even
Charles did not venture till he had received ecclesiastical permission.
He did not attend it in his shroud, nor lie down in his own coffin.
There were the ordinary ornaments which the Romish Church uses at the
usual services for the dead, and nothing more. The only exception to the
ordinary service was when Charles, extinguishing the light which he
held, surrendered it into the hands of a priest, in token of yielding up
his life to the will of God.
And similarly, we are reminded how Maria Theresa, who survived her
husband fifteen years, lived amid the emblems of perpetual mourning. She
shut herself up on the 18th of every month, and the whole of every
August, the day and month of his death. As her life drew near its end,
she spent many days at times in the funeral chapel before the picture of
her husband, taken as he lay in his coffin, and her last words, well
understood by those around her, were, “I come to thee.”
Queen Victoria was not altogether free from the morbid tendency of mind
“which comes of excessive study of incidents of sorrow and suffering,”
and her habit of accumulating sepulchral memorials of relations and
friends was one manifestation of it.
Her Majesty, too, was a strong believer in the reality and near presence
of the spirit world. A writer in the _Quiver_ (March, 1898) states that
Mrs. Oliphant’s “Little Pilgrim in the Unseen” was of great interest to
her, as, since the death of the Prince Consort, she had manifested a
special liking for writings dealing with the mystic and unseen. And to
quote from this article:--
“She believes that it is given to our departed loved ones to watch over
those who still struggle with the temptations and sorrows of the earthly
life. It has been the real consolation of her bereaved years that she
felt that the Prince was watching over the events of her life. During
her retirement at Osborne, immediately after the Prince Consort’s death,
the Queen found ‘her only comfort in the belief that her husband’s
spirit was close beside her, for he had promised that it should be so.’
This was told to Dean Stanley by the Queen’s half-sister, the Princess
Hohenlohe.”
The belief of this kind, it may be added, in the spiritual world, was
one of the links which bound together her Majesty and the late
Poet-Laureate in affectionate sympathy. In one of his published letters
to the Queen the poet wrote: “If the dead, as I have often felt, though
silent, be more living than the living, and linger about the planet in
which their earth-life was passed, then _they_, while we are lamenting
that they are not at our side, may still be with us; and the husband,
the daughter, and the son, lost by your Majesty, may rejoice when the
people shout the name of your Majesty.”
That sentiments such as these found an echo in the heart of her Majesty
may be gathered from what she wrote to Lord Tennyson on one of the
anniversaries of her wedding-day, which she described as a day that she
could never allow to be considered sad: “The reflected light of the sun
which has set still remains. It is full of pathos, but also full of
joyful gratitude, and he who has left me nearly fifty years ago surely
blesses me still.”
And in connection with spiritualism associated with royalty, we may
incidentally mention the many stories told of the White Lady of the
House of Hapsburg and other weird visitants. Napoleon, as is well known,
was haunted by the spirit known as “the little red man,” invariably seen
a short time before, it is said, some great disaster befell the Emperor;
and among the curious stories of the kind current in this country we are
told how George II., when walking on the balcony at Windsor Castle with
some of his courtiers, suddenly drew their attention to a singular
spectacle in the clouds, where an armed Highlander was clearly seen
fighting with a British Grenadier. Several times the Grenadier appeared
as if getting the worst of the encounter, but at last it was vanquished,
and the picture faded from the sky.
“Thank God,” exclaimed the King, “my kingdom is saved.” Not many days
afterwards despatches were received from the Duke of Cumberland,
announcing that the Highlanders had been completely routed at Culloden.
And like Henry III., Louis XV. endeavoured to associate profligacy with
devotional practices; for he would read sermons to his mistresses, and
go down on his knees and pray with his victims in the _Parc aux Cerfs_.
He was fond of talking about maladies, death-bed scenes, and graves, and
worms, and epitaphs; he professed to have the gift of reading death in a
courtier’s face, and several of them he terrified with a notice of this
kind.[9]
The short and tragic life of Don Carlos, son of Philip II., must in a
measure be attributed to the vein of insanity in his nature. He behaved
in so reckless and violent a manner, that some excuse has been made for
the acts of severity which cut short his eccentric career. But his wild
follies were such as to bring contempt and discredit on the throne, for
he gave blows to one of his attendant gentlemen, called another by
opprobrious names, drew his dagger upon another, caused children to be
beaten, and, according to the historian Cabrera, he wanted to burn a
house down because some water had fallen from one of the windows.
His violence, too, extended itself even to animals; he maimed the horses
in his own stables, and he so ill-treated one which his father held in
particular affection, that the unfortunate animal died in a few days.
And yet his cruelties and eccentricities were not unaccompanied with
kindness, for he paid the charges of the education of children thrown on
the world without resources, although at the time he was himself much
embarrassed with debt.
Many anecdotes are told of Edward I. of England and his strange doings,
and of his merry pranks in the royal household. One day, when the Queen
went to her palace at Waltham, the King, so runs the story, espied her
laundress, Matilda of Waltham, among the lookers-on in the courtyard
while the hounds were coupling and the hunters were mounting. Thereupon,
in a mischievous mood, he made a wager that Matilda could not ride
hunting with them, and be in at the death of the stag. To his surprise
she accepted the challenge, mounted the horse, and rode with such
success that Edward was fain to pay his fine of forty shillings. In the
earlier part of his life Edward appears to have been subject to violent
fits of rage; and at the nuptials of his daughter Margaret, having given
one of his esquires a rap with his wand without just cause, he
afterwards paid him as compensation £13, 6s. 8d. He is also said on more
than one occasion to have thrown coronets behind the fire.
But among the merry scenes which took place between Edward and the
Queen’s ladies, with whom he now and then indulged in romping, was his
being “heaved” on Easter Monday, 1290. It is recorded how seven of Queen
Eleanora’s ladies unceremoniously invaded the chamber of the King, and
seizing their majestic master, proceeded to “heave” him in his chair,
till he was glad to pay a fine of £14 to enjoy “his own peace,” and be
set at liberty.
Levity of deportment has been laid to the charge of Edward II., and in
one of his freaks he is accused of having made a party on the Thames in
a returned fagot-barge, and of buying cabbages of the gardeners on the
banks of the river to make his soup. On one occasion, when he was
keeping his Court with his queen at Westminster during the Whitsuntide
festival of 1317, as they were dining in public in the great
banqueting-hall, a masked woman entered on horseback, and riding up to
the royal table, delivered a letter to King Edward, who, thinking it
contained some elegant compliment, ordered it to be opened and read
aloud for the amusement of his courtiers; but, to his great disgust and
mortification, it was a cutting satire on his unkingly propensities,
setting forth the various calamities which his misgovernment had brought
on the country.
But Edward’s frolics were nothing compared with the wild dissipation and
mad pranks of Henry V. when Prince of Wales. His poverty, it has been
urged, made him reckless, and forced him into company below his rank.
Thus one of his freaks caused him to see the inside of a London prison.
In one of the street uproars common at the period, the Lord Mayor
arrested his favourite servant and carried him before Judge Gascoigne.
As soon as the Prince of Wales heard of the detention of his servant, he
rushed into the court of justice, where the man stood arraigned at the
bar, and endeavoured there and then with his own hands to free him from
his fetters, and on the judge interposing he struck him. Gascoigne
fearlessly reproved the Prince, and committed him to the prison of the
King’s Bench--a punishment to which he submitted with so good a grace
that Henry IV. made the well-known remark: “He was proud of having a son
who would thus submit himself to the laws, and that he had a judge who
could so fearlessly enforce them.”
On another occasion his mad frolic made him an inmate of Coventry gaol,
for some of his most outrageous acts were done at a manor of his close
to Coventry, called Cheylesmore, a residence appertaining to his Duchy
of Cornwall. But John Hornesby, the Mayor of Coventry, disregarding his
royal position, took him and some of his friends into custody for
raising a riot.
As long as the world lasts the strange marriage freaks of Henry VIII.
will be matter of comment. And a peculiarity of Elizabeth, which gave
rise to many amusing scenes, was her indecision--a trait of character
which occasioned considerable inconvenience, her ministers not even
knowing what freak her Majesty’s fickleness of will would next take. The
story goes that a carter was once ordered to go with his cart to Windsor
to remove a portion of the royal wardrobe. But on his arrival he
ascertained that her Majesty had altered the day, causing him to make
the second journey in vain; and when on a third summons he attended, and
was informed, after waiting a considerable time, that “the remove did
not hold,” he clapped his hands and exclaimed, “Now I see that the Queen
is a woman as well as my wife!” Elizabeth, as she stood at an open
window, overheard this remark and inquired, “What villain is this?”
afterwards sending him three angels as a compensation for the
inconvenience she had caused him.
A bit of mischief her successor, James I., much enjoyed was to listen to
personal allusions in the pulpit. Among those who pandered to this freak
was Neile, Bishop of Lincoln, and afterwards Archbishop of York. On one
occasion one of the royal chaplains selected for his text St. Matt. iv.
8: “And the devil took Jesus to the top of a mountain, and showed him
all the kingdoms of the world, saying, All these will I give thee,” &c.
He first proceeded “to demonstrate the power of the devil at that
period; he then brought his kingdom down to the present time, expressing
his belief that as the devil was in possession of such large dominions,
there could be no doubt but that he had his viceroys, councillors of
state, treasurers, &c. This gave him an opportunity of attributing the
several vices of which James’s advisers were accused to the ministers of
his Satanic majesty, and portraying their characters accordingly. At
last he came to the devil’s treasurer, when he fixed his eyes on the
Earl of Cranfield, and pointing at him, he exclaimed: ‘That man who
makes himself rich and his master poor is a fit treasurer for the
devil.’ Cranfield kept his hat over his eyes, while James sat smiling at
his minister’s discomfiture.”[10]
William III. behaved in a strange fashion at church. If ever he happened
to be uncovered during the recital of the liturgy, he assumed his hat
directly the sermon began. His partisans observed that such was the
custom among the Dutch congregations, and pleaded that Jews did the
same. But members of the Church of England considered the King’s
behaviour irreverent, and were in no way pacified by the examples he
followed.
In speaking of his Majesty’s religious freaks, we are reminded of Queen
Anne, who was in the habit of dressing herself while her chaplain
prayed. On one occasion, when decency compelled the attendants to close
the door while the Queen put on some of her under garments, the chaplain
suddenly stopped; and on her Majesty’s inquiry as to the reason of this
pause, he replied, “Because I will not whistle the Word of God through a
keyhole.”
Similarly, it was Queen Caroline’s custom while she dressed herself to
have prayers read in an outer room, where there hung a picture of a
naked Venus. Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, was one day the
chaplain on duty, when the bed-chamber woman-in-waiting conveyed to him
the Queen’s command to begin the service, at which he looked up archly
at the picture and said, “And a very pretty altar-piece is here!”