Transcriber's Note: Italic text is represented by _underscores_ and
boldface text by =equals signs=.
COURT BEAUTIES OF OLD WHITEHALL
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_Cloth_, =6s.=
A DAZZLING REPROBATE.
A GIRL OF THE MULTITUDE.
THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA.
_Paper Cover_, =1s.=; _Crown_, =2s.=
THE LETTERS OF HER MOTHER TO ELIZABETH.
THE GRANDMOTHER'S ADVICE TO ELIZABETH.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
[Illustration: _Elizabeth Hamilton_
_Countess of Gramont._
_from the picture by Lely._]
COURT BEAUTIES OF OLD WHITEHALL
HISTORIETTES OF THE RESTORATION
BY
W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE
WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS
"A Court without fair women is like a year without
a spring, a spring-time without flowers."
_A Sigh of Francis I., when prisoner in Spain_
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
MCMVI
[_All rights reserved._]
TO
ETHEL AND HERBERT NICOL
Preface
If we may believe so eminent an authority as M. Emile Bourgeois, whose
"Le Grand Siècle," is a fascinating proof of his statement, "the age we
live in delights in inquiry into the private lives of the great and into
the spirit of society of the past. It loves to interrogate them
directly, so that it may get at the secrets of their passions and find
out their state of mind at different periods. This curiosity is not
culpable. 'It almost ceases to be curiosity,' said Voltaire, 'when it
has epochs and men who attract the gaze of posterity for its object.'"
Such an epoch in English history is _par excellence_ the Restoration. It
is a subject on which an immense number of books has been written. Of
the eight beautiful women whose extraordinary careers are described in
the following pages, the names of all are probably more or less familiar
to the reader, while some--such as "Madame" and the Duchess of
Portsmouth--have provided several historians with themes that have
elevated them to the proud height of classical authority. Forneron's
"Louise de Kéroual" is not only a monumental study of the English
Restoration, but a fascinating romance and a work of real literary
merit. And many distinguished writers, from the _spirituelle_ Madame de
La Fayette down to M. Anatole France, have found in the life of
"Madame," the most brilliant of all the Stuarts, a constant source of
inspiration.
To enter, therefore, into competition with such a galaxy of talent would
seem almost presumptuous, more especially as this book makes no claim to
literary erudition or grace. On the contrary, my object has been not to
paint finished portraits of beautiful women, but rather to popularise
characters who helped to colour one of the most memorable periods of our
history. From this point of view the Restoration will be found to be a
mine containing a vein from which ore may still be extracted--the ore of
amusement from the vein of curiosity.
As regards the illustrations, I am especially obliged to--
The Duc de Guiche for obtaining for me the permission of his father, the
Duc de Gramont, to engrave his portrait of Armand, Comte de Guiche. This
portrait is, I believe, the only one of the Comte de Guiche known to
exist, and is now published for the first time.
I am also indebted to Earl Spencer, the Earl of Sandwich, Dr. G. C.
Williamson, and the _Strand Magazine_ for their courtesy in granting me
permission to reproduce the portraits respectively of the Countess of
Shrewsbury, the Duchesse de Mazarin, "Madame," and the medals of the
Duchess of Richmond.
* * * * *
A list of the principal sources from which the information necessary to
compile this book has been gathered is herewith appended:--
Amédée Renée's "Les Nièces de Mazarin."
St. Réal's "Mémoires de la Duchesse de Mazarin."
St. Evremond's "OEuvres."
{Vizetelly's Notes.
Hamilton's "Mémoires de Gramont" {Walpole's "
{Scott's "
Madame de Sévigné's "Lettres."
Saint-Simon's "Mémoires."
Marquise de Courcelles' "Mémoires."
Steinman's "Memoir of the Duchess of Cleveland."
Vincent's "Lives of Twelve Bad Women" (Duchess of Cleveland).
The "Life" of Robert Feilding.
The Wentworth Papers.
Pepys' "Diary."
Evelyn's "Diary."
_Tatler_ No. 50.
Delman's "Barbara Villiers."
Mrs. Manley's "Rivella"
Clarendon's "Life."
"Archæologia Cantiana," Vols. XI., XII.
Mrs. Jameson's "Beauties of the Court of Charles II."
{Catherine of Braganza.
Strickland's "Lives of the Queens {Mary of Modena.
of England" {Mary II. and Queen Anne.
_Ulster Journal of Archæology_, Vol. V.
Pennant's "Account of London."
" "Antiquities of London."
Steinman's "Althorp Memoirs" {Duchess of Tyrconnel.
{Countess of Shrewsbury.
Walpole's "Anecdotes."
Lodge's Portraits.
Burnet's "History of My Own Times."
Macaulay's "History of England."
" "The Comic Dramatists."
Mrs. Cartwright's "Madame."
Jusserand's "French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II."
Rait's "Five Stuart Princesses" ("Madame").
Baillon's "Henriette-Anne d'Angleterre."
Bossuet's "Oraison Funèbre sur Henriette d'Angleterre."
Mrs. Green's "Lives of the Princesses of England" ("Madame").
Bussy-Rabutin's "Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules."
The Princess Palatine's "Correspondance."
Marquise de La Fayette's "Mémoires."
Forneron's "Louise de Kéroual."
Jesse's "Court of England."
Bourgeois' "Le Grand Siècle."
Reresby's "Memoirs."
"La Grande Encyclopédie."
"Nouvelle Biographie Générale."
"Dictionary of National Biography."
W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE.
LONDON, _February, 1906_.
Contents
PAGE
HORTENSE MANCINI, DUCHESSE DE MAZARIN 17
An Adventuress of the Restoration.
BARBARA VILLIERS, DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND 59
A Courtezan of the Restoration.
"LA BELLE STUART," DUCHESS OF RICHMOND 105
A Prude of the Restoration.
"LA BELLE HAMILTON," COMTESSE DE GRAMONT 137
A Good Woman of the Restoration.
"THE LOVELY JENNINGS," DUCHESS OF TYRCONNEL 163
A Splendid Failure of the Restoration.
"WANTON SHREWSBURY," ANNA MARIA, COUNTESS OF SHREWSBURY 193
A Messalina of the Restoration.
"MADAME," HENRIETTA, DUCHESS OF ORLEANS 221
The French Court--The Evil Genius of the Restoration.
LOUISE DE KÉROUAL, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH 271
A Spy of the Restoration.
List of Illustrations
"LA BELLE HAMILTON," COMTESSE DE GRAMONT _Frontispiece_
_Facing
page_
DUCHESSE DE MAZARIN 17
DUC DE MAZARIN 24
ST. EVREMOND 47
"MY LADY CASTLEMAINE," BARBARA VILLIERS, DUCHESS OF
CLEVELAND 59
EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLARENDON 68
WYCHERLEY 77
JOHN CHURCHILL, DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH 80
NELL GWYNN 86
JACOB HALL 95
"HANDSOME FEILDING" 101
THE DUCHESS OF RICHMOND 105
CHARLES THE SECOND 111
THE ROTIERS' MEDALS 124
THE DUKE OF RICHMOND 131
THE CHEVALIER DE GRAMONT 144
COUNT ANTHONY HAMILTON 159
"THE LOVELY JENNINGS," DUCHESS OF TYRCONNEL 163
THE DUKE OF YORK 166
RICHARD TALBOT, DUKE OF TYRCONNEL 184
"WANTON SHREWSBURY," ANNA MARIA, COUNTESS OF SHREWSBURY 193
THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM 204
THE DUKE OF SHREWSBURY 215
"MADAME," DUCHESS OF ORLEANS 221
"MONSIEUR," PHILIPPE D'ORLÉANS 237
ARMAND, COMTE DE GUICHE 241
MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIÈRE 246
THE CHEVALIER DE LORRAINE 266
THE DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH 271
LOUIS XIV. 281
PHILIPPE DE VENDÔME, GRAND PRIEUR 313
[Illustration: HORTENSE MANCINI, DUCHESSE DE MAZARIN.
_From the Portrait by Mignard, in the possession of the Earl of
Sandwich._
_Photo._ _Goupil._
]
HORTENSE MANCINI, DUCHESSE DE MAZARIN
AN ADVENTURESS OF THE RESTORATION
It was the dream of Richelieu, as everybody knows, to make the French
monarchy independent and absolute. This dream was only half realised
when the Cardinal died, but as he was too astute not to foresee that
after his death there would be a violent reaction against his policy, he
had sought a successor who would be capable of finishing what he was
obliged to leave undone. He found the man he wanted in an obscure
Italian, who proved in the end to be even more subtle and slippery than
his Eminence Rouge himself. It was not so much hatred of Mazarin that
inspired the civil war with which France was rent during the childhood
of Louis XIV. as inarticulate hatred of Richelieu's statecraft. The
Fronde was the _dernière espérance_ of a proud and turbulent nobility
bent on reducing their King to the condition of a Venetian doge. This
revolt against the throne ended with the complete triumph of Mazarin--a
triumph embellished by the passion with which he inspired the haughty,
treacherous Anne of Austria. There are men who on finding themselves in
his shoes would have given free rein to ambition and desire. The sly
Italian adventurer, however, apparently considered himself sufficiently
recompensed by amassing the greatest fortune in Europe and winning the
heart of a queen. Having "arrived," as we say nowadays, the Cardinal
sent to Rome for the children of his sister, Hieronima Mancini, to come
to France and share his prosperity.
Five little girls and a little boy, perfectly beautiful children,
according to all accounts, on receipt of this invitation were got ready
as soon as possible, and sent off to the Palais Mazarin in Paris, where
they had a king and his brother for playmates. Few children ever had
more splendid advantages--certainly no children in that day--and none
ever benefited less by them. Perhaps it was not altogether their fault,
for though affectionate and intelligent they were afflicted with an
incurable spiritual infirmity. The Mancinis altogether lacked the moral
sense. Furthermore, the system of education to which they were
subjected, with its espionage and inducements to deceit, coupled with
the demoralising mixture of indulgence and severity with which their
uncle treated them, was anything but calculated to correct the faults of
nature. These quick-witted, wilful children were, as retribution for his
sins, said his enemies, constantly dashing the hopes and outraging the
feelings of their uncle, whose life within the splendid walls of the
Palais Mazarin they caused to resemble that Fronde with which he had
battled so desperately in the State.
"At least," he used to plead when they objected to hearing Mass, "if you
don't hear it for God's sake, hear it for the world's."
But the Mancinis never showed the slightest aptitude for learning
lessons in hypocritical respectability; vice with them was ever naked
and unashamed.
The Cardinal had intended, as was but natural, to leave his immense
fortune and his name, which he desired to perpetuate, to his nephew,
Philip, on whom he had already bestowed the title of Duc de Nevers. But
this young man, who had as little brains as he afterwards lacked
importance, took it into his head one Good Friday to celebrate Mass over
a pig, an enormity that cost him Mazarin's name and fortune. In other
respects the Duc de Nevers was a harmless nonentity and turned out
well--for a Mancini. He seems to have spent the greater part of his
useless life in composing doggerel verses which he addressed to his
sisters. The names of these celebrated beauties were Laure, Olympe,
Marie, Hortense, and Marie Anne. The Cardinal married the first to the
grandson of the "Charmante Gabrielle" and Henri IV., by whom she had a
son destined fifty years later to win renown in the Marlborough Wars as
the Duc de Vendôme, a man whose memory Saint-Simon has preserved for us
in vitriol. Laure was the only one of Mazarin's nieces on whom there is
no slur. She died young.
The youngest, Marie Anne, became the Duchesse de Bouillon. She had the
ready wit of all the Mancinis, and her repartees in the "Poison Affair,"
the _cause célèbre_ of the reign of Louis XIV., should still be
remembered, as well as her patronage of La Fontaine. Her life was, on
the whole, decorous enough, according to the seventeenth-century
standard of propriety, but, while more or less eventful, extremely
uninteresting by contrast with that of Olympe, Marie, and Hortense. It
is these three that one means when one mentions Mazarin's nieces. They
gave Europe much to talk of in their day, and have given it much to
write about since.
It was lucky for Olympe that she was not born in the present century; if
she had lived now she would probably have spent the greater portion of
her career in prison and died on the gallows. But with over two hundred
years between her and us she seems rather picturesque. Brought up in the
same nursery, so to speak, with Louis XIV. and his contemptible brother,
Philippe d'Orléans, Olympe Mancini aspired to be Queen of France. This
splendid destiny seemed possible of fulfilment, for the young King was
smitten and the Cardinal was favourable. But if Anne of Austria was
ready enough to be Mazarin's mistress, she objected to marrying her son
to Mazarin's niece. Anne was a Spaniard and a Hapsburg; she could
stomach anything but a _mésalliance_. The result of Olympe's aspirations
was, we know, such a _mauvais quart d'heure_ with Anne for the Cardinal
as to terrify him. Olympe, however, was _intrigante_, and waged a sort
of Fronde of her own in the Palais Mazarin, till Louis, who had never
been very fond of her, fell head over ears in love with her sister
Marie. Then she suffered her uncle to marry her to a younger son of the
House of Savoy, the Comte de Soissons. One of their sons was afterwards
world-famous as Prince Eugene of Savoy. But marriage did not,
unfortunately for her, "settle" the Comtesse de Soissons; plotting and
mischief-making generally, mixed up with a _liaison_ or two, kept her
busy till the bursting on society of the "Poison Affair," in which she
was implicated. The order for her arrest was issued, but Louis, glad to
be rid of her, gave her the chance to flee the country. She lived
henceforth the shadiest of lives wandering about Europe.
Quite as chequered was the career of Marie. The harassed Cardinal, who
had no intention of incurring a second time the displeasure of the Queen
Mother, no sooner discovered the attachment of the young King for his
lovely niece than with all possible haste he sent her back to Rome,
where she eventually married the Constable Colonna. Her parting with
Louis is celebrated; it has inspired poems, novels, essays, and plays.
For the sake of the story it is a pity that he should have treated her
so shabbily years after when she appealed to him in her troubles. As
these were mixed up with those of her sister, Hortense, with much
_éclat_ at a later period, we will defer their description and hasten
to introduce our heroine, the most beautiful and best known of the
famous nieces of Mazarin.
Hortense's intelligence and sweet disposition had from the first made
her the Cardinal's favourite, and after his nephew had offended him he
decided that she should be his heir. The report that she was to inherit
the Mazarin millions naturally induced many splendid offers for her
hand, which her own dazzling charms quickly coloured with a passion for
herself. "The destiny," she declared in the memoirs she dictated, "that
has rendered me the most unhappy of my sex began by dangling a crown
before my eyes." It is a notorious fact that Charles II., _roi sans
couronne_, twice proposed for her hand, and was twice refused by the
Cardinal, who was at the time the ally of Cromwell and not shrewd enough
to foresee the future. In like vain manner the splendid prize was sought
by the Prince, afterwards King, of Portugal; the Duke of Savoy; and the
great Turenne. Her uncle finally gave her to Armand de la Porte de la
Meilleraye, son of a brilliant Maréchal of that name, for no other
reason, apparently, than because he was a relation of Richelieu--an
evidence of Mazarin's sense of gratitude that throws a curious light on
the cunning Italian's character.
It was not a bad match for Hortense Mancini, whose father was but a
petty Roman knight. De la Meilleraye was rich and boasted a great name,
although Saint-Simon in his caustic way makes him descend from an
apothecary, adding that one of his ancestors was a porter, whence the
name de la Porte--a slur to which de la Meilleraye might have replied
like the witty Marquise de Créquy when some one suggested that La
Rochefoucauld was descended from a butcher: "Ah," she said, "that must
have been when the kings were shepherds." Be it as it may, the
bridegroom got with his bride the title of Duc de Mazarin and some
thirty million francs. His wedding gift to his wife was a cabinet
containing ten thousand pistoles in gold, which the Duchesse, not
without craft, at once proceeded to share with her brother and sisters
to propitiate their jealousy of her huge fortune. But she carried this
generosity to a degree that augured ill for the preservation of
Mazarin's millions. For she had so little regard for money that she left
the key in the cabinet that any who cared might help himself, and at
last literally flung out of the windows what remained for the amusement
of watching the passers-by scramble for the coins. This prodigality so
alarmed the Cardinal that it was thought to have hastened his end; eight
days later he died. The news of this event was received by the Duchesse
de Mazarin's brother and sisters, who, though well provided for, not
unnaturally resented their uncle's favouritism, by exclamations of, "God
be thanked, the Cardinal's gone!"
This marriage of convenience might possibly have been fairly happy, as
such marriages go, but for the strange character of the Duc de Mazarin;
for his wife was amiable and long-suffering, if giddy and volatile.
Considering all that we have read of this man, we are almost inclined to
agree with Madame de Sévigné when she says, that "the mere sight of him
was a justification of his wife's conduct." Molière took him as the
model of Orgon in his "Tartuffe." Religion was the subject on which his
peculiarities were most offensively noticeable. He was a Jansenist, a
sort of Roman Catholic Puritan, and the willing tool of the Jansenist
monks and nuns with whom he surrounded himself, and on whom he, in other
respects miserly, lavished enormous sums.
[Illustration: DUC DE MAZARIN.]
For nearly sixty years his _outré_ acts of devotion afforded small-talk
for the Court of France. The superb statues and pictures in the Palais
Mazarin--now the Bibliothèque Nationale--in which he resided having
offended his sense of decency, he proceeded, with a handkerchief in one
hand and a hammer in the other, to cover up or destroy his rare marbles
and subject his Titians and Coreggios to the same radical reforms.
Colbert, whom the King, on hearing of this vandalism, sent to
expostulate with him, arrived during the process of demolition. The
Minister, who knew to a farthing what the _chefs d'oeuvre_ had cost the
Cardinal, did what he could to save such works of art as remained
undesecrated. But the Duc de Mazarin complained to the King, who, being
in the habit of borrowing money from him, contented himself with
deploring his aberration.
His zeal in behalf of purity did not, however, rest here. His mind,
crippled with bigotry and superstition, imagined temptations in the
most innocent and natural things. He wished to pull out the front teeth
of his daughters to prevent coquetry; and he forbade the women on his
estates to milk the cows for fear of the evil thoughts that such an
employment might suggest. From conscientious scruples he likewise
resigned the governorship of several provinces and the important post of
Grand Commander of Artillery. Further, as the devil was ever in his
thoughts, he fancied he appeared to him in his sleep, and he would wake
his wife in the middle of the night to look for evil spirits by the
light of flambeaux. He was, in a word, one of those mad people who are
just sane enough to keep out of an asylum.
To such a man the dazzling beauty of his wife was a perpetual torment.
It filled him at once with a horrible jealousy and a fear for the safety
of her soul. She seemed to him the incarnation of temptation. He dared
not let her out of his sight, and subjected her to an espionage as base
as it was intolerable. To retain the servants she liked she was obliged
to pretend she hated them; if she wished to go into society or to the
play her husband preached her a sermon on the evil of the latter, and
objected to the toilette a woman of rank and fashion was obliged to wear
at the former. The innocent "patch," then the rage, was the cause of
many a quarrel between this ill-matched pair.
"Ah," said people on rare occasions when they appeared in public
together, "the Duc and Duchesse de Mazarin have 'patched' up their
differences again."
For seven years their private life was the _pièce de résistance_ at
every feast of scandal served at Paris and Versailles. But, as if this
asphyxiating atmosphere of suspicion and religious prudery that the Duc
de Mazarin forced his lovely wife to breathe was not sufficient penance
for her charms, he dragged her about with him from province to province
in all sorts of weather and seasons, compelling her to sleep in
peasants' huts and sheds, or lodge for weeks in lonely castles. Once
even she was forced to accompany him two hundred leagues when she was
_enceinte_.
To this vindictive religious mania he was afflicted with another for
law-suits. He was said to have had more than three hundred, nearly all
of which he lost.
At the end of seven years the Duchesse de Mazarin, who had borne her
husband three daughters and one son, in spite of her own disregard of
the value of money, became alarmed at the rapidity with which her
uncle's millions were being squandered on the crowd of becowled
hangers-on who directed the life and conscience of their cranky dupe.
She protested on behalf of her children. The Duc de Mazarin answered by
seizing her jewels, on the ground that jewels encouraged vanity and
immodesty, and ordered her to accompany him to Alsace, of which province
he was governor, intending to keep her with him there for the rest of
her life. After a scandalous attempt at force, witnessed by the entire
domestic establishment of the Palais Mazarin, the Duchesse escaped to
her brother's, the Duc de Nevers.
In this age of the emancipation of women it is amusing to read of the
grave scandal the Duchesse de Mazarin caused by leaving her husband.
Such an action, which to-day would scarcely cause a ripple of
excitement, was then a criminal offence. It was the first step in
defiance of convention that gave her freedom and deprived her of her
reputation. But, considering the life she had led, the wonder is not
that she did not leave her husband sooner, but that she had ever put up
with him at all. Arguing, perhaps, from her indolent and easy-going
temperament, which, because it had endured for seven years the vagaries
of such a husband, seemed to prove an unlimited capacity of endurance,
she was pestered by the Duc, her relations, and even the King himself,
to return to the Palais Mazarin. But she refused to listen to all offers
of reconciliation and mediation. Any fate, she declared, was preferable
to living again under the same roof with her husband. He, in his
exasperation, seized the power the law gave him and had her arrested and
imprisoned in the convent of Les Filles de St. Marie, a sort of
aristocratic home for fallen women. The Duchesse, now as alert and
vindictive as she had previously been indolent and submissive, retorted
from her convent-prison with a demand for her jewels, an allowance, and
a separation.
As usual in a scandal of this sort, the sympathy of society was divided
between the husband and the wife. For while there was no excuse for the
absurd and irritating behaviour of the Duc de Mazarin, there was no
doubt but that the Duchesse herself was not above reproach. The
looseness of her later life is of itself a sufficient warrant for the
suspicion that the corruption associated with her name was of early
origin. We read of strange flirtations before her marriage, one with a
handsome eunuch attached to the household of her uncle, the Cardinal; of
a duel fought over her by servants; of visits paid her by the King; and
of the charge brought against her by her husband of too close an
intimacy with the Duc de Nevers, her poetising, godless brother--a
charge which she passionately resented and denied, which we, personally,
do not know whether to credit or not, and which of itself was a
justifiable cause for separation.
While the case between her husband and herself was pending, Madame de
Mazarin made the most of her imprisonment. Philosophic resignation is
nothing to the airy indifference with which she appeared to regard her
situation. Perhaps this unrepentant frame of mind could have found its
vindication, if it required one, in nothing more likely to encourage it
than the companionship of a young and fascinating woman who was also a
prisoner at Les Filles de St. Marie. Even more talked about at this
period than the Duchesse de Mazarin herself was Sidonie de Lenoncourt,
Marquise de Courcelles, who was also the victim of an insupportable
husband. This "Manon Lescaut of the seventeenth century," as she has
been wittily called, deserves a word or two, not so much on her own
account as on account of the light she casts on certain phases of the
social life of her day.
Born heiress of a noble family, Sidonie, who had lost both parents in
her infancy, was brought up by an old aunt, an abbess of Orleans. When
she was fifteen the orphan, who was as innocent as she was beautiful,
was suddenly removed from the pure life of the abbey at Orleans, by
order of the King, whose ward she was, and placed at the Hôtel de
Soissons, then the centre of the gayest and loosest society in Paris.
The instigator of this spiritual seduction was Colbert, who, wishing to
enrich and ennoble his family, conceived the idea of marrying the
heiress to his brother. But at the Hôtel de Soissons the lovely Sidonie
fired all sorts of ambitions. If Colbert coveted her name and wealth,
Louvois lusted for her person. During the intrigues to which she was
exposed she was married off-hand to the Marquis de Courcelles, a man
devoid of all principle, who helped to corrupt her on purpose on the day
of her ruin to get complete possession of her fortune. Surrounded by
such pitfalls, it is not surprising that Sidonie fell, and fell noisily.
To escape the thought of her villain of a husband, the girl flung
herself into the arms of Louvois. This powerful Minister was able to
protect her from the designs of de Courcelles for a time, but she sought
consolation elsewhere, and got herself so talked and written about in
the lampoons that deluged Paris and were said to "temper despotism,"
that her husband had no trouble in getting an order from the King to
shut her up at Les Filles de St. Marie.
No worse influence could have come into the life of the freshly
emancipated and besmirched Duchesse de Mazarin than this captivating
young adultress, whose misfortunes, though unworthy of sympathy, won it
and admiration as well, by reason of the gaiety with which they were
borne. "The pleasure of remaining innocent does not make up for the pain
of being continually browbeaten and insulted," she said--an opinion to
which the Duchesse was only too ready to agree. For three months these
two were inseparable. Although Sidonie was the younger, a mere child,
she was the more experienced, the cleverer. It was she who instigated
the Duchesse to kill the tedium of imprisonment by filling the nuns'
holy-water stoup with ink, putting wet sheets on their beds, letting
loose dogs in their dormitory, and by perpetrating practical jokes
continually.
At last the unfortunate nuns pleaded to be relieved of such intolerable
charges. The Duchesse was transferred to another convent to await the
settlement of her case, while Sidonie was herself shortly after released
and went back to her husband, and more adventures. Escaping from one
convent in which she was afterwards imprisoned, she met a young man who
fell in love with her at sight and joined her in her flight. But she ran
away from him too in the end, and many another, and finished sadly
enough. The Abbé Prévost might, indeed, have taken her for the model of
his Manon Lescaut. To see Sidonie was to adore her, and she was not
without an agreeable wit, as her poor little memoirs, which she found
time to write, testify. "I am tall," she wrote, in her gay way that
suggests a wink of the eye, "I have a good figure, the best possible
deportment, fine hair, and a beautiful complexion, although pitted in a
couple of places by small-pox. My eyes are big, and I never open them
completely, which, though an affectation, gives them a very sweet and
tender expression. I have not much to boast of in the shape of my mouth,
but my teeth are like pearls. Hands exquisite, arms passable--that is to
say, they are rather thin--but I find compensation for this defect in
knowing that my legs are perfect." Poor little Sidonie!
At length the Duchesse de Mazarin's suit for separation and an allowance
was settled in her favour. She returned to the Palais Mazarin, and the
Duc took up his abode at the Arsenal. But it was merely a truce. M. de
Mazarin appealed, and fearing lest she might once more fall into his
hands, the Duchesse, who had tasted liberty, aided by a friend of her
brother's, the Chevalier de Rohan, fled in male attire, accompanied by
her maid similarly disguised and two men-servants. The Duc de Mazarin
wormed a _lettre de cachet_ out of the reluctant King, and had his wife
hotly chased. The fugitives, however, succeeded in getting out of the
country in safety, and had a series of adventures that are very
suggestive of Dumas. No one ever fled with a lighter heart or more
casually, so to speak, than the Duchesse de Mazarin; and no one ever
more thoroughly entered into the spirit of adventure than she.
At Neuchâtel they took her for the Duchesse de Longueville, the
celebrated heroine of the Fronde, and she received an embarrassing
ovation. Only Madame de Longueville, they said, went about dressed as a
man. At a small garrison town in the Alps "we were all liked to be
knocked on the head, owing to our ignorance of the language," and on
arriving at the village of Altdorf, on Lake Lucerne, the party were
quarantined for forty days, on account of the indisposition of the
Duchesse, caused by an injury to her knee received some days before. In
this wretched little village she says that a farrier was the local
surgeon, and that it was only with the greatest difficulty he could be
got to agree that it would not be necessary to amputate her leg. Finally
Milan was reached, where the Constable Colonna and his wife, Marie
Mancini, the Duchesse's sister, were waiting to receive her.
At Paris the scandal caused by this flight was the talk of the town and
the Court; the reputation of the Duchesse de Mazarin was torn to
shreds. She considered her freedom, however, cheap at the price, and,
joined by her brother, the Duc de Nevers, she and the Colonnas spent
several months touring about Italy. This delightful jaunt was but a lull
in the cyclone that had swept her into Italy, and was to sweep her back
to France. At Rome, where she hoped to make her residence, humiliations
as insupportable as any she had known in the Palais Mazarin awaited her.
Penniless and _déclassée_, the beautiful fugitive was an embarrassing
incubus to her Roman relations. They passed her on from one to the
other, snubbing and quarrelling with her, till at last, reduced to
pawning her "little" jewels, as she called them, to distinguish them
from her "big" ones still in the Duc de Mazarin's hands, she decided
that the fire from which she had escaped was preferable to the
frying-pan into which she had fallen. So, accompanied by her brother,
who was returning to marry a niece of Madame de Montespan, she went back
to France with the intention of throwing herself on the mercy of her
husband. Like true Mancinis, they spent six months on the journey. In
the meantime the Duc de Mazarin, warned of his wife's intention, took
the course that might have been expected of him.
On arriving at the Château de Nevers, the Duchesse found the park
infested with police, who had orders to arrest her and imprison her in
the Abbey of Lys. But her relations were active at Court as well as her
husband, and within a week the King, whose playmate she had been as a
child, sent a company of dragoons to force the doors of her prison and
release her. And to the mortification of her husband, and the
astonishment of society, Madame de Mazarin entered Paris in the carriage
of Colbert, and had an audience of Louis. The King, who arrogated to
himself the right to arbitrate in the domestic squabbles of his
subjects, high and low, tried to induce the Duc de Mazarin to take his
wife back, but at this suggestion the emancipated Duchesse replied
wittily but firmly with the cry of the Fronde: "_Point de Mazarin! Point
de Mazarin!_" The King, however, concluded an arrangement, much to the
stingy Duc's despair, by which Madame de Mazarin was to return to Italy
on an allowance from her husband, as long as she remained out of the
country, of 24,000 francs a year--a sum inadequate enough for one whose
_dot_ had been the greatest in Europe!
"She will eat it at the first inn she comes to," remarked the courtier
Lauzun cynically.
In much less time than it had taken her to reach France from Rome,
Madame de Mazarin found herself back in the Eternal City, and once more
under the roof of her sister, Madame la Connétable. Much had transpired
in the Palazzo Colonna since her departure. The Constable and his wife
were no longer on friendly terms. The Constable had become faithless and
cruel, while Madame la Connétable was in bad odour in Roman society on
her own account--mixed bathing in the Tiber, Madame la Connétable in a
gauze bathing costume, and the Chevalier de Lorraine all but living in
the Palazzo Colonna! When the Duchesse arrived on the scene she found
her sister, egged on by the Chevalier, the handsomest and most
disreputable man of his century, and whose wit, vices, and exploits are
plentifully sprinkled through its literature, bent on flight. At first,
seeing in such a proposition fresh trouble for herself, she tried to
smooth matters. But her efforts proving ineffectual, and perhaps also
from a love of further adventures, she finally determined to aid and
accompany her sister.
One night, when the Constable was visiting at a country house near Rome,
Madame la Connétable and the Duchesse de Mazarin donned men's clothes
and, attended by their maids in similar apparel, drove off in a coach to
Civita Vecchia. They arrived there at two in the morning and, not
finding the fishing-boat they had engaged beforehand, were obliged to
wait till dawn in a wood without the town. "The coachman," says the
Duchesse in her memoirs, "having hunted high and low without finding our
boat, was fain to hire another, which he got for a thousand crowns.
While he was thus employed the postilion becoming impatient took one of
the coach-horses and had the luck to meet with our boat, but it was late
when he came back, and we were obliged to walk five miles on foot and go
on board about three in the afternoon without having eaten or drunk
since we left Rome. We had the luck to fall in with a very honest
captain; for, as it was easy to see that we were women and not beggars,
any other but he would have murdered us and thrown us overboard. His
crew asked us 'if we had not killed the Pope?'" In eight days these two
extraordinary _grandes dames_ disembarked from their fishing-smack at
the little port of Ciotat, near Marseilles, whither they went on
horseback, after one of the most thrilling journeys the Duchesse de
Mazarin ever took. For their boat had been nearly lost in a storm and
chased by Turkish pirates; the latter was a peril perhaps less
terrifying to them than shipwreck, as it would have meant a new series
of adventures.
At Marseilles they were met by the Chevalier de Lorraine and another
dazzling reprobate, and the four, who had no longer any reputations to
lose--for, as the Duchesse says, "there was no fable horrible enough to
be invented by the wickedness of man but was reported of us"--set out
light-heartedly on a tour through Provence. The ladies, still wearing
men's clothes, which mightily became them, at length reached
Aix-les-Bains. Here their rank and unparalleled adventures afforded them
the reception curiosity always offers to unconventionality--if it is
feminine and beautiful. Some were for whipping them at a cart's wheel,
others for putting them in a lunatic asylum; while Madame de Grignan,
the wife of the governor, sent them proper clothing with the message
"that they travelled like true heroines of romance, with abundance of
jewels but no clean linen," and wrote to her mother, Madame de Sévigné,
that their beauty was divine. Their stay at Aix, however, was but of
short duration, for the approach of the Duc de Mazarin's police agents
so alarmed the Duchesse that she abandoned her sister and slipped across
the frontier to Chambéry, where one of her former suitors, now become
the reigning Duke of Savoy, afforded her his protection.
As for Madame la Connétable, she soon after fell into the hands of her
ruthless Constable, who shut her up in various convents, from which she
was always escaping, only to be caught again. Her last prison was a
convent in Madrid, where she passed the greater part of her life--an
imprisonment, however, nominal rather than real, for we find her
frequently at the Spanish Court festivities. Madame de Villars, who saw
her there, wrote to a friend in France that "she was even more beautiful
at forty than at twenty, when Louis XIV. had loved her." But she was
never happy. Of a different temperament from her sister Hortense, Marie
Mancini had not the _bravade_ necessary to conquer the hostility of the
world. She could never live down her past, and finding herself free at
the death of her husband, who begged her pardon in his will for the
misery he had caused her, she returned to Italy, only to meet everywhere
with a cold reception. History is not quite clear as to her last years,
but it is believed that her children, at any rate, forgave her, as there
is a monument to her memory in the cathedral at Pisa, where she died.
For the first time in her career the fates were really kind now to the
Duchesse de Mazarin. In Savoy she found the peace and quiet that her
naturally indolent temperament craved, and for three years the
infatuated Duke supported her in luxury at his Court. Pleasure, of which
she was ever a devotee, was agreeably tempered by a taste for
literature, art, and philosophy, which she developed at this time. Nor
was love abandoned. She shared her heart between the unexacting Duke and
a certain César Vischard. It was to the latter that she dictated her
memoirs during her stay in Savoy, and as he played for a time a rather
important part in her life a word about him will not be amiss.
The Abbé de St. Réal, as he called himself, though never consecrated,
was a _chevalier d'industrie_ with a literary bent. Among his works,
which had a certain ephemeral popularity, were a romance entitled "Don
Carlos," which Schiller afterwards made use of for the stage, and a "Vie
de Jésus." But he was best celebrated at the time and remembered now for
the profligacy of his career. He may be said to have plumbed the
bottomless pit of vice, and some of his letters which were intercepted
by the agents of the Minister Louvois, whom Forneron says was a
_connoisseur_ in indecency, made even him shudder. Such was the man whom
Madame de Mazarin now admitted to the closest intimacy, and with whom,
on the sudden death of the Duke, she fled from Savoy to escape the
vengeance of the jealous Duchess.
"I learnt on arriving here," wrote from Geneva her whilom friend, the
Marquise de Courcelles, with whom she had fallen out before her first
flight from France, "that Madame de Mazarin had some days ago gone to
Germany, I believe to Augsburg, and that because the Duchess of Savoy,
immediately after the death of her husband, had ordered her out of the
country. How miserable it must be for her to see herself hunted from
place to place! But what is uncommon is that this woman triumphs over
disgrace by follies that have no parallel, and that after having tasted
shame she thinks only of enjoying herself. When passing through here she
was on horseback dressed as a man and with twenty men in her suite,
talking only of music and hunting and everything that suggests
pleasure."
In such costume and company she arrived at Amsterdam with the lightest
of hearts after passing through countries aflame with war. As if she had
taken the idea to visit her former suitors in turn, she decided upon
going to England, which she reached in the month of December, 1675, and
where she was destined to remain till her death in 1699, twenty-four
years later. The real motive of the greatest heiress in Europe, now
become a pure adventuress, in going to England was, no doubt, to lay
siege to the heart of Charles II. But her ostensible motive was to
visit her cousin by marriage, Mary of Modena, whom she had met when that
princess passed through Savoy on her way to marry the Duke of York, and
with whom she had struck up a friendship. The Duchess of York, as she
expected, welcomed her warmly. Charles II. fell an instant victim to her
charms, and she entered London society with unprecedented _éclat_.
She was now thirty, and of the fourteen years since her marriage she had
passed seven principally on the highway dressed as a man. This life,
which would have broken the health of any other woman, had agreed with
her wonderfully. Her appearance on her arrival in London may be imagined
by the following description by Forneron: "The Duchesse de Mazarin was
one of those Roman beauties in whom there is no doll-prettiness, and in
whom unaided nature triumphs over all the arts of the coquette. Painters
could not say what was the colour of her eyes. They were neither blue
nor grey, nor yet black nor brown nor hazel. Nor were they languishing
nor passionate, as if either demanding to be loved or expressing love.
They simply looked as if she had basked in love's sunshine. If her mouth
were not large, it was not a small one, and was suitably the fit organ
for intelligent speech and amiable words. All her motions were charming
in their easy grace and dignity. Her complexion was softly toned and yet
warm and fresh. It was so harmonious that though dark she seemed of
beautiful fairness. Her jet-black hair rose in strong waves above her
forehead, as if proud to clothe and adorn her splendid head. She did not
use scent." Though fond of it, he might have added, and unlike her uncle
the Cardinal, who was always perfumed like the garden of Armida.
Ruvigny, the French Ambassador, wrote to Louis: "She is to all
appearances a finely developed young girl. I never saw any one who so
well defies the power of time and vice to disfigure. When she arrives at
the age of fifty she will have the satisfaction of thinking when she
looks in the mirror that she is as lovely as she ever was in her life."
King Charles, in that characteristic way that made him most popular when
most undeserving popularity, gave this superb beauty apartments in St.
James's Palace and a pension of four thousand pounds sterling a year.
The ball was at the feet of the adventuress. She at once became the
centre of State intrigues, a party was formed around her. She saw
herself on the point of dethroning, not the Queen, but the favourite,
the all-powerful Duchess of Portsmouth. The corruption of the Court had
reached the Parliament, and tinged even the patriotism of the people.
The Duchess of Mazarin was chosen by Protestant England as the means of
ridding the country from the harlot who had made it the satellite of
France. They accepted her as the avenging champion; she at least was
above-board and never resorted to trick or artifice. The situation is
one of the most extraordinary spectacles in English history. Louis XIV.
became alarmed. Ruvigny, honest Huguenot, was not the man to succeed in
threading the maze of the foul diplomatic labyrinth in which he suddenly
found himself by the success of the Duchesse de Mazarin. He suggested
that, as the star of the Duchess of Portsmouth appeared to be declining,
the French Court should throw her over and make terms with her rival.
But the shrewd French Court was unwilling to desert a harlot whom they
could trust for a harlot who had a grievance against them.
Ruvigny was replaced by the crafty Courtin, one of Louis' ablest
servants. Before going to England he went to see the Duc de Mazarin in
the hope of ingratiating himself with that Tartuffe-ridden man, as well
as the nation to which he was accredited, by bringing the Duchesse news
that her plea for a fitting maintenance, strongly backed by Charles to
Louis, was heard. But he little understood the man he had to deal with.
The Duc de Mazarin, thoroughly unable to admit that he had ever given
the least cause for the scandalous conduct of his wife, demanded that
she should return to France and suffer herself to be incarcerated in a
convent. The answer of Madame de Mazarin, who was living sumptuously at
St. James's and the object of almost universal admiration, was such as
might have been expected.
When Courtin arrived in London the French influence seemed ruined at
Whitehall. Every night Charles visited the fascinating Duchesse, and
every day on repairing to the Duchess of York, his sister-in-law, who
was ill at the time, he found the enchantress at her bedside.
Nevertheless Courtin paid his court to the new favourite and studied her
every action. "I saw Madame de Mazarin at High Mass at the chapel of the
Portuguese ambassador, who is dying of love for her," he wrote to Louis,
"but could not help noticing that she betrayed disgust at the length of
the service." The conversion of England to Catholicism, no less than the
French influence, seemed doomed by the sway of the fair agnostic. Her
position was so important that Courtin advised Louis to force the Duc de
Mazarin to accede to her demand that he should allow her fifty thousand
a year of the Cardinal's fortune, send her her jewels, laces, and
precious furniture, and swear never more to molest her if she returned
to France. The great Louis humbled himself to plead with her; even the
Abbé de St. Réal, who still hung about her and talked of Charles like an
aggrieved husband, was not neglected. Courtin promised him the favour of
the French Court.
But suddenly in the heyday of her triumph the fears and hopes that the
Duchesse had raised to such a pitch were dashed by the Duchesse herself.
She was not equal to the position; none of the Mancinis had the ambition
or political instinct of their famous uncle, the Cardinal. Pleasure, not
power, was what Madame de Mazarin really craved. Never had the enemies
of the Duchess of Portsmouth leant on a weaker reed. As usual the
Duchess let her heart get the better of her head; she flung herself,
cost what it might, into the arms of the dashing Prince of Monaco, who
was on a two months' visit to the English Court and stayed two years for
sake of La Belle Mazarin. Her political _rôle_ was over, and perhaps to
no one connected with this intrigue did it give greater relief than to
the protagonist herself. St. Réal, who had got together for his
light-hearted mistress a good library, including such works as Appian
and Tacitus, eaten up with jealousy, took the violent resolution of
leaving England in the hope that she would call him back at Dover. But,
as Forneron says, "she bore his absence with Roman fortitude and
perhaps, like Louvois, who had perused some of his letters seized in the
post, thought his room more agreeable than his company."
As for Charles, he was furious and stopped her pension. But Charles's
furies never lasted long; like the Duchesse, whose character and
exciting career closely resembled his own, he was too easy-going to
cherish resentment. He gave her back her pension shortly afterwards,
saying, "It was in repayment of sums advanced him years before by the
Cardinal," and treated her henceforth as the best of friends. But this
method of repaying debts was not at all to the fancy of the Duc de
Mazarin. He despatched a friend to England to tell the King that he
considered such payment valueless, to which Charles replied with a
cynical laugh, "Quite so; I do not ask for a receipt."