was consciously, unblushingly, gratuitously vicious. There might have
been some excuse on grounds of heredity and education for Hortense, but
it is impossible to find any excuse whatever for Barbara. It was said of
her, when created Duchess of Cleveland, that "the King might add to her
titles, but nothing to her birth." She was a Villiers. From her father
who died at Oxford, when she was an infant, from wounds received at the
battle of Edgehill in the Royalist cause, she should have inherited all
the virtues. He must indeed have been a very noble character to judge
from the panegyrics pronounced at his death, even by those belonging to
a party bitterly opposed to his. But so little did she resemble him,
that when we first meet her we find her at sixteen in London--whither
she had come to live with her stepfather on the death of her
mother--engaged in an intrigue with the second Earl of Chesterfield, a
young widower five years her senior, gifted with very agreeable manners
and a fine head of hair. That she was allowed full control of her
actions by her stepfather may be taken for granted from the following
letter addressed to Chesterfield:--
"MY LORD,
"My friend" (Lady Anne Hamilton) "and I are now abed together
contriving how to get your company this afternoon. If you
deserve this favour, you will come and seek us at Ludgate Hill
at about three o'clock at Butler's shop, where we will expect
you, &c."
The consequences of such a correspondence were such as might be
expected. Barbara began to look about her for a husband, and as
Chesterfield, who at the beginning of this intrigue proved the quality
of his passion for the beautiful wanton he was in the habit of meeting
at "Butler's shop in Ludgate Hill" by marrying some one else, he was out
of the question. In this extremely awkward position she had the luck to
meet one of those impressionable, inexperienced youths who, under the
glamour of a first and absorbing passion, fancy that nothing is so
likely to ennoble, intensify, and immortalise it as the act of marriage.
The name of this dupe was Roger Palmer, and he was a young fellow of
respectable means and family studying law at the Temple. Where, when, or
how Barbara made his acquaintance is unknown; perhaps it is not doing
her memory, already sufficiently lurid, an injustice to suggest that the
first meeting might have been in the streets when she was on her way to
"Butler's shop." For Roger Palmer, excellent young man though he was, by
no means belonged to the same rank or moved in the same society as
Barbara Villiers. In fact, her stepfather, the Earl of Anglesea,
strongly opposed the match, but as he eventually yielded it is to be
supposed that Barbara's arguments were irresistible.
Having got the necessary husband, she returned without compunction to
her _liaison_ with Chesterfield, whom she was too much in love with to
bear him any resentment. As for Palmer, poor creature, he was so blinded
with love of his dazzlingly beautiful wife as to remain apparently long
in ignorance of the real state of affairs of which he had been the dupe.
But the "Mounseer," as his wife spoke of him in her letters to
Chesterfield, was not so great a fool as not to be jealous, if still
unsuspicious, of the attention Mrs. Palmer received from her admirer. He
suggested that they should go into the country to live, where he might
have her all to himself.
An unexpected event, however, soon rid him of Chesterfield. This
nobleman--of whom Swift many years after declared "I have heard he was
the greatest knave in England"--having killed his man in a duel, was
obliged to flee the country, and the _liaison_ was interrupted. Shortly
afterwards Palmer, who was employed by the Royalists to carry messages
to Charles, went to Holland and took his wife with him. Although it is
not known with any certainty what sort of reception the Palmers met with
at the exiled Court at Breda, there can be little doubt that Barbara,
whose character experience had already begun to develop, used
Chesterfield, whom she found at Breda, to serve her ends in his turn as
cunningly as she had previously used Palmer for the same purpose. It was
to her, as all the world knows, that King Charles slunk off privately to
spend the first night of the Restoration, treating the joyous acclaim of
the people, such as no King of England has ever received before or
since, quite as cynically as the pompous official welcome of Sir
Harbottle Grimstone, Speaker of the House of Commons. Henceforth, the
career of "the finest woman of her age," as she was described by one of
her enemies, emerges from obscurity and passes into the full light of
history.
So far there was nothing in her life to mark it from that of hundreds of
other loose women. She had given no sign of the _chef-d'oeuvre_ she was
to execute; "like most great artists," says one of her biographers, "she
had begun her career by copying conventional methods." But now she was
to show a remarkably original talent in the design of vice. Her
opportunity, that "tide in the affairs of men" which the great majority
of mankind are incapable of using to their advantage, had come; she was
not the one to let her chance slip. That she was fully alive to the
fortune that dropped on those on whom Royalty smiled is evident from her
attempt to capture the favour of the Duke of York while still uncertain
of Charles's. We read of a flirtation carried on in church with the
heir-presumptive; if she could not be the mistress of the King, she
resolved to be that of his brother. Of the necessary qualifications for
playing her game successfully, Mrs. Palmer possessed a perfect
self-confidence and the power to fascinate. As we do not believe that it
is possible to convey any real idea of physical beauty by enumerating
its component parts, we will content ourselves with saying, on the
authority of her friends and enemies, that Mrs. Palmer was dazzlingly,
maddeningly, triumphantly beautiful.
At the Bartholomew Fair, to which she had the hardihood to go, the
curses of a mob that threatened to wreck the carriage of the "King's
Miss" were turned, at sight of her lovely face, to blessings. She was
one of those women who appeal directly to the senses, a rare creature
with the irresistible smile of a Circe and the temper of a Medea. Such
women do not require intellect.
The siren played her part cunningly. Her husband had at the Restoration
been returned to Parliament for Windsor, and lived in London in King
Street, Westminster, in the house which had been the regicide Whalley's,
now a fugitive in America. Next door, Pepys, as consummate a snob and
gossip as he was diarist, used to hear "great doings of music; the King
and Dukes at Madam Palmer's, a pretty woman they have a fancy to." It is
strange to note how Pepys's admiration for her rose and fell with the
King's favour. Exactly nine months after that Restoration night a
daughter--afterwards Lady Sussex, bosom friend of the Duchesse de
Mazarin--was born in "Whalley's house," about whose birth there was much
scandal. The King, already the slave of Mrs. Palmer, acknowledged the
child as his, but it was generally believed to be Lord Chesterfield's,
"whom she resembled very much." But Palmer, who was either a fool or a
very chivalrous man, claimed the baby as his!
Shortly after this scandal the negotiations for Charles's marriage with
Catherine of Braganza were begun. At once Mrs. Palmer, who dreaded in
the unknown queen a rival to supplant her, prepared to soften her fall
and at the same time to prevent it if she could. Already political
factions had formed around her, but it was by relying on herself more
than on others that she managed to get Charles to send the following
note to Morrice, the Secretary of State:--
"WHITEHALL, _16 Oct., 1661_.
"Prepare a warrant for Mr. Roger Palmer to be Baron of Limerick
and Earl of Castlemaine in the same form as the last, and let me
have it before dinner.--C."
Owing, however, to the hostility of Clarendon, the famous Chancellor,
one of those men whose great abilities and integrity are characterised
by a total absence of tact, Mr. Palmer did not become Earl of
Castlemaine till the 11th of December, instead of "before dinner." In
spite of this coveted honour Lady Castlemaine was very nervous as to the
future. As she foresaw clearly that with the arrival of the Queen her
position was at stake, she determined not to lose it without a struggle.
By her termagant temper, by which strangely she held Charles as much as
by her beauty, she hectored and caressed the King into appointing her
lady of the bedchamber to the Queen. Nevertheless, the interval before
the battle-royal began was very trying to her. She quarrelled with
Chesterfield and threw him aside like an old glove lest his former
connection should damage her at such a juncture in the eyes of Charles.
Pepys and his wife saw her at this time at the play of "The French
Dancing Mistress," where "with much pleasure we gazed upon my Lady
Castlemaine; but it troubles us to see her look dejectedly and slighted
by people already."
But nothing tried her temper more than her husband. The poor
disillusioned man, thinking of her good name perhaps, if not of his own,
had a child born to his wife in these days, of which Charles was
undoubtedly the father, baptized as his own by a Roman Catholic priest,
to which faith he was a convert. To Lady Castlemaine, hoping to hold the
King by the children she had by him, nothing was more vexatious than
this well-intentioned spoke in the wheel from a husband whose worth she
knew in her heart and whom she had shamefully treated. She burst like a
fury upon Castlemaine; had the child re-baptized by the rector of St.
Margaret's; and ten days later left her husband for ever, taking with
her "the plate, jewels, and other best things, every dish and cloth, and
servant, except the porter"--the first indication of the rapacity for
which she was later to be famous. On this day, in such a temper as one
may imagine, she went to Hampton Court to kiss the Queen's hand for the
first time and fight out with her royal rival the battle for which it
seems both had been preparing.
[Illustration: EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLARENDON.
_After Sir Peter Lely._]
Catherine of Braganza, poor, little, lonely, inexperienced creature, had
arrived in England with the fixed determination not to admit Lady
Castlemaine into her presence. She came prepared to conquer the heart of
her fascinating husband, and lost her own at sight of him. To receive
Lady Castlemaine as her lady of the bedchamber was, as Clarendon told
the King, "more than flesh and blood could stand." But Charles, who
dreaded the ridicule of his courtiers if he yielded to his wife and
under the spell of his passionate mistress, remained firm. The Queen was
equally obstinate. She declared that rather than submit she would go
back to Lisbon "in any little vessel." The honourable Clarendon, to whom
such a woman as Lady Castlemaine was personally no less abhorrent than
her influence in State affairs was to be dreaded, sided with the Queen,
and with his customary tactlessness tried to persuade the King he was
in the wrong. The hatred of Lady Castlemaine for Clarendon dates from
this period; she never forgave him for "meddling in her business," as
she expressed it. As she never hid her dislikes, and in the war of
interest fought squarely enough, the Chancellor had much to do to keep
his own position secure.
It was she who made Charles write to Clarendon during his thankless
_rôle_ of peacemaker--
"Nobody shall presume to meddle in the affairs of the Countess of
Castlemaine. Whoever dares to do so will have cause to repent it to the
last moment of his life. Nothing will shake the resolution I have taken
with regard to her; and I shall consent to be miserable in this world
and the next, if I yield in my decision, which is that she shall
continue a bedchamber lady to the Queen. I shall to the last hour of my
life regard any one who opposes me in this as my enemy; and whosoever
shows himself hostile to the Countess will, I swear by my honour, earn
my undying displeasure."
The vituperative exaggeration of this letter betrays the real author.
Charles merely penned what the beautiful termagant dictated to him.
Such was the state of affairs when Lady Castlemaine left her husband,
plundering his house of all it contained before she went, and on the
same day got herself presented at the Queen's Drawing-Room by the King
himself. Catherine, who till now had never seen her and did not catch
her name, received her graciously; a moment later, discovering the
trick that had been played upon her, and stung by the publicity with
which she had been insulted, the wretched Queen fainted, bursting a
blood-vessel. Far from feeling shame at being the cause of such an
indecent scandal, not to speak of the misery of a fellow-creature, Lady
Castlemaine gloried in her triumph. It is true the Duchess of Richmond,
unable to control herself, before the whole Court called her a Jane
Shore, and hoped she should live to see her come to the same end! But
the Queen's powers of resistance were broken by exhaustion. Not long
after Pepys saw the "King, Queen, and my Lady Castlemaine and young
Crofts (the Duke of Monmouth) in one coach." Catherine shut her eyes,
and Lady Castlemaine moved to Whitehall, into apartments close to the
King's.
As for the husband she had degraded and deserted, his state of mind as
well as his temperament may be imagined from the fact that he went to
France to hide his shame and grief under a cowl in some monastery. This
cure for his sick spirit did not, however, prove as efficacious as he
had expected. He soon returned and tried a sort of political activity as
a substitute, which from time to time drew him for a brief moment out of
a respectable obscurity, from which but for his notorious wife he would
never have emerged at all.
Great as was her victory and long as her sway lasted, we very much doubt
if Lady Castlemaine's power over the King, marked as it was by plunder
of the State, was ever so real as before the arrival of the Queen. For
some ten years or more, it is true, she continued a sort of _maîtresse
en titre_, but never before or since was such a position assailed by so
many storms, or filled by a woman whose actions were so calculated to
cause her to forfeit it. No royal mistress has ever treated her lover so
brutally, so indecently, so faithlessly as Lady Castlemaine treated
Charles, and continued to be a power. He liked wit, and she had none; he
liked peace in his establishment, and she scolded him like a Xantippe;
he liked flattery, and she reviled him; he dreaded ridicule, and she
made him the laughing-stock of his Court and the jest of his people.
Even affection was lacking between them; neither of them ever evinced
the pretence of it for the other. It is true she had beauty, but others
were more beautiful; and after the chain that bound him to her, many
times snapped, was finally broken beyond repair, this strange couple
continued on good terms. Perhaps psychologists may explain the secret of
her hold over him, for never was connection between such a King and such
a mistress so inexplicable.
Her first indiscretion, which, one would think, should have proved fatal
to her position, occurred shortly after her triumph over the Queen.
Charles, whose affection for his numerous progeny was one of the traits
of his subtly complex character, had young Crofts, his eldest bastard,
brought to Whitehall and publicly acknowledged. He was a singularly
handsome and attractive youth, and Lady Castlemaine, under the pretence
of "mothering" him, began at once to weave her spells around him. This
intrigue did not escape the King; but, instead of overwhelming both with
his royal wrath, he paid his mistress the compliment of being jealous,
and cynically removed his son from her path by marrying him to the
richest heiress in Scotland and creating him Duke of Monmouth. The
termagant took her revenge by carrying on a double intrigue with James
Hamilton, the brother of the famous Anthony, and Sir Charles Barkeley.
It was no secret. "Captain Ferrers and Mr. Howe," wrote gossip Pepys,
"both often through my Lady Castlemaine's window have seen her go to bed
and Sir Charles Barkeley in her chamber." But Charles merely shrugged
his shoulders in his cynical fashion and declared himself "past
jealousy." The report, the first of many similar ones, ran "that Lady
Castlemaine had fallen from favour." Pepys, however, is able to state
that the King still continued to visit her "four nights a week," and was
told that "my Lady Castlemaine hath all the King's Christmas presents,
made him by the peers, given to her; and that at the great ball she was
much richer in jewels than the Queen and Duchess (of York) put
together."
It is _de rigueur_, no doubt, that the reconciliations between a monarch
and his mistress should be richly lacquered with gold; but in the annals
of royal tiffs there is no gilding so heavy as that which calmed the
termagant outbursts of my Lady Castlemaine. If it be true that lovers
often quarrel for the pleasure of "making up," how great must that
pleasure have been to Barbara Villiers, whose greed of gain was only
equalled by her man-hunger!
For these two passions, money and men, consumed her between them. After
one of their quarrels Charles gave her £30,000 to pay her debts; after
another he made her a present of Berkshire House, a splendid property
near St. James's Palace; after yet another her dukedom. But titles were
of as little account to this woman with the blood of the Villiers in her
veins as silver in the time of King Solomon. What she coveted was
cash--cash to squander upon her pleasures, cash to pay her huge debts,
cash to stimulate her lovers. As Burnet says of her, "she was enormously
ravenous"; so the Customs were farmed for her benefit to the extent of
ten thousand a year; likewise she mulcted the revenue derived from the
tax on beer of a similar sum, and the Post Office of half this amount
annually. But this great income was as nothing compared to the vast sums
paid her from the Irish Treasury, instead of from the English, because
the corruption was less easily to be detected. As for the Privy Purse,
she never went shopping without it. "Make a note that this is to be paid
for out of the Privy Purse," she used to say to her maid when anything
in the London shops took her fancy. Further, during the period that my
Lady Castlemaine played the Montespan to Charles's Louis, all offices
that fell vacant, whether spiritual or temporal, were auctioned for her
benefit. And, like the true courtezan she was, this literal shower of
gold in which she lived ran off her like water through a sieve.
One night she lost £25,000 at play, and her usual stake on a cast was
from £1,000 to £1,500. Money had neither meaning nor value for her, but
she wanted it and was prepared to get it at all costs. Once too, like
the harlot again, she stripped Charles of everything, so that he himself
lacked linen and the very servants at Whitehall had not bread to eat!
This abnormal appetite, which consumed even the money set aside for the
purchase of the royal stationery, was the concomitant symptom of the
nymphomania from which she suffered--a disease perfectly well known to
medical science. Without some such explanation it seems impossible to us
to account for the innumerable infidelities that Lady Castlemaine
indulged in while _maîtresse en titre_. As Charles had some knowledge of
medicine and chemistry, and was very far from being a fool--as the
beautiful shrew once called him to his face--one is almost tempted to
hazard the suggestion, as an explanation of his long bondage to this
woman, that he found a scientific excuse for her conduct which has been
overlooked by historians. Be this as it may, it was not long before the
lovely Lady Castlemaine found room again for others beside the King in
her capacious heart.
To enumerate her lovers, the number of whom exceeded the King's, would
not only be impossible but scarcely amusing. Of this legion devoted to
the worship of Priapus there are a few, however, that may be cited. As
Lady Castlemaine consumed money irrespective of the source from which it
was derived, so she never gave a thought to the rank from which her
lovers were recruited. My Lady Castlemaine's taste in men was thoroughly
catholic. From Barkeley and Hamilton her fancy flitted to her cousin,
Buckingham, one of the most extraordinary men of an extraordinary age,
of whom more later. From this great Duke what she termed her affections
roamed through the various grades of society, and finally rested on a
"compound of Hercules and Adonis," who supplemented his living on the
tight-rope. With this man, Jacob Hall, she was, as Pepys would say, so
"besotted" for a time that she gave him a salary, diverting the money
for this purpose from a sum voted by Parliament for the National
Defence. From the rope-dancer, who is said to have treated her after her
own vituperative fashion, she probably suffered less than from the
polished villainy of Buckingham.
Nor, when the ice of the trough on which we are skating is cracking
under our feet, should we fail to mention the actor, Hart, a
great-nephew of Shakespeare. Her _liaison_ with this handsome and justly
celebrated tragic actor had apparently a less voluptuous motive than
such amours usually had with her. Pepys, gossiping with Mrs. Knipp, the
actress, in his customary prurient curiosity to glean news from any
source, learns that "my Lady Castlemaine is mightily in love with Hart,
of their house; and he is much with her in private, and she goes to him
and do give him many presents; and that the thing is most certain, and
by this means she is _even with_ the King's love to Mrs. Davis." (Moll
Davis, an "impertinent slut" of an actress, and as beautiful and brazen
as my Lady Castlemaine herself.) As one of many instances of the bond,
of which history does not afford a parallel, between a king and a
_maîtresse en titre_ this attempt of Lady Castlemaine to get "even with"
Charles is striking.
How the ice cracks under us!
It is not always on dukes and rope-dancers, actors and dandies that my
Lady Castlemaine casts her hungry glance. No one, provided he be fair
and shapely to the eye, escapes her attention. History does not relate
the number of times Chiffinch let her through that little gate at
Whitehall by which the crowd of duchesses, actresses, and meaner
beauties passed secretly to and from the private closet of Majesty. But
on one of these masked assignations, as my Lady Castlemaine scuttled
down the back-stairs, she spied with her observant eyes a page loitering
there. The page passed after that meeting with the King's mistress from
the back-stairs of Whitehall to the stage, assassination plots, and many
a questionable adventure, but for nigh on twenty years my Lady
Castlemaine was "interested" in him. His shallow, handsome head being
turned, Goodman boasted openly of the patronage he enjoyed. Once at the
theatre--it was in William and Mary's time--the audience being seated,
the Queen in her box, and the curtain ready to rise, he shouted from
behind the scenes to inquire "whether his duchess had come," and forbade
the raising of the curtain till she should appear. Fortunately at that
moment her Grace of Cleveland arrived and Queen Mary was spared the
insult of having to wait an actor's pleasure. Such was her passion for
this scoundrel that she was content to share his affections with his
wife and another woman of the town. But this was at a later period when
her money and rank rather than her charms attracted.
[Illustration: WILLIAM WYCHERLEY.
_After Sir Peter Lely._]