imagined, great difficulty to refrain from bursting into laughter.
However, she kept her face sufficiently to tell him "that she thought
herself much honoured by his intentions towards her, and still more
obliged to him for consulting her before he made any overtures to her
relations. 'It will be time enough,' she said, 'to speak to them upon
the subject at your return from the waters; for I do not think that it
is at all probable that they will dispose of me before that time, and in
case they should be urgent in their solicitations your nephew William
will take care to acquaint you. Therefore, you may set out whenever you
think proper; but take care not to injure your health by returning too
soon.'"
It is needless to say that neither the absurd uncle nor the stupid
nephew succeeded in winning the beauty. Nor was the latter compensated
for this loss by the long-anticipated possession of the wealth of the
former. The uncle derived so much benefit from that visit to the
waters, that he was enabled to defy the asthma for nigh upon another
twenty years, so that his nephew grew tired of waiting for the deferred
pleasures of this world and went into the next before him.
But while rank and fortune were being laid at the feet of La Belle
Hamilton, she was being courted by a man whose remarkable personality
had the power of making that of all others seem commonplace. This was
Philibert, Chevalier de Gramont.
[Illustration: THE CHEVALIER DE GRAMONT.]
Of all the qualifications he lacked, by the possession of which alone
one would have said he would have been acceptable to so charming a
creature, he was at least, in point of birth, second to none of her
suitors. The de Gramonts were one of the oldest and proudest feudal
families in Europe, long settled in Navarre. The Chevalier, who was a
younger son, boasted that he was descended from Henri IV. through his
grandmother, "La Belle Corisande," one of the many mistresses of that
gallant King. His eldest brother was the Maréchal Duc de Gramont, the
head of the family, whose ancestral seat was the lordly Château de
Gramont "at Bidache on the Bidouze." The titles of this stately house
comprised a marquisate borne by the second brother, Louvigny, and a
countship, which, together with a large fortune possessed by the third,
Toulongeon, were to go in case he died without heirs to the Chevalier,
the cadet of the family. Philibert, having nothing but expectations,
which seemed extremely doubtful of ever being realised, was destined
for the Church. His boyhood was spent at the Château de Seméat, the
property of his luckier brother, the Comte de Toulongeon, in preparation
for this career. But a trip to Paris made him turn his thoughts from the
Church to the army. Like most of the well-born young men of his time, he
had the honour of serving under the great Condé and Turenne, and
distinguished himself for his _insouciante_ bravery in numerous battles
and sieges.
One of the many stories told of him at this period is very
characteristic. While besieging some small fortress which capitulated
after a short defence the governor, who was surprised at the easy
conditions he received, said to him--
"I will tell you a secret, Chevalier; my only reason for capitulating
was because I was short of powder."
"And I will tell you another," replied de Gramont; "my only reason for
granting you such easy terms was because I was short of ball."
His incurable flippancy, however, stood in the way of his promotion and
finally ruined him. For his colossal egotism made him dispute out of
bravado the affections of Mademoiselle de la Motte-Houdancourt, whom he
did not love, with the young Louis XIV., who promptly banished him. Like
many who have been driven into exile, he carried with him nothing but
his illustrious birth. At Whitehall, whither he came, he was, however,
instantly welcomed by Charles, who never tired of his company. His
brilliant wit and manners soon made him generally popular, and he was
received everywhere on terms of intimacy. Among his closest friends was
St. Evremond, who had preceded him a year, and in whom he was in the
habit of confiding his impressions and troubles with that gaiety with
which he knew how to captivate La Belle Hamilton and make her disdain
splendid offers to marry him, who had neither character nor means of
existence, save by gambling, at which he was an adept.
His fascination for the society of the Restoration is easily
comprehended. The Chevalier de Gramont had the luck to be born at the
right time. This _mauvais sujet de l'esprit_, as he has been called, was
the first appearance in modern Europe of the Petronian cynic and
_arbiter elegantiarum_ of which there have been since so many examples.
He was the immediate forerunner of the Regent d'Orléans and the Maréchal
de Richelieu, the historical father of countless Brummels, d'Orsays, and
Oscar Wildes. His wit, said Saint-Simon, who was jealous of it, was
"mainly of the sort which shows itself in pleasantry and repartee; it
was bold enough to detect a failing and describe it in one or two
ineffaceable sentences. He was like a mad dog from whom none escaped. He
had wonderful animal spirits and invulnerable self-complacency, never
entertaining a serious feeling or a deep thought." This is the character
given him by Bussy-Rabutin and St. Evremond, who were his friends, as
well as by his brother-in-law, Anthony Hamilton. The portrait of him by
the last, who has immortalised him, he himself applauded.
For when the "Mémoires de Gramont" were submitted to the censor
Fontenelle before their publication he was so scandalised that he flatly
refused his approval. The Chevalier on hearing this at once went to
Fontenelle and asked him in his characteristic way "what business he had
to be more solicitous of his reputation than he was himself, and
demanded that the book should pass if the freedom with which his
character was drawn was the only objection." As Mrs. Jameson has very
aptly remarked, "Fontenelle might have replied to him as de Gramont did
on another occasion to Madame de Hérault. The Count had visited this
lady to pay her his condolence on the death of her husband; she received
him with an air of extreme coldness, upon which, suddenly changing his
tone, he exclaimed gaily, 'Is that the way you take your loss? Well, to
tell you the truth, I don't care any more about it than you do!'"
Such an Epicurean as de Gramont scarcely needed the advice of St.
Evremond. No one knew the world better than he, or was more deeply
acquainted with all its vice, at which, without seriously polluting
himself with it, he laughed in the gayest, most cynical way. He had so
little religion that once in old age, when his wife in an attempt to
convert him recited the Lord's Prayer, he remarked, "That is very fine,
who wrote it?" His moral sense was entirely lacking. Women meant to him
an amour, nothing more. And even La Belle Hamilton, whose virtue, to his
credit be it said, he never attempted to attack, had so little real hold
of his affections that on being pardoned by Louis he would have gone
back to France without marrying her had it not been for her brothers.
Two of them, who had no intention of letting her be compromised by such
a desertion, rode after him and overtook him at Dover. "Chevalier," they
cried, galloping up and addressing him in his own fashion, "haven't you
forgot something in London?"
"Excuse me," he replied gaily, "I have forgotten to marry your sister."
He returned and married her, making her, it must be confessed, the best
of husbands. His conduct when married was in this respect in striking
contrast with that of the de Gramonts of his time generally. For his
brother the Maréchal was notoriously brutal; while the private lives of
the Comte de Guiche and the Princess of Monaco, his nephew and niece,
could not in the present day be exposed in print.
Many people have often tried to guess the secret of the fascination of
this Chevalier de Gramont for La Belle Hamilton, a woman on whom slander
never breathed. Without ourselves entering the lists of those who vainly
attempt to explain the mysteries of human emotions, we should suggest
that a mutual sense of humour was not without its effect on first
attracting each to the other. Both were gifted with a very keen sense
of the ridiculous. The picture of Miss Hamilton in the exercise of hers
is one of the most entertaining incidents in the "Mémoires de Gramont."
A splendid masked ball, which the Queen gave in honour of the King,
afforded Miss Hamilton an excellent opportunity to amuse herself
innocently at the expense of two silly women of the Court. These
persons, whose actions and appearance certainly marked them as victims
for the practical joker, were Miss Blague, a maid of honour, and Lady
Muskerry. As Miss Hamilton, said her brother, "liked to do things in
order, she began with her cousin Muskerry, on account of her rank." The
appearance of her ladyship was ridiculous in the extreme. Her face,
which was ludicrously plain, matched her figure, which seemed without
being so to be perpetually _enceinte_. This deformity was further
heightened by a limp, occasioned by an inequality in the length of her
legs. But Lady Muskerry, far from being aware of her defects, was
exceedingly vain. "Her two darling foibles were dress and dancing.
Magnificence of dress was intolerable with her figure; and though her
dancing was still more insupportable, she never missed a ball at Court;
and the Queen had so much complaisance for the public as always to make
her dance. But in a function so important and splendid as this
masquerade it was impossible to give her a part. However, she was dying
with impatience for an invitation, which she expected."
It was this impatience on the part of Lady Muskerry that gave Miss
Hamilton her opportunity. She sent her ladyship an invitation, as if
from the Queen, with the request that she should appear at the ball as a
Babylonian princess. Lord Muskerry, who was particularly afraid of
ridicule, and aware of the absurd figure his wife would cut if she were
present at the ball, had begged her on no account to think of accepting
the invitation in case she should receive it. But Lady Muskerry,
believing that her husband had taken measures to prevent her being
invited, was so exasperated that she had determined to go to the Queen
unbeknown to him and ask for an invitation. It was at this juncture that
the invitation arrived. She promptly decided to conceal the fact from
Lord Muskerry, and "immediately got into her coach in order to get
information of the merchants who traded to the Levant as to how the
ladies of quality dressed in Babylon."
The practical joke that Miss Hamilton prepared to play upon Miss Blague
was of a totally different kind. She had noticed that the maid of honour
was in love with the Marquis de Brisacier, a Frenchman as insipid and
silly as herself, who was visiting England and paying her considerable
attention. Miss Blague had quarrelled with another maid of honour, Miss
Price, over some man whom Miss Blague believed had been "drawn away"
from her by Miss Price. With this material the inventive mind of La
Belle Hamilton prepared to play. The gloves of Martial, a Parisian
maker, were then the rage, and Miss Hamilton, who had several pairs of
them, sent one to Miss Blague together with some yellow ribbon and a
note from the Marquis de Brisacier, couched in the most ridiculous and
affectionate language, asking the maid of honour to wear them at the
masked ball as the means by which he might recognise her. Then, giving a
similar pair of gloves and a piece of yellow ribbon to Miss Price, the
merry mischief-maker induced her to wear them by letting her only so far
into the secret as to make Miss Blague's enemy determined to cut her out
with Brisacier as she had previously done with the former admirer.
To Miss Hamilton's intense delight, as well as that of the persons she
had taken into her confidence, both jokes succeeded admirably, and
without the betrayal of their originator. But Lady Muskerry got no
nearer the ball-room than the state entrance to Whitehall. As it was
understood that all the ladies who were to dance in the Queen's
quadrille, of whom Lady Muskerry had no doubt that she was one, would be
met at the entrance to the palace by their partners, and as in the
secrecy she was obliged to practise to prevent her husband from knowing
that she had been invited to the ball she had not been able to learn who
her partner was, she was still patiently waiting when the Chevalier de
Gramont passed her. His costume and the late hour at which he arrived
attracted universal attention, and the King asking him the reason of
his delay, de Gramont seized the occasion in his characteristic way to
tell a witty story, concluding as follows:
"_À propos_, Sire, I had forgotten to tell you, that to increase my
ill-humour" (at the cause of his late arrival), "I was stopped, as I was
getting out of my chair, by the devil of a phantom in masquerade dress,
who wished by all means to persuade me that the Queen had commanded me
to dance with her; and, as I excused myself with the least rudeness
possible, she charged me to inquire who was to be her partner, and
desired me to send him to her immediately. Your Majesty will, therefore,
do well to give orders about it, for she has placed herself in ambush in
a coach, to seize upon all who pass through Whitehall."
The Chevalier went on to describe the costume worn by the mask, whose
appearance must indeed have been laughable; for poor Lady Muskerry, not
having the least idea how a lady of quality dressed in Babylon, had
adopted from a crowd of different opinions she had consulted something
of each. The Chevalier's description of this fantastic unknown not only
amused those who heard it, but excited the greatest curiosity, inasmuch
as the Queen declared that all whom she had invited were present. They
began to wonder who it could be. The King, whose sense of the ridiculous
was much more mocking than Miss Hamilton's, guessed it was the Duchess
of Newcastle--a woman even more absurd than Lady Muskerry. For she was
afflicted with a dramatic _cacoethes scribendi_ to such a pitch that
she would only wear theatrical costumes, and kept a secretary, who,
according to Walpole, was often roused in the night to register the
Duchess's conceptions, "which," added this English de Gramont of a later
generation, "were all of a literary kind, for her Grace left no
children."
But Miss Hamilton, thoroughly satisfied with the success of her joke,
had no desire to expose her victim to the laughter of the Court by
seeing her suddenly appear as a Princess of Babylon. It was therefore
with a sense of relief that she saw Lord Muskerry, dreading lest the
ridiculous mask should prove to be his wife, go off to ascertain her
identity before, exhausted with waiting for her partner, she should come
in search of him. The interview at the entrance to Whitehall between the
husband and wife was not, as reported to Miss Hamilton, the least
amusing feature of her joke. For when the Princess of Babylon at last
found her partner, she showed a decided inclination to wait for another,
till Lord Muskerry, terrified at the bare thought of the ridicule to
which she was exposing him, was obliged to use force in order to get her
to return home!
As for the joke played at Miss Blague's expense, its success was
sufficient to complete Miss Hamilton's satisfaction and to divert the
whole Court. This silly maid of honour, with her "pig's eyes" and long
white lashes, in response to the note she had received from the equally
silly Marquis de Brisacier, wore the gloves and the ribbon. But it was
not until after the stately French dances, with which the ball opened,
were over and the country dances and real fun began that La Belle
Hamilton and those in her confidence had the pleasure of watching the
working of their joke. They observed with the greatest amusement that
Miss Blague's "pale hair was stuffed with the citron-coloured ribbon,
while to inform Brisacier of his fate she often raised to her head her
victorious hands, adorned with the gloves we have before mentioned.
However, if the others were surprised to see her in a head-dress that
made her look more wan than ever, she herself was far more surprised to
see Miss Price share Brisacier's present with her in every particular.
Her surprise soon turned to jealousy; for her rival had not failed to
join in conversation with him; nor did Brisacier fail to return her
first advances, without paying the least attention to the fair Blague,
nor to the signs which, exerting herself to desperation, she made to
inform him of his happy destiny."
To make matters worse, the Duke of Buckingham innocently brought up
Brisacier to Miss Blague, with the request to dance with her on the
King's behalf. But Brisacier, who could not dance the English dances,
and preferred to sit them out with Miss Price, who could not dance at
all, excused himself. This was the last straw to Miss Blague. Feeling
herself despised by the man she loved, and cut out by her mortal enemy,
"she began to dance, without knowing what she was doing"--a sight that,
no doubt, convulsed Miss Hamilton, of whose fondness for practical
jokes other examples than those already mentioned could be cited.
How her sense of humour was affected by the circumstances stated above
which made her the wife of de Gramont, it is impossible to guess. That
the story of the Chevalier in flight from the altar of Hymen and
forcibly brought back to it--if true, of which there appears to be some
doubt--did not make Madame de Gramont ridiculous in the eyes of the
world may be assumed from the high esteem in which she must have been
held. For in that age of lampoons the incident is not one that would
have been suffered to pass unnoticed. The silence of the coffee-houses
on the subject may, therefore, be taken as an eloquent tribute to the
popularity La Belle Hamilton enjoyed. Perhaps it is not too much to
state that this reputation of his beautiful wife, who was twenty years
his junior, was of great assistance to de Gramont's relations in
procuring his pardon. Louis XIV. was induced to permit the Chevalier
shortly after his marriage to return to his native country, where, with
the exception of several visits to England, which altogether ceased on
the overthrow of the Stuarts, he and Madame de Gramont remained for the
rest of their lives.
The death of his brother, the Comte de Toulongeon, made the Chevalier
himself a count and one of the richest men in France. The Comtesse de
Gramont was now much at Versailles, and in spite of the jealousy of
certain Court ladies, who were inclined to sneer at the English
lady-in-waiting of the Queen of France, she succeeded in winning the
respect of Louis. He made her a present of a villa in the neighbourhood
of Versailles, which became such a fashionable resort that de Gramont
declared he should be obliged to ask the King to pay his bills for
entertaining, which the acceptance of the royal gift entailed. We are
not told if Louis took the hint. Such wit as de Gramont's was not of the
sort that the French King appreciated; it was too familiar. He would,
for instance, never have laughed, like Charles II., when that King one
day dining in state asked de Gramont to observe that he was served on
one knee, a mark of respect not usual at other Courts, to which de
Gramont replied, "I thank your Majesty for the explanation; I thought
they were begging pardon for giving you so bad a dinner."
But, on the other hand, no one knew better than the Comte de Gramont
that the way to make his wit acceptable to Louis was to wrap it in
flattery. The following anecdote is in striking contrast with the one
just related. They both prove the cunning with which the Comte read
character. We are told that once when Louis XIV. was playing backgammon
he disputed a throw with his opponent. The King appealed to those who
were watching the game, but they, not daring to give against him, sought
refuge from their dilemma by appealing to de Gramont, who from the other
end of the room declared against the King.
"But you have not heard the case," cried Louis.
"Ah, Sire," replied de Gramont, seizing his opportunity, "if your
Majesty had but a shadow of right, would these gentlemen have failed to
decide in your favour?"
No wonder that people were afraid of his nimble repartees, or that to
the end he knew how to stand well with his master.
The flight of James II. brought a host of Jacobites to France, and among
them some of the brothers of the Comtesse de Gramont. One, Anthony,
found a refuge with his sister, and to him de Gramont at the age of
eighty, but still the same flippant, cynical wit that he was when he had
first fascinated the Court of Charles II., suggested that they should
write the Chevalier's memoirs. De Gramont, who was exceedingly vain of
the reputation he had acquired, and anxious to transmit its memory to
posterity, was incapable of the literary effort necessary to this end.
This man, who in conversation could sparkle as few have ever done, could
not string two sentences together on paper. His wit completely deserted
him when he took a pen in his hand. The opposite was the case with
Hamilton. His brother-in-law's suggestion appealed to him, and the
result of their curious partnership, in which, so to speak, de Gramont
furnished the capital and Hamilton the brains, was the famous classic,
"Les Mémoires de Gramont."
Of all the high praise that has been heaped upon this "_bréviaire de la
jeune noblesse_" that of the French critics is the most notable. To us,
"the adventure of the soul among masterpieces" that we experience when
reading it cannot be so great a pleasure as it must have been to
Hamilton in his own lifetime to be told that he, a foreigner, had
written a book in the French language which in style, atmosphere, wit,
what you will, was French to the core--a _chef d'oeuvre_ of French
literature! Everybody has heard of Count Hamilton's "Mémoires du Comte
de Gramont." How many have ever read it? Is it because it is thought to
be that ponderous thing, a classic? Without attempting to express our
opinions on this curious work we are daring enough to seize this
opportunity of answering a question heard everywhere, "What shall I
read?" by replying, "The Memoirs of Gramont." Do not be afraid of it
because it is a classic; all classics are not tedious because many
stupid books have usurped the label of immortality. A true classic is
never tedious. The character of the Chevalier de Gramont as conceived by
Anthony Hamilton is one of the great creations of literature.
Hamilton also occupied his time in France with writing other things. His
fairy tales, very much _goûté_ in their day, would make very dull
reading now. One of the best, that of Bélier and the Giant Moulineau,
was written to please his sister. It is interesting to note that
Hamilton was nearly sixty when he wrote his masterpiece, and past middle
life when he first turned his attention to literature. Considering
the active military life he had led it was not strange that he should
have made his literary _début_ so late. In fact, had it not been for the
Revolution of 1688 he might possibly never have written at all. Before
that date he had been first, as a youth, in the French army, which he
left at the Restoration to serve in that of his own country. Roman
Catholic and Jacobite by birth and association, England had for him
after the Battle of the Boyne, as for many another, no shelter. A
soldier by instinct, he once more turned to France for employment. Of
his career in the French service little is known, beyond that he was an
officer in Louis' _gens d'armes anglais_ and received the title of
count, presumably in lieu of salary; for such money as the French King
had to spare he gave to the last of the Stuarts.
[Illustration: COUNT ANTHONY HAMILTON.]