THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE . - _/ / WHABTQN'S nor.nsH PRESENT. Thowsan, THE WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY BY GRACE AND PHILIP WHARTON NEW EDITION WITH A PREFACE JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY, M.P. And the original illustrations by H. K. BROWNE AND JAMES GODWIN TWO VOLS. VOL. I. /. W. JAR VIS dr* SON 28, KING WILLIAM STREET, CHARING CROSS LONDON, W.C. 1890 v. DEDICATION. DEAR MR. AUGUSTIN DALY, May I write your name on the dedication page of this new edition of an old and pleasant book in token of. our common interest in the people and the periods of which it treats, and as a small proof of our friendship ? Sincerely yours, JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY. LONDON, July, 1890. CONTENTS. PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION . . p. xi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION . . p. xxv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION . . .p. xxix GEORGE VILLIERS, SECOND DUKE OF BUCK- INGHAM. Signs of the Restoration. Samuel Pepys in his Glory. A Royal Company. Pepys ' ready to Weep.' The Playmate of Charles II. George Villiers's Inheritance. Two Gallant Young Noblemen. -The Brave Francis Villiers. After the Battle of Worcester. Disguising the King.. Villiers in Hiding. He appears as a Mountebank. Buckingham's Habits. A Daring Adventure. Cromwell's Saintly Daughter. Villiers and the Rabbi. The Buckingham Pictures and Estates. York House. Villiers returns to England. Poor Mary Fairfax. Villiers in the Tower. Abraham Cowley, the Poet. The Greatest Ornament of Whitehall. Buckingham's Wit and Beauty. Flecknoe's Opinion of Him. His Duel with the Earl of Shrews- bury. Villiers as a Poet. As a Dramatist. A Fearful Censure ! Villiers's Influence in Parliament. A Scene in the Lords. The Duke of Ormond in Danger. Colonel Blood's Outrages. Wallingford House and Ham House. ' Madame Ellen.' The Cabal. Villiers again in the Tower. A Change. The Duke of York's Theatre. Buckingham and the Princess of Orange. His last Hours. His Religion. Death of Villiers. The Duchess of Buckingham. . . . . . . . p. i COUNT DE GRAMMONT, ST. EVREMOND, AND LORD ROCHESTER. De Grammont's Choice. His Influence with Turenne. The Church or the Army? An Adventure at Lyons. A brilliant Idea. De Grammont's Generosity. A Horse 'for the Cards. ' Knight-Cicisbeism. De Gram- mont's first Love. His Witty Attacks on Mazarin. Anne Lucie de la Mothe Houdancourt. Beset with Snares. De Grammont's Visits to England. Charles II. The Court of Charles II. Introduction of Country-dances. Norman Peculiarities. St. Evremond, the Handsome Norman. The most Beautiful Woman in Europe. Hortense Mancini's Adventures. Madame Mazarin's House at Chelsea. Anecdote of Lord Dorset. Lord Rochester in his Zenith. His Courage and Wit. vi Contents. Rochester's Pranks in the City. Credulity, Past and Present. ' Dr. Bendo,' and La Belle Jennings. La Triste Heritiere. Elizabeth, Coun- tess of Rochester. Retribution and Reformation. Conversion. Beaux without Wit. Little Jermyn. An Incomparable Beauty. Anthony Hamilton, De Grammont's Biographer. The Three Courts. ' La Belle Hamilton.' Sir Peter Lely's Portrait of her. The Household Deity of Whitehall. Who shall have the Caleche? A Chaplain in Liver)'. De Grammont's Last Hours. What might he not have been? . p. d.i BEAU FIELDING. On Wits and Beaux. Scotland Yard in Charles II. 's day. Orlando of 'The Tatler.' Beau Fielding, Justice of the Peace. Adonis in Search of a Wife. The Sham Widow. Ways and Means. Barbara Villiers, Lady Castle- maine. Quarrels with the King. The Beau's Second Marriage. The Last Days of Fops and Beaux. . . . . . p. 80 OF CERTAIN CLUBS AND CLUB- WITS UNDER ANNE. The Origin of Clubs. The Establishment of Coffee-houses. The October Club. The Beef-steak Club. Of certain other Clubs. The Kit-kat Club. The Romance of the Bowl. The Toasts of the Kit-kat. -The Members of the Kit-kat. A good Wit, and a bad Architect. ' Well-natured Garth.' The Poets of the Kit-kat. Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax. Chancellor Somers. Charles Sackville, Lord Dorset. Less celebrated Wits. p. 91 WILLIAM CONGREVE. When and where was he born? The Middle Temple. Congreve finds his Vocation. Verses to Queen Mary. The Tennis-court Theatre. Congreve abandons the Drama. Jeremy Collier. The Immorality of the Stage. Very improper Things. Congreve's Writings. Jeremy's 'Short Views.' Rival Theatres. Dryden's Funeral. A Tub-Preacher. Horoscopic Pre- dictions. Dryden's Solicitude for his Son. Congreve's Ambition. Anec- dote of Voltaire and Congreve. The Profession of Maecenas. Congreve's Private Life. ' Malbrook's' Daughter. Congreve's Death and Burial. p. 106 BEAU NASH. The King of Bath. Nash at Oxford.' My Boy Dick.' Offers of Knighthood. Doing Penance at York. Days of Folly. A very Romantic Story. Sickness and Civilization. Nash descends upon Bath. Nash's Chef- d'oeuvre. The Ball. Improvements in the Pump-room, &c. A Public Benefactor. Life at Bath in Nash's time. A Compact with the Duke of Beaufort. Gaming at Bath. Anecdotes of Nash. 'Miss Sylvia.' A Generous Act. Nash's Sun setting. A Panegyric. Nash's Funeral. His Characteristics. . . . . . . p. 127 PHILIP, DUKE OF WHARTON. Wharton's Ancestors. His Early Years. Marriage at Sixteen. Wharton takes leave of his Tutor. The Young Marquis and the Old Pretender. Frolics at Paris. Zeal for the Orange Cause. A Jacobite Hero. The Trial of Atterbury. Wharton's Defence of the Bishop. Hypocritical Signs of Contents. vii Penitence. Sir Robert Walpole duped. Very Trying. The Duke of Wharton's 'Whens.' Military Glory at Gibraltar. 'Uncle Horace.'- Wharton to ' Uncle Horace.' The Duke's Impudence. High Treason. Wharton's Ready Wit. Last Extremities. Sad Days in Paris. His Last Journey to Spain. His Death in a Bernardine Convent. . p. 148 LORD HERVEY. George II. arriving from Hanover. His Meeting with the Queen. Lady Suffolk. Queen Caroline. Sir Robert Walpole. Lord Hervey. A Set of Fine Gentlemen. An Eccentric Race. Carr, Lord Hervey. A Fragile Boy. Description of George II. 's Family. Anne Brett. A Bitter Cup. The Darling of the Family. Evenings at St. James's. Frederick, Prince of Wales. Amelia Sophia Walmoden. Poor Queen Caroline ! Nocturnal Diversions of Maids of Honour. Neighbour George's Orange Chest. Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. Rivalry. Hervey 's Intimacy with Lady Mary. Relaxations of the Royal Household. Bacon's Opinion of Twickenham. A Visit to Pope's Villa. The Little Nightingale. The Essence of Small Talk. Hervey's Affectation and Effeminacy. Pope's Quarrel with Hervey and Lady Mary. Hervey's Duel with Pulteney. ' The Death of Lord Hervey : a Drama.' Queen Caroline's last Drawing-room. Her Illness and Agony. A Painful Scene. The Truth discovered. The Queen's Dying Bequests. The King's Temper. Archbishop Potter is sent for. The Duty of Reconciliation. The Death of Queen Caroline. A Change in Hervey's Life. Lord Hervey's Death. Want of Christianity. Memoirs of his Own Time. ....... p. 170 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, FOURTH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. The King of Table Wits. Early Years. Hervey's Description of his Person. Resolutions and Pursuits. Study of Oratory. The Duties of an Am- bassador. King George II. 's Opinion of his Chroniclers. Life in the Country. Melusina, Countess of Walsingham. George II. and his Father's Will. Dissolving Views. Madame du Bouchet. The Broad- Bottomed Administration. Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in Time of Peril. Reformation of the Calendar. Chesterfield House. Exclusiveness. Re- commending 'Johnson's Dictionary.' 'Old Samuel,' to Chesterfield. Defensive Pride. The Glass of Fashion. Lord Scarborough's Friendship for Chesterfield. The Death of Chesterfield's Son. His Interest in his Grandsons. ' I must go and Rehearse my Funeral.' Chesterfield's Will. What is a Friend ? Les Manieres Nobles. Letters to his Son. p. 210 THE ABBE SCARRON. An Eastern Allegory. Who comes Here? A Mad Freak and its Consequences. Making an Abbe 1 of him. The May-Fair of Paris. Scarron's Lament to Pellisson. The Office of the Queen's Patient. ' Give me a Simple Bene- fice.' Scarron's Description of Himself. Improvidence and Servility. The Society at Scarron's. The Witty Conversation. Francoise D'Aubig- n's Debut. The Sad Story of La Belle Indienne. Matrimonial Consider- ations. ' Scarron's Wife will live for ever." Petits Soupers. Scarron's last M.im>nts. A Lesson for Gay and Grave. o. 235 iii Contents. FRANCOIS DUG DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT AND THE DUG DE SAINT-SIMON. Rank and Good Breeding. The H6tel de Rochefoucault. Racine and his Plays. La Rochoucault's Wit and Sensibility. Saint-Simon's Youth Looking out for a Wife. Saint-Simon's Court Life. The History of Louise de la Valliere. A mean Act of Louis Quatorze. All has passed away. Saint-Simon's Memoirs of His Own Time. ... p. 253 SUBJECTS OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS. VOLUME I. PAGE WHARTON'S ROGUISH PRESENT . . . . . . (Frontispiece) VILLIERS IN DISGUISE THE MEETING WITH HIS SISTER 14 DE GRAMMONT'S MEETING WITH LA BELLE HAMILTON 74 BEAU FIELDING AND THE SHAM WIDOW.. .. .. 85 A SCENE BEFORE KENSINGTON PALACE GEORGE II. AND QUEEN CAROLINE .. .. .. .. ..172 POPE AT HIS VILLA DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 194 A ROYAL ROBBER .. 217 DR. JOHNSON AT LORD CHESTERFIELD'S .. .. ..226 SCARRON AND THE WITS FIRST APPEARANCE OF LA BELLE INDIENNE 247 PREFACE. | HEN Grace and Philip Wharton found that they had pleased the world with their " Queens of Society," they very sensibly resolved to follow up their success with a companion work. Their first book had been all about women ; the second book should be all about men. Accordingly they set to work select- ing certain types that pleased them ; they wrote a fresh collection of pleasant essays and presented the reading public with "Wits and Beaux of Society". The one book is as good as the other ; there is not a pin to choose between them. There is the same bright easy, gossiping style, the same pleasing rapidity. There is nothing tedious, nothing dull anywhere. They do not profess to have anything to do with the graver processes of history these entertaining volumes; they seek rather to amuse than to instruct, and they fulfil their purpose excellently. There is instruction in them, but it comes in by the way ; one is conscious of being entertained, and it is only after the entertainment is over that one finds that a fair amount of information has been thrown in to boot. The Whartons have but old tales to tell, but they tell them very well, and that is the first part of their business. Looking over these articles is like looking over the list of a good club. Men are companionable creatures ; xii Preface. they love to get together and gossip. It is maintained, and with reason, that they are fonder of their own society than women are. Men delight to breakfast together, to take luncheon together, to dine together, to sup together. They rejoice in clubs devoted exclusively to their service, as much taboo to women as a trappist monastery. Women are not quite so clannish. There are not very many women's clubs in the world ; it is not certain that those which do exist are very brilliant or very entertaining. Women seldom give supper parties, "all by themselves they" after the fashion of that " grande dame de par le monde " of whom we have spoken elsewhere. A woman's dinner-party may suc- ceed now and then by way of a joke, but it is a joke that is not often repeated. Have we not lately seen how an institution with a graceful English name, started in London for women and women only, has just so far relaxed its rigid rule as to allow men upon its premises between certain hours, and this relaxation we are told has been conceded in consequence of the demand of numerous ladies. Well, well, if men can on the whole get on better without the society of women than women can without the society of men it is no doubt because they are rougher creatures, moulded of a coarser clay, and are more entertained by eating and drinking, smok- ing and the telling of tales than women are. If all the men whom the Whartons labelled as wits and beaux of society could be gathered together they would make a most excellent club in the sense in which a club was understood in the last century. Johnson thought that he had praised a man highly when he called him a clubbable man, and so he had for those days which dreamed not of vast caravanserai calling Preface. xiii themselves clubs and having thousands of members on their roll, the majority of whom do not know more than perhaps ten of their fellow members from Adam. In the sense that Dr. Johnson meant, all these wits and beaux whom our Whartons have gathered together were eminently clubbable. If some such necromancer could come to us as he who in Tourguenieff's story conjures up the shade of Julius Caesar ; and if in an obliging way he could make these wits and beaux greet us : if such a spiritualistic society as that described by Mr. Stockton in one of his diverting stories could materialise them all for our benefit : then one might count with confidence upon some very delightful company and some very delightful talk. For the people whom the Whartons have been good enough to group together are people of the most fascinating variety. They have wit in common and goodfellowship, they were famous entertainers in their time ; they add to the gaiety of nations still. The Whartons have given what would in America be called a " Stag Party ". If we join it we shall find much enter- tainment thereat. Do people read Theodore Hook much nowadays? Does the generation which loves to follow the trail with Allan Quatermain, and to ride with a Splendid Spur, does it call at all for the humours of the days of the Regency ? Do those who have laughed over " The Wrong Box," ever laugh over Jack Brag? Do the students of Mr. Rudyard Kipling know anything of " Gilbert Gurney ? " Somebody started the theory some time ago, that this was not a laughter-loving generation, that it lacked high spirits. It has been maintained that if a writer appeared now, with the rollicking good spirits, and reckless abandon of a Lever, he xiv Preface. would scarcely win a warm welcome. We may be permitted to doubt this conclusion ; we are as fond of laughter as ever, as ready to laugh if somebody will set us going. Mr. Stevenson prefers of late to be thought grim in his fiction, but he has set the sides shaking, both over that " Wrong Box " which we spoke of, and in earlier days. We are ready to laugh with Stockton from overseas, with our own Anstey, with anybody who has the heart to be merry, and the wit to make his mirth communicable. But, it may be doubted if we read our Lever quite as much as a wise doctor, who happened also to be a wise man of letters, would recommend. And we may well fancy that such a doctor dealing with a patient for whom laughter was salutary as for whom is it not salutary would exhibit Theodore Hook in rather large doses. Undoubtedly the fun is a little old fashioned, but it is none the worse for that. Those who share Mr. Hard- castle's tastes for old wine and old books will not like Theodore Hook any the less, because he does not happen to be at all " Fin de Siecle". He is like Berowne in the comedy, the merriest man perhaps not always within the limits of becoming mirth to spend an hour's talk withal. There is no better key to the age in which Hook glittered, than Hook's own stories. The London of that day the London which is as dead and gone as Nineveh or Karnak or Troy lives with extraordinary freshness in Theodore Hook's pages. And how enter- taining those pages are. It is not always the greatest writers who are the most mirth provoking, but how much we owe to them. The man must have no mirth in him if he fail to be tickled by the best of Labiche's comedies, aye and the worst too, if such a term Preface. xv can be applied to any of the enchanting series ; if he refuse to unbend over " A Day's Journey and a Life's Romance," if he cannot let himself go and enjoy himself over Gilbert Gurney's river adventure. If the revival of the Whartons' book were to serve no other purpose than to send some laughter loving souls to the heady well- spring of Theodore Hook's merriment, it would have done the mirthful a good turn and deserved well of its country. There is scarcely a queerer, or scarcely a more pathetic figure in the world than that of Beau Brummell. He seems to belong to ancient history, he and his titanic foppishness and his smart clothes and his smart sayings. Yet is it but a little while since the last of his adorers, the most devoted of his disciples passed away from the earth. Over in Paris there lingered till the past year a certain man of letters who was very brilliant and very poor and very eccentric. So long as people study French literature, and care to investigate the amount of high artistic workmanship which goes into even its minor productions, so long the name of Barbey D'Aurevilly will have its niche not a very large one, it is true in the temple. The author of that strange and beautiful story " Le Chevalier des Touches," was a great devotee of Brummell's. He was himself the " last of the dandies ". All the money he had and he had very little of it he spent in dandification. But he never moved with the times. His foppishness was the foppishness of his youth, and to the last he wandered through Paris clad in the splendour of the days when young men were " lions," and when the quarrel between classicism and romanticism was vital. He wrote a book about Beau Brummell and a very curious little book it is, with its xvi Preface. odd earnest defence of dandyism, with its courageous championship of the arts which men of letters so largely affect to despise. Poor Beau Brummell. After having played his small part on life's stage, his thin shade still occasionally wanders across the boards of the theatre. Blanchard Jerrold wrote a play upon him, which was acted at the Lyceum Theatre in 1859, when Emery played the title role. Jerrold's play, which has for sub-title " The King of Calais," treats of that period in Brummell's life in which he had retired across the channel to live upon black-mail and to drift into that Consulship at Caen which he so queerly resigned, to end a poor madman, trying to shave his own peruke. Jerrold's is a grim play ; either it or a version on the same lines of Brummell's fall is being played across the Atlantic at this very hour by Mr. Mansfield whose study of the final decay and idiotcy of the famous beau is said to rival the impressive- ness of his Mr. Hyde. Beau Brummell is never likely to be quite forgotten. Folly often brings with it a kind of immortality. The fool who fired the Temple of Ephesus has secured his place in history with Aristides and Themistocles ; the fop who gave a kind of epic dignity to neck-clothes, and who asked the famous "Who's your fat friend? " question, is remembered as a figure of that age which includes the name of Sheridan and the name of Burke. Another and a no less famous Beau steps to salute us from the pages of the Whartons. Beau Nash is an old friend of ours in fiction, an old friend in the drama. Our dear old Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel about him yesterday ; to-day he figures in the pages of one of the most attractive of Mr. Lewis Winerfield's attractive Preface. xvii stories. He found his way on to the stage under the care of Douglas Jerrold whose comedy of manners was acted at the Haymarket in the midsummer of 1834. There is a charm about these Beaux, these odd blossoms of last century civilisation, the Brummells and the Nashes and the Fieldings, so " high fantastical " in their bearing, such living examples of the eternal verities contained in the clothes' philosophy of Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo. Their wigs were more important than their wit ; the pattern of their waistcoats more important than the composition of their hearts ; all morals, all philosophy are absorbed for them in the engrossing question of the fit of their breeches. D'Artois is of their kin, French d'Artois who helped to ruin the Old Order and failed to re-create it as Charles the Tenth, d'Artois whom Mercier de- scribes as being poured into his faultlessly fitting breeches by the careful and united efforts of no less than four valets de chambre. But the English dandies were better than the Frenchman, for they did harm only to them- selves, while he helped to ruin his cause, his party, and his king. As we turn the pages, we come to one name which immediately if whimsically suggests poetry. The man was, like Touchstone's Audrey, not poetical and yet a great poet has been pleased to address him, very much as Pindar might have addressed the Ancestral Hero of some mighty tyrant. Ah, George Bubb Dodington Lord Melcombe no, Yours was the wrong way ! always understand, Supposing that permissibly you planned How statesmanship your trade in outward show Might figure as inspired by simple zeal For serving country, king, and commonweal, xviii Preface. (Though service tire to death the body, teaze The soul from out an o'ertasked patriot-drudge) And yet should prove zeal's outward show agrees In all respects right reason being judge With inwrrdcare that while the statesman spends Body and soul thus freely for the sake Of public good, his private welfare take No harm by such devotedness. Thus Robert Browning in Robert Browning's penulti- mate book, that " Parleyings with certain people of importance in their day " which fell somewhat coldly upon all save Browning fanatics, and which, when it seemed to show that the poet's hand had palsied, served only as the discordant prelude to the swan song of " Asolando," the last and almost the greatest of his glories. Perhaps only Browning would ever have thought of undertaking a poetical parley with Bubb Dodington. Dodington is now largely, and not unde- servedly forgotten. His dinners and his dresses, his poems and his pamphlets, his plays and his passions the wind has carried them all away. If Pope had not nicknamed him Bubo, if Foote had not caricatured him in "The Patron," if Churchill had not lampooned him in "The Rosciad," he would scarcely have earned in his own day the notoriety which the publication of his " Diary" had in a manner preserved to later days. If he was hardly worth a corner in the Whartons' picture- gallery he was certainly scarcely deserving of the atten- tion of Browning. Even his ineptitude was hardly important enough to have twenty pages of Browning's genius wasted upon it, twenty pages ending with the sting about The scoff That greets your very name : folks see but one Fool more, as well as knave, in Dodington. Preface. xix Dodington has been occasionally classed with Lord Hervey but the classification is scarcely fair. With all his faults and he had them in abundance Lord Hervey was a better creature than Bubb Dodington. If he was effeminate, he had convictions and could stand by them. If Pope sneered at him as Sporus and called him a curd of asses' milk, he has left behind him some of the most brilliant memoirs ever penned. If he had some faults in common with Dodington he was endowed with virtues of which Dodington never dreamed. The name of Lord Chesterfield is in the air just now. Within the last few months the curiosity of the world has been stimulated and satisfied by the publica- tion of some hitherto unknown letters by Lord Chester- field. The pleasure which the student of history has taken in this new find is just dimmed at this moment by the death of Lord Carnarvon, whose care and scholarship gave them to the world. They are indeed a precious possession. A very eminent French critic, M. Brunetiere, has inveighed lately with much justice against the passion for raking together and bringing out all manner of unpublished writings. He complains, and complains with justice, that while the existing classics of literature are left imperfectly edited, if not ignored, the activity of students is devoted to burrowing out all manner of unimportant material, anything, everything, so long as it has not been known beforehand to the world. The French critic protests against the class of scholars who go into ecstacies over a newly discovered washing list of Pascal or a bill from Racine's perruquier. The complaint tells against us as well on our side of the Channel. We hear a great deal xx Preface about newly discovered fragments by this great writer and that great writer, which are of no value whatever, except that they happen to be new. But no such stricture applies to the letters of Lord Chesterfield which the late Lord Carnarvon so recently gave to the world. They are a valuable addition to our knowledge of the last century, a valuable addition to our know- ledge of the man who wrote them. And knowledge about Lord Chesterfield is always welcome. Few of the famous figures of the last century have been more misunderstood than he. The world is too ready to remember Johnson's biting letter ; too ready to re- member the cruel caricatures of Lord Hervey. Even the famous letters have been taken too much at John- son's estimate, and Johnson's estimate was one-sided and unfair. A man would not learn the highest life from the Chesterfield letters ; they have little in com- mon with the ethics of an A Kempis, a Jean Paul Richter, or a John Stuart Mill. But they have their value in their way, and if they contain some utterances so unutterably foolish as those in which Lord Chester- field expressed himself upon Greek literature, they contain some very excellent maxims for the manage- ment of social life. Nobody could become a penny the worse for the study of Chesterfield ; many might be- come the better. They are not a whit more cynical than, indeed they are not so cynical as, those letters of Thackeray's to young Brown, which with all their cleverness make us understand what Mr. Henley means when in his "Views and Reviews" he describes him as a "writer of genius who was innately and irredeemably a Philistine". The letters of Lord Chesterfield would not do much to make a man a Preface. xxi hero, but there is little in literature more unheroic than the letters to Mr. Thomas Brown the younger. It is curious to contrast the comparative enthusiasm with which the Whartons write about Horace Walpole with the invective of Lord Macaulay. To the great historian Walpole was the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most capricious of men, who played in- numerable parts and over-acted them all, a creature to whom whatever was little seemed great and whatever was great seemed little. To Macaulay he was a gentle- man-usher at heart, a Republican whose Republicanism like the courage of a bully or the love of a fribble was only strong and ardent when there was no occasion for it, a man who blended the faults of Grub Street with the faults of St. James's Street, and who united to the vanity, the jealousy and the irritability of a man of letters, the affected superciliousness and apathy of a man of ton. The Whartons over-praise Walpole where Lord Macaulay under-rates him ; the truth lies between the two. He was not in the least an estimable or an admirable figure, but he wrote admirable, indeed incom- parable letters to which the world is indebted beyond expression. If we can almost say that we know the London of the last century as well as the London of to- day it is largely to Horace Walpole's letters that our knowledge is due. They can hardly be over-praised, they can hardly be too often read by the lover of last cen- tury London. Horace Walpole affected to despise men of letters. It is his punishment that his fame depends upon his letters, those letters which, though their writer w 7 as all unaware of it, are genuine literature, and almost of the best. We could linger over almost every page of the xxii Preface. Whartons* volumes, for every page is full of pleasant suggestions. The name of George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham brings up at once a picture of perhaps the brilliantest and basest period in English history. It brings up too memories of a fiction that is even dearer than history, of that wonderful romance of Dumas the Elder's, which Mr. Louis Stevenson has placed among the half-dozen books that are dearest to his heart, the " Vicomte de Bragelonne". Who that has ever followed, breathless and enraptured, the final fortunes of that gallant quadrilateral of musketeers will forget the part which is played by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in that magnificent prose epic ? There is little to be said for the real Villiers ; he was a profli- gate and a scoundrel, and he did not show very heroic- ally in his quarrel with the fiery young Ossory. It. was one thing to practically murder Lord Shrewsbury ; it was quite another thing to risk the wrath and the deter- mined right hand of the Duke of Ormonde's son. But the Villiers of Dumas' fancy is a fairer figure and a finer lover, and it is pleasant after reading the pages in which the authors of these essays trace the career of Dryden's epitome to turn to those volumes of the great French- man, to read the account of the duel with de Wardes and invoke a new blessing on the muse of fiction. In some earlier volumes of the same great series we meet with yet another figure who has his image in the Wharton picture gallery. In that " crowded and sunny field of life" the words are Mr. Stevenson's, and they apply to the whole musketeer epic that " place busy as a city, bright as a theatre, thronged with memorable faces, and sounding with delightful speech," the Abbe Scarron plays his part. It was here that many of us Preface. xxiii met Scarron for the first time, and if we have got to know him better since, we still remember with a thrill of pleasure that first encounter when in the society of the matchless Count de la Fere and the marvellous Aramis we made our bow in company with the young Raoul to the crippled wit and his illustrious companions. The Whartons write brightly about Scarron, but their best merit to my mind is that they at once prompt a desire to go to that corner of the bookshelf where the eleven volumes of the adventures of the immortal musketeers repose, and taking down the first volume of " Vingt Ans Apres " seek for the twenty-third chapter, where Scarron receives society in his residence in the Rue des Tour- nelles. There Scudery twirls his moustaches and trails his enormous rapier and the Coadjutor exhibits his silken " Fronde". There the velvet eyes of Mademois- elle d'Aubigne smile and the beauty of Madame de Chevreuse delights, and all the company make fun of Mazarin and recite the verses of Voiture. There are others of these wits and beaux with whom we might like to linger ; but our space is running short ; it is time to say good-bye. Congreve the dramatist and gentleman, Rochefoucauld the wit, Saint-Simon the king of memoir-writers, Rochester and St. Evremond and de Gramont, Selwyn and Sydney Smith and Sheri- dan each in turn appeals to us to tarry a little longer. But it is time to say good-bye to these shadows of the past with whom we have spent some pleasant hours. It is their duty now to offer some pleasant hours to others. JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. N revising this Publication, it has scarcely been found necessary to recall a single opinion relative to the subject of the Work. The general impressions of characters adopted by the Authors have received little modifi- cation from any remarks elicited by the appearance of ' The Wits and Beaux of Society.' It is scarcely to be expected that even our descendants will know much more of the Wits and Beaux of former days than we now do. The chests at Strawberry Hill are cleared of their contents ; Horace Walpole's latest letters are before us ; Pepys and Evelyn have thoroughly dramatized the days of Charles II. ; Lord Hervey's Memoirs have laid bare the darkest secrets of the Court in which he figures ; voluminous memoirs of the less historic characters among the Wits and Beaux have been pub- lished ; still it is possible that some long-disregarded treasury of old letters, like that in the Gallery at Wotton, may come to light. From that precious deposit a housemaid blotted for ever be her name from memory's page was purloining sheets of yellow paper, with antiquated writing on them, to light her fires with, when the late William Upcott came to the rescue, xxvi Preface to Second Edition. and saved Evelyn's ' Diary' for a grateful world. It is just possible that such a discovery may again be made, and that the doings of George Villiers, or the exile life of Wharton, or the inmost thoughts of other Wits and Beaux may be made to appear in clearer lights than heretofore ; but it is much more likely that the popular opinions about these witty, worthless men are substantially true. All that has been collected, therefore, to form this work and, as in the ' Queens of Society,' every known source has been consulted assumes a sterling value as being collected ; and, should hereafter fresh materials be disinterred from any old library closet in the homes of some one descendant of our heroes, advantage will be gladly taken to improve, correct, and complete the lives. One thing must, in justice, be said : if they have been written freely, fearlessly, they have been written without pas- sion or prejudice. The writers, though not quite of the stamp of persons who would never have ' dared to address' any of the subjects of their biography, ' save with courtesy and obeisance,' have no wish to 'trample on the graves' of such very amusing personages as the ' Wits and Beaux of Society.' They have even been lenient to their memory, hailing every good trait gladly, and pointing out with no unsparing hand redeeming virtues ; and it cannot certainly be said, in this instance, that the good has been ' interred with the bones ' of the personages herein described, although the evil men do, 'will live after them." But whilst a biographer is bound to give the fair as well as the dark side of his subject, ne has stiil to remember that bio- graphy is a trust, and that it should not be an eulogium. It is his duty to reflect that in nviny instances it must be regarded even as a warning. The moral conclusions of these lives of 'Wits and Beaux' Preface to Second Edition. xxvii are, it is admitted, just : vice is censured ; folly rebuked ; un- gentlemanly conduct, even in a beau of the highest polish, ex- posed ; irreligion finds no toleration under gentle names heartlessness no palliation from its being the way of the world. There is here no separate code allowed for men who live in the world, and for those who live out of it. The task of pourtray- ing such characters as the 'Wits and Beaux of Society' is a responsible one. and does not involve the mere attempt to amuse, or the mere desire to abuse, but requires truth and dis- crimination ; as embracing just or unjust views of such charac- ters, it may do much harm or much good. Nevertheless, in spite of these obvious considerations there do exist worthy persons, even in the present day, so unreasonable as to take offence at the revival of old stories anent their defunct grand- fathers, though those very stories were circulated by accredited writers employed by the families themselves. Some individuals are scandalized when a man who was habitually drunk, is called a drunkard ; and ears polite cannot bear the application of plain names to well-known delinquencies. There is something foolish, but respectably foolish, in this wish to shut out light which has been streaming for years over these old tombs and memories. The flowers that are cast on such graves cannot, however, cause us to forget the corruption within and underneath. In consideration, nevertheless, of a pardonable weakness, all expressions that can give pain, or which have been said to give pain, have been, in this Second Edition, omitted ; and whenever a mis-statement has crept in, care has been taken to amend the error. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. HE success of the ' Queens of Society ' will have pioneered the way for the ' Wits and Beaux :' with whom, during the holiday time of their lives, these fair ladies were so greatly associated. The ' Queens,' whether all wits or not, must have been the cause of wit in others ; their influence over dandyism is notorious : their power to make or mar a man of fashion, almost historical. So far, a chronicle of the sayings and doings of the ' Wits ' is worthy to serve as a/- fused. He went abroad in 1648, but returned with Charles II. to Scotland in 1650, and again escaped to France after the battle of Worcester, 1651. The sale of the pictures would seem to have commenced during his first exiii. iO Disguising the King. But not so rapidly did they in reality proceed. A Catholic family, named Giffard, were living at White-Ladies, about twenty six miles from Worcester. This was only about half a mile from Boscobel : it had been a convent of Cistercian nuns, whose long white cloaks of old had once been seen, ghost-like, amid forest glades or on hillock green. The White-Ladies had other memories to grace it besides those of holy vestals, or of unholy Cavaliers. From the time of the Tudors, a respectable family named Somers had owned the White-Ladies, and inha- bited it since its white-garbed tenants had been turned out, and the place secularized. ' Somers's House,' as it was called, (though more happily, the old name has been restored,) had received Queen Elizabeth on her progress. The richly culti- vated old conventual gardens had supplied the Queen with some famous pears, and, in the fulness of her approval of the fruit, she had added them to the City arms. At that time one of these vaunted pear-trees stood securely in the market-place of Worcester. At the White-Ladies, Charles rested for half an hour ; and here he left his garters, waistcoat, and other garments, to avoid discovery, ere he proceeded. They were long kept as relics. The mother of Lord Somers had been placed in this old house for security, for she was on the eve of giving birth to the future statesman, who was born in that sanctuary just at this time. His father at that very moment commanded a troop of horse in Cromwell's army, so that the risk the Cavaliers ran was imminent. The King's horse was led into the hall. Day was dawning ; and the Cavaliers, as they entered the old conventual tenement, and saw the sunbeams on its walls, perceived their peril. A family of servants named Penderell held various offices there, and at Boscobel. William took care of Boscobel, George was a servant at White-Ladies; Humphrey was the miller to that house , Richard lived close by, at Hebbal Grange. He and William were called into the royal pre- sence. Lord Derby then said to them, ' This is the King ; have a care of him, and preserve him as thou didst me.' Then the attendant courtiers began undressing the King. They took off his buff-coat, and put on him a ' noggon coarse Vittiers in Hiding 1 1 shirt,' and a green suit and another doublet Richard Pende- rell's woodman's dress. Lord Wilmot cut his sovereign's hair with a knife, but Richard Penderell took up his shears and finished the work. ' Burn it,' said the king ; but Richard kept the sacred locks. Then Charles covered his dark face with soot. Could anything have taken away the expression of his half-sleepy, half-merry eyes ? They departed, and half an hour afterwards Colonel Ashen- hurst, with a troop of Roundhead horse, rode up to the White- Ladies. The King, meantime, had been conducted by Richard Penderell into a coppice-wood, with a bill-hook in his hands for defence and disguise. But his followers were overtaken near Newport ; and here Buckingham, with Lords Talbot and Levis- ton, escaped ; and henceforth, until Charles's wanderings were transferred from England to France, George Villiers was sepa- rated from the Prince. Accompanied by the Earls of Derby and Lauderdale, and by Lord Talbot, he proceeded northwards, in hopes of joining General Leslie and the Scotch horse. But their hopes were soon dashed : attacked by a body of Round- heads, Buckingham and Lord Leviston were compelled to leave the high road, to alight from their horses, and to make their way to Bloore Park, near Newport, where Villiers found a shelter. He was soon, however, necessitated to depart : he put on a labourer's dress ; he deposited his George, a gift from Henrietta Maria, with a companion, and set off for Billstrop, in Notting- hamshire, one Matthews, a carpenter, acting as his guide ; at Billstrop he was welcomed by Mr. Hawley, a Cavalier ; and from that place he went to Brookesby, in Leicestershire, the original seat of the Villiers family, and the birthplace of his father. Here he was received by Lady Villiers the widow, probably, of his father's brother, Sir William Villiers, one of those contented country squires who not only sought no dis- tinction, but scarcely thanked James I. when he made him a baronet. Here might the hunted refugee see, on the open bat- tlements of the church, the shields on which were exhibited united quarterings of his father's family with those of his mo- ther ; here, listen to old tales about his grandfather, good Sir George, who married a serving-woman in his deceased wife's ; 2 He Appears as a Mountebank. kitchen ;* and that serving-woman became the leader of fashions in the court of James. Here he might ponder on the vicissitudes which marked the destiny of the house of Villiers, and wondei what should come next. That the spirit of adventure was strong within him, is shown by his daring to go up to London, and disguising himself as a mountebank. He had a coat made, called a ' Jack Pudding Coat :' a little hat was stuck on his head, with a fox's tail in it, and cocks' feathers here and there. A wizard's mask one day, a daubing of flour another, completed the disguise it was then so usual to assume : witness the long traffic held at Exeter Change by the Duchess of Tyrconnel, Francis Jennings, in a white mask, selling laces, and French gew-gaws, a trader to all appearance, but really carrying on political intrigues ; every one went to chat with the 'White Milliner,' as she was called, during the reign of William and Mary. The Duke next erected a stage at Charing Cross in the very face of the stern Rurn- pers, who, with long faces, rode past the sinful man each day as they came ambling up from the Parliament House. A band of puppet-players and violins set up their shows ; and music covers a multitude of incongruities. The ballad was then the great vehicle of personal attack, and Villiers's dawning taste for poetry was shown in the ditties which he now composed, and in which he sometimes assisted vocally. Whilst all the other Cavaliers were forced to fly, he thus bearded his enemies in their very homes : sometimes he talked to them face to face, and kept the sanctimonious citizens in talk, till they found themselves sinfully disposed to laugh. But this vagrant life had serious evils : it broke down all the restraints which civilised society naturally, and beneficially, imposes. The Duke of Buckingham, Butler, the author of Hudibras, writes, 'rises, eats, goes to bed by the Julian account, long after all others that go by the new style, and keeps the same hours with o\vls and the Antipodes. He is a great observer of the Tartar cus- * Sir George Villiers's second wife was Mary, daughter of Antony Beaumont, Esq., of Glenfield, (Nichols's ' Leicestershire, iii. 193,) who was son of Wm. Beau- mont, Esq., of Cole -Orton. She afterwards was married successively to Sit \Vm. Rayner and Sir Thomas Compton, and was create . Countess of Bucking hm in 1618. Buckingham's Habits. 13 toms, and never eats till the great cham, having dined, makes proclamation that all the world may go to dinner. He does not dwell in his house, but haunts it like an evil spirit, that walks all night, to disturb the family, and never appears by day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time as men do their ways in the dark : and as blind men are led by their dogs, so he is governed by some mean servant or other that relates to his pleasures. He is as incon- stant as the moon which he lives under ; and although he does nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world. His mind entertains all things that come and go ; but like guests and strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long. This lays him open to all cheats, quacks, and impostors, who apply to every particular humour while it lasts, and afterwards vanish. He deforms nature, while he intends to adorn her, like Indians that hang jewels in their lips and noses. His ears are perpe- tually drilling with a fiddlestick, and endures pleasures with less patience than other men do their pains.' The more effectually to support his character as a mounte- bank, Villiers sold mithridate and galbanum plasters : thou- sands of spectators and customers thronged every day to see and hear him. Possibly many guessed that beneath all this fantastic exterior some ulterior project was concealed ; yet he remained untouched by the City Guards. Well did Dryden describe him : ' Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Beside ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Blest madman, who could every hour employ With something new to wish or to enjoy. ' His elder sister, Lady Mary Villiers, had married the Duke of Richmond, one of the loyal adherents of Charles I. The duke was, therefore, in durance at Windsor, whilst the duchess was to be placed under strict surveillance at Whitehall. Villiers resolved to see her. Hearing that she was to pass into Whitehall on a certain day, he set up his stage where she could not fail to perceive him. He had something important to say to her. As she drew near, he cried out to the mob that 14 Cromtvell's Saintly Daughter. he would give them a song on the Duchess of Richmond and the Duke of Buckingham : nothing could be more acceptable. ' The mob,' it is related, ' stopped the coach and the duchess . . . Nay, so outrageous were the mob, that they forced the duchess, who was then the handsomest woman in England, to sit in the boot of the coach, and to hear him sing all his imper- tinent songs. Having left off singing, he told them it was no more than reason that he should present the duchess with some of the songs. So he alighted from his stage, covered all over with papers and ridiculous little pictures. Having come to the coach, he took off a black piece of taffeta, which he always wore over one of his eyes, when his sister discovered imme- diately who he was, yet had so much presence of mind as not to give the least sign of mistrust ; nay, she gave him some very opprobrious language, but was very eager at snatching the papers he threw into her coach. Among them was a packet of letters, which she had no sooner got but she went forward, the duke, at the head of the mob, attending and hallooing her a good way out of the town.' A still more daring adventure was contemplated also by this young, irresistible duke. Bridget Cromwell, the eldest daughter of Oliver, was, at that time, a bride of twenty-six years of age ; having married, in 1647, the saintly Henry Ireton, Lord Deputy of Ireland. Bridget was the pattern heroine of the ' unco guidj the quintessence of all propriety ; the impersonation of sanctity ; an ultra republican, who scarcely accorded to her father the modest title of Protector. She was esteemed by her party a ' personage of sublime growth :' ' humbled, not exalted,' accord- ing to Mrs. Hutchinson, by her elevation : ' nevertheless,' says that excellent lady, ' as my Lady Ireton was walking in the St. James's Park, the Lady Lambert, as proud as her husband, came by where she was, and as the present princess always hath precedency of the relict of the dead, so she put by my Lady Ireton, who, notwithstanding her piety and humility, was a little grieved at the affront.' After this anecdote one cannot give much credence to this lady's humility : Bridget was, however, a woman of powerful intellect, weakened by her extreme, and, to use a now common VILLIERS IN DISGUISE THK MEETING WITH HIS SISTER. Villiers and tlie Rabbi, 1 5 term, crotchety opinions. Like most esprits forts, she was easily imposed upon. One day this paragon saw a mountebank dancing on a stage in the most exquisite style. His fine shape, too, caught the attention of one who assumed to be above all folly. It is sometimes fatal to one's peace to look out of a window; no one knows what sights may rivet or displease. Mistress Ireton was sitting at her window unconscious that any one with the hated and malignant name of 'Villiers' was before her. After some unholy admiration, she sent to speak to the mummer. The duke scarcely knew whether to trust himself in the power of the bloodthirsty Ireton's bride or not yet his courage his love of sport prevailed. He visited her that evening : no longer, however, in his jack-pudding coat, but in a rich suit, disguised with a cloak over it. He wore still a plaster over one eye, and was much disposed to take it off, but prudence for- bade ; and thus he stood in the presence of the prim and saintly Bridget Ireton. The particulars of the interview rest on his statement, and they must not, therefore, be accepted im- plicitly. Mistress Ireton is said to have made advances to the handsome incognito. What a triumph to a man like Villiers, to have intrigued with my Lord Protector's sanctified daughter ! But she inspired him with disgust. He saw in her the pre- sumption and hypocrisy of her father ; he hated her as Crom- well's daughter and Ireton's wife. He told her, therefore, that he was a Jew, and could not by his laws become the paramour of a Christian woman. The saintly Bridget stood amazed ; she had imprudently let him- into some of the most important secrets of her party. A Jew ! It was dreadful ! But how could a person of that persuasion be so strict, so strait-laced ? She probably entertained all the horror of Jews which the Puri- tanical party cherished as a virtue ; forgetting the lessons of toleration and liberality inculcated by Holy Writ. She sent, however, for a certain Jewish Rabbi to converse with the stranger. What was the Duke of Buckingham's surprise, on visiting her one evening, to see the learned doctor armed at all points with the Talmud, and thirsting for dispute, by the side of th saintly Bridget. He could noways meet such a body of controversy; but thought it best forthwith to set off for the 1 6 1 ne Buckingham Pictures and Estate. Downs. Before he departed he wrote, however, to Mistress Ireton, on the plea that she might wish to know to what tribe of Jews he belonged. So he sent her a note written with all his native wit and point* Buckingham now experienced all the miseries that a man of expensive pleasures with a sequestrated estate is likely to endure. One friend remained to watch over his interests in England. This was John Traylman, a servant of his late father's, who was left to guard the collection of pictures made by the late duke, and deposited in York House. That collec- tion was, in the opinion of competent judges, the third in point of value in England, being only inferior to those of Charles I. and the Earl of Arundel. It had been bought, with immense expense, partly by the duke's agents in Italy, the Mantua Gallery supplying a great portion partly in France partly in Flanders ; and to Flanders a great portion was destined now to return. Secretly and labo- riously did old Traylman pack up and send off these treasures to Antwerp, where now the gay youth whom the aged domestic had known from a child was in want and exile. The pictures were eagerly bought by a foreign collector named Duart. The proceeds gave poor Villiers bread; but the noble works of Titian and Leonardo da Vinci, and others, were lost for ever to England. It must have been very irritating to Villiers to know that whilst he just existed abroad, the great estates enjoyed by his father were being subjected to pillage by Cromwell's soldiers, or sold for pitiful sums by the Commissioners appointed by the Parliament to break up and annihilate many of the old pro- perties in England. Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the stately seat on which the first duke had lavished thousands, had been taken by the Roundheads. It was so large, and presented so long a line of buildings, that the Parliamentarians could not hold it without leaving in it a great garrison and stores of ammunition. It was therefore burnt, and the stables alone occupied; and those even were formed into a house of unusual size. York * This incident is taken from Madame Dunois' Memoirs, part i. \>. Sa. York House. 1 7 House was doubtless marked out for the next destructive decree. There was something in the very history of this house which might be supposed to excite the wrath of the Round- heads. Queen Mary (whom we must not, after Miss Strick- land's admirable life of her, call Bloody Queen Mary, but who will always be best known by that unpleasant title) had be- stowed York House on the See of York, as a compensation for York House, at Whitehall, which Henry VIII. had taken from Wolsey. It had afterwards come into possession of the Keepers of the Great Seal. Lord Bacon was born in York House, his father having lived there ; and the 'Greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,' built here an aviary which cost ^300. When the Duke of Lennox wished to buy York House, Bacon thus wrote to him : ' For this you will pardon me : York House is the house where my father died, and where I first breathed ; and there will I yield my last breath, if it so please God and the King.' It did not, however, please the King that he should ; the house was borrowed only by the first Duke of Buckingham from the Archbishop of York, and then exchanged for another seat, on the plea that the duke would want it for the reception of foreign potentates, and for entertainments given to royalty. The duke pulled it down : and the house, which was erected as a temporary structure, was so superb that even Pepys, twenty years after it had been left to bats and cob- webs, speaks of it in raptures, as of a place in which the great duke's soul was seen in every chamber. On the walls were shields on which the arms of Manners and of Villiers pea- cocks and lions were quartered. York House was never, however, finished ; but as the lover of old haunts enters Buckingham Street in the Strand, he will perceive an ancient water-gate, beautifully proportioned, built by Inigo Jones smoky, isolated, impaired but still speaking volumes of re- membrance of the glories of the assassinated duke, who had purposed to build the whole house in that style. ' Yorschaux] as he called it York House the French ambassador had written word to his friends at home, ' is the 2 1 8 Villiers Returns to England. most richly fitted up of any that I saw.' The galleries and state rooms were graced by the display of the Roman marbles, both busts and statues, which the first duke had bought from Rubens ; whilst in the gardens the Cain and Abel of John oi Bologna, given by Philip IV. of Spain to King Charles, ana by him bestowed on the elder George Villiers, made that fair pleasaunce famous. It was doomed as were what were called the ' superstitious ' pictures in the house to destruction : henceforth all was in decay and neglect. ' I went to see York House and gardens,' Evelyn writes in 1655, 'belonging to the former greate Buckingham, but now much ruined through neglect.' Traylman, doubtless, kept George Villiers the younger in full possession of all that was to happen to that deserted tene- ment in which the old man mourned for the departed, and thought of the absent. The intelligence which he had soon to communicate was all-important. York House was to be occupied again; and Cromwell and his coadjutors had bestowed it on Fairfax. The blow was perhaps softened by the reflection that Fairfax was a man of generous temper ; and that he had an only daughter, Mary Fairfax, young, and an heiress. Though the daughter of a Puritan, a sort of interest was attached, even by Cavaliers, to Mary Fairfax, from her having, at five years of age, followed her father through the civil wars on horseback, seated before a maid-servant; and having, on her journey, frequently fainted, she was so ill as to have been left in a house by the roadside, her father never expecting to see her again. In reference to this young girl, then about eighteen years of age, Buckingham now formed a plan. He resolved -to return to England disguised, to otfer his hand to Mary Fair- fax, and so recover his property through the influence of Fairfax. He was confident of his own attractions ; and, in- deed, from every account, he appears to have been one of those reckless, handsome, speculative characters that often take the fancy of better men than themselves. 'He had,' says Burnet. 'no sort of literature, only he was drawn into chv- Poor Mary Fairfax ! 19 rnistiy ; and for some years he thought he was very near the finding of the philosopher's stone, which had the effect that attends on all such men as he was, when they are drawn in, to lay out for it. He had no principles of religion, virtue, or friendship ; pleasure, frolic, or extravagant diversion, was all he laid to heart. He was true to nothing ; for he was not true to himself. He had no steadiness nor conduct ; he could keep no secret, nor execute any design without spoiling it ; he could never fix his thoughts, nor govern his estate, though then the greatest in England. He was bred about the king, and for many years he had a great ascendant over him ; but he spoke of him to all persons with that contempt, that at last he drew a lasting disgrace upon himself. And he at length ruined both body and mind, fortune and reputation, equally.' This was a sad prospect for poor Mary Fairfax, but certainly if in their choice ' Weak women go astray, Their stars are more in fault than they, 1 and she was less to blame in her choice than her father, who ought to have advised her against the marriage. Where and how they met is not known. Mary was not attractive in person : she was in her youth little, brown, and thin, but became a ' short fat body,' as De Grammont tells us, in her early married life ; in the later period of her existence she was described by the Vicomtesse de Longueville as a ' little round crumpled woman, very fond of finer)* ;' and she adds that, on visiting the duchess one day, she found her, though in mourn- ing, in a kind of loose robe over her, all edged and laced with gold. So much for a Puritan's daughter ! To this insipid personage the duke presented himself. She sooa liked him, and in spite of his outrageous infidelities, con- tinued to like him after their marriage. He carried his point : Mary Fairfax became his wife on the 6th of September, 1675, and, by the influence of Fairfax, his estate, or, at all events, a portion of the revenues, about ^4,000 a year, it is said, were restored to him. Nevertheless, it is mortifying to find that in 1682, he sold York House, in which his father had taken such pride, for .30,000. The 2O Villiers in t/ie Tower. house was pulled down ; streets were erected on the gardens : George Street, Villiers Street, Duke Street. Buckingham Street, Off Alley recall the name of the ill-starred George, first duke, and of his needy, profligate son ; but the only trace of the real greatness of the family importance thus swept away is in the motto inscribed on the point of old Inigo's water-gate, towards the street : l Fidd coticula crux} It is sad for all good royalists to reflect that it was not the rabid Roundhead, but a degenerate Cavalier, who sold and thus destroyed York House. The marriage with Mary Fairfax, though one of interest solely, was not a mesalliance: her father was connected by the female side with the Earls of Rutland ; he was also a man of a generous spirit, as he had shown, in handing over to the Countess of Derby the rents of the Isle of Man, which had been granted to him by the Parliament. In a similar spirit he was not sorry to restore York House to the Duke of Buckingham. Cromwell, however, was highly exasperated by the nuptials between Mary Fairfax and Villiers, which took place at Nun- Appleton, near York, one of Fairfax's estates. The Protector had, it is said, intended Villiers for one of his own daughters. Upon what plea he acted it is not stated : he committed Villiers to the Tower, where he remained until the death of Oliver, and the accession of Richard Cromwell. In vain did Fairfax solicit his release : Cromwell refused it, and Villiers remained in durance until the abdication of Richard Cromwell, when he was set at liberty, but not without the following conditions, dated February 2ist, 1658 9 : 'The humble petition of George Duke of Buckingham was this day read. Resolved that George Duke of Buckingham, now prisoner at Windsor Castle, upon his engagement upon his honour at the bar of this House, and upon the engage- ment of Lord Fairfax in ^"20,000 that the said duke shall peaceably demain himself for the future, and shall not join with, or abet, or have any correspondence with, any of the enemies of the Lord Protector, and of this Commonwealth, in any of the parts beyond the sea, or within this Common- \vealth, shall be discharged of his imprisonment and restraint ; A braJiam Cowlcy, the Poet. 2 1 and that the Governor of Windsor Castle be required to bring the Duke of Buckingham to the bar of this House on Wednesday next, to engage his honour accordingly. Ordered; that the security of ^"20,000 to be given by the Lord Fairfax, on the behalf of the Duke of Buckingham, be taken in the name of His Highness the Lord Protector.' During his incarceration at Windsor, Buckingham had a companion, of whom many a better man might have been envious : this was Abraham Cowley, an old college friend of the duke's. Cowley was the son of a grocer, and owed his entrance into academic life to having been a King's Scholar at Westminster. One day he happened to take up from his mother's parlour window a copy of Spenser's ' Faerie Queene.' He eagerly perused the delightful volume, though he was then only twelve years old : and this impulse being given to his mind, became at fifteen a reciter of verses. His ' Poetical Blossoms,' published whilst he was still at school, gave, how- ever, no foretaste of his future eminence. He proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his friendship with Villiers was formed ; and where, perhaps, from that circumstance, Cowley's predilections for the cause of the Stuarts was ripened into loyalty. No two characters could be more dissimilar than those of Abraham Cowley and George Villiers. Cowley was quiet, modest, sober, of a thoughtful, philosophical turn, and of an affectionate nature ; neither boasting of his own merits nor depreciating others. He was the friend of Lucius Gary, Lord Falkland ; and yet he loved, though he must have condemned, George Villiers. It is not unlikely that, whilst Cowley im- parted his love of poetry to Villiers, Villiers may have inspired the pensive and blameless poet with a love of that display of wit then in vogue, and heightened that sense of humour which speaks forth in some of Cowley's productions. Few authors suggest so many new thoughts, really his own, as Cowley. ' His works,' it has been said, ' are a flower-garden run to weeds, but the flowers are numerous and brilliant, and a search after them will repay the pains of a collector who is not too indolent or fastidious.' 22 The Greatest Ornament of Whitehall. As Cowley and his friend passed the weary hours in durance, many an old tale could the poet tell the peer of stirring times ; for Cowley had accompanied Charles I. in many a perilous journey, and had protected Queen Henrietta Maria in her escape to France : through Cowley had the cor- respondence of the royal pair, when separated, been carried on. The poet had before suffered imprisonment for his loyalty; and, to disguise his actual occupation, had obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and assumed the character of a physician, on the strength of knowing the virtues of a few plants. Many a laugh, doubtless, had Buckingham at the expense of Dr. Cowley : however, in later days, the duke proved a true friend to the poet, in helping to procure for him the lease of a farm at Chertsey from the queen, and here Cowley, rich upon 300 a year, ended his days. For some time after Buckingham's release, he lived quietly and respectably at Nun-Appleton, with General Fairfax and the vapid Mary. But the Restoration the first dawnings of which have been referred to in the commencement of this biography ruined him, body and mind. He was made a Lord of the Bedchamber, a Member of the Privy Council, and afterwards Master of the Horse,* and Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire. He lived in great magnificence at Wallingford House, a tenement next to York House, intended to be the habitable and useful appendage to that palace. He was henceforth, until he proved treacherous to his sove- reign, the brightest ornament of Whitehall. Beauty of person was hereditary : his father was styled the ' handsomest-bodied man in England,' and George Villiers the younger equalled George Villiers the elder in all personal accomplishments. When he entered the Presence-Chamber all eyes followed hin; every movement was graceful and stately. Sir John Reresby pronounced him ' to be the finest gentleman he ever saw.' ' He was born,' Madame Dunois declared, ' for gallantry and magnificence.' His wit was faultless, but his manners engaging ; yet his sallies often descended into buffoonery, and * The duke became Master of the Horse in 1688 : he paid /.ao.ooo to the Albemarle for the post. Buckingham s Wrt and Beauty. 23 he spared no one in his merry moods. One evening a play of Dryden's was represented. An actress had to spout forth this line ' My wound is great because it is so small !' She gave it out with pathos, paused, and was theatrically dis- tressed. Buckingham was seated in one of the boxes. He rose, all eyes were fixed upon a face well known in all gay assemblies, in a tone of burlesque he answered ' Then 'twould be greater were it none at all.' Instantly the audience laughed at the Duke's tone of ridicule, and the poor woman was hissed off the stage. The king himself did not escape Buckingham's shafts ; whilst Lord Chancellor Clarendon fell a victim to his ridicule : nothing could withstand it. There, not in that iniquitous gal- lery at Whitehall, but in the king's privy chambers, Villiers might be seen, in all the radiance of his matured beauty. His face was long and oval, with sleepy, yet glistening eyes, over which large arched eyebrows seemed to contract a brow on which the curls of a massive wig (which fell almost to his shoulders) hung low. His nose was long, well formed, and flexible ; his lips thin and compressed, and defined, as the cus- tom was, by two very short, fine, black patches of hair, looking more like strips of sticking-plaster than a moustache. As he made his reverence, his rich robes fell over a faultless form. He was a beau to the very fold of the cambric band round his throat; with long ends of the richest, closest point that was ever rummaged out from a foreign nunnery to be placed on the person of this sacrilegious sinner. Behold, now, how he changes. Villiers is Villiers no longer. He is Clarendon, walking solemnly to the Court of the Star Chamber : a pair of bellows is hanging before him for the purse ; Colonel Titus is walking with a fire shovel on his shoulder, to represent a mace ; the king, himself a capital mimic, is splitting his sides with laughter ; the courtiers are fairly in a roar. Then how he was wont to divert the king with his descriptions ! ' Ipswich, for instance,' he said, ' was a town without inhabitants a river it had without water 24 Flecknoes Opinion of Him. streets without names; and it was a place where asses wore boots :' alluding to the asses, when employed in rolling Lord Hereford's bowling-green, having boots on their feet to prevent their injuring the turf. Flecknoe, the poet, describes the duke at this period, in ' Euterpe Revived' The gallant'st person, and the noblest minde, In all the world his prince could ever finde, Or to participate his private cares, Or bear the public weight of his affairs, Like well-built arches, stronger with their weight, And well-built minds, the steadier with their height ; Such was the composition and frame O' the noble and the gallant Buckingham.' The praise, however, even in the duke's best days, was over- charged. Villiers was no ' well-built arch,' nor could Charles trust to the fidelity of one so versatile for an hour. Besides, the moral character of Villiers must have prevented him, even in those days, from bearing ' the public weight of affairs." A scandalous intrigue soon proved the unsoundness of Fleck- noe's tribute. Amongst the most licentious beauties of the court was Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, the daughter of Robert Brudenel, Earl of Cardigan, and the wife of Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury : amongst many shameless women she was the most shameless, and her face seems to have well expressed her mind. In the round, fair visage, with its languishing eyes, and full, pouting mouth, there is something voluptuous and bold. The forehead is broad, but low; and the wavy hair, with its tendril curls, comes down almost to the fine arched eyebrows, and then, falling into masses, sets off white shoulders which seem to designate an inelegant amount of embonpoint. There is nothing elevated in the whole countenance, as Lely has painted her, and her history is a disgrace to her age and time. She had numerous lovers (not in the refined sense of the word), and, at last, took up with Thomas Killigrew. He had been, like Villiers, a royalist : first a page to Charles I., next a companion of Charles II., in exile. He married the fair Cecilia Croft ; yet his morals were so vicious that even in the Court of Venice to which he was accredited, in order to borrow His Duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury. 2jj money from the merchants of that city, he was too profligate to remain. He came back with Charles II., and was Master of the Revels, or King's Jester, as the court considered him, though without any regular appointment, during his life : the butt, at once, and the satirist of Whitehall. It was Killigrew's wit and descriptive powers which, when heightened by wine, were inconceivably great, that induced Villiers to select Lady Shrewsbury for the object of his admi- ration. When Killigrew perceived that he was supplanted by Villiers, he became frantic with rage, and poured out the bit- terest invectives against the countess. The result was that, one night, returning from the Duke of York's apartments at St. James's, three passes with a sword were made at him through his chair, and one of them pierced his arm. This, and other occurrences, at last aroused the attention of Lord Shrewsbury, who had hitherto never doubted his wife : he challenged the Duke of Buckingham ; and his infamous wife, it is said, held her paramour's horse, disguised as a page. Lord Shrewsbury was killed,* and the scandalous intimacy went on as before. No one but the queen, no one but the Duchess of Buckingham, appeared shocked at this tragedy, and no one minded their remarks, or joined in their indignation : all moral sense was suspended, or wholly stifled ; and Villiers gloried in his de- pravity, more witty, more amusing, more fashionable than ever ; and yet he seems, by the best-known and most extolled of his poems, to have had some conception of what a real and worthy attachment might be. The following verses are to his ' Mistress' : ' What a dull fool was I To think so gross a lie, As that I ever was in love before ! I have, perhaps, known one or two, With whom I was content to be At that which they call keeping company. But after all that they could do, 1 still could be with more. Their absence never made me shed a tear ; And I can truly swear, That, till my eyes first gazed on you, I ne'er beheld the thing I could adore. * The duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury took place I7th January, 1667-8. 26 Villiers as a Poet. ' A world of things must curiously be sought : A world of things must be together brought To make up charms which have the power to move. Through a discerning eye, true love ; That is a maspr-piece above What only looks and shape can do ; There must be wit and judgment too, Greatness of thought, and worth, which draw. From the whole world, respect and awe. ' She that would raise a noble love must find Ways to beget a passion for her mind ; She must be that which she to be would seem, For all true love is grounded on esteem : Plainness and truth gain more a generous heart Than all the crooked subtleties of art. She must be what said I ? she must be you : None but yourself that miracle can do. At least, I'm sure, thus much I plainly see, None but yourself e'er did it upon me. 'Tis you alone that can my heart subdue, To you alone it always shall be true.' The next lines are also remarkable for the delicacy and happy turn of the expressions 1 Though Phillis, from prevailing charms, Have forc'd my Delia from my arms, Think not your conquest to maintain By rigour or unjust disdain. In vain, fair nymph, in vain you strive, For Love doth seldom Hope survive. My heart may languish for a time, As all beauties in their prime Have justified such cruelty, By the same fate that conquered me. When age shall come, at whose command Those troops of beauty must disband A rival's strength once took away, What slave's so dull as to obey ? But if you'll learn a noble way To keep his empire from decay, And there for ever fix your throne, Be kind, but kind to me alone. ' Like his father, who ruined himself by building, Villiers had a monomania for bricks and mortar, yet he found time to write ' The Rehearsal,' a play on which Mr. Reed in his ' Dramatic Biography' makes the following observation : ' It is so perfect a masterpiece in its way, and so truly original, that notwithstanding its prodigious success, even the task of imita- tion, which most kinds of excellence have invited inferior ge niuses to undertake, has appeared as too arduous to be attempted with regard to this, which through a whole century A fearful Censure. 2" stands alone, notwithstanding that the very plays it was written expressly to ridicule are forgotten, and the taste it was meant to expose totally exploded.' The reverses of fortune which brought George Villiers to abject misery were therefore, in a very great measure, due to his own misconduct, his depravity, his waste of life, his per- version of noble mental powers : yet in many respects he was in advance of his age. He advocated, in the House of Lords, toleration to Dissenters. He wrote a ' Short Discourse on the Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion, or Worship of God ;' yet, such was his inconsistency, that in spite of these works, and of one styled a ' Demonstration of the Deity,' writ- ten a short time before his death, he assisted Lord Rochester in his atheistic poem upon ' Nothing.' Butler, the author of Hudibras, too truly said of Villiers ' that he had studied the whole body of vice? a most fearful cen- sure a most significant description of a bad man. ' His parts,' he adds, ' are disproportionate to the whole, and like a monster, he has more of some, and less of others, than he should have. He has pulled down all that nature raised in him, and built himself up again after a model of his own. He has dammed up all those lights that nature made into the noblest prospects of the world, and opened other little blind loopholes backward by turning day into night, and night into day.' The satiety and consequent misery produced by this terrible life are ably described by Butler. And it was perhaps partly this wearied, worn-out spirit that caused Villiers to rush madly into politics for excitement. In 1666 he asked for the office of Lord President of the North ; it was refused : he became disaffected, raised mutinies, and, at last, excited the indigna- tion of his too-indulgent sovereign. Charles dismissed him from his office, after keeping him for some time in confinement. After this epoch little is heard of Buckingham but what is dis- graceful. He was again restored to Whitehall, and, according to Pepys, even closeted with Charles, whilst the Duke of York was excluded. A certain acquaintance of the duke's remon- strated with him upon the course which Charles now took in Parliament. ' How often have you said to me,' this person re- 23 Villiers's Influence in Parliament. marked, ' that the king was a weak man, unable to govern, but to be governed, and that you could command him as you liked ? Why do you suffer him to do these things?' ' Why,' answered the duke, ' I do suffer him to do these things, that I may hereafter the better command him.' A reply which betrays the most depraved principle of action, whether towards a sovereign or a friend, that can be expressed. His influence was for some time supreme, yet he became the leader of the opposition, and invited to his table the discontented peers, to whom he satirized the court, and condemned the king's want of attention to business. Whilst the theatre was ringing with laughter at the inimitable character of Bayes in the ' Rehearsal,' the House of Lords was listening with profound attention to the eloquence that entranced their faculties, making wrong seem right, for Buckingham was ever heard with attention. Taking into account his mode of existence, ' which,' says Clarendon, ' was a life by night more than by day, in all the liberties that nature could desire and wit invent,' it was aston- ishing how extensive an influence he had in both Houses of Parliament. ' His rank and condescension, the pleasantness of his humours and conversation, and the extravagance and keen- ness of his wit, unrestrained by modesty or religion, caused persons of all opinions and dispositions to be fond of his com- pany, and to imagine that these levities and vanities would wear off with age, and that there would be enough of good left to make him useful to his country, for which he pretended a won- derful affection.' But this brilliant career was soon checked. The varnish over the hollow character of this extraordinary man was eventually rubbed off. We find the first hint of that famous coalition styled the Cabal in Pepys's Diary, and henceforth the duke must be regarded as a ruined man. ' He' (Sir H. Cholmly) tells me that the Duke of Bucking- ham his crimes, as far as he knows, are his being of a cabal with some discontented persons of the late House of Commons, and opposing the desires of the king in all his matters in that House ; and endeavouring to become popular, and advising how the Commons' House should proceed, and how he would A Scene in the Lords. 29 order the House of Lords. And he hath been endeavouring to have the king's nativity calculated ; which was done, and the fellow now in the Tower about it. ... This silly lord hath provoked, by his ill carriage, the Duke of York, my Lord Chancellor, and all the great persons, and therefore most likely will die.' One day, in the House of Lords, during a conference be- tween the two Houses, Buckingham leaned rudely over the shoulder of Henry Pierrepont Marquis of Dorchester. Lord Dorchester merely removed his elbow. Then the duke asked him if he was uneasy. ' Yes,' the marquis replied, adding, ' the duke dared not do this if he were anywhere else.' Buckingham retorted, ' Yes, he would : and he was a better man than my lord marquis :' on which Dorchester told him that he lied. On this Buckingham struck off Dorchester's hat, seized him by the periwig, pulled it aside, and held him. The Lord Chamberlain and others interposed and sent them both to the Tower. Ne- vertheless, not a month afterwards, Pepys speaks of seeing the duke's play of ' The Chances' acted at Whitehall. ' A good play,' he condescends to say, ' I find it, and the actors most good in it ; and pretty to hear Knipp sing in the play very pro- perly " All night I weepe," and sung it admirably. The whole play pleases me well : and most of all, the sight of many fine ladies, amongst others, my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Mid- dleton.' The whole management of public affairs was, at this period, intrusted to five persons, and hence the famous combination, the united letters of which formed the word 'Cabal :' Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Their repre- hensible schemes, their desperate characters, rendered them the opprobrium of their age, and the objects of censure to all pos- terity. Whilst matters were in this state a daring outrage, which spoke fearfully of the lawless state of the times, was ascribed, though wrongly, to Buckingham. The Duke of Ormond, the object of his inveterate hatred, was at that time Lord Lieu- tenant of Ireland. Colonel Blood, a disaffected disbanded officer of the Commonwealth, who had been attainted for a conspiracy in Ireland, but had escaped punishment, came 10 30 The Duk of Ormond in Danger. England, and acted as a spy for the ' Cabal,' who did not hesi- tate to countenance this daring scoundrel. His first exploit was to attack the Duke of Ormond's coach one night in St. James's Street : to secure his person, bind him, put him on horseback after one of his accomplices, and carry him to Tyburn, where he meant to hang his grace. On their way, however, Ormond, by a violent effort, threw himself on the ground ; a scuffle ensued : the duke's servants came up, and after receiving the fire of Blood's pistols, the duke escaped. Lord Ossory, the Duke of Ormond's son, on going afterward to court, met Buckingham, and addressed him in these words : ' My lord, I know well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt on my father ; but I give you warning, if he by any means come to a violent end, I shall not be at a loss to know the author. I shall consider you as an assassin, and shall treat you as such ; and wherever I meet you I shall pistol you, though you stood behind the king's chair ; and I tell it you in his majesty's presence, that you may be sure I shall not fail of performance.' Blood's next feat was to carry off from the Tower the crown jewels. He was overtaken and arrested : and was then asked to name his accomplices. ' No,' he replied, ' the fear of danger shall never tempt me to deny guilt or to betray a friend. Charles II., with undignified curiosity, wished to see the culprit. On inquiring of Blood how he dared to make so bold an at- tempt on the crown, the bravo answered, ' My father lost a good estate fighting for the crown, and I considered it no harm to recover it by the crown.' He then told his majesty how he had resolved to assassinate him : how he had stood among the reeds in Battersea-fields with this design ; how then, a sudden awe had come over him : and Charles was weak enough to admire Blood's fearless bearing and to pardon his attempt. Well might the Earl of Rochester write of Charles 1 Here lies my sovereign lord the king, Whose word no man relies on ; Who never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one.' Notwithstanding Blood's outrages the slightest penalty foi Walling ford House, and Ham House. 3 1 which in our days would have been penal servitude for life Evelyn met him, not long afterwards, at Lord Clifford's, at dinner, when De Grammont and other French noblemen were entertained. ' The man,' says Evelyn, ' had not only a daring, but a villanous, unmerciful look, a false countenance ; but very well-spoken, and dangerously insinuating.' Early in 1662, the Duke of Buckingham had been engaged in practices against the court : he had disguised deep designs by affecting the mere man of pleasure. Never was there such splendour as at Wallingford House such wit and gallantry ; such perfect good breeding ; such apparently openhanded hos- pitality. At those splendid banquets, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ' a man whom the Muses were fond to inspire, but ashamed to avow,' showed his ' beautiful face,' as it was called ; and chimed in with that wit for which the age was famous. The frequenters at Wallingford House gloried in their indeli- cacy. ' One is amazed,' Horace Walpole observes, ' at hearing the age of Charles II. called polite. The Puritans have af- fected to call everything by a Scripture' name ; the new comers affected to call everything by its right name ; ' As if preposterously they would confess A forced hypocrisy in wickedness.' Walpole compares the age of Charles II. to that of Aristo- phanes ' which called its own grossness polite.' How bitterly he decries the stale poems of the time as ' a heap of senseless ribaldry ;' how truly he shows that licentiousness weakens as well as depraves the judgment. ' When Satyrs are brought to court,' he observes, ' no wonder the Graces would not trust themselves there.' The Cabal is said, however, to have been concocted, not at Wallingford House, but at Ham House, near Kingston-on- Thames. In this stately old manor-house, the abode of the Tollemache family, the memory of Charles II. and of his court seems to linger still. Ham House was intended for the residence of Henry, Prince of Wales, and was built in 1610. It stands near the river Thames ; and is flanked by noble avenues of elm and of chestnut trees, down which one may almost, as it were, hear 32 ' Madame Ellen' the king's talk with his courtiers ; see Arlington approach with the well-known patch across his nose ; or spy out the lovely, childish Miss Stuart and her future husband, the Duke of Richmond, slipping behind into the garden, lest the jealous mortified king should catch a sight of the ' conscious lovers.' This stately structure was given by Charles II., in 1672, to the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale : she, the supposed mis- tress of Cromwell ; he, the cruel, hateful Lauderdale of the Cabal. This detestable couple, however, furnished with massive grandeur the apartments of Ham House. They had the ceil- ings painted by Verrio ; the furniture was rich, and even now the bellows and brushes in some of the rooms are of silver fili- gree. One room is furnished with yellow damask, still rich, though faded ; the very seats on which Charles, looking around him, saw Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (the infamous Shaftesbury), and Lauderdale and knew not, good easy man, that he was looking on a band of traitors are still there. Nay, he even sat to Sir Peter Lely for a portrait for this very place in which, schemes for the ruin of the kingdom were concocted. All, probably, was smooth and pleasing to the monarch as he ranged down the fine gallery, ninety-two feet long ; or sat at dinner amid his foes in that hall, surrounded with an open balustrade ; or disported himself on the river's green brink. Nay, one may even fancy Nell Gwynn taking a day's pleasure in this then lone and ever sweet locality. We hear her swearing, as she was wont to do, perchance at the dim looking-glasses, her own house in Pall Mall, given her by the king, having been filled up, for the comedian, entirely, ceiling and all, with looking-glass. How bold and pretty she looked in her undress ! Even Pepys no very sound moralist, though a vast hypocrite tells us : Nelly, 'all unready' was 'very pretty, prettier far than he thought.' But to see how she was ' painted,' would, he thought, ' make a man mad.' ' Madame Ellen,' as after her elevation, as it was termed, she was called, might, since she held long a great sway over Charles's fancy, be suffered to scamper about Ham House where her merry laugh perhaps scandalised the now Saintly Duchess of Lauderdale, just to impose on the world ; for Nell TJie Cabal. 33 was regarded as the Protestant champion of the court, in oppo- sition to her French rival, the Duchess of Portsmouth. Let us suppose that she has been at Ham House, and is gone off to Pall Mall again, where she can see her painted face in every turn. The king has departed, and Killigrew, who, at alt events, is loyal, and the true-hearted Duke of Richmond, all are away to London. In yon sanctimonious-looking closet, next to the duchess's bed-chamber, with her psalter and her prayer-book on her desk, which is fixed to her great chair, and that very cane which still hangs there serving as her support when she comes forth from that closet, murmur and wrangle the component parts of that which was never mentioned without fear the Cabal. The conspirators dare not trust themselves in the gallery : there is tapestry there, and we all know what coverts there are for eaves-droppers and spiders in tapestried walls : then the great Cardinal spiders do so click there, are so like the death-watch, that Villiers, who is inveterately supersti- tious, will not abide there. The hall, with its enclosing galleries, and the buttery near, are manifestly unsafe. So they heard, nay crouch, mutter, and concoct that fearful treachery which, as far as their country is concerned, has been a thing apart in our annals, in ' my Lady's' closet. Englishmen are turbulent, ambitious, unscrupulous ; but the craft of Maitland, Duke ot Lauderdale the subtlety of Ashley, seem hardly conceivable either in a Scot or Southron. These meetings had their natural consequence. One leaves Lauderdale, Arlington, Ashley, and Clifford, to their fate. But the career of Villiers inspires more interest. He seemed born for better things. Like many men of genius, he was so credu- lous that the faith he pinned on one Heydon, an astrologer, at this time, perhaps buoyed him up with false hopes. Be it as it may, his plots now tended to open insurrection. In 1666, a proclamation had been issued for his apprehension he hav- ing then absconded. On this occasion he was saved by the act of one whom he had injured grossly his wife. She ma- naged to outride the serjeant-at-arms, and to warn him of his danger. She had borne his infidelities, after the fashion of the day, as a matter of course : jealousy was then an impertinence 3 34 Villiers again in the Toiver. constancy, a chimera ; and her husband, whatever his con- duct, had ever treated her with kindness of manner ; he had that charm, that attribute of his family, in perfection, and it had fascinated Mary Fairfax. He fled, and played for a year successfully the pranks of his youth. At last, worn out, he talked of giving himself up to justice. ' Mr. Fenn, at the table, says that he hath been taken by the watch two or three times of late, at unseasonable hours, but so disguised they did not know him ; and when I come home, by and by, Mr. Lowther tells me that the Duke of Buckingham do dine publickly this day at Wadlow's, at the Sun Tavern ; and is mighty merry, and sent word to the Lieutenant of the Tower, that he would come to him as soon as he dined.' So Pepys states. Whilst in the Tower to which he was again committed Buckingham's pardon was solicited by Lady Castlemaine ; on which account the king was very angry with her ; called her a meddling 'jade;' she calling him ' fool,' and saying if he was not a fool he never would suffer his best subjects to be impri- soned referring to Buckingham. And not only did she ask his liberty, but the restitution of his places. No wonder there was discontent when such things were done, and public affairs were in such a state. We must again quote the graphic, terse language of Pepys : ' It was computed that the Parliament had given the king for this war only, besides all prizes, and besides the ^200,000 which he was to spend of his own re- venue, to guard the sea, above ^5,000,000, and odd ^100,000; which is a most prodigious sum. Sir H. Cholmly, as a true English gentleman, do decry the king's expenses of his privy purse, which in King James's time did not rise to above ^5,000 a year, and in King Charles's to ^10,000, do now cost us above ^100,000, besides the great charge oi the monarchy, as the Duke of York has ;i 00,000 of it, and other limbs of the royal family.' In consequence of Lady Castlemaine's intervention, Villiers was restored to liberty a strange instance, as Pepys remarks, of the ' fool's play' of the age. Buckingham was now as pre- suming as ever : he had a theatre of his own, and he soon A Change. 35 showed his usual arrogance by beating Henry Killigrew on the stage, and taking away his coat and sword ; all very ' inno- cently' done, according to Pepys. In July he appeared in his place in the House of Lords, as ' brisk as ever,' and sat in his robes, ' which,' says Pepys, ' is a monstrous thing that a man should be proclaimed against, and put in the Tower, and re- leased without any trial, and yet not restored to his places.' We next find the duke intrusted with a mission to France, in concert with Halifax and Arlington. In the year 1680, he was threatened with an impeachment, in which, with his usual skill, he managed to exculpate himself by blaming Lord Arling- ton. The House of Commons passed a vote for his removal ; and he entered the ranks of the opposition. But this career of public meanness and private profligacy was drawing to a close. Alcibiades no longer his frame wasted by vice his spirits broken by pecuniary difficulties Buckingham's importance visibly sank away. ' He remained, at last,' to borrow the words of Hume, ' as incapable of doing hurt as he had ever been little desirous of doing good to man- kind.' His fortune had now dwindled down to 300 a year in land ; he sold Wallingford House, and removed into the City. And now the fruits of his adversity, not, we hope, too late, began to appear. Like Lord Rochester, who had ordered all his immoral works to be burnt, Buckingham now wished to retrieve the past. In 1685 he wrote the religious works which form so striking a contrast with his other productions. That he had been up to the very time of his ruin perfectly impervious to remorse, dead also to shame, is amply mani- fested by his conduct soon after his duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury. Sir George Etherege had brought out a new play at the Duke of York's Theatre. It was called, ' She Would if she Could.' Plays in those days began at what we now consider our luncheon hour. Though Pepys arrived at the theatre on this occasion at two o'clock his wife having gone before about a thousand people had then been put back from the pit. At last, seeing his wife in the eighteen-penny-box, Samuel ' made 3(5 The Duke of York's Theatre. shift' to get there and there saw, ' but .lord !' (his own words are inimitable) ' how dull, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good in it, and few people pleased in it. The king was there ; but I sat mightily behind, and could see but little, and hear not at all. The play being done, I went into the pit to look for my wife, it being dark and raining, but could not find her ; and so staid, going between the two doors and through the pit an hour and a half, I think, after the play was done ; the people staying there till the rain was over, and to talk to one another. And among the rest, here was the Duke of Buckingham to-day openly in the pit ; and there I found him with my Lord Buckhurst, and Sedley, and Etheridge the poet, the last of whom I did hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they were out of humour, and had not their parts perfect, and that Harris did do nothing, nor could so much as sing a ketch in it ; and so was mightily concerned, while all the rest did, through the whole pit, blame the play as a silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish aud witty ; but the design of the play, and end, mighty insipid." Buckingham had held out to his Puritan friends the hope of his conversion for some years ; and when they attempted to convert him, he had appointed a time for them to finish their work. They kept their promise, and discovered him in the most profligate society. It was indeed impossible to know in what directions his fancies might take him, when we find him be- lieving in the predictions of a poor fellow in a wretched lodg- ing near Tower Hill, who, having cast his nativity, assured the duke he would be king. He had continued for years to live with the Countess of Shrewsbury, and two months after her husband's death, had taken her to his home. Then, at last, the Duchess of Buck- ingham indignantly observed, that she and the countess could not possibly live together. ' So I thought, madam,' was the reply. ' I have therefore ordered your coach to take you to your father's.' It has been asserted that Dr. Sprat, the duke's chaplain, actually married him to Lady Shrewsbury, and that his legal wife was thenceforth styled ' The Duchess-dowager.' He retreated with his mistress to Claverdon, near Windsor, Buckingham and tlie Princess of Orange. 37 situated on the summit of a hill which is washed by the Thames. It is a noble building, with a great terrace in front, under which are twenty-six niches, in which Buckingham had intended to place twenty-six statues as large as life; and in the middle is an alcove with stairs. Here he lived with the in- famous countess, by whom he had a son, whom he styled Earl of Coventry, (his second title,) and who died an infant. One lingers still over the social career of one whom Louis XIV. called ' the only English gentleman he had ever seen.' A capital retort was made to Buckingham by the Princess of Orange, during an interview, when he stopped at the Hague, between her and the Duke. He was trying diplomatically to convince her of the affection of England for the States. ' We do not,' he said, ' use Holland like a mistress, we love her as a wife.' ' Vraiment je crois que vous nous aimez comme vous aimez la vdtre] was the sharp and clever answer. On the death of Charles II., in 1685, Buckingham retired to the small remnant of his Yorkshire estates. His debts were now set down at the sum of ;i 40,000. They were liquidated by the sale of his estates. He took kindly to a country life, to the surprise of his old comrade in pleasure, Etherege. 'I have heard the news,' that wit cried, alluding to this change, ' with no less astonishment than if I had been told that the Pope had begun to wear a periwig and had turned beau in the seventy-fourth year of his age !' Father Petre and Father Fitzgerald were sent by James II. to convert the duke to Popery. The following anecdote is told of their conference with the dying sinner: 'We deny,' said the Jesuit Petre, ' that any one can be saved out of our Church. Your grace allows that our people may be saved.' * No,' said the duke, ' I make no doubt you will all be damned to a man !' ' Sir,' said the father, ' I cannot argue with a person so void of all charity.' ' I did not expect, my reve- rend father,' said the duke, 'such a reproach from you, whose whole reasoning was founded on the very same instance of want of charity to yourself.' Buckingham's death took place at Helmsby, in Yorkshire, and the immediate cause was an ague and fever, owing to 38 His last Hours. having sat down on the wet grass after fox-hunting. Pope has given the following forcible, but inaccurate account of his last hours, and the place in which they were passed : ' In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, The floors of plaster and the walls of dung, On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw, With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw ; The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies : alas ! how changed from him. That life of pleasure and that soul of whim ! Gallant and gay, in Claverdon's proud alcove. The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love . Or, just as gay, at council in a ring Of mimic'd statesmen and their merry King. No wit to flatter left of all his store, No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, Then victor of his health, of fortune, friends. And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends." Far from expiring in the 'worst inn's worst room,' the duke breathed his last in Kirby Moorside, in a house which had once been the best in the place. Brian Fairfax, who loved this brilliant reprobate, has left the only authentic account on record of his last hours. The night previous to the duke's death Fairfax had received a message from him desiring him to prepare a bed for him in his house, Bishop Hill, in York. The next day, however, Fairfax was sent for to his master, whom he found dying. He was speechless, but gave the afflicted servant an earnest look of recognition. The Earl of Arran, son of the Duke of Hamilton, and a gentleman of the neighbourhood, stood by his bedside. He had then received the Holy Communion from a neighbouring clergyman of the Established Church. When the minister came it is said that he inquired of the duke what religion he professed. ' It is,' replied the dying man, ' an insignificant question, for I have been a shame and a disgrace to all religions : if you can can do me any good, pray do.' When a Popish priest had been mentioned to him, he answered vehemently, ' No, no !' He was in a very low state when Lord Arran had found him. But though that nobleman saw death in his looks, the His Death. 39 duke said he 'felt so well at heart that he knew he could be in no danger.' He appeared to have had inflammation in the bowels, which ended in mortification. He begged of Lord Arran to stay with him. The house seems to have been in a most miserable condition, for in a letter from Lord Arran to Dr. Sprat, he says, ' I confess it made my heart bleed to see the Duke of Buckingham in so pitiful a place, and so bad a condition, and what made it worse, he was not at all sensible of it, for he thought in a day or two he should be well ; and when we reminded him of his condition, he said it was not as we ap- prehended. So I sent for a worthy gentleman, Mr. Gibson, to be assistant to me in this work; so we jointly represented his condition to him, who I saw was at first very uneasy ; but I think we should not have discharged the duties of honest men if we had suffered him to go out of this world without desiring him to prepare for death.' The duke joined heartily in the beautiful prayers for the dying, of our Church, and yet there was a sort of selfishness and indifference to others manifest even at the last. 'Mr. Gibson,' writes Lord Arran, 'asked him if he had made a will, or if he would declare who was to be his heir ? but to the first, he answered he had made none ; and to the last, whoever was named he answered, " No." First, my lady duchess was named, and then I think almost everybody that had any relation to him, but his answer always was, "No."' I did fully represent my lady duchess' condition to him, but nothing that was said to him could make him come to any point.' In this ' retired corner,' as Lord Arran terms it, did the former wit and beau, the once brave and fine cavalier, the reckless plotter in after-life, end his existence. His body was removed to Helmsby Castle, there to wait the duchess' pleasure, being meantime embalmed. Not one farthing could his steward produce to defray his burial. His George and blue ribbon were sent to the King James, with an account of his death. In Kirby Moorside the following entry in the register of 4O Duchess of Buckingham. burials records the event, which is so replete with a singular retributive justice so constituted to impress and sadden the mind : 'Georges Villus Lord dooke of Buckingham." He left scarcely a friend to mourn his life ; for to no man had he been true. He died on the i6th of April according to some accounts ; according to others, on the third of that month, 1687, in the sixty-first year of his age. His body, after being embalmed, was deposited in the family vault in Henry VII.'s chapel.* He left no children, and his title was therefore extinct. The Duchess of Buckingham, of whom Brian Fairfax remarks, ' that if she had none of the vanities, she had none of the vices of the court,' survived him several years. She died in 1705, at the age of sixty-six, and was buried in the vault of the Villiers' family, in the chapel of Henry VII. Such was the extinction of all the magnificence and intel- lectual ascendency that at one time centred in the great and gifted family of Villiers. * Brian Fairfax states, that at his death (the Duke of Buckingham's) he charged his debts on his estate, leaving much more than enough to cover them. By the register of Westminster Abbey it appears that he was buried in Henry VII.'s Chapel, 7th June, 1687. COUNT DE GRAMMONT, ST. EVREMOND, AND LORD ROCHESTER. De Grammont's Choice. His Influence with Turenne. The Church or the Army? An Adventure at Lyons. A brilliant Idea. De Grammont's Generosity. A Horse 'for the Cards.' Knight-Cicisbeism. De Gram- mont's first Love. His Witty Attacks on Mazarin. Anne Lucie de la Mothe Houdancourt. Beset with Snares. De Grammont's Visits to England. Charles II. The Court of Charles II. Introduction of Country-dances. Norman Peculiarities. St. Evremond, the Handsome Norman. The most Beautiful Woman in Europe. Hortense Mancini's Adventures. -Madame Mazarin's House at Chelsea. Anecdote of Lord Dorset. Lord Rochester in his Zenith. His Courage and Wit. Rochester's Pranks in the City. Credulity, Past and Present. ' Dr. Bendo,' and La Belle Jennings. La Triste Heritiere. Elizabeth, Coun- tess of Rochester. Retribution and Reformation. Conversion. Beaux without Wit. Little Jermyn. An Incomparable Beauty. Anthony Hamilton, De Grammont's Biographer. The Three Courts. ' La Belle Hamilton.' Sir Peter Lely's Portrait of her. The Household Deity of Whitehall. Who shall have the Caleche?* A Chaplain in Livery. De Grammont's Last Hours. What might he not have been? T has been observed by a French critic, that the Memoires de Grammont afford the truest specimens of French character in our language. To this it may be added, that the subject of that animated narrative was most completely French in principle, in intelligence, in wit that hesitated at nothing, in spirits that were never daunted, and in that incessant activity which is characteristic of his countrymen. Grammont. it was said, ' slept neither night nor day ;' his life was one scene of incessant excitement. His father, supposed to have been the natural son of Henry the Great, of France, did not suppress that fact, but desired to publish it : for the morals of his time were so de- praved, that it was thought to be more honourable to be the illegitimate son of a king than the lawful child of lowlier parents. Born in the Castle of Semeac, on the banks of the Garonne, the fame of two fair ancestresses, Corisande and 42 De Grammonfs Cliolce. Menadame, had entitled the family of De Grammont to ex- pect in each successive member an inheritance of beauty. Wit, courage, good nature, a charming address, and boundless assurance, were the heritage of Philibert de Grammont. Beauty was not in his possession; good nature, a more popular quality, he had in abundance : ' His wit to scandal never stooping, His mirth ne'er to buffoonery drooping.' As Philibert grew up, the two aristocratic professions of France were presented for his choice : the army, or the church. Neither of these vocations constitutes now the ambition of the high-born in France : the church, to a certain extent, retains its prestige, but the army, ever since officers have risen from the ranks, does not comprise the same class of men as in England. In the reign of Louis XIII., when De Grammont lived it was otherwise. All political power was vested in the church. Richelieu was, to all purposes, the ruler of France, the dictator of Europe ; and, with regard to the church, great men, at the head of military affairs, were daily proving to the world, how much intelligence could effect with a small numerical power. Young men took one course or another : the sway of the cabinet, on the one hand, tempted them to the church ; the brilliant exploits of Turenne, and of Conde', on the other, led "them to the camp. It was merely the difference of dress between the two that constituted the dis- tinction : the soldier might be as pious as the priest, the priest was sure to be as worldly as the soldier; the soldier might have ecclesiastical preferment ; the priest sometimes turned out to fight Philibert de Grammont chose to be a soldier. He was styled the Chevalier de Grammont, according to custom, his father being still living. He fought under Turenne, at the siege of Trino. The army in which he served was beleaguering that city when the gay youth from the banks of the Garonne joined it, to aid it not so much by his valour as by the fun, the raillery, the off-hand anecdote, the ready, hearty companionship which lightened the soldier's life in the trenches : adieu to His Influence with Ttirenne. 43 impatience, to despair, even to gravity. The very generals could not maintain their seriousness when the light-hearted De Grammont uttered a repartee Sworn enemy to all long speeches, Lively and brilliant, frank- and free. Author of many a repartee : Remember, over all, that he Was not renowned for storming breaches.' Where he came, all was sunshine, yet there breathed not a colder, graver man than the Calvinist Turenne : modest, serious, somewhat hard, he gave the young nobility who served under him no quarter in their shortcomings ; but a word, a look, from De Grammont could make him, malgr& hit, unbend. The gay chevalier's white charger's prancing, its gallant rider foremost in every peril, were not forgotten in after-times, when De Grammont, in extreme old age, chatted over the achieve- ments and pleasures of his youth. Amongst those who courted his society in Turenne's army was Matta, a soldier of simple manners, hard habits, and handsome person, joined to a candid, honest nature. He soon persuaded De Grammont to share his quarters, and there they gave splendid entertainments, which, Frenchman-like, De Gram- mont paid for out of the successes of the gaming-tables. But chances were against them ; the two officers were at the mercy of their maitre cThotel, who asked for money. One day, when De Grammont came home sooner than usual, he found Matta fast asleep. Whilst De Grammont stood looking at him, he awoke, and burst into a violent fit of laughter. 'What is the matter?' cried the chevalier. ' Faith, chevalier,' answered Matta, ' I was dreaming that we had sent away our maitre