Love Romances of the Aristocracy | Page 7

He
forbade the runaways ever to show their faces near his Court--he even
dismissed his Chancellor Clarendon, whom he suspected of having a
hand in the plot.

But all his wrath fell impotently on the new Duchess, who returned his
presents and settled smilingly down to enjoy her new dignities and her
honeymoon. Within a year--so powerless is anger against love--Charles
summoned the truants back to favour, and the Duchess, as Lady of the
Bedchamber to the Queen, was installed once more at Whitehall, more
splendid and pre-eminent than ever. During her brief exile, she had held
a rival court of her own as near Whitehall as Somerset House, where,
says Pepys,
"she was visited for her beauty's sake by people, as the Queen is at
nights. And they say also she is likely to go to Court again, and there
put my Lady Castlemaine's nose out of joint. God knows that would
make a great turn."
How far the Duke's bride succeeded in putting Lady Castlemaine's
"nose out of joint" must remain a matter of speculation. There seems
little doubt that as a wife she proved more complaisant to Charles than
as a maid. She had carried her virtue unstained to the altar and a
Duchess's coronet, and this seems to have been the main concern of the
beautiful prude. That Charles was more infatuated even with the wife
than with the maid-of-honour is incontestable. He not only made open
love to her at Court, but, especially after he had packed off her husband,
the Duke, as Ambassador to Denmark, his pursuit took a clandestine
and more dangerous shape. Pepys throws a light on what looks like a
secret amour, when he tells us, on the authority of Mr Pierce, that
Charles once "did take a pair of oars or a sculler, and all alone, or but
one with him, go to Somerset House (from Whitehall), and there, the
garden-door not open, himself clamber over the wall to make a visit to
the Duchess, which is a horrid shame."
[Illustration: FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND]
But the Duchess's new reign of conquest was destined to be brief. To
the consternation of her Royal lover she was struck down with
small-pox,
"by which," to quote Pepys again, "all do conclude she will be wholly
spoiled, which is the greatest instance of the uncertainty of beauty that

could be in this age; but then she hath had the benefit of it to be first
married, and to have kept it so long, under the greatest temptations in
the world from a King, and yet without the least imputation."
That Pepys's fears were realised we know from Ruvigny's letters to
Louis XIV., in which he says that "her matchless beauty was impaired
beyond recognition, one of her brilliant eyes being nearly quenched for
ever." During this tragic illness Charles, who was consumed with
anxiety, visited her more than once, thus proving, at a terrible risk, the
sincerity of his devotion. And it is even said that his admiration of her
was not diminished by the loss of her beauty.
With this loss of her beauty, however, the Duchess's reign may be said
to have come to an end. King Charles's eyes were soon to be dazzled by
the fresher charms of Louise de Querouaille, whom the "Sun-King" had
sent from France to turn his head and influence his foreign policy in
Louis's favour; and La belle Stuart was not slow to realise that at last
her sun had set. During the remainder of her long life, at least until the
Orange King came to the Throne, she retained her office of Lady of the
Bedchamber to two Queens; but her appearances at Court, the scene of
so many triumphs, were as few as she could make them.
For the rest her days were spent in retirement, among her beloved
books and pictures and cats; until, after thirty years of widowhood, full
of years and wearied of life's vanities, she was laid to rest in her ducal
robes in Westminster Abbey. The bulk of her enormous fortune went to
her nephew, Lord Blantyre, with a direction that he should purchase
with part of it an estate, to be known as "Lennox's Love to Blantyre";
and to this day "Lennox-Love" perpetuates, like the Britannia of our
coins, the memory of one of the most beautiful and tantalising women
who have ever driven men to distraction by their beauty.
CHAPTER II
THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH
A century and a half ago Bath had reached the zenith of her fame and
allurement, not only as "Queen of the West," but as Empress of all the

haunts of pleasure in England. She drew, as by an irresistible magnet,
rank and beauty and wealth to her shrine. In her famous Assembly
Rooms,