It was inevitable that at last Adrienne
Lecouvreur
should appear in
Paris.
Paris.
Orr - Famous Affinities of History, Romacen of Devotion
She bore him a son, in the person of that
brilliant adventurer whom Charles afterward created Duke of Monmouth.
Many persons believe that Charles had married Lucy Walters, just as
George IV. may have married Mrs. Fitzherbert; yet there is not the
slightest proof of it, and it must be classed with popular legends.
There was also one Catherine Peg, or Kep, whose son was afterward
made Earl of Plymouth. It must be confessed that in his attachments
to English women Charles showed little care for rank or station. Lucy
Walters and Catherine Peg were very illiterate creatures.
In a way it was precisely this sort of preference that made Charles
so popular among the people. He seemed to make rank of no account, but
would chat in the most familiar and friendly way with any one whom he
happened to meet. His easy, democratic manner, coupled with the grace
and prestige of royalty, made friends for him all over England. The
treasury might be nearly bankrupt; the navy might be routed by the
Dutch; the king himself might be too much given to dissipation; but his
people forgave him all, because everybody knew that Charles would clap
an honest citizen on the back and joke with all who came to see him feed
the swans in Regent's Park.
The popular name for him was "Rowley," or "Old Rowley"--a nickname
of mysterious origin, though it is said to have been given him from a
fancied resemblance to a famous hunter in his stables. Perhaps it is the
very final test of popularity that a ruler should have a nickname known
to every one.
Cromwell's death roused all England to a frenzy of king-worship. The
Roundhead, General Monk, and his soldiers proclaimed Charles King of
England and escorted him to London in splendid state. That was a day
when national feeling reached a point such as never has been before or
since. Oughtred, the famous mathematician, died of joy when the royal
emblems were restored. Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, died, it is
said, of laughter at the people's wild delight--a truly Rabelaisian end.
There was the king once more; and England, breaking through its long
period of Puritanism, laughed and danced with more vivacity than ever
the French had shown. All the pipers and the players and panderers to
vice, the mountebanks, the sensual men, and the lawless women poured
into the presence of the king, who had been too long deprived of the
pleasure that his nature craved. Parliament voted seventy thousand
pounds for a memorial to Charles's father, but the irresponsible king
spent the whole sum on the women who surrounded him. His severest
counselor, Lord Clarendon, sent him a remonstrance.
"How can I build such a memorial," asked Charles, "when I don't know
where my father's remains are buried! "
He took money from the King of France to make war against the Dutch,
who had befriended him. It was the French king, too, who sent him that
insidious, subtle daughter of Brittany, Louise de Keroualle--Duchess
of Portsmouth--a diplomat in petticoats, who won the king's wayward
affections, and spied on what he did and said, and faithfully reported
all of it to Paris. She became the mother of the Duke of Lenox, and
she was feared and hated by the English more than any other of his
mistresses. They called her "Madam Carwell," and they seemed to have an
instinct that she was no mere plaything of his idle hours, but was like
some strange exotic serpent, whose poison might in the end sting the
honor of England.
There is a pitiful little episode in the marriage of Charles with his
Portuguese bride, Catharine of Braganza. The royal girl came to him
fresh from the cloisters of her convent. There was something about her
grace and innocence that touched the dissolute monarch, who was by no
means without a heart. For a time he treated her with great respect,
and she was happy. At last she began to notice about her strange
faces--faces that were evil, wanton, or overbold. The court became more
and more a seat of reckless revelry.
Finally Catharine was told that the Duchess of Cleveland--that splendid
termagant, Barbara Villiers--had been appointed lady of the bedchamber.
She was told at the same time who this vixen was--that she was no fit
attendant for a virtuous woman, and that her three sons, the Dukes of
Southampton, Grafton, and Northumberland, were also the sons of Charles.
Fluttered and frightened and dismayed, the queen hastened to her husband
and begged him not to put this slight upon her. A year or two before,
she had never dreamed that life contained such things as these; but now
it seemed to contain nothing else. Charles spoke sternly to her until
she burst into tears, and then he petted her and told her that her
duty as a queen compelled her to submit to many things which a lady in
private life need not endure.
After a long and poignant struggle with her own emotions the little
Portuguese yielded to the wishes of her lord. She never again reproached
him. She even spoke with kindness to his favorites and made him feel
that she studied his happiness alone. Her gentleness affected him so
that he always spoke to her with courtesy and real friendship. When the
Protestant mobs sought to drive her out of England he showed his
courage and manliness by standing by her and refusing to allow her to be
molested.
Indeed, had Charles been always at his best he would have had a very
different name in history. He could be in every sense a king. He had a
keen knowledge of human nature. Though he governed England very badly,
he never governed it so badly as to lose his popularity.
The epigram of Rochester, written at the king's own request, was
singularly true of Charles. No man relied upon his word, yet men loved
him. He never said anything that was foolish, and he very seldom did
anything that was wise; yet his easy manners and gracious ways endeared
him to those who met him.
One can find no better picture of his court than that which Sir Walter
Scott has drawn so vividly in Peveril of the Peak; or, if one wishes
first-hand evidence, it can be found in the diaries of Evelyn and of
Samuel Pepys. In them we find the rakes and dicers, full of strange
oaths, deep drunkards, vile women and still viler men, all striving for
the royal favor and offering the filthiest lures, amid routs and balls
and noisy entertainments, of which it is recorded that more than once
some woman gave birth to a child among the crowd of dancers.
No wonder that the little Portuguese queen kept to herself and did not
let herself be drawn into this swirling, roaring, roistering saturnalia.
She had less influence even than Moll Davis, whom Charles picked out
of a coffee-house, and far less than "Madam Carwell," to whom it is
reported that a great English nobleman once presented pearls to the
value of eight thousand pounds in order to secure her influence in a
single stroke of political business.
Of all the women who surrounded Charles there was only one who cared
anything for him or for England. The rest were all either selfish or
treacherous or base. This one exception has been so greatly written of,
both in fiction and in history, as to make it seem almost unnecessary to
add another word; yet it may well be worth while to separate the fiction
from the fact and to see how much of the legend of Eleanor Gwyn is true.
The fanciful story of her birthplace is most surely quite unfounded. She
was not the daughter of a Welsh officer, but of two petty hucksters who
had their booth in the lowest precincts of London. In those days the
Strand was partly open country, and as it neared the city it showed the
mansions of the gentry set in their green-walled parks. At one end of
the Strand, however, was Drury Lane, then the haunt of criminals and
every kind of wretch, while nearer still was the notorious Coal Yard,
where no citizen dared go unarmed.
Within this dreadful place children were kidnapped and trained to
various forms of vice. It was a school for murderers and robbers and
prostitutes; and every night when the torches flared it vomited forth
its deadly spawn. Here was the earliest home of Eleanor Gwyn, and out of
this den of iniquity she came at night to sell oranges at the entrance
to the theaters. She was stage-struck, and endeavored to get even a
minor part in a play; but Betterton, the famous actor, thrust her aside
when she ventured to apply to him.
It must be said that in everything that was external, except her beauty,
she fell short of a fastidious taste. She was intensely ignorant even
for that time. She spoke in a broad Cockney dialect. She had lived the
life of the Coal Yard, and, like Zola's Nana, she could never remember
the time when she had known the meaning of chastity.
Nell Gwyn was, in fact, a product of the vilest slums of London; and
precisely because she was this we must set her down as intrinsically a
good woman--one of the truest, frankest, and most right-minded of
whom the history of such women has anything to tell. All that external
circumstances could do to push her down into the mire was done; yet she
was not pushed down, but emerged as one of those rare souls who have in
their natures an uncontaminated spring of goodness and honesty. Unlike
Barbara Villiers or Lucy Walters or Louise de Keroualle, she was neither
a harpy nor a foe to England.
Charles is said first to have met her when he, incognito, with another
friend, was making the rounds of the theaters at night. The king spied
her glowing, nut-brown face in one of the boxes, and, forgetting his
incognito, went up and joined her. She was with her protector of the
time, Lord Buckhurst, who, of course, recognized his majesty.
Presently the whole party went out to a neighboring coffee-house, where
they drank and ate together. When it came time to pay the reckoning the
king found that he had no money, nor had his friend. Lord Buckhurst,
therefore, paid the bill, while Mistress Nell jeered at the other two,
saying that this was the most poverty-stricken party that she had ever
met.
Charles did not lose sight of her. Her frankness and honest manner
pleased him. There came a time when she was known to be a mistress
of the king, and she bore a son, who was ennobled as the Duke of St.
Albans, but who did not live to middle age. Nell Gwyn was much with
Charles; and after his tempestuous scenes with Barbara Villiers, and the
feeling of dishonor which the Duchess of Portsmouth made him experience,
the girl's good English bluntness was a pleasure far more rare than
sentiment.
Somehow, just as the people had come to mistrust "Madam Carwell," so
they came to like Nell Gwyn. She saw enough of Charles, and she liked
him well enough, to wish that he might do his duty by his people; and
she alone had the boldness to speak out what she thought. One day she
found him lolling in an arm-chair and complaining that the people were
not satisfied.
"You can very easily satisfy them," said Nell Gwyn. "Dismiss your women
and attend to the proper business of a king. "
Again, her heart was touched at the misfortunes of the old soldiers who
had fought for Charles and for his father during the Civil War, and who
were now neglected, while the treasury was emptied for French favorites,
and while the policy of England itself was bought and sold in France.
Many and many a time, when other women of her kind used their lures
to get jewels or titles or estates or actual heaps of money, Nell Gwyn
besought the king to aid these needy veterans. Because of her efforts
Chelsea Hospital was founded. Such money as she had she shared with the
poor and with those who had fought for her royal lover.
As I have said, she is a historical type of the woman who loses her
physical purity, yet who retains a sense of honor and of honesty
which nothing can take from her. There are not many such examples, and
therefore this one is worth remembering.
Of anecdotes concerning her there are many, but not often has their real
import been detected. If she could twine her arms about the monarch's
neck and transport him in a delirium of passion, this was only part of
what she did. She tried to keep him right and true and worthy of
his rank; and after he had ceased to care much for her as a lover he
remembered that she had been faithful in many other things.
Then there came the death-bed scene, when Charles, in his inimitable
manner, apologized to those about him because he was so long in dying.
A far sincerer sentence was that which came from his heart, as he cried
out, in the very pangs of death:
"Do not let poor Nelly starve! "
MAURICE OF SAXONY AND ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR
It is an old saying that to every womanly woman self-sacrifice is almost
a necessity of her nature. To make herself of small account as compared
with the one she loves; to give freely of herself, even though she may
receive nothing in return; to suffer, and yet to feel an inner poignant
joy in all this suffering--here is a most wonderful trait of womanhood.
Perhaps it is akin to the maternal instinct; for to the mother, after
she has felt the throb of a new life within her, there is no sacrifice
so great and no anguish so keen that she will not welcome it as the
outward sign and evidence of her illimitable love.
In most women this spirit of self-sacrifice is checked and kept within
ordinary bounds by the circumstances of their lives. In many small
things they do yield and they do suffer; yet it is not in yielding and
in suffering that they find their deepest joy.
There are some, however, who seem to have been born with an abnormal
capacity for enduring hardship and mental anguish; so that by a sort
of contradiction they find their happiness in sorrow. Such women are
endowed with a remarkable degree of sensibility. They feel intensely. In
moments of grief and disappointment, and even of despair, there steals
over them a sort of melancholy pleasure. It is as if they loved dim
lights and mournful music and scenes full of sad suggestion.
If everything goes well with them, they are unwilling to believe that
such good fortune will last. If anything goes wrong with them, they are
sure that this is only the beginning of something even worse. The music
of their lives is written in a minor key.
Now, for such women as these, the world at large has very little
charity. It speaks slightingly of them as "agonizers. " It believes that
they are "fond of making scenes. " It regards as an affectation something
that is really instinctive and inevitable. Unless such women are
beautiful and young and charming they are treated badly; and this is
often true in spite of all their natural attractiveness, for they seem
to court ill usage as if they were saying frankly:
"Come, take us! We will give you everything and ask for nothing. We do
not expect true and enduring love. Do not be constant or generous or
even kind. We know that we shall suffer. But, none the less, in our
sorrow there will be sweetness, and even in our abasement we shall feel
a sort of triumph. "
In history there is one woman who stands out conspicuously as a type
of her melancholy sisterhood, one whose life was full of disappointment
even when she was most successful, and of indignity even when she was
most sought after and admired. This woman was Adrienne Lecouvreur,
famous in the annals of the stage, and still more famous in the annals
of unrequited--or, at any rate, unhappy--love.
Her story is linked with that of a man no less remarkable than herself,
a hero of chivalry, a marvel of courage, of fascination, and of
irresponsibility.
Adrienne Lecouvreur--her name was originally Couvreur--was born toward
the end of the seventeenth century in the little French village of
Damery, not far from Rheims, where her aunt was a laundress and her
father a hatter in a small way. Of her mother, who died in childbirth,
we know nothing; but her father was a man of gloomy and ungovernable
temper, breaking out into violent fits of passion, in one of which, long
afterward, he died, raving and yelling like a maniac.
Adrienne was brought up at the wash-tub, and became accustomed to a
wandering life, in which she went from one town to another. What she had
inherited from her mother is, of course, not known; but she had all her
father's strangely pessimistic temper, softened only by the fact
that she was a girl. From her earliest years she was unhappy; yet her
unhappiness was largely of her own choosing. Other girls of her own
station met life cheerfully, worked away from dawn till dusk, and then
had their moments of amusement, and even jollity, with their companions,
after the fashion of all children. But Adrienne Lecouvreur was unhappy
because she chose to be. It was not the wash-tub that made her so,
for she had been born to it; nor was it the half-mad outbreaks of her
father, because to her, at least, he was not unkind. Her discontent
sprang from her excessive sensibility.
Indeed, for a peasant child she had reason to think herself far more
fortunate than her associates. Her intelligence was great. Ambition was
awakened in her before she was ten years of age, when she began to
learn and to recite poems--learning them, as has been said, "between the
wash-tub and the ironing-board," and reciting them to the admiration of
older and wiser people than she. Even at ten she was a very beautiful
child, with great lambent eyes, an exquisite complexion, and a lovely
form, while she had the further gift of a voice that thrilled the
listener and, when she chose, brought tears to every eye. She
was, indeed, a natural elocutionist, knowing by instinct all those
modulations of tone and varied cadences which go to the hearer's heart.
It was very like Adrienne Lecouvreur to memorize only such poems as were
mournful, just as in after life she could win success upon the stage
only in tragic parts. She would repeat with a sort of ecstasy the
pathetic poems that were then admired; and she was soon able to give up
her menial work, because many people asked her to their houses so that
they could listen to the divinely beautiful voice charged with the
emotion which was always at her command.
When she was thirteen her father moved to Paris, where she was placed at
school--a very humble school in a very humble quarter of the city.
Yet even there her genius showed itself at that early age. A number
of children and young people, probably influenced by Adrienne, formed
themselves into a theatrical company from the pure love of acting.
A friendly grocer let them have an empty store-room for their
performances, and in this store-room Adrienne Lecouvreur first acted in
a tragedy by Corneille, assuming the part of leading woman.
Her genius for the stage was like the genius of Napoleon for war. She
had had no teaching. She had never been inside of any theater; and yet
she delivered the magnificent lines with all the power and fire and
effectiveness of a most accomplished actress. People thronged to see her
and to feel the tempest of emotion which shook her as she sustained her
part, which for the moment was as real to her as life itself.
At first only the people of the neighborhood knew anything about these
amateur performances; but presently a lady of rank, one Mme. du Gue,
came out of curiosity and was fascinated by the little actress. Mme. du
Gue offered the spacious courtyard of her own house, and fitted it with
some of the appurtenances of a theater. From that moment the fame of
Adrienne spread throughout all Paris. The courtyard was crowded by
gentlemen and ladies, by people of distinction from the court, and at
last even by actors and actresses from the Comedie Franchise.
It is, in fact, a remarkable tribute to Adrienne that in her thirteenth
year she excited so much jealousy among the actors of the Comedie that
they evoked the law against her. Theaters required a royal license,
and of course poor little Adrienne's company had none. Hence legal
proceedings were begun, and the most famous actresses in Paris talked
of having these clever children imprisoned! Upon this the company sought
the precincts of the Temple, where no legal warrant could be served
without the express order of the king himself.
There for a time the performances still went on. Finally, as the other
children were not geniuses, but merely boys and girls in search of fun,
the little company broke up. Its success, however, had determined for
ever the career of Adrienne. With her beautiful face, her lithe and
exquisite figure, her golden voice, and her instinctive art, it was
plain enough that her future lay upon the stage; and so at fourteen
or fifteen she began where most actresses leave off--accomplished and
attractive, and having had a practical training in her profession.
Diderot, in that same century, observed that the truest actor is one who
does not feel his part at all, but produces his effects by intellectual
effort and intelligent observation. Behind the figure on the stage, torn
with passion or rollicking with mirth, there must always be the cool
and unemotional mind which directs and governs and controls. This same
theory was both held and practised by the late Benoit Constant Coquelin.
To some extent it was the theory of Garrick and Fechter and Edwin Booth;
though it was rejected by the two Keans, and by Edwin Forrest, who
entered so throughly into the character which he assumed, and who let
loose such tremendous bursts of passion that other actors dreaded to
support him on the stage in such parts as Spartacus and Metamora.
It is needless to say that a girl like Adrienne Lecouvreur flung herself
with all the intensity of her nature into every role she played. This
was the greatest secret of her success; for, with her, nature rose
superior to art. On the other hand, it fixed her dramatic limitations,
for it barred her out of comedy. Her melancholy, morbid disposition was
in the fullest sympathy with tragic heroines; but she failed when she
tried to represent the lighter moods and the merry moments of those who
welcome mirth. She could counterfeit despair, and unforced tears would
fill her eyes; but she could not laugh and romp and simulate a gaiety
that was never hers.
Adrienne would have been delighted to act at one of the theaters in
Paris; but they were closed to her through jealousy. She went into the
provinces, in the eastern part of France, and for ten years she was a
leading lady there in many companies and in many towns. As she blossomed
into womanhood there came into her life the love which was to be at once
a source of the most profound interest and of the most intense agony.
It is odd that all her professional success never gave her any
happiness. The life of the actress who traveled from town to town, the
crude and coarse experiences which she had to undergo, the disorder and
the unsettled mode of living, all produced in her a profound disgust.
She was of too exquisite a fiber to live in such a way, especially in a
century when the refinements of existence were for the very few.
She speaks herself of "obligatory amusements, the insistence of men, and
of love affairs. " Yet how could such a woman as Adrienne Lecouvreur keep
herself from love affairs? The motion of the stage and its mimic griefs
satisfied her only while she was actually upon the boards. Love offered
her an emotional excitement that endured and that was always changing.
It was "the profoundest instinct of her being"; and she once wrote:
"What could one do in the world without loving? "
Still, through these ten years she seems to have loved only that she
might be unhappy. There was a strange twist in her mind. Men who were
honorable and who loved her with sincerity she treated very badly. Men
who were indifferent or ungrateful or actually base she seemed to choose
by a sort of perverse instinct. Perhaps the explanation of it is that
during those ten years, though she had many lovers, she never really
loved. She sought excitement, passion, and after that the mournfulness
which comes when passion dies. Thus, one man after another came into her
life--some of them promising marriage--and she bore two children, whose
fathers were unknown, or at least uncertain. But, after all, one can
scarcely pity her, since she had not yet in reality known that great
passion which comes but once in life. So far she had learned only a sort
of feeble cynicism, which she expressed in letters and in such sayings
as these:
"There are sweet errors which I would not venture to commit again. My
experiences, all too sad, have served to illumine my reason. "
"I am utterly weary of love and prodigiously tempted to have no more of
it for the rest of my life; because, after all, I don't wish either to
die or to go mad. "
Yet she also said: "I know too well that no one dies of grief. "
She had had, indeed, some very unfortunate experiences. Men of rank had
loved her and had then cast her off. An actor, one Clavel, would
have married her, but she would not accept his offer. A magistrate in
Strasburg promised marriage; and then, when she was about to accept him,
he wrote to her that he was going to yield to the wishes of his family
and make a more advantageous alliance. And so she was alternately
caressed and repulsed--a mere plaything; and yet this was probably all
that she really needed at the time--something to stir her, something to
make her mournful or indignant or ashamed.
It was inevitable that at last Adrienne Lecouvreur should appear in
Paris. She had won such renown throughout the provinces that even
those who were intensely jealous of her were obliged to give her due
consideration. In 1717, when she was in her twenty-fifth year, she
became a member of the Comedie Franchise. There she made an immediate
and most brilliant impression. She easily took the leading place. She
was one of the glories of Paris, for she became the fashion outside the
theater. For the first time the great classic plays were given, not
in the monotonous singsong which had become a sort of theatrical
convention, but with all the fire and naturalness of life.
Being the fashion, Mlle. Lecouvreur elevated the social rank of actors
and of actresses. Her salon was thronged by men and women of rank.
Voltaire wrote poems in her honor. To be invited to her dinners was
almost like receiving a decoration from the king. She ought to have been
happy, for she had reached the summit of her profession and something
more.
Yet still she was unhappy. In all her letters one finds a plaintive
tone, a little moaning sound that shows how slightly her nature had been
changed. No longer, however, did she throw herself away upon dullards or
brutes. An English peer--Lord Peterborough--not realizing that she was
different from other actresses of that loose-lived age, said to her
coarsely at his first introduction:
"Come now! Show me lots of wit and lots of love. "
The remark was characteristic of the time. Yet Adrienne had learned
at least one thing, and that was the discontent which came from light
affairs. She had thrown herself away too often. If she could not love
with her entire being, if she could not give all that was in her to be
given, whether of her heart or mind or soul, then she would love no more
at all.
At this time there came to Paris a man remarkable in his own century,
and one who afterward became almost a hero of romance. This was Maurice,
Comte de Saxe, as the French called him, his German name and title being
Moritz, Graf von Sachsen, while we usually term him, in English, Marshal
Saxe. Maurice de Saxe was now, in 1721, entering his twenty-fifth year.
Already, though so young, his career had been a strange one; and it was
destined to be still more remarkable. He was the natural son of Duke
Augustus II. of Saxony, who later became King of Poland, and who is
known in history as Augustus the Strong.
Augustus was a giant in stature and in strength, handsome, daring,
unscrupulous, and yet extremely fascinating. His life was one of revelry
and fighting and display. When in his cups he would often call for a
horseshoe and twist it into a knot with his powerful fingers. Many were
his mistresses; but the one for whom he cared the most was a beautiful
and high-spirited Swedish girl of rank, Aurora von Konigsmarck. She was
descended from a rough old field-marshal who in the Thirty Years'
War had slashed and sacked and pillaged and plundered to his heart's
content. From him Aurora von Konigsmarck seemed to have inherited a high
spirit and a sort of lawlessness which charmed the stalwart Augustus of
Poland.
Their son, Maurice de Saxe, inherited everything that was good in his
parents, and a great deal that was less commendable. As a mere child
of twelve he had insisted on joining the army of Prince Eugene, and
had seen rough service in a very strenuous campaign. Two years later he
showed such daring on the battle-field that Prince Eugene summoned him
and paid him a compliment under the form of a rebuke.
"Young man," he said, "you must not mistake mere recklessness for
valor. "
Before he was twenty he had attained the stature and strength of his
royal father; and, to prove it, he in his turn called for a horseshoe,
which he twisted and broke in his fingers. He fought on the side of the
Russians and Poles, and again against the Turks, everywhere displaying
high courage and also genius as a commander; for he never lost his
self-possession amid the very blackest danger, but possessed, as Carlyle
says, "vigilance, foresight, and sagacious precaution. "
Exceedingly handsome, Maurice was a master of all the arts that pleased,
with just a touch of roughness, which seemed not unfitting in so gallant
a soldier. His troops adored him and would follow wherever he might
choose to lead them; for he exercised over these rude men a magnetic
power resembling that of Napoleon in after years. In private life he was
a hard drinker and fond of every form of pleasure. Having no fortune of
his own, a marriage was arranged for him with the Countess von Loben,
who was immensely wealthy; but in three years he had squandered all
her money upon his pleasures, and had, moreover, got himself heavily in
debt.
It was at this time that he first came to Paris to study military
tactics. He had fought hard against the French in the wars that were now
ended; but his chivalrous bearing, his handsome person, and his reckless
joviality made him at once a universal favorite in Paris. To the
perfumed courtiers, with their laces and lovelocks and mincing ways,
Maurice de Saxe came as a sort of knight of old--jovial, daring,
pleasure-loving. Even his broken French was held to be quite charming;
and to see him break a horseshoe with his fingers threw every one into
raptures.
No wonder, then, that he was welcomed in the very highest circles.
Almost at once he attracted the notice of the Princesse de Conti, a
beautiful woman of the blood royal. Of her it has been said that she was
"the personification of a kiss, the incarnation of an embrace, the ideal
of a dream of love. " Her chestnut hair was tinted with little gleams of
gold. Her eyes were violet black. Her complexion was dazzling. But by
the king's orders she had been forced to marry a hunchback--a man whose
very limbs were so weakened by disease and evil living that they would
often fail to support him, and he would fall to the ground, a writhing,
screaming mass of ill-looking flesh.
It is not surprising that his lovely wife should have shuddered much at
his abuse of her and still more at his grotesque endearments. When her
eyes fell on Maurice de Saxe she saw in him one who could free her from
her bondage. By a skilful trick he led the Prince de Conti to invade the
sleeping-room of the princess, with servants, declaring that she was
not alone. The charge proved quite untrue, and so she left her husband,
having won the sympathy of her own world, which held that she had been
insulted. But it was not she who was destined to win and hold the love
of Maurice de Saxe.
Not long after his appearance in the French capital he was invited to
dine with the "Queen of Paris," Adrienne Lecouvreur. Saxe had seen her
on the stage. He knew her previous history. He knew that she was very
much of a soiled dove; but when he met her these two natures, so utterly
dissimilar, leaped together, as it were, through the indescribable
attraction of opposites. He was big and powerful; she was small and
fragile. He was merry, and full of quips and jests; she was reserved and
melancholy. Each felt in the other a need supplied.
At one of their earliest meetings the climax came. Saxe was not the
man to hesitate; while she already, in her thoughts, had made a full
surrender. In one great sweep he gathered her into his arms. It appeared
to her as if no man had ever laid his hand upon her until that moment.
She cried out:
"Now, for the first time in my life, I seem to live! "
It was, indeed, the very first love which in her checkered career was
really worthy of the name. She had supposed that all such things were
passed and gone, that her heart was closed for ever, that she was
invulnerable; and yet here she found herself clinging about the neck
of this impetuous soldier and showing him all the shy fondness and
the unselfish devotion of a young girl. From this instant Adrienne
Lecouvreur never loved another man and never even looked at any other
man with the slightest interest. For nine long years the two were bound
together, though there were strange events to ruffle the surface of
their love.
Maurice de Saxe had been sired by a king. He had the lofty ambition to
be a king himself, and he felt the stirrings of that genius which in
after years was to make him a great soldier, and to win the brilliant
victory of Fontenoy, which to this very day the French are never tired
of recalling. Already Louis XV. had made him a marshal of France; and a
certain restlessness came over him. He loved Adrienne; yet he felt that
to remain in the enjoyment of her witcheries ought not to be the whole
of a man's career.
Then the Grand Duchy of Courland--at that time a vassal state of Poland,
now part of Russia--sought a ruler. Maurice de Saxe was eager to secure
its throne, which would make him at least semi-royal and the chief of
a principality. He hastened thither and found that money was needed to
carry out his plans. The widow of the late duke--the Grand Duchess Anna,
niece of Peter the Great, and later Empress of Russia--as soon as she
had met this dazzling genius, offered to help him to acquire the duchy
if he would only marry her. He did not utterly refuse. Still another
woman of high rank, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, Peter the
Great's daughter, made him very much the same proposal.
Both of these imperial women might well have attracted a man like
Maurice de Saxe, had he been wholly fancy-free, for the second of them
inherited the high spirit and the genius of the great Peter, while the
first was a pleasure-seeking princess, resembling some of those Roman
empresses who loved to stoop that they might conquer. She is described
as indolent and sensual, and she once declared that the chief good in
the world was love. Yet, though she neglected affairs of state and gave
them over to favorites, she won and kept the affections of her people.
She was unquestionably endowed with the magnetic gift of winning hearts.
Adrienne, who was left behind in Paris, knew very little of what was
going on. Only two things were absolutely clear to her. One was that if
her lover secured the duchy he must be parted from her. The other was
that without money his ambition must be thwarted, and that he would then
return to her. Here was a test to try the soul of any woman. It proved
the height and the depth of her devotion. Come what might, Maurice
should be Duke of Courland, even though she lost him. She gathered
together her whole fortune, sold every jewel that she possessed, and
sent her lover the sum of nearly a million francs.
This incident shows how absolutely she was his. But in fact, because
of various intrigues, he failed of election to the ducal throne of
Courland, and he returned to Adrienne with all her money spent, and
without even the grace, at first, to show his gratitude. He stormed and
raged over his ill luck. She merely soothed and petted him, though she
had heard that he had thought of marrying another woman to secure
the dukedom. In one of her letters she bursts out with the pitiful
exclamation:
I am distracted with rage and anguish. Is it not natural to cry out
against such treachery? This man surely ought to know me--he ought to
love me. Oh, my God! What are we--what ARE we?
But still she could not give him up, nor could he give her up, though
there were frightful scenes between them--times when he cruelly
reproached her and when her native melancholy deepened into outbursts
of despair. Finally there occurred an incident which is more or
less obscure in parts. The Duchesse de Bouillon, a great lady of the
court--facile, feline, licentious, and eager for delights--resolved that
she would win the love of Maurice de Saxe. She set herself to win it
openly and without any sense of shame. Maurice himself at times, when
the tears of Adrienne proved wearisome, flirted with the duchess.
Yet, even so, Adrienne held the first place in his heart, and her rival
knew it. Therefore she resolved to humiliate Adrienne, and to do so in
the place where the actress had always reigned supreme. There was to be
a gala performance of Racine's great tragedy, "Phedre," with Adrienne,
of course, in the title-role. The Duchesse de Bouillon sent a large
number of her lackeys with orders to hiss and jeer, and, if possible,
to break off the play. Malignantly delighted with her plan, the duchess
arrayed herself in jewels and took her seat in a conspicuous stage-box,
where she could watch the coming storm and gloat over the discomfiture
of her rival.
When the curtain rose, and when Adrienne appeared as Phedre, an uproar
began. It was clear to the great actress that a plot had been devised
against her. In an instant her whole soul was afire. The queen-like
majesty of her bearing compelled silence throughout the house. Even the
hired lackeys were overawed by it. Then Adrienne moved swiftly across
the stage and fronted her enemy, speaking into her very face the three
insulting lines which came to her at that moment of the play:
I am not of those women void of shame,
Who, savoring in crime the joys of peace,
Harden their faces till they cannot blush!
The whole house rose and burst forth into tremendous applause. Adrienne
had won, for the woman who had tried to shame her rose in trepidation
and hurried from the theater.
But the end was not yet. Those were evil times, when dark deeds were
committed by the great almost with impunity. Secret poisoning was a
common trade. To remove a rival was as usual a thing in the eighteenth
century as to snub a rival is usual in the twentieth.
Not long afterward, on the night of March 15, 1730, Adrienne Lecouvreur
was acting in one of Voltaire's plays with all her power and instinctive
art when suddenly she was seized with the most frightful pains. Her
anguish was obvious to every one who saw her, and yet she had the
courage to go through her part. Then she fainted and was carried home.
Four days later she died, and her death was no less dramatic than her
life had been. Her lover and two friends of his were with her, and also
a Jesuit priest. He declined to administer extreme unction unless she
would declare that she repented of her theatrical career. She stubbornly
refused, since she believed that to be the greatest actress of her time
was not a sin. Yet still the priest insisted.
Then came the final moment.
"Weary and revolting against this death, this destiny, she stretched her
arms with one of the old lovely gestures toward a bust which stood near
by and cried--her last cry of passion:
"'There is my world, my hope--yes, and my God! '"
The bust was one of Maurice de Saxe.
THE STORY OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART
The royal families of Europe are widely known, yet not all of them are
equally renowned. Thus, the house of Romanoff, although comparatively
young, stands out to the mind with a sort of barbaric power, more
vividly than the Austrian house of Hapsburg, which is the oldest
reigning family in Europe, tracing its beginnings backward until
they are lost in the Dark Ages. The Hohenzollerns of Prussia are
comparatively modern, so far as concerns their royalty. The offshoots of
the Bourbons carry on a very proud tradition in the person of the King
of Spain, although France, which has been ruled by so many members of
the family, will probably never again behold a Bourbon king. The deposed
Braganzas bear a name which is ancient, but which has a somewhat tinsel
sound.
The Bonapartes, of course, are merely parvenus, and they have had the
good taste to pretend to no antiquity of birth. The first Napoleon,
dining at a table full of monarchs, when he heard one of them
deferentially alluding to the Bonaparte family as being very old and
noble, exclaimed:
"Pish! My nobility dates from the day of Marengo! "
And the third Napoleon, in announcing his coming marriage with Mlle. de
Montijo, used the very word "parvenu" in speaking of himself and of his
family. His frankness won the hearts of the French people and helped to
reconcile them to a marriage in which the bride was barely noble.
In English history there are two great names to conjure by, at least
to the imaginative. One is Plantagenet, which seems to contain within
itself the very essence of all that is patrician, magnificent, and
royal. It calls to memory at once the lion-hearted Richard, whose short
reign was replete with romance in England and France and Austria and the
Holy Land.
But perhaps a name of greater influence is that which links the royal
family of Britain today with the traditions of the past, and which
summons up legend and story and great deeds of history. This is the name
of Stuart, about which a whole volume might be written to recall its
suggestions and its reminiscences.
The first Stuart (then Stewart) of whom anything is known got his name
from the title of "Steward of Scotland," which remained in the family
for generations, until the sixth of the line, by marriage with Princess
Marjory Bruce, acquired the Scottish crown. That was in the early years
of the fourteenth century; and finally, after the death of Elizabeth
of England, her rival's son, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England,
united under one crown two kingdoms that had so long been at almost
constant war.
It is almost characteristic of the Scot that, having small territory,
little wealth, and a seat among his peers that is almost ostentatiously
humble, he should bit by bit absorb the possessions of all the rest and
become their master. Surely, the proud Tudors, whose line ended with
Elizabeth, must have despised the "Stewards," whose kingdom was small
and bleak and cold, and who could not control their own vassals.
One can imagine also, with Sir Walter Scott, the haughty nobles of the
English court sneering covertly at the awkward, shambling James, pedant
and bookworm. Nevertheless, his diplomacy was almost as good as that of
Elizabeth herself; and, though he did some foolish things, he was very
far from being a fool.
In his appearance James was not unlike Abraham Lincoln--an unkingly
figure; and yet, like Lincoln, when occasion required it he could rise
to the dignity which makes one feel the presence of a king. He was the
only Stuart who lacked anything in form or feature or external grace.
His son, Charles I. , was perhaps one of the worst rulers that England
has ever had; yet his uprightness of life, his melancholy yet handsome
face, his graceful bearing, and the strong religious element in his
character, together with the fact that he was put to death after being
treacherously surrendered to his enemies--all these have combined to
make almost a saint of him. There are Englishmen to-day who speak of him
as "the martyr king," and who, on certain days of the year, say prayers
that beg the Lord's forgiveness because of Charles's execution.
The members of the so-called League of the White Rose, founded to
perpetuate English allegiance to the direct line of Stuarts, do many
things that are quite absurd. They refuse to pray for the present King
of England and profess to think that the Princess Mary of Bavaria is the
true ruler of Great Britain. All this represents that trace of sentiment
which lingers among the English to-day. They feel that the Stuarts were
the last kings of England to rule by the grace of God rather than by the
grace of Parliament. As a matter of fact, the present reigning family
in England is glad to derive its ancient strain of royal blood through a
Stuart--descended on the distaff side from James I. , and winding its way
through Hanover.
This sentiment for the Stuarts is a thing entirely apart from reason and
belongs to the realm of poetry and romance; yet so strong is it that
it has shown itself in the most inconsistent fashion. For instance, Sir
Walter Scott was a devoted adherent of the house of Hanover. When George
IV. visited Edinburgh, Scott was completely carried away by his loyal
enthusiasm. He could not see that the man before him was a drunkard and
braggart. He viewed him as an incarnation of all the noble traits that
ought to hedge about a king. He snatched up a wine-glass from which
George had just been drinking and carried it away to be an object of
reverence for ever after. Nevertheless, in his heart, and often in his
speech, Scott seemed to be a high Tory, and even a Jacobite.
There are precedents for this. The Empress Eugenie used often to say
with a laugh that she was the only true royalist at the imperial court
of France. That was well enough for her in her days of flightiness and
frivolity. No one, however, accused Queen Victoria of being frivolous,
and she was not supposed to have a strong sense of humor. None the less,
after listening to the skirling of the bagpipes and to the romantic
ballads which were sung in Scotland she is said to have remarked with a
sort of sigh:
"Whenever I hear those ballads I feel that England belongs really to the
Stuarts! "
Before Queen Victoria was born, when all the sons of George III. were
childless, the Duke of Kent was urged to marry, so that he might have a
family to continue the succession. In resenting the suggestion he said
many things, and among them this was the most striking:
"Why don't you call the Stuarts back to England? They couldn't possibly
make a worse mess of it than our fellows have! "
But he yielded to persuasion and married. From this marriage came
Victoria, who had the sacred drop of Stuart blood which gave England
to the Hanoverians; and she was to redeem the blunders and tyrannies of
both houses.
The fascination of the Stuarts, which has been carried overseas to
America and the British dominions, probably began with the striking
history of Mary Queen of Scots. Her brilliancy and boldness and beauty,
and especially the pathos of her end, have made us see only her intense
womanliness, which in her own day was the first thing that any one
observed in her. So, too, with Charles I. , romantic figure and knightly
gentleman. One regrets his death upon the scaffold, even though his
execution was necessary to the growth of freedom.
Many people are no less fascinated by Charles II.
brilliant adventurer whom Charles afterward created Duke of Monmouth.
Many persons believe that Charles had married Lucy Walters, just as
George IV. may have married Mrs. Fitzherbert; yet there is not the
slightest proof of it, and it must be classed with popular legends.
There was also one Catherine Peg, or Kep, whose son was afterward
made Earl of Plymouth. It must be confessed that in his attachments
to English women Charles showed little care for rank or station. Lucy
Walters and Catherine Peg were very illiterate creatures.
In a way it was precisely this sort of preference that made Charles
so popular among the people. He seemed to make rank of no account, but
would chat in the most familiar and friendly way with any one whom he
happened to meet. His easy, democratic manner, coupled with the grace
and prestige of royalty, made friends for him all over England. The
treasury might be nearly bankrupt; the navy might be routed by the
Dutch; the king himself might be too much given to dissipation; but his
people forgave him all, because everybody knew that Charles would clap
an honest citizen on the back and joke with all who came to see him feed
the swans in Regent's Park.
The popular name for him was "Rowley," or "Old Rowley"--a nickname
of mysterious origin, though it is said to have been given him from a
fancied resemblance to a famous hunter in his stables. Perhaps it is the
very final test of popularity that a ruler should have a nickname known
to every one.
Cromwell's death roused all England to a frenzy of king-worship. The
Roundhead, General Monk, and his soldiers proclaimed Charles King of
England and escorted him to London in splendid state. That was a day
when national feeling reached a point such as never has been before or
since. Oughtred, the famous mathematician, died of joy when the royal
emblems were restored. Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, died, it is
said, of laughter at the people's wild delight--a truly Rabelaisian end.
There was the king once more; and England, breaking through its long
period of Puritanism, laughed and danced with more vivacity than ever
the French had shown. All the pipers and the players and panderers to
vice, the mountebanks, the sensual men, and the lawless women poured
into the presence of the king, who had been too long deprived of the
pleasure that his nature craved. Parliament voted seventy thousand
pounds for a memorial to Charles's father, but the irresponsible king
spent the whole sum on the women who surrounded him. His severest
counselor, Lord Clarendon, sent him a remonstrance.
"How can I build such a memorial," asked Charles, "when I don't know
where my father's remains are buried! "
He took money from the King of France to make war against the Dutch,
who had befriended him. It was the French king, too, who sent him that
insidious, subtle daughter of Brittany, Louise de Keroualle--Duchess
of Portsmouth--a diplomat in petticoats, who won the king's wayward
affections, and spied on what he did and said, and faithfully reported
all of it to Paris. She became the mother of the Duke of Lenox, and
she was feared and hated by the English more than any other of his
mistresses. They called her "Madam Carwell," and they seemed to have an
instinct that she was no mere plaything of his idle hours, but was like
some strange exotic serpent, whose poison might in the end sting the
honor of England.
There is a pitiful little episode in the marriage of Charles with his
Portuguese bride, Catharine of Braganza. The royal girl came to him
fresh from the cloisters of her convent. There was something about her
grace and innocence that touched the dissolute monarch, who was by no
means without a heart. For a time he treated her with great respect,
and she was happy. At last she began to notice about her strange
faces--faces that were evil, wanton, or overbold. The court became more
and more a seat of reckless revelry.
Finally Catharine was told that the Duchess of Cleveland--that splendid
termagant, Barbara Villiers--had been appointed lady of the bedchamber.
She was told at the same time who this vixen was--that she was no fit
attendant for a virtuous woman, and that her three sons, the Dukes of
Southampton, Grafton, and Northumberland, were also the sons of Charles.
Fluttered and frightened and dismayed, the queen hastened to her husband
and begged him not to put this slight upon her. A year or two before,
she had never dreamed that life contained such things as these; but now
it seemed to contain nothing else. Charles spoke sternly to her until
she burst into tears, and then he petted her and told her that her
duty as a queen compelled her to submit to many things which a lady in
private life need not endure.
After a long and poignant struggle with her own emotions the little
Portuguese yielded to the wishes of her lord. She never again reproached
him. She even spoke with kindness to his favorites and made him feel
that she studied his happiness alone. Her gentleness affected him so
that he always spoke to her with courtesy and real friendship. When the
Protestant mobs sought to drive her out of England he showed his
courage and manliness by standing by her and refusing to allow her to be
molested.
Indeed, had Charles been always at his best he would have had a very
different name in history. He could be in every sense a king. He had a
keen knowledge of human nature. Though he governed England very badly,
he never governed it so badly as to lose his popularity.
The epigram of Rochester, written at the king's own request, was
singularly true of Charles. No man relied upon his word, yet men loved
him. He never said anything that was foolish, and he very seldom did
anything that was wise; yet his easy manners and gracious ways endeared
him to those who met him.
One can find no better picture of his court than that which Sir Walter
Scott has drawn so vividly in Peveril of the Peak; or, if one wishes
first-hand evidence, it can be found in the diaries of Evelyn and of
Samuel Pepys. In them we find the rakes and dicers, full of strange
oaths, deep drunkards, vile women and still viler men, all striving for
the royal favor and offering the filthiest lures, amid routs and balls
and noisy entertainments, of which it is recorded that more than once
some woman gave birth to a child among the crowd of dancers.
No wonder that the little Portuguese queen kept to herself and did not
let herself be drawn into this swirling, roaring, roistering saturnalia.
She had less influence even than Moll Davis, whom Charles picked out
of a coffee-house, and far less than "Madam Carwell," to whom it is
reported that a great English nobleman once presented pearls to the
value of eight thousand pounds in order to secure her influence in a
single stroke of political business.
Of all the women who surrounded Charles there was only one who cared
anything for him or for England. The rest were all either selfish or
treacherous or base. This one exception has been so greatly written of,
both in fiction and in history, as to make it seem almost unnecessary to
add another word; yet it may well be worth while to separate the fiction
from the fact and to see how much of the legend of Eleanor Gwyn is true.
The fanciful story of her birthplace is most surely quite unfounded. She
was not the daughter of a Welsh officer, but of two petty hucksters who
had their booth in the lowest precincts of London. In those days the
Strand was partly open country, and as it neared the city it showed the
mansions of the gentry set in their green-walled parks. At one end of
the Strand, however, was Drury Lane, then the haunt of criminals and
every kind of wretch, while nearer still was the notorious Coal Yard,
where no citizen dared go unarmed.
Within this dreadful place children were kidnapped and trained to
various forms of vice. It was a school for murderers and robbers and
prostitutes; and every night when the torches flared it vomited forth
its deadly spawn. Here was the earliest home of Eleanor Gwyn, and out of
this den of iniquity she came at night to sell oranges at the entrance
to the theaters. She was stage-struck, and endeavored to get even a
minor part in a play; but Betterton, the famous actor, thrust her aside
when she ventured to apply to him.
It must be said that in everything that was external, except her beauty,
she fell short of a fastidious taste. She was intensely ignorant even
for that time. She spoke in a broad Cockney dialect. She had lived the
life of the Coal Yard, and, like Zola's Nana, she could never remember
the time when she had known the meaning of chastity.
Nell Gwyn was, in fact, a product of the vilest slums of London; and
precisely because she was this we must set her down as intrinsically a
good woman--one of the truest, frankest, and most right-minded of
whom the history of such women has anything to tell. All that external
circumstances could do to push her down into the mire was done; yet she
was not pushed down, but emerged as one of those rare souls who have in
their natures an uncontaminated spring of goodness and honesty. Unlike
Barbara Villiers or Lucy Walters or Louise de Keroualle, she was neither
a harpy nor a foe to England.
Charles is said first to have met her when he, incognito, with another
friend, was making the rounds of the theaters at night. The king spied
her glowing, nut-brown face in one of the boxes, and, forgetting his
incognito, went up and joined her. She was with her protector of the
time, Lord Buckhurst, who, of course, recognized his majesty.
Presently the whole party went out to a neighboring coffee-house, where
they drank and ate together. When it came time to pay the reckoning the
king found that he had no money, nor had his friend. Lord Buckhurst,
therefore, paid the bill, while Mistress Nell jeered at the other two,
saying that this was the most poverty-stricken party that she had ever
met.
Charles did not lose sight of her. Her frankness and honest manner
pleased him. There came a time when she was known to be a mistress
of the king, and she bore a son, who was ennobled as the Duke of St.
Albans, but who did not live to middle age. Nell Gwyn was much with
Charles; and after his tempestuous scenes with Barbara Villiers, and the
feeling of dishonor which the Duchess of Portsmouth made him experience,
the girl's good English bluntness was a pleasure far more rare than
sentiment.
Somehow, just as the people had come to mistrust "Madam Carwell," so
they came to like Nell Gwyn. She saw enough of Charles, and she liked
him well enough, to wish that he might do his duty by his people; and
she alone had the boldness to speak out what she thought. One day she
found him lolling in an arm-chair and complaining that the people were
not satisfied.
"You can very easily satisfy them," said Nell Gwyn. "Dismiss your women
and attend to the proper business of a king. "
Again, her heart was touched at the misfortunes of the old soldiers who
had fought for Charles and for his father during the Civil War, and who
were now neglected, while the treasury was emptied for French favorites,
and while the policy of England itself was bought and sold in France.
Many and many a time, when other women of her kind used their lures
to get jewels or titles or estates or actual heaps of money, Nell Gwyn
besought the king to aid these needy veterans. Because of her efforts
Chelsea Hospital was founded. Such money as she had she shared with the
poor and with those who had fought for her royal lover.
As I have said, she is a historical type of the woman who loses her
physical purity, yet who retains a sense of honor and of honesty
which nothing can take from her. There are not many such examples, and
therefore this one is worth remembering.
Of anecdotes concerning her there are many, but not often has their real
import been detected. If she could twine her arms about the monarch's
neck and transport him in a delirium of passion, this was only part of
what she did. She tried to keep him right and true and worthy of
his rank; and after he had ceased to care much for her as a lover he
remembered that she had been faithful in many other things.
Then there came the death-bed scene, when Charles, in his inimitable
manner, apologized to those about him because he was so long in dying.
A far sincerer sentence was that which came from his heart, as he cried
out, in the very pangs of death:
"Do not let poor Nelly starve! "
MAURICE OF SAXONY AND ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR
It is an old saying that to every womanly woman self-sacrifice is almost
a necessity of her nature. To make herself of small account as compared
with the one she loves; to give freely of herself, even though she may
receive nothing in return; to suffer, and yet to feel an inner poignant
joy in all this suffering--here is a most wonderful trait of womanhood.
Perhaps it is akin to the maternal instinct; for to the mother, after
she has felt the throb of a new life within her, there is no sacrifice
so great and no anguish so keen that she will not welcome it as the
outward sign and evidence of her illimitable love.
In most women this spirit of self-sacrifice is checked and kept within
ordinary bounds by the circumstances of their lives. In many small
things they do yield and they do suffer; yet it is not in yielding and
in suffering that they find their deepest joy.
There are some, however, who seem to have been born with an abnormal
capacity for enduring hardship and mental anguish; so that by a sort
of contradiction they find their happiness in sorrow. Such women are
endowed with a remarkable degree of sensibility. They feel intensely. In
moments of grief and disappointment, and even of despair, there steals
over them a sort of melancholy pleasure. It is as if they loved dim
lights and mournful music and scenes full of sad suggestion.
If everything goes well with them, they are unwilling to believe that
such good fortune will last. If anything goes wrong with them, they are
sure that this is only the beginning of something even worse. The music
of their lives is written in a minor key.
Now, for such women as these, the world at large has very little
charity. It speaks slightingly of them as "agonizers. " It believes that
they are "fond of making scenes. " It regards as an affectation something
that is really instinctive and inevitable. Unless such women are
beautiful and young and charming they are treated badly; and this is
often true in spite of all their natural attractiveness, for they seem
to court ill usage as if they were saying frankly:
"Come, take us! We will give you everything and ask for nothing. We do
not expect true and enduring love. Do not be constant or generous or
even kind. We know that we shall suffer. But, none the less, in our
sorrow there will be sweetness, and even in our abasement we shall feel
a sort of triumph. "
In history there is one woman who stands out conspicuously as a type
of her melancholy sisterhood, one whose life was full of disappointment
even when she was most successful, and of indignity even when she was
most sought after and admired. This woman was Adrienne Lecouvreur,
famous in the annals of the stage, and still more famous in the annals
of unrequited--or, at any rate, unhappy--love.
Her story is linked with that of a man no less remarkable than herself,
a hero of chivalry, a marvel of courage, of fascination, and of
irresponsibility.
Adrienne Lecouvreur--her name was originally Couvreur--was born toward
the end of the seventeenth century in the little French village of
Damery, not far from Rheims, where her aunt was a laundress and her
father a hatter in a small way. Of her mother, who died in childbirth,
we know nothing; but her father was a man of gloomy and ungovernable
temper, breaking out into violent fits of passion, in one of which, long
afterward, he died, raving and yelling like a maniac.
Adrienne was brought up at the wash-tub, and became accustomed to a
wandering life, in which she went from one town to another. What she had
inherited from her mother is, of course, not known; but she had all her
father's strangely pessimistic temper, softened only by the fact
that she was a girl. From her earliest years she was unhappy; yet her
unhappiness was largely of her own choosing. Other girls of her own
station met life cheerfully, worked away from dawn till dusk, and then
had their moments of amusement, and even jollity, with their companions,
after the fashion of all children. But Adrienne Lecouvreur was unhappy
because she chose to be. It was not the wash-tub that made her so,
for she had been born to it; nor was it the half-mad outbreaks of her
father, because to her, at least, he was not unkind. Her discontent
sprang from her excessive sensibility.
Indeed, for a peasant child she had reason to think herself far more
fortunate than her associates. Her intelligence was great. Ambition was
awakened in her before she was ten years of age, when she began to
learn and to recite poems--learning them, as has been said, "between the
wash-tub and the ironing-board," and reciting them to the admiration of
older and wiser people than she. Even at ten she was a very beautiful
child, with great lambent eyes, an exquisite complexion, and a lovely
form, while she had the further gift of a voice that thrilled the
listener and, when she chose, brought tears to every eye. She
was, indeed, a natural elocutionist, knowing by instinct all those
modulations of tone and varied cadences which go to the hearer's heart.
It was very like Adrienne Lecouvreur to memorize only such poems as were
mournful, just as in after life she could win success upon the stage
only in tragic parts. She would repeat with a sort of ecstasy the
pathetic poems that were then admired; and she was soon able to give up
her menial work, because many people asked her to their houses so that
they could listen to the divinely beautiful voice charged with the
emotion which was always at her command.
When she was thirteen her father moved to Paris, where she was placed at
school--a very humble school in a very humble quarter of the city.
Yet even there her genius showed itself at that early age. A number
of children and young people, probably influenced by Adrienne, formed
themselves into a theatrical company from the pure love of acting.
A friendly grocer let them have an empty store-room for their
performances, and in this store-room Adrienne Lecouvreur first acted in
a tragedy by Corneille, assuming the part of leading woman.
Her genius for the stage was like the genius of Napoleon for war. She
had had no teaching. She had never been inside of any theater; and yet
she delivered the magnificent lines with all the power and fire and
effectiveness of a most accomplished actress. People thronged to see her
and to feel the tempest of emotion which shook her as she sustained her
part, which for the moment was as real to her as life itself.
At first only the people of the neighborhood knew anything about these
amateur performances; but presently a lady of rank, one Mme. du Gue,
came out of curiosity and was fascinated by the little actress. Mme. du
Gue offered the spacious courtyard of her own house, and fitted it with
some of the appurtenances of a theater. From that moment the fame of
Adrienne spread throughout all Paris. The courtyard was crowded by
gentlemen and ladies, by people of distinction from the court, and at
last even by actors and actresses from the Comedie Franchise.
It is, in fact, a remarkable tribute to Adrienne that in her thirteenth
year she excited so much jealousy among the actors of the Comedie that
they evoked the law against her. Theaters required a royal license,
and of course poor little Adrienne's company had none. Hence legal
proceedings were begun, and the most famous actresses in Paris talked
of having these clever children imprisoned! Upon this the company sought
the precincts of the Temple, where no legal warrant could be served
without the express order of the king himself.
There for a time the performances still went on. Finally, as the other
children were not geniuses, but merely boys and girls in search of fun,
the little company broke up. Its success, however, had determined for
ever the career of Adrienne. With her beautiful face, her lithe and
exquisite figure, her golden voice, and her instinctive art, it was
plain enough that her future lay upon the stage; and so at fourteen
or fifteen she began where most actresses leave off--accomplished and
attractive, and having had a practical training in her profession.
Diderot, in that same century, observed that the truest actor is one who
does not feel his part at all, but produces his effects by intellectual
effort and intelligent observation. Behind the figure on the stage, torn
with passion or rollicking with mirth, there must always be the cool
and unemotional mind which directs and governs and controls. This same
theory was both held and practised by the late Benoit Constant Coquelin.
To some extent it was the theory of Garrick and Fechter and Edwin Booth;
though it was rejected by the two Keans, and by Edwin Forrest, who
entered so throughly into the character which he assumed, and who let
loose such tremendous bursts of passion that other actors dreaded to
support him on the stage in such parts as Spartacus and Metamora.
It is needless to say that a girl like Adrienne Lecouvreur flung herself
with all the intensity of her nature into every role she played. This
was the greatest secret of her success; for, with her, nature rose
superior to art. On the other hand, it fixed her dramatic limitations,
for it barred her out of comedy. Her melancholy, morbid disposition was
in the fullest sympathy with tragic heroines; but she failed when she
tried to represent the lighter moods and the merry moments of those who
welcome mirth. She could counterfeit despair, and unforced tears would
fill her eyes; but she could not laugh and romp and simulate a gaiety
that was never hers.
Adrienne would have been delighted to act at one of the theaters in
Paris; but they were closed to her through jealousy. She went into the
provinces, in the eastern part of France, and for ten years she was a
leading lady there in many companies and in many towns. As she blossomed
into womanhood there came into her life the love which was to be at once
a source of the most profound interest and of the most intense agony.
It is odd that all her professional success never gave her any
happiness. The life of the actress who traveled from town to town, the
crude and coarse experiences which she had to undergo, the disorder and
the unsettled mode of living, all produced in her a profound disgust.
She was of too exquisite a fiber to live in such a way, especially in a
century when the refinements of existence were for the very few.
She speaks herself of "obligatory amusements, the insistence of men, and
of love affairs. " Yet how could such a woman as Adrienne Lecouvreur keep
herself from love affairs? The motion of the stage and its mimic griefs
satisfied her only while she was actually upon the boards. Love offered
her an emotional excitement that endured and that was always changing.
It was "the profoundest instinct of her being"; and she once wrote:
"What could one do in the world without loving? "
Still, through these ten years she seems to have loved only that she
might be unhappy. There was a strange twist in her mind. Men who were
honorable and who loved her with sincerity she treated very badly. Men
who were indifferent or ungrateful or actually base she seemed to choose
by a sort of perverse instinct. Perhaps the explanation of it is that
during those ten years, though she had many lovers, she never really
loved. She sought excitement, passion, and after that the mournfulness
which comes when passion dies. Thus, one man after another came into her
life--some of them promising marriage--and she bore two children, whose
fathers were unknown, or at least uncertain. But, after all, one can
scarcely pity her, since she had not yet in reality known that great
passion which comes but once in life. So far she had learned only a sort
of feeble cynicism, which she expressed in letters and in such sayings
as these:
"There are sweet errors which I would not venture to commit again. My
experiences, all too sad, have served to illumine my reason. "
"I am utterly weary of love and prodigiously tempted to have no more of
it for the rest of my life; because, after all, I don't wish either to
die or to go mad. "
Yet she also said: "I know too well that no one dies of grief. "
She had had, indeed, some very unfortunate experiences. Men of rank had
loved her and had then cast her off. An actor, one Clavel, would
have married her, but she would not accept his offer. A magistrate in
Strasburg promised marriage; and then, when she was about to accept him,
he wrote to her that he was going to yield to the wishes of his family
and make a more advantageous alliance. And so she was alternately
caressed and repulsed--a mere plaything; and yet this was probably all
that she really needed at the time--something to stir her, something to
make her mournful or indignant or ashamed.
It was inevitable that at last Adrienne Lecouvreur should appear in
Paris. She had won such renown throughout the provinces that even
those who were intensely jealous of her were obliged to give her due
consideration. In 1717, when she was in her twenty-fifth year, she
became a member of the Comedie Franchise. There she made an immediate
and most brilliant impression. She easily took the leading place. She
was one of the glories of Paris, for she became the fashion outside the
theater. For the first time the great classic plays were given, not
in the monotonous singsong which had become a sort of theatrical
convention, but with all the fire and naturalness of life.
Being the fashion, Mlle. Lecouvreur elevated the social rank of actors
and of actresses. Her salon was thronged by men and women of rank.
Voltaire wrote poems in her honor. To be invited to her dinners was
almost like receiving a decoration from the king. She ought to have been
happy, for she had reached the summit of her profession and something
more.
Yet still she was unhappy. In all her letters one finds a plaintive
tone, a little moaning sound that shows how slightly her nature had been
changed. No longer, however, did she throw herself away upon dullards or
brutes. An English peer--Lord Peterborough--not realizing that she was
different from other actresses of that loose-lived age, said to her
coarsely at his first introduction:
"Come now! Show me lots of wit and lots of love. "
The remark was characteristic of the time. Yet Adrienne had learned
at least one thing, and that was the discontent which came from light
affairs. She had thrown herself away too often. If she could not love
with her entire being, if she could not give all that was in her to be
given, whether of her heart or mind or soul, then she would love no more
at all.
At this time there came to Paris a man remarkable in his own century,
and one who afterward became almost a hero of romance. This was Maurice,
Comte de Saxe, as the French called him, his German name and title being
Moritz, Graf von Sachsen, while we usually term him, in English, Marshal
Saxe. Maurice de Saxe was now, in 1721, entering his twenty-fifth year.
Already, though so young, his career had been a strange one; and it was
destined to be still more remarkable. He was the natural son of Duke
Augustus II. of Saxony, who later became King of Poland, and who is
known in history as Augustus the Strong.
Augustus was a giant in stature and in strength, handsome, daring,
unscrupulous, and yet extremely fascinating. His life was one of revelry
and fighting and display. When in his cups he would often call for a
horseshoe and twist it into a knot with his powerful fingers. Many were
his mistresses; but the one for whom he cared the most was a beautiful
and high-spirited Swedish girl of rank, Aurora von Konigsmarck. She was
descended from a rough old field-marshal who in the Thirty Years'
War had slashed and sacked and pillaged and plundered to his heart's
content. From him Aurora von Konigsmarck seemed to have inherited a high
spirit and a sort of lawlessness which charmed the stalwart Augustus of
Poland.
Their son, Maurice de Saxe, inherited everything that was good in his
parents, and a great deal that was less commendable. As a mere child
of twelve he had insisted on joining the army of Prince Eugene, and
had seen rough service in a very strenuous campaign. Two years later he
showed such daring on the battle-field that Prince Eugene summoned him
and paid him a compliment under the form of a rebuke.
"Young man," he said, "you must not mistake mere recklessness for
valor. "
Before he was twenty he had attained the stature and strength of his
royal father; and, to prove it, he in his turn called for a horseshoe,
which he twisted and broke in his fingers. He fought on the side of the
Russians and Poles, and again against the Turks, everywhere displaying
high courage and also genius as a commander; for he never lost his
self-possession amid the very blackest danger, but possessed, as Carlyle
says, "vigilance, foresight, and sagacious precaution. "
Exceedingly handsome, Maurice was a master of all the arts that pleased,
with just a touch of roughness, which seemed not unfitting in so gallant
a soldier. His troops adored him and would follow wherever he might
choose to lead them; for he exercised over these rude men a magnetic
power resembling that of Napoleon in after years. In private life he was
a hard drinker and fond of every form of pleasure. Having no fortune of
his own, a marriage was arranged for him with the Countess von Loben,
who was immensely wealthy; but in three years he had squandered all
her money upon his pleasures, and had, moreover, got himself heavily in
debt.
It was at this time that he first came to Paris to study military
tactics. He had fought hard against the French in the wars that were now
ended; but his chivalrous bearing, his handsome person, and his reckless
joviality made him at once a universal favorite in Paris. To the
perfumed courtiers, with their laces and lovelocks and mincing ways,
Maurice de Saxe came as a sort of knight of old--jovial, daring,
pleasure-loving. Even his broken French was held to be quite charming;
and to see him break a horseshoe with his fingers threw every one into
raptures.
No wonder, then, that he was welcomed in the very highest circles.
Almost at once he attracted the notice of the Princesse de Conti, a
beautiful woman of the blood royal. Of her it has been said that she was
"the personification of a kiss, the incarnation of an embrace, the ideal
of a dream of love. " Her chestnut hair was tinted with little gleams of
gold. Her eyes were violet black. Her complexion was dazzling. But by
the king's orders she had been forced to marry a hunchback--a man whose
very limbs were so weakened by disease and evil living that they would
often fail to support him, and he would fall to the ground, a writhing,
screaming mass of ill-looking flesh.
It is not surprising that his lovely wife should have shuddered much at
his abuse of her and still more at his grotesque endearments. When her
eyes fell on Maurice de Saxe she saw in him one who could free her from
her bondage. By a skilful trick he led the Prince de Conti to invade the
sleeping-room of the princess, with servants, declaring that she was
not alone. The charge proved quite untrue, and so she left her husband,
having won the sympathy of her own world, which held that she had been
insulted. But it was not she who was destined to win and hold the love
of Maurice de Saxe.
Not long after his appearance in the French capital he was invited to
dine with the "Queen of Paris," Adrienne Lecouvreur. Saxe had seen her
on the stage. He knew her previous history. He knew that she was very
much of a soiled dove; but when he met her these two natures, so utterly
dissimilar, leaped together, as it were, through the indescribable
attraction of opposites. He was big and powerful; she was small and
fragile. He was merry, and full of quips and jests; she was reserved and
melancholy. Each felt in the other a need supplied.
At one of their earliest meetings the climax came. Saxe was not the
man to hesitate; while she already, in her thoughts, had made a full
surrender. In one great sweep he gathered her into his arms. It appeared
to her as if no man had ever laid his hand upon her until that moment.
She cried out:
"Now, for the first time in my life, I seem to live! "
It was, indeed, the very first love which in her checkered career was
really worthy of the name. She had supposed that all such things were
passed and gone, that her heart was closed for ever, that she was
invulnerable; and yet here she found herself clinging about the neck
of this impetuous soldier and showing him all the shy fondness and
the unselfish devotion of a young girl. From this instant Adrienne
Lecouvreur never loved another man and never even looked at any other
man with the slightest interest. For nine long years the two were bound
together, though there were strange events to ruffle the surface of
their love.
Maurice de Saxe had been sired by a king. He had the lofty ambition to
be a king himself, and he felt the stirrings of that genius which in
after years was to make him a great soldier, and to win the brilliant
victory of Fontenoy, which to this very day the French are never tired
of recalling. Already Louis XV. had made him a marshal of France; and a
certain restlessness came over him. He loved Adrienne; yet he felt that
to remain in the enjoyment of her witcheries ought not to be the whole
of a man's career.
Then the Grand Duchy of Courland--at that time a vassal state of Poland,
now part of Russia--sought a ruler. Maurice de Saxe was eager to secure
its throne, which would make him at least semi-royal and the chief of
a principality. He hastened thither and found that money was needed to
carry out his plans. The widow of the late duke--the Grand Duchess Anna,
niece of Peter the Great, and later Empress of Russia--as soon as she
had met this dazzling genius, offered to help him to acquire the duchy
if he would only marry her. He did not utterly refuse. Still another
woman of high rank, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, Peter the
Great's daughter, made him very much the same proposal.
Both of these imperial women might well have attracted a man like
Maurice de Saxe, had he been wholly fancy-free, for the second of them
inherited the high spirit and the genius of the great Peter, while the
first was a pleasure-seeking princess, resembling some of those Roman
empresses who loved to stoop that they might conquer. She is described
as indolent and sensual, and she once declared that the chief good in
the world was love. Yet, though she neglected affairs of state and gave
them over to favorites, she won and kept the affections of her people.
She was unquestionably endowed with the magnetic gift of winning hearts.
Adrienne, who was left behind in Paris, knew very little of what was
going on. Only two things were absolutely clear to her. One was that if
her lover secured the duchy he must be parted from her. The other was
that without money his ambition must be thwarted, and that he would then
return to her. Here was a test to try the soul of any woman. It proved
the height and the depth of her devotion. Come what might, Maurice
should be Duke of Courland, even though she lost him. She gathered
together her whole fortune, sold every jewel that she possessed, and
sent her lover the sum of nearly a million francs.
This incident shows how absolutely she was his. But in fact, because
of various intrigues, he failed of election to the ducal throne of
Courland, and he returned to Adrienne with all her money spent, and
without even the grace, at first, to show his gratitude. He stormed and
raged over his ill luck. She merely soothed and petted him, though she
had heard that he had thought of marrying another woman to secure
the dukedom. In one of her letters she bursts out with the pitiful
exclamation:
I am distracted with rage and anguish. Is it not natural to cry out
against such treachery? This man surely ought to know me--he ought to
love me. Oh, my God! What are we--what ARE we?
But still she could not give him up, nor could he give her up, though
there were frightful scenes between them--times when he cruelly
reproached her and when her native melancholy deepened into outbursts
of despair. Finally there occurred an incident which is more or
less obscure in parts. The Duchesse de Bouillon, a great lady of the
court--facile, feline, licentious, and eager for delights--resolved that
she would win the love of Maurice de Saxe. She set herself to win it
openly and without any sense of shame. Maurice himself at times, when
the tears of Adrienne proved wearisome, flirted with the duchess.
Yet, even so, Adrienne held the first place in his heart, and her rival
knew it. Therefore she resolved to humiliate Adrienne, and to do so in
the place where the actress had always reigned supreme. There was to be
a gala performance of Racine's great tragedy, "Phedre," with Adrienne,
of course, in the title-role. The Duchesse de Bouillon sent a large
number of her lackeys with orders to hiss and jeer, and, if possible,
to break off the play. Malignantly delighted with her plan, the duchess
arrayed herself in jewels and took her seat in a conspicuous stage-box,
where she could watch the coming storm and gloat over the discomfiture
of her rival.
When the curtain rose, and when Adrienne appeared as Phedre, an uproar
began. It was clear to the great actress that a plot had been devised
against her. In an instant her whole soul was afire. The queen-like
majesty of her bearing compelled silence throughout the house. Even the
hired lackeys were overawed by it. Then Adrienne moved swiftly across
the stage and fronted her enemy, speaking into her very face the three
insulting lines which came to her at that moment of the play:
I am not of those women void of shame,
Who, savoring in crime the joys of peace,
Harden their faces till they cannot blush!
The whole house rose and burst forth into tremendous applause. Adrienne
had won, for the woman who had tried to shame her rose in trepidation
and hurried from the theater.
But the end was not yet. Those were evil times, when dark deeds were
committed by the great almost with impunity. Secret poisoning was a
common trade. To remove a rival was as usual a thing in the eighteenth
century as to snub a rival is usual in the twentieth.
Not long afterward, on the night of March 15, 1730, Adrienne Lecouvreur
was acting in one of Voltaire's plays with all her power and instinctive
art when suddenly she was seized with the most frightful pains. Her
anguish was obvious to every one who saw her, and yet she had the
courage to go through her part. Then she fainted and was carried home.
Four days later she died, and her death was no less dramatic than her
life had been. Her lover and two friends of his were with her, and also
a Jesuit priest. He declined to administer extreme unction unless she
would declare that she repented of her theatrical career. She stubbornly
refused, since she believed that to be the greatest actress of her time
was not a sin. Yet still the priest insisted.
Then came the final moment.
"Weary and revolting against this death, this destiny, she stretched her
arms with one of the old lovely gestures toward a bust which stood near
by and cried--her last cry of passion:
"'There is my world, my hope--yes, and my God! '"
The bust was one of Maurice de Saxe.
THE STORY OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART
The royal families of Europe are widely known, yet not all of them are
equally renowned. Thus, the house of Romanoff, although comparatively
young, stands out to the mind with a sort of barbaric power, more
vividly than the Austrian house of Hapsburg, which is the oldest
reigning family in Europe, tracing its beginnings backward until
they are lost in the Dark Ages. The Hohenzollerns of Prussia are
comparatively modern, so far as concerns their royalty. The offshoots of
the Bourbons carry on a very proud tradition in the person of the King
of Spain, although France, which has been ruled by so many members of
the family, will probably never again behold a Bourbon king. The deposed
Braganzas bear a name which is ancient, but which has a somewhat tinsel
sound.
The Bonapartes, of course, are merely parvenus, and they have had the
good taste to pretend to no antiquity of birth. The first Napoleon,
dining at a table full of monarchs, when he heard one of them
deferentially alluding to the Bonaparte family as being very old and
noble, exclaimed:
"Pish! My nobility dates from the day of Marengo! "
And the third Napoleon, in announcing his coming marriage with Mlle. de
Montijo, used the very word "parvenu" in speaking of himself and of his
family. His frankness won the hearts of the French people and helped to
reconcile them to a marriage in which the bride was barely noble.
In English history there are two great names to conjure by, at least
to the imaginative. One is Plantagenet, which seems to contain within
itself the very essence of all that is patrician, magnificent, and
royal. It calls to memory at once the lion-hearted Richard, whose short
reign was replete with romance in England and France and Austria and the
Holy Land.
But perhaps a name of greater influence is that which links the royal
family of Britain today with the traditions of the past, and which
summons up legend and story and great deeds of history. This is the name
of Stuart, about which a whole volume might be written to recall its
suggestions and its reminiscences.
The first Stuart (then Stewart) of whom anything is known got his name
from the title of "Steward of Scotland," which remained in the family
for generations, until the sixth of the line, by marriage with Princess
Marjory Bruce, acquired the Scottish crown. That was in the early years
of the fourteenth century; and finally, after the death of Elizabeth
of England, her rival's son, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England,
united under one crown two kingdoms that had so long been at almost
constant war.
It is almost characteristic of the Scot that, having small territory,
little wealth, and a seat among his peers that is almost ostentatiously
humble, he should bit by bit absorb the possessions of all the rest and
become their master. Surely, the proud Tudors, whose line ended with
Elizabeth, must have despised the "Stewards," whose kingdom was small
and bleak and cold, and who could not control their own vassals.
One can imagine also, with Sir Walter Scott, the haughty nobles of the
English court sneering covertly at the awkward, shambling James, pedant
and bookworm. Nevertheless, his diplomacy was almost as good as that of
Elizabeth herself; and, though he did some foolish things, he was very
far from being a fool.
In his appearance James was not unlike Abraham Lincoln--an unkingly
figure; and yet, like Lincoln, when occasion required it he could rise
to the dignity which makes one feel the presence of a king. He was the
only Stuart who lacked anything in form or feature or external grace.
His son, Charles I. , was perhaps one of the worst rulers that England
has ever had; yet his uprightness of life, his melancholy yet handsome
face, his graceful bearing, and the strong religious element in his
character, together with the fact that he was put to death after being
treacherously surrendered to his enemies--all these have combined to
make almost a saint of him. There are Englishmen to-day who speak of him
as "the martyr king," and who, on certain days of the year, say prayers
that beg the Lord's forgiveness because of Charles's execution.
The members of the so-called League of the White Rose, founded to
perpetuate English allegiance to the direct line of Stuarts, do many
things that are quite absurd. They refuse to pray for the present King
of England and profess to think that the Princess Mary of Bavaria is the
true ruler of Great Britain. All this represents that trace of sentiment
which lingers among the English to-day. They feel that the Stuarts were
the last kings of England to rule by the grace of God rather than by the
grace of Parliament. As a matter of fact, the present reigning family
in England is glad to derive its ancient strain of royal blood through a
Stuart--descended on the distaff side from James I. , and winding its way
through Hanover.
This sentiment for the Stuarts is a thing entirely apart from reason and
belongs to the realm of poetry and romance; yet so strong is it that
it has shown itself in the most inconsistent fashion. For instance, Sir
Walter Scott was a devoted adherent of the house of Hanover. When George
IV. visited Edinburgh, Scott was completely carried away by his loyal
enthusiasm. He could not see that the man before him was a drunkard and
braggart. He viewed him as an incarnation of all the noble traits that
ought to hedge about a king. He snatched up a wine-glass from which
George had just been drinking and carried it away to be an object of
reverence for ever after. Nevertheless, in his heart, and often in his
speech, Scott seemed to be a high Tory, and even a Jacobite.
There are precedents for this. The Empress Eugenie used often to say
with a laugh that she was the only true royalist at the imperial court
of France. That was well enough for her in her days of flightiness and
frivolity. No one, however, accused Queen Victoria of being frivolous,
and she was not supposed to have a strong sense of humor. None the less,
after listening to the skirling of the bagpipes and to the romantic
ballads which were sung in Scotland she is said to have remarked with a
sort of sigh:
"Whenever I hear those ballads I feel that England belongs really to the
Stuarts! "
Before Queen Victoria was born, when all the sons of George III. were
childless, the Duke of Kent was urged to marry, so that he might have a
family to continue the succession. In resenting the suggestion he said
many things, and among them this was the most striking:
"Why don't you call the Stuarts back to England? They couldn't possibly
make a worse mess of it than our fellows have! "
But he yielded to persuasion and married. From this marriage came
Victoria, who had the sacred drop of Stuart blood which gave England
to the Hanoverians; and she was to redeem the blunders and tyrannies of
both houses.
The fascination of the Stuarts, which has been carried overseas to
America and the British dominions, probably began with the striking
history of Mary Queen of Scots. Her brilliancy and boldness and beauty,
and especially the pathos of her end, have made us see only her intense
womanliness, which in her own day was the first thing that any one
observed in her. So, too, with Charles I. , romantic figure and knightly
gentleman. One regrets his death upon the scaffold, even though his
execution was necessary to the growth of freedom.
Many people are no less fascinated by Charles II.
