London Pride by M. E. Braddon

M >> M. E. Braddon >> London Pride

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"All that is most agreeable in our court is imitated from the Palais Royal
and the Louvre.

"'Whitehall is but the shadow of a shadow,' says Fareham, in one of his
philosophy fits, preaching upon the changes he has seen in Paris and
London. And, indeed, it is strange to have lived through two revolutions,
one so awful in its final catastrophe that it dwarfs the other, yet both
terrible; for I, who was a witness of the sufferings of Princes and
Princesses during the two wars of the Fronde, am not inclined to think
lightly of a civil war which cost France some of the flower of her
nobility, and made her greatest hero a prisoner and an exile for seven
years of his life.

"But oh, my dear, it was a romantic time! and I look back and am proud to
have lived in it. I was but twelve years old at the siege of Paris; but
I was in Madame de Longueville's room, at the Hotel de Ville, while the
fighting was going on, and the officers, in their steel cuirasses, coming
in from the thick of the strife. Such a confusion of fine ladies and armed
men--breast-plates and blue scarves--fiddles squeaking in the salon,
trumpets sounding in the square below!"

* * * * *

In a letter of later date Lady Fareham expatiated upon the folly of her
sister's spiritual guides.

"I am desolated, _ma mie_, by the absurd restriction which forbids you to
profit by my New Year's gift. I thought, when I sent you all the volumes of
la Scudery's enchanting romance, I had laid up for you a year of enjoyment,
and that, touched by the baguette of that exquisite fancy, your convent
walls would fall, like those of Jericho at the sound of Jewish trumpets,
and you would be transported in imagination to the finest society in the
world--the company of Cyrus and Mandane--under which Oriental disguise you
are shown every feature of mind and person in Conde and his heroic sister,
my esteemed friend, the Duchesse de Longueville. As I was one of the first
to appreciate Mademoiselle Scudery's genius, and to detect behind the
name of the brother the tender sentiments and delicate refinement of the
sister's chaster pen, so I believe I was the first to call the Duchesse
'Mandane,' a sobriquet which soon became general among her intimates.

"You are not to read 'Le Grand Cyrus," your aunt tells you, because it is
a romance! That is to say, you are forbidden to peruse the most faithful
history of your own time, and to familiarise yourself with the persons and
minds of great people whom you may never be so fortunate as to meet in the
flesh. I myself, dearest Ange, have had the felicity to live among
these princely persons, to revel in the conversations of the Hotel de
Rambouillet--not, perhaps, as our grandmother would have told you, in its
most glorious period--but at least while it was still the focus of all that
is choicest in letters and in art. Did we not hear M. Poquelin read his
first comedy before it was represented by Monsieur's company in the
beautiful theatre at the Palais Royal, built by Richelieu, when it was the
Palais Cardinal? Not read 'Le Grand Cyrus,' and on the score of morality!
Why, this most delightful book was written by one of the most moral women
in Paris--one of the chastest--against whose reputation no word of slander
has ever been breathed! It must, indeed, be confessed that Sapho is of an
ugliness which would protect her even were she not guarded by the aegis of
genius. She is one of those fortunate unfortunates who can walk through the
furnace of a Court unscathed, and leave a reputation for modesty in an age
that scarce credits virtue in woman.

"I fear, dear child, that these narrow-minded restrictions of your convent
will leave you of a surpassing ignorance, which may cover you with
confusion when you find yourself in fine company. There are accomplishments
without which youth is no more admired than age and grey hairs; and to
sparkle with wit or astonish with learning is a necessity for a woman
of quality. It is only by the advantages of education that we can show
ourselves superior to such a hussy as Albemarle's gutter-bred duchess, who
was the faithless wife of a sailor or barber--I forget which--and who hangs
like a millstone upon the General's neck now that he has climbed to the
zenith. To have perfect Italian and some Spanish is as needful as to
have fine eyes and complexion nowadays. And to dance admirably is a gift
indispensable to a lady. Alas! I fear that those little feet of yours--I
hope they _are_ small--have never been taught to move in a coranto or a
contre-danse, and that you will have to learn the alphabet of dancing at an
age when most women are finished performers. The great Conde, while winning
sieges and battles that surpassed the feats of Greeks and Romans, contrived
to make himself the finest dancer of his day, and won more admiration
in high-bred circles by his graceful movements, which every one could
understand and admire, than by prodigies of valour at Dunkirk or
Nordlingen."

The above was one of Lady Fareham's most serious letters. Her pen was
exercised, for the most part, in a lighter vein. She wrote of the Court
beauties, the Court jests--practical jokes some of them, which our finer
minds of to-day would consider in execrable taste--such jests as we read
of in Grammont's memoirs, which generally aimed at making an ugly woman
ridiculous, or an injured husband the sport and victim of wicked lover and
heartless wife. No sense of the fitness of things constrained her ladyship
from communicating these Court scandals to her guileless sister. Did they
not comprise the only news worth anybody's attention, and relate to the
only class of people who had any tangible existence for Lady Fareham? There
were millions of human beings, no doubt, living and acting and suffering on
the surface of the earth, outside the stellary circles of which Louis and
Charles were the suns; but there was no interstellar medium of sympathy to
convey the idea of those exterior populations to Hyacinth's mind. She knew
of the populace, French or English, as of something which was occasionally
given to become dangerous and revolutionary, which sometimes starved and
sometimes died of the plague, and was always unpleasing to the educated
eye.

Masquerades, plays, races at Newmarket, dances, duels, losses at
cards--Lady Fareham touched every subject, and expatiated on all; but she
had usually more to tell of the country she had left than of that in which
she was living.

"Here everything is on such a small scale, _si mesquin!_" she wrote.
"Whitehall covers a large area, but it is only a fine banqueting hall and
a labyrinth of lodgings, without suite or stateliness. The pictures in the
late King's cabinet are said to be the finest in the world, but they are
a kind of pieces for which I care very little--Flemish and Dutch
chiefly--with a series of cartoons by Raphael, which connoisseurs affect to
admire, but which, did they belong to me, I would gladly exchange for a set
of Mortlake tapestries.

"His Majesty here builds ships, while the King of France builds palaces.
I am told Louis is spending millions on the new palace at Versailles,
an ungrateful site--no water, no noble prospect as at St. Germain, no
population. The King likes the spot all the better, Madame tells me,
because he has to create his own landscape, to conjure lakes and cataracts
out of dry ground. The buildings have been but two years in progress, and
it must be long before these colossal foundations are crowned with the
edifice which Louis and his architect, Mansart, have planned. Colbert is
furious at this squandering of vast sums on a provincial palace, while the
Louvre, the birthplace and home of dynasties, remains unfinished.

"The King's reason for disliking St. Germain--a chateau his mother has
always loved--has in it something childish and fantastic, if, as my dear
duchess declares, he hates the place only because he can see the towers of
St. Denis from the terrace, and is thus hourly reminded of death and the
grave. I can hardly believe that a being of such superior intelligence
could be governed by any such horror of man's inevitable end. I would far
sooner attribute the vast expenditure of Versailles to the common love of
monarchs and great men for building houses too large for their necessities.
Indeed, it was but yesterday that Fareham took me to see the palace--for I
can call it by no meaner name--that Lord Clarendon is building for himself
in the open country at the top of St. James's Street. It promises to be
the finest house in town, and, although not covering so much ground as
Whitehall, is judged far superior to that inchoate mass in its fine
proportions and the perfect symmetry of its saloons and galleries. There is
a garden a-making, projected by Mr. Evelyn, a great authority on trees and
gardens. A crowd of fine company had assembled to see the newly finished
hall and dining parlour, among them a fussy person, who came in attendance
upon my Lord Sandwich, and who was more voluble than became his quality as
a clerk in the Navy Office. He was periwigged and dressed as fine as his
master, and, on my being civil to him, talked much of himself and of divers
taverns in the city where the dinners were either vastly good or vastly
ill. I told him that as I never dined at a tavern the subject was
altogether beyond the scope of my intelligence, at which Sandwich and
Fareham laughed, and my pertinacious gentleman blushed as red as the heels
of his shoes. I am told the creature has a pretty taste in music, and is
the son of a tailor, but professes a genteel ancestry, and occasionally
pushes into the best company.

"Shall I describe to you one of my latest conquests, sweetheart? 'Tis
a boy--an actual beardless boy of eighteen summers; but such a boy! So
beautiful, so insolent, with an impudence that can confront Lord Clarendon
himself, the gravest of noblemen, who, with the sole exception of my Lord
Southampton, is the one man who has never crossed Mrs. Palmer's threshold,
or bowed his neck under that splendid fury's yoke. My admirer thinks no
more of smoking these grave nobles, men of a former generation, who learnt
their manners at the court of a serious and august King, than I do of
teasing my falcon. He laughs at them, jokes with them in Greek or in Latin,
has a ready answer and a witty quip for every turn of the discourse; will
even interrupt his Majesty in one of those anecdotes of his Scottish
martyrdom which he tells so well and tells so often. Lucifer himself could
not be more arrogant or more audacious than this bewitching boy-lover
of mine, who writes verses in English or Latin as easy as I can toss a
shuttlecock. I doubt the greater number of his verses are scarce proper
reading for you or me, Angela; for I see the men gather round him in
corners as he murmurs his latest madrigal to a chosen half-dozen or so;
and I guess by their subdued tittering that the lines are not over modest;
while by the sidelong glances the listeners cast round, now at my Lady
Castlemaine, and anon at some other goddess in the royal pantheon, I have a
shrewd notion as to what alabaster breast my witty lover's shafts are aimed
at.

"This youthful devotee of mine is the son of a certain Lord Wilmot, who
fought on the late King's side in the troubles. This creature went to the
university of Oxford at twelve years old--as it were, straight from his
go-cart to college, and was master of arts at fourteen. He has made the
grand tour, and pretends to have seen so much of this life that he has
found out the worthlessness of it. Even while he woes me with a most
romantic ardour, he affects to have outgrown the capacity to love.

"Think not, dearest, that I outstep the bounds of matronly modesty by this
airy philandering with my young Lord Rochester, or that my serious Fareham
is ever offended at our pretty trifling. He laughs at the lad as heartily
as I do, invites him to our table, and is amused by his monkeyish tricks.
A woman of quality must have followers; and a pert, fantastical boy is the
safest of lovers. Slander itself could scarce accuse Lady Fareham, who has
had soldier-princes and statesmen at her feet, of an unworthy tenderness
for a jackanapes of seventeen; for, indeed, I believe his eighteenth
birthday is still in the womb of time. I would with all my heart thou wert
here to share our innocent diversions; and I know not which of all my
playthings thou wouldst esteem highest, the falcon, my darling spaniels,
made up of soft silken curls and intelligent brown eyes, or Rochester. Nay,
let me not forget the children, Papillon and Cupid, who are truly very
pretty creatures, though consummate plagues. The girl, Papillon, has a
tongue which Wilmot says is the nearest approach to perpetual motion that
he has yet discovered; and the boy, who was but seven last birthday, is
full of mischief, in which my admirer counsels and abets him.

"Oh, this London, sweetheart, and this Court! How wide those violet eyes
would open couldst thou but look suddenly in upon us after supper at
Basset, or in the park, or at the play-house, when the orange girls are
smoking the pretty fellows in the pit, and my Lady Castlemaine is leaning
half out of her box to talk to the King in his! I thought I had seen enough
of festivals and dances, stage-plays and courtly diversions beyond sea; but
the Court entertainments at Paris or St. Germain differed as much from the
festivities of Whitehall as a cathedral service from a dance in a booth at
Bartholomew Fair. His Majesty of France never forgets that he is a king.
His Majesty of England only remembers his kingship when he wants a
new subsidy, or to get a Bill hurried through the Houses. Louis at
four-and-twenty was serious enough for fifty. Charles at thirty-four has
the careless humour of a schoolboy. He is royal in nothing except his
extravagance, which has squandered more millions than I dare mention since
he landed at Dover.

"I am growing almost as sober as my solemn spouse, who will ever be railing
at the King and the Duke, and even more bitterly at the favourite, his
Grace of Buckingham, who is assuredly one of the most agreeable men in
London. I asked Fareham only yesterday why he went to Court, if his
Majesty's company is thus distasteful to him. 'It is not to his company I
object, but to his principles,' he answered, in that earnest fashion of his
which takes the lightest questions _au grand serieux_. 'I see in him a man
who, with natural parts far above the average, makes himself the jest of
meaner intellects, and the dupe of greedy courtesans; a man who, trained
in the stern school of adversity, overshadowed by the great horror of his
father's tragical doom, accepts life as one long jest, and being, by a
concatenation of circumstances bordering on the miraculous, restored to the
privileges of hereditary monarchy, takes all possible pains to prove
the uselessness of kings. I see a man who, borne back to power by the
irresistible current of the people's affections, has broken every pledge he
gave that people in the flush and triumph of his return. I see one who,
in his own person, cares neither for Paul nor Peter, and yet can tamely
witness the persecution of his people because they do not conform to a
State religion--can allow good and pious men to be driven out of the
pulpits where they have preached the Gospel of Christ, and suffer wives and
children to starve because the head of the household has a conscience. I
see a king careless of the welfare of his people, and the honour and glory
of his reign; affecting to be a patriot, and a man of business, on the
strength of an extravagant fancy for shipbuilding; careless of everything
save the empty pleasure of an idle hour. A king who lavishes thousands upon
wantons and profligates, and who ever gives not to the most worthy, but to
the most importunate.'

"I laughed at this tirade, and told him, what indeed I believe, that he is
at heart a Puritan, and would better consort with Baxter and Bunyan, and
that frousy crew, than with Buckhurst and Sedley, or his brilliant kinsman,
Roscommon."

From her father directly, Angela heard nothing, and her sister's allusions
to him were of the briefest, anxiously as she had questioned that lively
letter-writer. Yes, her father was well, Hyacinth told her; but he stayed
mostly at the Manor Moat. He did not care for the Court gaieties.

"I believe he thinks we have all parted company with our wits," she wrote.
"He seldom sees me but to lecture me, in a sidelong way, upon my folly; for
his railing at the company I keep hits me by implication. I believe
these old courtiers of the late King are Puritans at heart; and that if
Archbishop Laud were alive he would be as bitter against the sins of the
town as any of the cushion-thumping Anabaptists that preach to the elect in
back rooms and blind alleys. My father talks and thinks as if he had spent
all his years of exile in the cave of the Seven Sleepers. And yet he fought
shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest gentlemen in France--Conde,
Turenne, Gramont, St. Evremond, Bussy, and the rest of them. But all the
world is young, and full of wit and mirth, since his Majesty came to his
own; and elderly limbs are too stiff to trip in our new dances. I doubt my
father's mind is as old-fashioned, and of as rigid a shape as his Court
suit, at sight of which my best friends can scarce refrain from laughing."

This light mention of a parent whom she reverenced wounded Angela to the
quick; and that wound was deepened a year later, when she was surprised by
a visit from her father, of which no letter had forewarned her. She was
walking in the convent garden, in her hour of recreation, tasting the sunny
air, and the beauty of the many-coloured tulips in the long narrow borders,
between two espalier rows trained with an exquisite neatness, and reputed
to bear the finest golden pippins and Bergamot pears within fifty miles of
the city. The trees were in blossom, and a wall of pink and white bloom
rose up on either hand above the scarlet and amber tulips.

Turning at the end of the long alley, where it met a wall that in August
was flushed with the crimson velvet of peaches and nectarines, Angela saw a
man advancing from the further end of the walk, attended by a lay sister.
The high-crowned hat and pointed beard, the tall figure in a grey doublet
crossed with a black sword-belt, the walk, the bearing, were unmistakable.
It might have been a figure that had stepped out of Vandyke's canvas. It
had nothing of the fuss and flutter, the feathers and ruffles, the loose
flow of brocade and velvet, that marked the costume of the young French
Court.

Angela ran to receive her father, and could scarce speak to him, she was so
startled, and yet so glad.

"Oh, sir, when I prayed for you at Mass this morning, how little I hoped
for so much happiness! I had a letter from Hyacinth only a week ago, and
she wrote nothing of your intentions. I knew not that you had crossed the
sea."

"Why, sweetheart, Hyacinth sees me too rarely, and is too full of her own
affairs, ever to be beforehand with my intentions; and, although I have
been long heartily sick of England, I only made up my mind to come to
Flanders less than a week ago. No sooner thought of than done. I came by
our old road, in a merchant craft from Harwich to Ostend, and the rest of
the way in the saddle. Not quite so fast as they used to ride that carried
his Majesty's post from London to York, in the beginning of the troubles,
when the loyal gentlemen along the north road would galop faster with
despatches and treaties than ever they rode after a stag. Ah, child, how
hopeful we were in those days; and how we all told each other it was but a
passing storm at Westminster, which could all be lulled by a little civil
concession here and there on the King's part! And so it might, perhaps, if
he would but have conceded the right thing at the right time--yielded
but just the inch they asked for when they first asked--instead of
shilly-shallying till they got angry, and wanted ells instead of inches.
'Tis the stitch in time, Angela, that saves trouble, in politics as well as
in thy petticoat."

He had flung his arm round his daughter's neck as they paced slowly side by
side.

"Have you come to stay at Louvain, sir?" she asked, timidly.

"Nay, love, the place is too quiet for me. I could not stay in a town
that is given over to learning and piety. The sound of their everlasting
carillon would tease my ear with the thought, 'Lo, another quarter of an
hour gone of my poor remnant of days, and nothing to do but to doze in the
sunshine or fondle my spaniel, fill my pipe, or ride a lazy horse on a
level road, such as I have ever hated.'"

"But why did you tire of England, sir? I thought the King would have wanted
you always near him. You, his father's close friend, who suffered so much
for Royal friendship. Surely he loves and cherishes you! He must be a base,
ungrateful man if he do not."

"Oh, the King is grateful, Angela, grateful enough and to spare. He never
sees me at Court but he has some gracious speech about his father's regard
for me. It grows irksome at last, by sheer repetition. The turn of the
sentence varies, for his Majesty has a fine standing army of words, but the
gist of the phrase is always the same, and it means, 'Here is a tiresome
old Put to whom I must say something civil for the sake of his ancient
vicissitudes.' And then his phalanx of foppery stares at me as if I were a
Topinambou; and since I have seen them mimic Ned Hyde's stately speech and
manners, I doubt not before I have crossed the ante-room I have served to
make sport for the crew, since their wit has but two phases--ordure and
mimickry. Look not so glum, daughter. I am glad to be out of a Court which
is most like--such places as I dare not name to thee."

"But to have you disrespected, sir; you, so brave, so noble! You who gave
the best years of your life to your royal master!"

"What I gave I gave, child. I gave him youth--that never comes back--and
fortune, that is not worth grieving for. And now that I have begun to lose
the reckoning of my years since fifty, I feel I had best take myself back
to that roving life in which I have no time to brood upon losses and
sorrows."

"Dear father, I am sure you must mistake the King's feelings towards you.
It is not possible that he can think lightly of such devotion as yours."

"Nay, sweetheart, who said he thinks lightly? He never thinks of me at all,
or of anything serious under God's sky. So long as he has spending money,
and can live in a circle of bright eyes, and hear only flippant tongues
that offer him a curious incense of flattery spiced with impertinence,
Charles Stuart has all of this life that he values. And for the next--a
man who is shrewdly suspected of being a papist, while he is attached by
gravest vows to the Church of England, must needs hold heaven's rewards and
hell's torments lightly."

"But Queen Catherine, sir--does not she favour you? My aunt says she is a
good woman."

"Yes, a good woman, and the nearest approach to a cypher to be found at
Hampton Court or Whitehall. Young Lord Rochester has written a poem upon
'Nothing.' He might have taken Queen Catherine's name as a synonym. She is
nothing; she counts for nothing. Her love can benefit nobody; her hatred,
were the poor soul capable of hating persistently, can do no one harm."

"And the King--is he so unkind to her?"

"Unkind! No. He allows her to live. Nay, when for a few days--the brief
felicity of her poor life--she seemed on the point of dying, he was
stricken with remorse for all that he had not been to her, and was kind,
and begged her to live for his sake. The polite gentleman meant it for
a compliment--one of those pious falsehoods that men murmur in dying
ears--but she took him at his word and recovered; and she is there still,
a little dark lady in a fine gown, of whom nobody takes any notice, beyond
the emptiest formality of bent knees and backward steps. There are long
evenings at Hampton Court in which she is scarce spoken to, save when she
fawns upon the fortunate lady whom she began by hating. Oh, child, I should
not talk to you of these things; but some of the disgust that has made
my life bitter bubbles over in spite of me. I am a wanderer and an exile
again, dear heart. I would sooner trail a pike abroad than suffer neglect
at home. I will fight under any flag so long as it flies not for my
country's foe. I am going back to my old friends at the Louvre, to those
few who are old enough to care for me; and if there come a war with Spain,
why my sword may be of some small use to young Louis, whose mother was
always gracious to me in the old days at St. Germain, when she knew not
in the morning whether she would go safe to bed at night. A golden age of
peace has followed that wild time; but the Spanish king's death is like to
light the torch and set the war-dogs barking. Louis will thrust his sword
through the treaty of the Pyrenees if he see the way to a throne t'other
side of the mountains."

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