MAURICE OF SAXONY AND ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR
It is an old saying that to every womanly woman self-sacrifice isalmost a necessity of her nature. To make herself of small account ascompared with the one she loves; to give freely of herself, even thoughshe may receive nothing in return; to suffer, and yet to feel an innerpoignant joy in all this suffering--here is a most wonderful trait ofwomanhood. Perhaps it is akin to the maternal instinct; for to themother, after she has felt the throb of a new life within her, there isno sacrifice so great and no anguish so keen that she will not welcomeit as the outward sign and evidence of her illimitable love.
In most women this spirit of self-sacrifice is checked and kept withinordinary bounds by the circumstances of their lives. In many smallthings they do yield and they do suffer; yet it is not in yielding andin suffering that they find their deepest joy.
There are some, however, who seem to have been born with an abnormalcapacity for enduring hardship and mental anguish; so that by a sort ofcontradiction they find their happiness in sorrow. Such women areendowed with a remarkable degree of sensibility. They feel intensely.In moments of grief and disappointment, and even of despair, theresteals over them a sort of melancholy pleasure. It is as if they loveddim lights and mournful music and scenes full of sad suggestion.
If everything goes well with them, they are unwilling to believe thatsuch good fortune will last. If anything goes wrong with them, they aresure that this is only the beginning of something even worse. The musicof their lives is written in a minor key.
Now, for such women as these, the world at large has very littlecharity. It speaks slightingly of them as "agonizers." It believes thatthey are "fond of making scenes." It regards as an affectationsomething that is really instinctive and inevitable. Unless such womenare beautiful and young and charming they are treated badly; and thisis often true in spite of all their natural attractiveness, for theyseem to court ill usage as if they were saying frankly:
"Come, take us! We will give you everything and ask for nothing. We donot expect true and enduring love. Do not be constant or generous oreven kind. We know that we shall suffer. But, none the less, in oursorrow there will be sweetness, and even in our abasement we shall feela sort of triumph."
In history there is one woman who stands out conspicuously as a type ofher melancholy sisterhood, one whose life was full of disappointmenteven when she was most successful, and of indignity even when she wasmost sought after and admired. This woman was Adrienne Lecouvreur,famous in the annals of the stage, and still more famous in the annalsof 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 ofirresponsibility.
Adrienne Lecouvreur--her name was originally Couvreur--was born towardthe end of the seventeenth century in the little French village ofDamery, not far from Rheims, where her aunt was a laundress and herfather 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 ungovernabletemper, 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 awandering life, in which she went from one town to another. What shehad inherited from her mother is, of course, not known; but she had allher father's strangely pessimistic temper, softened only by the factthat she was a girl. From her earliest years she was unhappy; yet herunhappiness was largely of her own choosing. Other girls of her ownstation met life cheerfully, worked away from dawn till dusk, and thenhad their moments of amusement, and even jollity, with theircompanions, after the fashion of all children. But Adrienne Lecouvreurwas unhappy because she chose to be. It was not the wash-tub that madeher so, for she had been born to it; nor was it the half-mad outbreaksof her father, because to her, at least, he was not unkind. Herdiscontent sprang from her excessive sensibility.
Indeed, for a peasant child she had reason to think herself far morefortunate than her associates. Her intelligence was great. Ambition wasawakened in her before she was ten years of age, when she began tolearn and to recite poems--learning them, as has been said, "betweenthe wash-tub and the ironing-board," and reciting them to theadmiration of older and wiser people than she. Even at ten she was avery beautiful child, with great lambent eyes, an exquisite complexion,and a lovely form, while she had the further gift of a voice thatthrilled the listener and, when she chose, brought tears to every eye.She was, indeed, a natural elocutionist, knowing by instinct all thosemodulations of tone and varied cadences which go to the hearer's heart.
It was very like Adrienne Lecouvreur to memorize only such poems aswere mournful, just as in after life she could win success upon thestage only in tragic parts. She would repeat with a sort of ecstasy thepathetic poems that were then admired; and she was soon able to give upher menial work, because many people asked her to their houses so thatthey could listen to the divinely beautiful voice charged with theemotion which was always at her command.
When she was thirteen her father moved to Paris, where she was placedat 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 ofchildren and young people, probably influenced by Adrienne, formedthemselves into a theatrical company from the pure love of acting. Afriendly grocer let them have an empty store-room for theirperformances, and in this store-room Adrienne Lecouvreur first acted ina tragedy by Corneille, assuming the part of leading woman.
Her genius for the stage was like the genius of Napoleon for war. Shehad had no teaching. She had never been inside of any theater; and yetshe delivered the magnificent lines with all the power and fire andeffectiveness of a most accomplished actress. People thronged to seeher and to feel the tempest of emotion which shook her as she sustainedher part, which for the moment was as real to her as life itself.
At first only the people of the neighborhood knew anything about theseamateur performances; but presently a lady of rank, one Mme. du Gue,came out of curiosity and was fascinated by the little actress. Mme. duGue offered the spacious courtyard of her own house, and fitted it withsome of the appurtenances of a theater. From that moment the fame ofAdrienne spread throughout all Paris. The courtyard was crowded bygentlemen and ladies, by people of distinction from the court, and atlast even by actors and actresses from the Comedie Franchise.
It is, in fact, a remarkable tribute to Adrienne that in her thirteenthyear she excited so much jealousy among the actors of the Comedie thatthey evoked the law against her. Theaters required a royal license, andof course poor little Adrienne's company had none. Hence legalproceedings were begun, and the most famous actresses in Paris talkedof having these clever children imprisoned! Upon this the companysought the precincts of the Temple, where no legal warrant could beserved without the express order of the king himself.
There for a time the performances still went on. Finally, as the otherchildren were not geniuses, but merely boys and girls in search of fun,the little company broke up. Its success, however, had determined forever the career of Adrienne. With her beautiful face, her lithe andexquisite figure, her golden voice, and her instinctive art, it wasplain enough that her future lay upon the stage; and so at fourteen orfifteen she began where most actresses leave off--accomplished andattractive, and having had a practical training in her profession.
Diderot, in that same century, observed that the truest actor is onewho does not feel his part at all, but produces his effects byintellectual effort and intelligent observation. Behind the figure onthe stage, torn with passion or rollicking with mirth, there mustalways be the cool and unemotional mind which directs and governs andcontrols. This same theory was both held and practised by the lateBenoit Constant Coquelin. To some extent it was the theory of Garrickand 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 thatother actors dreaded to support him on the stage in such parts asSpartacus and Metamora.
It is needless to say that a girl like Adrienne Lecouvreur flungherself with all the intensity of her nature into every role sheplayed. This was the greatest secret of her success; for, with her,nature rose superior to art. On the other hand, it fixed her dramaticlimitations, for it barred her out of comedy. Her melancholy, morbiddisposition was in the fullest sympathy with tragic heroines; but shefailed when she tried to represent the lighter moods and the merrymoments of those who welcome mirth. She could counterfeit despair, andunforced tears would fill her eyes; but she could not laugh and rompand simulate a gaiety that was never hers.
Adrienne would have been delighted to act at one of the theaters inParis; but they were closed to her through jealousy. She went into theprovinces, in the eastern part of France, and for ten years she was aleading lady there in many companies and in many towns. As sheblossomed into womanhood there came into her life the love which was tobe at once a source of the most profound interest and of the mostintense agony.
It is odd that all her professional success never gave her anyhappiness. The life of the actress who traveled from town to town, thecrude and coarse experiences which she had to undergo, the disorder andthe 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 acentury 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 Lecouvreurkeep herself from love affairs? The motion of the stage and its mimicgriefs satisfied her only while she was actually upon the boards. Loveoffered her an emotional excitement that endured and that was alwayschanging. It was "the profoundest instinct of her being"; and she oncewrote: "What could one do in the world without loving?"
Still, through these ten years she seems to have loved only that shemight be unhappy. There was a strange twist in her mind. Men who werehonorable and who loved her with sincerity she treated very badly. Menwho were indifferent or ungrateful or actually base she seemed tochoose by a sort of perverse instinct. Perhaps the explanation of it isthat during those ten years, though she had many lovers, she neverreally loved. She sought excitement, passion, and after that themournfulness which comes when passion dies. Thus, one man after anothercame into her life--some of them promising marriage--and she bore twochildren, whose fathers were unknown, or at least uncertain. But, afterall, one can scarcely pity her, since she had not yet in reality knownthat great passion which comes but once in life. So far she had learnedonly a sort of feeble cynicism, which she expressed in letters and insuch sayings as these:
"There are sweet errors which I would not venture to commit again. Myexperiences, all too sad, have served to illumine my reason."
"I am utterly weary of love and prodigiously tempted to have no more ofit for the rest of my life; because, after all, I don't wish either todie 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 hadloved her and had then cast her off. An actor, one Clavel, would havemarried her, but she would not accept his offer. A magistrate inStrasburg promised marriage; and then, when she was about to accepthim, he wrote to her that he was going to yield to the wishes of hisfamily and make a more advantageous alliance. And so she wasalternately caressed and repulsed--a mere plaything; and yet this wasprobably 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 inParis. She had won such renown throughout the provinces that even thosewho were intensely jealous of her were obliged to give her dueconsideration. In 1717, when she was in her twenty-fifth year, shebecame a member of the Comedie Franchise. There she made an immediateand most brilliant impression. She easily took the leading place. Shewas one of the glories of Paris, for she became the fashion outside thetheater. For the first time the great classic plays were given, not inthe monotonous singsong which had become a sort of theatricalconvention, but with all the fire and naturalness of life.
Being the fashion, Mlle. Lecouvreur elevated the social rank of actorsand of actresses. Her salon was thronged by men and women of rank.Voltaire wrote poems in her honor. To be invited to her dinners wasalmost like receiving a decoration from the king. She ought to havebeen happy, for she had reached the summit of her profession andsomething more.
Yet still she was unhappy. In all her letters one finds a plaintivetone, a little moaning sound that shows how slightly her nature hadbeen changed. No longer, however, did she throw herself away upondullards or brutes. An English peer--Lord Peterborough--not realizingthat 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 atleast one thing, and that was the discontent which came from lightaffairs. She had thrown herself away too often. If she could not lovewith her entire being, if she could not give all that was in her to begiven, whether of her heart or mind or soul, then she would love nomore 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 wasMaurice, Comte de Saxe, as the French called him, his German name andtitle being Moritz, Graf von Sachsen, while we usually term him, inEnglish, Marshal Saxe. Maurice de Saxe was now, in 1721, entering histwenty-fifth year. Already, though so young, his career had been astrange one; and it was destined to be still more remarkable. He wasthe natural son of Duke Augustus II. of Saxony, who later became Kingof 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 ofrevelry and fighting and display. When in his cups he would often callfor 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 abeautiful and high-spirited Swedish girl of rank, Aurora vonKonigsmarck. She was descended from a rough old field-marshal who inthe Thirty Years' War had slashed and sacked and pillaged and plunderedto his heart's content. From him Aurora von Konigsmarck seemed to haveinherited a high spirit and a sort of lawlessness which charmed thestalwart Augustus of Poland.
Their son, Maurice de Saxe, inherited everything that was good in hisparents, and a great deal that was less commendable. As a mere child oftwelve he had insisted on joining the army of Prince Eugene, and hadseen rough service in a very strenuous campaign. Two years later heshowed such daring on the battle-field that Prince Eugene summoned himand paid him a compliment under the form of a rebuke.
"Young man," he said, "you must not mistake mere recklessness forvalor."
Before he was twenty he had attained the stature and strength of hisroyal 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 theRussians and Poles, and again against the Turks, everywhere displayinghigh courage and also genius as a commander; for he never lost hisself-possession amid the very blackest danger, but possessed, asCarlyle says, "vigilance, foresight, and sagacious precaution."
Exceedingly handsome, Maurice was a master of all the arts thatpleased, with just a touch of roughness, which seemed not unfitting inso gallant a soldier. His troops adored him and would follow whereverhe might choose to lead them; for he exercised over these rude men amagnetic power resembling that of Napoleon in after years. In privatelife he was a hard drinker and fond of every form of pleasure. Havingno fortune of his own, a marriage was arranged for him with theCountess von Loben, who was immensely wealthy; but in three years hehad squandered all her money upon his pleasures, and had
, moreover, gothimself heavily in debt.
It was at this time that he first came to Paris to study militarytactics. He had fought hard against the French in the wars that werenow ended; but his chivalrous bearing, his handsome person, and hisreckless joviality made him at once a universal favorite in Paris. Tothe perfumed courtiers, with their laces and lovelocks and mincingways, 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 intoraptures.
No wonder, then, that he was welcomed in the very highest circles.Almost at once he attracted the notice of the Princesse de Conti, abeautiful woman of the blood royal. Of her it has been said that shewas "the personification of a kiss, the incarnation of an embrace, theideal of a dream of love." Her chestnut hair was tinted with littlegleams of gold. Her eyes were violet black. Her complexion wasdazzling. But by the king's orders she had been forced to marry ahunchback--a man whose very limbs were so weakened by disease and evilliving that they would often fail to support him, and he would fall tothe ground, a writhing, screaming mass of ill-looking flesh.
It is not surprising that his lovely wife should have shuddered much athis abuse of her and still more at his grotesque endearments. When hereyes fell on Maurice de Saxe she saw in him one who could free her fromher bondage. By a skilful trick he led the Prince de Conti to invadethe sleeping-room of the princess, with servants, declaring that shewas not alone. The charge proved quite untrue, and so she left herhusband, having won the sympathy of her own world, which held that shehad been insulted. But it was not she who was destined to win and holdthe love of Maurice de Saxe.
Not long after his appearance in the French capital he was invited todine with the "Queen of Paris," Adrienne Lecouvreur. Saxe had seen heron the stage. He knew her previous history. He knew that she was verymuch of a soiled dove; but when he met her these two natures, soutterly dissimilar, leaped together, as it were, through theindescribable attraction of opposites. He was big and powerful; she wassmall and fragile. He was merry, and full of quips and jests; she wasreserved and melancholy. Each felt in the other a need supplied.
At one of their earliest meetings the climax came. Saxe was not the manto hesitate; while she already, in her thoughts, had made a fullsurrender. In one great sweep he gathered her into his arms. Itappeared to her as if no man had ever laid his hand upon her until thatmoment. 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 wasreally worthy of the name. She had supposed that all such things werepassed and gone, that her heart was closed for ever, that she wasinvulnerable; and yet here she found herself clinging about the neck ofthis impetuous soldier and showing him all the shy fondness and theunselfish devotion of a young girl. From this instant AdrienneLecouvreur never loved another man and never even looked at any otherman with the slightest interest. For nine long years the two were boundtogether, though there were strange events to ruffle the surface oftheir love.
Maurice de Saxe had been sired by a king. He had the lofty ambition tobe a king himself, and he felt the stirrings of that genius which inafter years was to make him a great soldier, and to win the brilliantvictory of Fontenoy, which to this very day the French are never tiredof recalling. Already Louis XV. had made him a marshal of France; and acertain restlessness came over him. He loved Adrienne; yet he felt thatto remain in the enjoyment of her witcheries ought not to be the wholeof a man's career.
Then the Grand Duchy of Courland--at that time a vassal state ofPoland, now part of Russia--sought a ruler. Maurice de Saxe was eagerto secure its throne, which would make him at least semi-royal and thechief of a principality. He hastened thither and found that money wasneeded to carry out his plans. The widow of the late duke--the GrandDuchess Anna, niece of Peter the Great, and later Empress of Russia--assoon as she had met this dazzling genius, offered to help him toacquire the duchy if he would only marry her. He did not utterlyrefuse. Still another woman of high rank, the Grand Duchess Elizabethof Russia, Peter the Great's daughter, made him very much the sameproposal.
Both of these imperial women might well have attracted a man likeMaurice de Saxe, had he been wholly fancy-free, for the second of theminherited the high spirit and the genius of the great Peter, while thefirst was a pleasure-seeking princess, resembling some of those Romanempresses who loved to stoop that they might conquer. She is describedas indolent and sensual, and she once declared that the chief good inthe world was love. Yet, though she neglected affairs of state and gavethem 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 wasgoing on. Only two things were absolutely clear to her. One was that ifher lover secured the duchy he must be parted from her. The other wasthat without money his ambition must be thwarted, and that he wouldthen return to her. Here was a test to try the soul of any woman. Itproved the height and the depth of her devotion. Come what might,Maurice should be Duke of Courland, even though she lost him. Shegathered together her whole fortune, sold every jewel that shepossessed, and sent her lover the sum of nearly a million francs.
This incident shows how absolutely she was his. But in fact, because ofvarious intrigues, he failed of election to the ducal throne ofCourland, and he returned to Adrienne with all her money spent, andwithout even the grace, at first, to show his gratitude. He stormed andraged over his ill luck. She merely soothed and petted him, though shehad heard that he had thought of marrying another woman to secure thedukedom. In one of her letters she bursts out with the pitifulexclamation:
I am distracted with rage and anguish. Is it not natural to cry outagainst such treachery? This man surely ought to know me--he ought tolove me. Oh, my God! What are we--what ARE we?
But still she could not give him up, nor could he give her up, thoughthere were frightful scenes between them--times when he cruellyreproached her and when her native melancholy deepened into outburstsof despair. Finally there occurred an incident which is more or lessobscure in parts. The Duchesse de Bouillon, a great lady of thecourt--facile, feline, licentious, and eager for delights--resolvedthat she would win the love of Maurice de Saxe. She set herself to winit 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 rivalknew it. Therefore she resolved to humiliate Adrienne, and to do so inthe place where the actress had always reigned supreme. There was to bea gala performance of Racine's great tragedy, "Phedre," with Adrienne,of course, in the title-role. The Duchesse de Bouillon sent a largenumber of her lackeys with orders to hiss and jeer, and, if possible,to break off the play. Malignantly delighted with her plan, the duchessarrayed herself in jewels and took her seat in a conspicuous stage-box,where she could watch the coming storm and gloat over the discomfitureof her rival.
When the curtain rose, and when Adrienne appeared as Phedre, an uproarbegan. It was clear to the great actress that a plot had been devisedagainst her. In an instant her whole soul was afire. The queen-likemajesty of her bearing compelled silence throughout the house. Even thehired lackeys were overawed by it. Then Adrienne moved swiftly acrossthe stage and fronted her enemy, speaking into her very face the threeinsulting 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. Adriennehad won, for the woman who had tried to shame her rose in trepidationand hurried from the theater.
But the end was not yet. Those were evil times, when dark deeds werecommitted by the great almost with impunity. Secret poisoning was acommon trade. To remove a rival w
as as usual a thing in the eighteenthcentury as to snub a rival is usual in the twentieth.
Not long afterward, on the night of March 15, 1730, Adrienne Lecouvreurwas acting in one of Voltaire's plays with all her power andinstinctive art when suddenly she was seized with the most frightfulpains. Her anguish was obvious to every one who saw her, and yet shehad the courage to go through her part. Then she fainted and wascarried home.
Four days later she died, and her death was no less dramatic than herlife had been. Her lover and two friends of his were with her, and alsoa Jesuit priest. He declined to administer extreme unction unless shewould declare that she repented of her theatrical career. Shestubbornly refused, since she believed that to be the greatest actressof 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 stretchedher arms with one of the old lovely gestures toward a bust which stoodnear 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 areequally renowned. Thus, the house of Romanoff, although comparativelyyoung, stands out to the mind with a sort of barbaric power, morevividly than the Austrian house of Hapsburg, which is the oldestreigning family in Europe, tracing its beginnings backward until theyare lost in the Dark Ages. The Hohenzollerns of Prussia arecomparatively modern, so far as concerns their royalty. The offshootsof the Bourbons carry on a very proud tradition in the person of theKing of Spain, although France, which has been ruled by so many membersof the family, will probably never again behold a Bourbon king. Thedeposed Braganzas bear a name which is ancient, but which has asomewhat tinsel sound.
The Bonapartes, of course, are merely parvenus, and they have had thegood taste to pretend to no antiquity of birth. The first Napoleon,dining at a table full of monarchs, when he heard one of themdeferentially alluding to the Bonaparte family as being very old andnoble, exclaimed:
"Pish! My nobility dates from the day of Marengo!"
And the third Napoleon, in announcing his coming marriage with Mlle. deMontijo, used the very word "parvenu" in speaking of himself and of hisfamily. His frankness won the hearts of the French people and helped toreconcile them to a marriage in which the bride was barely noble.
In English history there are two great names to conjure by, at least tothe imaginative. One is Plantagenet, which seems to contain withinitself the very essence of all that is patrician, magnificent, androyal. It calls to memory at once the lion-hearted Richard, whose shortreign was replete with romance in England and France and Austria andthe Holy Land.
But perhaps a name of greater influence is that which links the royalfamily of Britain today with the traditions of the past, and whichsummons up legend and story and great deeds of history. This is thename of Stuart, about which a whole volume might be written to recallits suggestions and its reminiscences.
The first Stuart (then Stewart) of whom anything is known got his namefrom the title of "Steward of Scotland," which remained in the familyfor generations, until the sixth of the line, by marriage with PrincessMarjory Bruce, acquired the Scottish crown. That was in the early yearsof the fourteenth century; and finally, after the death of Elizabeth ofEngland, her rival's son, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England,united under one crown two kingdoms that had so long been at almostconstant war.
It is almost characteristic of the Scot that, having small territory,little wealth, and a seat among his peers that is almost ostentatiouslyhumble, he should bit by bit absorb the possessions of all the rest andbecome their master. Surely, the proud Tudors, whose line ended withElizabeth, must have despised the "Stewards," whose kingdom was smalland bleak and cold, and who could not control their own vassals.
One can imagine also, with Sir Walter Scott, the haughty nobles of theEnglish court sneering covertly at the awkward, shambling James, pedantand bookworm. Nevertheless, his diplomacy was almost as good as that ofElizabeth herself; and, though he did some foolish things, he was veryfar from being a fool.
In his appearance James was not unlike Abraham Lincoln--an unkinglyfigure; and yet, like Lincoln, when occasion required it he could riseto the dignity which makes one feel the presence of a king. He was theonly Stuart who lacked anything in form or feature or external grace.His son, Charles I., was perhaps one of the worst rulers that Englandhas ever had; yet his uprightness of life, his melancholy yet handsomeface, his graceful bearing, and the strong religious element in hischaracter, together with the fact that he was put to death after beingtreacherously surrendered to his enemies--all these have combined tomake almost a saint of him. There are Englishmen to-day who speak ofhim as "the martyr king," and who, on certain days of the year, sayprayers that beg the Lord's forgiveness because of Charles's execution.
The members of the so-called League of the White Rose, founded toperpetuate English allegiance to the direct line of Stuarts, do manythings that are quite absurd. They refuse to pray for the present Kingof England and profess to think that the Princess Mary of Bavaria isthe true ruler of Great Britain. All this represents that trace ofsentiment which lingers among the English to-day. They feel that theStuarts were the last kings of England to rule by the grace of Godrather than by the grace of Parliament. As a matter of fact, thepresent reigning family in England is glad to derive its ancient strainof royal blood through a Stuart--descended on the distaff side fromJames I., and winding its way through Hanover.
This sentiment for the Stuarts is a thing entirely apart from reasonand belongs to the realm of poetry and romance; yet so strong is itthat it has shown itself in the most inconsistent fashion. Forinstance, Sir Walter Scott was a devoted adherent of the house ofHanover. When George IV. visited Edinburgh, Scott was completelycarried away by his loyal enthusiasm. He could not see that the manbefore him was a drunkard and braggart. He viewed him as an incarnationof all the noble traits that ought to hedge about a king. He snatchedup a wine-glass from which George had just been drinking and carried itaway to be an object of reverence for ever after. Nevertheless, in hisheart, and often in his speech, Scott seemed to be a high Tory, andeven a Jacobite.
There are precedents for this. The Empress Eugenie used often to saywith a laugh that she was the only true royalist at the imperial courtof France. That was well enough for her in her days of flightiness andfrivolity. No one, however, accused Queen Victoria of being frivolous,and she was not supposed to have a strong sense of humor. None theless, after listening to the skirling of the bagpipes and to theromantic ballads which were sung in Scotland she is said to haveremarked with a sort of sigh:
"Whenever I hear those ballads I feel that England belongs really tothe Stuarts!"
Before Queen Victoria was born, when all the sons of George III. werechildless, the Duke of Kent was urged to marry, so that he might have afamily to continue the succession. In resenting the suggestion he saidmany things, and among them this was the most striking:
"Why don't you call the Stuarts back to England? They couldn't possiblymake a worse mess of it than our fellows have!"
But he yielded to persuasion and married. From this marriage cameVictoria, who had the sacred drop of Stuart blood which gave England tothe Hanoverians; and she was to redeem the blunders and tyrannies ofboth houses.
The fascination of the Stuarts, which has been carried overseas toAmerica and the British dominions, probably began with the strikinghistory of Mary Queen of Scots. Her brilliancy and boldness and beauty,and especially the pathos of her end, have made us see only her intensewomanliness, which in her own day was the first thing that any oneobserved in her. So, too, with Charles I., romantic figure and knightlygentleman. One regrets his death upon the scaffold, even though hisexecution was necessary to the growth of freedom.
Many people are no less fascinated by Charles II., that very
differenttype, with his gaiety, his good-fellowship, and his easy-going ways. Itis not surprising that his people, most of whom never saw him, werevery fond of him, and did not know that he was selfish, a loose liver,and almost a vassal of the king of France.
So it is not strange that the Stuarts, with all their arts and graces,were very hard to displace. James II., with the aid of the French,fought hard before the British troops in Ireland broke the backs ofboth his armies and sent him into exile. Again in 1715--an episodeperpetuated in Thackeray's dramatic story of Henry Esmond--came the sonof James to take advantage of the vacancy caused by the death of QueenAnne. But it is perhaps to this claimant's son, the last of themilitant Stuarts, that more chivalrous feeling has been given than toany other.
To his followers he was the Young Chevalier, the true Prince of Wales;to his enemies, the Whigs and the Hanoverians, he was "the Pretender."One of the most romantic chapters of history is the one which tells ofthat last brilliant dash which he made upon the coast of Scotland,landing with but a few attendants and rejecting the support of a Frencharmy.
"It is not with foreigners," he said, "but with my own loyal subjects,that I wish to regain the kingdom for my father."
It was a daring deed, and the spectacular side of it has been oftencommemorated, especially in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley. There we seethe gallant prince moving through a sort of military panorama. Most ofthe British troops were absent in Flanders, and the few regiments thatcould be mustered to meet him were appalled by the ferocity andreckless courage of the Highlanders, who leaped down like wildcats fromtheir hills and flung themselves with dirk and sword upon the Britishcannon.
We see Sir John Cope retiring at Falkirk, and the astonishing victoryof Prestonpans, where disciplined British troops fled in dismay throughthe morning mist, leaving artillery and supplies behind them. It isScott again who shows us the prince, master of Edinburgh for a time,while the white rose of Stuart royalty held once more the ancient keepabove the Scottish capital. Then we see the Chevalier pressingsouthward into England, where he hoped to raise an English army tosupport his own. But his Highlanders cared nothing for England, and theEnglish--even the Catholic gentry--would not rise to support his cause.
Personally, he had every gift that could win allegiance. Handsome,high-tempered, and brave, he could also control his fiery spirit andlisten to advice, however unpalatable it might be.
The time was favorable. The British troops had been defeated on theContinent by Marshal Saxe, of whom I have already written, and byMarshal d'Estrees. George II. was a king whom few respected. He couldscarcely speak anything but German. He grossly ill-treated his wife. Itis said that on one occasion, in a fit of temper, he actually kickedthe prime minister. Not many felt any personal loyalty to him, and hespent most of his time away from England in his other domain of Hanover.
But precisely here was a reason why Englishmen were willing to put upwith him. As between him and the brilliant Stuart there would have beenno hesitation had the choice been merely one of men; but it wasbelieved that the return of the Stuarts meant the return of somethinglike absolute government, of taxation without sanction of law, and ofreligious persecution. Under the Hanoverian George the English peoplehad begun to exercise a considerable measure of self-government. Sharpopposition in Parliament compelled him time and again to yield; andwhen he was in Hanover the English were left to work out the problem offree government.
Hence, although Prince Charles Edward fascinated all who met him, andalthough a small army was raised for his support, still the unromantic,common-sense Englishmen felt that things were better than in the daysgone by, and most of them refused to take up arms for the cause whichsentimentally they favored. Therefore, although the Chevalier stirredall England and sent a thrill through the officers of state in London,his soldiers gradually deserted, and the Scots insisted on returning totheir own country. Although the Stuart troops reached a point as farsouth as Derby, they were soon pushed backward into Scotland, pursuedby an army of about nine thousand men under the Duke of Cumberland, sonof George II.
Cumberland was no soldier; he had been soundly beaten by the French onthe famous field of Fontenoy. Yet he had firmness and a sort ofovermastering brutality, which, with disciplined troops and abundantartillery, were sufficient to win a victory over the untrainedHighlanders.
When the battle came five thousand of these mountaineers went roaringalong the English lines, with the Chevalier himself at their head. Fora moment there was surprise. The Duke of Cumberland had been drinkingso heavily that he could give no verbal orders. One of his officers,however, is said to have come to him in his tent, where he was tryingto play cards.
"What disposition shall we make of the prisoners?" asked the officer.
The duke tried to reply, but his utterance was very thick.
"No quarter!" he was believed to say.
The officer objected and begged that such an order as that should begiven in writing. The duke rolled over and seized a sheaf ofplaying-cards. Pulling one out, he scrawled the necessary order, andthat was taken to the commanders in the field.
The Highlanders could not stand the cannon fire, and the English won.Then the fury of the common soldiery broke loose upon the country.
There was a reign of fantastic and fiendish brutality. One provost ofthe town was violently kicked for a mild remonstrance about thedestruction of the Episcopalian meeting-house; another was condemned toclean out dirty stables. Men and women were whipped and tortured onslight suspicion or to extract information. Cumberland franklyprofessed his contempt and hatred of the people among whom he foundhimself, but he savagely punished robberies committed by privatesoldiers for their own profit.
"Mild measures will not do," he wrote to Newcastle.
When leaving the North in July, he said:
"All the good we have done is but a little blood-letting, which hasonly weakened the madness, but not at all cured it; and I tremble tofear that this vile spot may still be the ruin of this island and ofour family."
Such was the famous battle of Culloden, fought in 1746, and putting afinal end to the hopes of all the Stuarts. As to Cumberland's order for"No quarter," if any apology can be made for such brutality, it must befound in the fact that the Highland chiefs had on their side agreed tospare no captured enemy.
The battle has also left a name commonly given to the nine of diamonds,which is called "the curse of Scotland," because it is said that onthat card Cumberland wrote his bloodthirsty order.
Such, in brief, was the story of Prince Charlie's gallant attempt torestore the kingdom of his ancestors. Even when defeated, he would notat once leave Scotland. A French squadron appeared off the coast nearEdinburgh. It had been sent to bring him troops and a large supply ofmoney, but he turned his back upon it and made his way into theHighlands on foot, closely pursued by English soldiers and Lowlandspies.
This part of his career is in reality the most romantic of all. He washunted closely, almost as by hounds. For weeks he had only such sleepas he could snatch during short periods of safety, and there were timeswhen his pursuers came within an inch of capturing him. But never inhis life were his spirits so high.
It was a sort of life that he had never seen before, climbing themighty rocks, and listening to the thunder of the cataracts, amongwhich he often slept, with only one faithful follower to guard him. Thestory of his escape is almost incredible, but he laughed and drank androlled upon the grass when he was free from care. He hobnobbed with themost suspicious-looking caterans, with whom he drank the smoky brew ofthe North, and lived as he might on fish and onions and bacon and wildfowl, with an appetite such as he had never known at the luxuriouscourt of Versailles or St.-Germain.
After the battle of Culloden the prince would have been captured hadnot a Scottish girl named Flora Macdonald met him, caused him to bedressed in the clothes of her waiting-maid, and thus got him off to theIsle of Skye.
There for a time it was impossible to follow him; and there the twolived al
most alone together. Such a proximity could not fail to stirthe romantic feeling of one who was both a youth and a prince. On theother hand, no thought of love-making seems to have entered Flora'smind. If, however, we read Campbell's narrative very closely we can seethat Prince Charles made every advance consistent with a delicateremembrance of her sex and services.
It seems to have been his thought that if she cared for him, then thetwo might well love; and he gave her every chance to show him favor.The youth of twenty-five and the girl of twenty-four roamed together inthe long, tufted grass or lay in the sunshine and looked out over thesea. The prince would rest his head in her lap, and she would tumblehis golden hair with her slender fingers and sometimes clip off tresseswhich she preserved to give to friends of hers as love-locks. But tothe last he was either too high or too low for her, according to herown modest thought. He was a royal prince, the heir to a throne, orelse he was a boy with whom she might play quite fancy-free. A lover hecould not be--so pure and beautiful was her thought of him.
These were perhaps the most delightful days of all his life, as theywere a beautiful memory in hers. In time he returned to France andresumed his place amid the intrigues that surrounded that other Stuartprince who styled himself James III., and still kept up the appearanceof a king in exile. As he watched the artifice and the plotting ofthese make-believe courtiers he may well have thought of his innocentcompanion of the Highland wilds.
As for Flora, she was arrested and imprisoned for five months onEnglish vessels of war. After her release she was married, in 1750; andshe and her husband sailed for the American colonies just before theRevolution. In that war Macdonald became a British officer and servedagainst his adopted countrymen. Perhaps because of this reason Florareturned alone to Scotland, where she died at the age of sixty-eight.
The royal prince who would have given her his easy love lived a life offar less dignity in the years that followed his return to France. Therewas no more hope of recovering the English throne. For him there wereleft only the idle and licentious diversions of such a court as that inwhich his father lived.
At the death of James III., even this court was disintegrated, andPrince Charles led a roving life under the title of Earl of Albany. Inhis wanderings he met Louise Marie, the daughter of a German prince,Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg. She was only nineteen years of age whenshe first felt the fascination that he still possessed; but it was anunhappy marriage for the girl when she discovered that her husband wasa confirmed drunkard.
Not long after, in fact, she found her life with him so utterlyintolerable that she persuaded the Pope to allow her a formalseparation. The pontiff intrusted her to her husband's brother,Cardinal York, who placed her in a convent and presently removed her tohis own residence in Rome.
Here begins another romance. She was often visited by Vittorio Alfieri,the great Italian poet and dramatist. Alfieri was a man of wealth. Inearly years he divided his time into alternate periods during which heeither studied hard in civil and canonical law, or was a constantattendant upon the race-course, or rushed aimlessly all over Europewithout any object except to wear out the post-horses which he used inrelays over hundreds of miles of road. His life, indeed, was eccentricalmost to insanity; but when he had met the beautiful and lonelyCountess of Albany there came over him a striking change. Sheinfluenced him for all that was good, and he used to say that he owedher all that was best in his dramatic works.
Sixteen years after her marriage her royal husband died, a worn-out,bloated wreck of one who had been as a youth a model of knightlinessand manhood. During his final years he had fallen to utter destitution,and there was either a touch of half contempt or a feeling of remotekinship in the act of George III., who bestowed upon the prince anannual pension of four thousand pounds. It showed most plainly thatEngland was now consolidated under Hanoverian rule.
When Cardinal York died, in 1807, there was no Stuart left in the maleline; and the countess was the last to bear the royal Scottish name ofAlbany.
After the prince's death his widow is said to have been married toAlfieri, and for the rest of her life she lived in Florence, thoughAlfieri died nearly twenty-one years before her.
Here we have seen a part of the romance which attaches itself to thename of Stuart--in the chivalrous young prince, leading his Highlandersagainst the bayonets of the British, lolling idly among the Hebrides,or fallen, at the last, to be a drunkard and the husband of anunwilling consort, who in her turn loved a famous poet. But it is thisStuart, after all, of whom we think when we hear the bagpipes skirling"Over the Water to Charlie" or "Wha'll be King but Charlie?"
THE END
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends