Another of the king"s favorites--and indeed one who was, unlike the disagreeable countess, a favorite as well with the English people, and whose name has not yet lost its popularity--was Nell Gwynn. Pretty, witty, and open-hearted, her face an index of the simplicity and purity of character which the unfortunate circ.u.mstances of her birth and bringing-up denied her, a veritable gem of womankind lost amid the flotsam and jetsam of a coa.r.s.e age, she is to be regarded less as a sinner than as one sinned against, although she herself, perhaps, seldom paused to reflect upon the moral value of her actions.
"How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame Which, like the canker in a fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name."
It will not do to judge too harshly the character of one whose whole conduct showed how essentially guileless and gentle, as well as generous, were her instincts by the rigorous standards which, however severe, are none too exacting to be held up for women as representing the only possible a.s.surance of security for the status which they have attained; but it is in no spirit of apology for her wrong courses that all who undertake to discuss the life of Nell Gwynn are irresistibly drawn to a recital of her virtues rather than to a reprobation of her faults.
The poor orange girl, who, according to some authorities, first saw the light of day in a miserable coalyard garret in Drury Lane, and whose tutelage was the vulgarity of the London streets, and her training a barroom where she entertained the patrons by the sweetness of her voice, courtesan though she became in the court of Charles II., yet numbered among her descendants Lord James Beauclerk, Bishop of Hereford, who died in 1782. Nor was she a.s.sociated with religion merely in this remote way, for she herself, as patroness of Chelsea Hospital, and promoter of many charities and the dispenser of private benefactions, may reasonably claim consideration. In her own behalf as a woman instinct with all the virtues saving one only,--the one she had never had an opportunity to possess. The effect of Nell Gwynn"s presence at court upon the minds of the populace was in some respects more insidious than that of the professional courtesan Castlemaine, for, by the pleasing philosophy of her winsome nature, the vices of the court became trans.m.u.ted into pure gold in the estimation of the young women who were affected by her as their ideal.
When the irascible temper of the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland became too intolerable to be borne, the king"s excitable fancy was adroitly directed by the Duke of Buckingham, English envoy to the court of France, to Mademoiselle de Queroualle, whom he planned to set up as a rival to her in the king"s affections, and thus to further his own ambitious ends, which were antagonized by the d.u.c.h.ess. Thus to place in control of the king"s volatile sentiments the seductive French woman, who would represent the duke"s interests, seemed a veritable stroke of masterful politics of a character not unworthy of Machiavel himself. It was not difficult to persuade Louis that such a sentimental alliance would cement Charles to the French interests; and as the project would save her from a French convent, mademoiselle was not found intractable. A decorous invitation, so worded as to spare the blush of the lady"s modesty, was sent from the English court, and she was forthwith despatched to the court of Charles to fulfil the double roles of courtesan and diplomat, which were so often combined in the person of astute females. Her appearance at court was hailed by Dryden, the court poet, in some complimentary stanzas of indifferent worth. Evelyn recorded in his _Diary_ that he had seen "that famous beauty, the new French Maid of Honor"; but adds: "In my opinion, she is of a childish, simple, and baby face." After the birth of a son to the king, who was created Duke of Richmond and Earl of Marsh in England, Mademoiselle de Queroualle was made d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth.
At the same time, she was drawing a considerable pension from Louis in recognition of her services to France. The n.o.ble-minded English gentleman Evelyn records the extravagant tastes of the d.u.c.h.ess, whose control over the king had become unbounded, in these words: "Following his Majesty this morning through the gallery, I went with the few who attended him into the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth"s dressing-room, within her bed-chamber, where she was in her loose morning garment, her maids combing her, newly out of her bed, his Majesty and the gallants standing about her; but that which engaged my curiosity was the rich and splendid furniture of this woman"s apartment, now twice or thrice pulled down and rebuilt to satisfy her prodigality and expensive pleasures, while her Majesty"s does not exceed some gentlemen"s wives"
in furniture and accommodations. Here I saw the new fabric of French tapestry, for design, tenderness of work, and incomparable imitation of the best paintings, beyond anything I had ever beheld. Some pieces had Versailles, St. Germaines, and other places of the French king, with huntings, figures, and landscapes, exotic fowls, and all to the life rarely done. Then the j.a.pan cabinets, screens, pendule clocks, great vases of wrought plate, tables, stands, chimney furniture, sconces, branches, brasures, and all of ma.s.sive silver, and out of number; besides of his Majesty"s best paintings. Surfeiting of this, I dined at Sir Stephen Fox"s, and went contented home to my poor but quiet villa. What contentment can there be in the riches and splendour of this world, purchased with vice and dishonour!"
"There was, in truth, little of contentment within those sumptuous walls;" a weak queen helpless under the indignities imposed upon her, a d.u.c.h.ess burning with pa.s.sionate resentment, and light-hearted Nell Gwynn laughing with amus.e.m.e.nt; a group of courtiers and courtesans with little sense of honor, tossed about by conflicting emotions of fear and jealousy, perplexity and heartaches; involved in disgraceful intrigues and malicious conspiracies; attended by all the demons which wait upon the mind that has sold itself to sordidness and sin; mocked at by a troupe of perfidious spirits of pride, avarice, and ambition--such was the company within the palace walls that opened to receive the woman who was to be, if possible, the most despicable of them all, and certainly the most detested.
In pleasing contrast to the fashionable and often brilliant debauchees of the court of Charles II. may be placed the Countess de Grammont, to whom the description of the poet Fletcher applies:
"A woman of that rare behaviour, So qualified, that admiration Dwells round about her; of that perfect spirit, That admirable carriage, That sweetness in discourse--young as the morning, Her blushes staining his."
She moved in the profligate sphere of the English court, and later in that of France, without for a moment having the brilliancy of her intellect, the acuteness of her wit, or the whiteness of her character tarnished by vulgarity of action or of word. Importuned by lovers of high degree for alliances that were not regarded as compromising in that gay atmosphere, and, when it was found futile to seek to entice her into an equivocal position, as ardently sought by the beaux for the honorable relation of wife, she held them all at arm"s length.
Strong and resolute, she, like a brilliant moth, circled about the pa.s.sionate flame of the English court without singeing her wings, neither did she seek, by an advent.i.tious flame of responsive pa.s.sion, to draw on to haplessness any of the courtiers who sought her with ardent protestations of affection. Though light-hearted and vivacious, she had none of the arts of a coquette; but when the persistence of the Comte de Grammont convinced her, in spite of the scepticism which her surroundings created, and of his known character of frivolity, that in him she might find a faithful and devoted husband, she allowed her heart to hold sway of her destiny and yielded herself in marriage to him. It had been better for her, however, if she had remained a maid of honor than to have become, by marriage to an unprincipled man, a wife of dishonor. The exceptional worth of character, the brilliancy of intellect, and the steadiness of purpose which La Belle Hamilton exhibited, did not, in the eyes of the voluptuous count, const.i.tute a charm sufficient to wean him from his evil courses to a life of consistency and of uprightness. Her husband lived to an advanced age, yet she survived him a brief while. Her brother has left us a word picture of her at about the time of her introduction to the court of Charles II., which, in connection with her portrait by Sir Peter Lely, leaves no doubt of her matchless charms. He says: "Her forehead was open, white, and smooth; her hair was well set, and fell with ease into that natural order which it is so difficult to imitate. Her complexion was possessed of a certain freshness not to be equalled by borrowed colours; her eyes were not large, but they were lovely, and capable of expressing whatever she pleased; her mouth was full of graces, and her contour uncommonly perfect; nor was her nose, which was small, delicate, and turned-up, the least ornament of so lovely a face. She had the finest shape, the loveliest neck, and most beautiful arms in the world; she was majestic and graceful in all her movements; and she was the original after which all the ladies copied in their tastes and air of dress."
In reading the memoirs of the court of Charles II., one is apt to overlook the fact that at the period there was a queen in England.
There was a time when the consort of the king was not so styled; her position was a personal one, as related to her husband, but she did not share the honors of the throne. How strangely reversed since the later Anglo-Saxon period, as contrasted with the reign of Charles II., had become the relation of the wife of the monarch! for in these last times the full recognition was tendered Catherine of Braganza to which her position as consort of Charles gave her t.i.tle--there was no question as to there being a queen in England in the full meaning of the term. But her personal relation to the king as her husband was an equivocal one; perhaps once in a month he might honor her with his presence at supper, and occasionally absent himself from the enticements of his mistresses. It was so from the very first; for, before Catherine had landed in England, the intrigue of Charles II.
with the notorious Castlemaine was a matter of common knowledge. The graceless king had the effrontery to include Lady Castlemaine in the list of appointees for the queen"s following. The indignant bride had not yet learned the futility of seeking to a.s.sert her rightful position, and, haughtily declaring that she would return to her own country rather than submit to such an indignity, drew her pen across the name and swept Lady Castlemaine from proximity to her person. In so doing she incurred the deeper enmity of the female fury who ruled Charles with an iron will and was for long years to be the queen"s evil genius. The queen was not brilliant, but she was in every sense a woman; and when on a particular occasion, similar to a present-day drawing room, Lady Castlemaine was introduced by the king, the queen, who did not know her and imperfectly caught the name, received her with grace and benignity; but realizing in a moment who it was, she became transformed, her urbanity disappeared, and, fully alive to the insult which had been publicly offered her, she was swept with a wave of pa.s.sion: "She started from her chair, turned as pale as ashes, then red with shame and anger, the blood gushed from her nose, and she swooned in the arms of her women." Lord Clarendon, who was a witness of the contest between the wife and mistress and sought to prevent the king from becoming controlled by the latter, finally absented himself from court; thereupon the king wrote him a letter in which, after declaring his purpose of making Lady Castlemaine a lady of his wife"s bedchamber, he added: "And whosoever I find to be my Lady Castlemaine"s enemy, I do promise upon my word to be his enemy as long as I live." The king"s missive had its effect; and Lord Clarendon undertook to persuade the queen to bear the indignity, although he had replied to the king that it was "more than flesh and blood could comply with," and reminded him of the difference between the French and English courts: "That in the former, such connections were not new and scandalous, whereas in England they were so unheard of, and so odious, that the mistress of the king was infamous to all women of honour."
The king himself succeeded better in reconciling the queen to the shameful situation than did his minister, for, after several scenes between them, he treated her with studied coldness and indifference, and in her presence a.s.sumed an air of exceptional gayety toward all other women. The unhappy queen finally acquiesced in a situation which she could not improve, and suffered much greater indignities than those which she had futilely resented. There is little more of interest to add with regard to this woman, whose position placed her first at court, but who really was regarded by the king and his courtiers as the most insignificant of its personages. She never quite gave up the hope that she might win at least a share of the affection which her husband bestowed upon others, and to that end she eventually laid aside her retiring ways, dressed decollete, and gave magnificent b.a.l.l.s, to which she invited the fairest women of the n.o.bility, thus seeking, by humoring the fancy of her husband, to gain his love.
The maids of honor at the court of Charles, who were for the most part mistresses of the king and of the courtiers, and the male sycophants, whose only pursuit in life was intrigue, made a choice group of profligate spirits, who, without any restraint, but with every encouragement from their royal master, a.s.siduously furthered the chief interest of their existence.
There are not wanting those who utterly disparage the morals of the Commonwealth, and affirm that both Cromwell and his followers generally were guilty of as base conduct as King Charles and his courtiers, and that the only difference was that which exists between covert and open practices of an evil nature. The fact remains, however, that even down to the present day the English people, and the American as well, are inheritors of the spirit of the Puritans, to the great good of society. It was the Puritans who taught reverence for the Sabbath and made the Bible a common textbook of life; and although they were strict and narrow in their views, earnestness always is straitened in its bounds until it bursts them and floods society with the power of the principles it advocates.
The apologists for King Charles, who hold to the ancient formula of the faith of the Fathers and of the Puritans,--that woman from the days of Eden unto the present time has stood for the downfall of man,--seek to enlist sympathy for him by saying that in his various peccadilloes the women seemed to be the aggressors. This plea, which was advanced by his friendly contemporaries, who sought to whitewash the outside of the sepulchre of the king"s character while leaving undisturbed the inward corruption, is still gravely repeated by partisan historians to-day. Sir John Reresby said: "I have since heard the King say they would sometimes offer themselves to his embrace." It is unfortunate that the integrity of the chivalrous king should have suffered such a.s.saults; but as no other English monarch seems to have been so desperately set upon to his destruction by the women of his times, it may not be too great a piece of temerity to put in a plea for the women of the reign of the glorious Charles II. by suggesting the bare possibility that all the moral probity was not possessed alone by him who reigned King of England!
We can much better accept the description of society given by Clarendon. It is not, however, to be taken as an index to the innate perversity of woman in wicked ways, but as indicating the natural effect of the lowering of the esteem in which the s.e.x was held by the evil living of men in the higher circles of society. Yet not all the indictments which are brought forward by Clarendon would be considered to-day as of a serious nature. He comments: "The young women conversed without any circ.u.mspection of modesty, and frequently met at taverns and common eating-houses; they who were stricter and more severe in their comportment became the wives of the seditious preachers or of officers of the army. The daughters of n.o.ble and ill.u.s.trious families bestowed themselves upon the divines of the time, or other low and unequal matches. Parents had no manner of authority over their children, nor children any obedience or submission to their parents, but every one did that which was good in his own eyes."
That the change in the feminine character was not simply due to the unsettled state of society from the Civil War, which undoubtedly did affect the standard of the times, but was attributable more largely to the imported French manners with which Charles made the nation familiar, is beyond doubt. Peter Heylin, who had travelled in France and published an account of his observations, and who was led to pa.s.s severe strictures upon the conduct of the French women, modified his gratulatory expressions with regard to English women as follows: "Our English women, at that time, were of a more retired behaviour than they have been since, which made the confident carriage of the French damsels seem more strange to me; whereas of late the garb of our women is so altered, and they have in them so much of the mode of France, as easily might take off those misapprehensions with which I was possessed at my first coming thither."
It was not until after the death of the king, which occurred on February 6, 1685, that the nation recovered from the spell of debauchery through which it had pa.s.sed, and a.s.sumed its wonted sobriety. Seven days prior, Evelyn wrote in his _Diary_: "I saw this evening such a scene of profuse gaming, and the king in the midst of his three concubines, as I had never before seen, luxurious dallying and profaneness." After the death of Charles and the proclamation of James II., he reverted again to that scene and said: "I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulness of G.o.d (it being Sunday evening) which this day se"nnight I was witness to, the king sitting and toying with his concubines--Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarine, etc.--a French boy singing love songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at ba.s.set round a large table, a bank of at least 2000 pounds in gold before them, upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflexions with astonishment. Six days after was all in the dust!"
Although the monarch who made England merry with all sorts of frivolities had pa.s.sed away, the influences of his life did not quickly cease. One of the social changes which came about in his reign was destined to become very widely extended and to have an important bearing upon the structure of English society. This was the introduction of women upon the stage. In discussing the amus.e.m.e.nts of the English people in the several periods, we have as yet said nothing with regard to the theatre, because it did not relate to woman in an especial manner. The old mediaeval mystery and morality plays were given under the auspices of the Church, and formed a part of the religious instruction of a people who neither knew how nor had the facilities to read. With the rise of the modern drama and of such masterly interpreters of human pa.s.sion as the dramatists of the Elizabethan era, the stage was secularized and the range of subjects and appeal was very much widened.
In 1660, for the first time, women were engaged to perform female characters. Before that time, they had been prohibited from appearing on the stage; largely because the female parts were usually--and especially in the beginning of the popularity of the theatre--so vulgar and obscene that it not only would have been highly disgraceful for a woman to appear in such characters, but the vulgarity was too great even for the countenance of females in the audience without resorting to the expedient of wearing masks. This practice led to shameful intrigues and discreditable escapades which added to living the zest which was craved by the women of the court who, thus disguised, were _habituees_ of the theatre. If it was thought that by allowing women to take female parts in the plays the tone of such characters might be improved, the ordinances which permitted the practice certainly failed of effect. D"Israeli, taking the aesthetic view of this innovation of the time of Charles II., says: "To us there appears something so repulsive in the exhibition of boys or men personating female characters, that one cannot conceive how they could ever have been tolerated as a subst.i.tute for the spontaneous grace, the melting voice, and the soothing looks of a female."
The absurdity which he suggests was aptly expressed by a poet of the reign of Charles II., in a prologue which was written as an introduction to the play in which appeared the first actress:
"Our women are defective, and so sized, You"d think they were some of the guard disguised For to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen; With brows so large and nerve so uncompliant, When you call Desdemona--enter giant."
Nell Gwynn is said first to have attracted the attention of King Charles when she appeared in a humorous part at the theatre; she was one of the earliest actresses to appear _in propria persona_. As ungraceful as were the female parts when taken by men, the innovation of women was not received kindly by many critics of the stage.
Thus Pepys, in his _Diary_, is found lamenting the new custom: "The introduction of females on the stage was the beginning of a change ever to be regretted. Pride of birth, but not insolence, is, to a certain extent, highly commendable, and which had hitherto been the chief characteristic of the old English aristocracy, who had kept themselves till now almost universally free from stained alliances; but from this time they became the patrons, and even the husbands, of any lewd, babbling, painted, pawed-over thing that the purlieus of the theatre could produce."
Evelyn comments upon the theatre to the same effect, and remarks that he very seldom attended it, because of its G.o.dless liberty: "Foul and indecent women now (and never till now) permitted to appear and act, who, inflaming several young n.o.blemen and gallants, become their misses, and to some their wives." He then instances several of the n.o.bility whom he says fell into such snares, to the reproach of their families and the ruin of themselves in both body and soul. He laments the fact that the splendid products of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were crowded off the stage to make room for the pasteboard and tinsel of John Dryden and Thomas Shadwell. At the time that Evelyn and Pepys were recording their comments upon the tone of the stage, thousands were living who well remembered the vehement denunciation of plays by the st.u.r.dy old Puritan William Prynne, who was rewarded for his ardent crusades against the iniquities of the theatre by the snipping off of his ears. The condemnation of the theatre was not confined to any party or church, for Bishop Burnet is found vigorously denouncing theatres, under the new conditions inaugurated by Charles II., as "nests of prost.i.tution."
The depravity of the taste of the patrons of the theatres had its influence upon the writers of the plays. Men whose personal lives were unexceptionable did not scruple, when writing pieces intended for representation upon the stage, to introduce as much indecency as they possibly could, knowing full well that unless their works were highly seasoned they would never get a hearing. The manners and tastes of the court of Charles II. established the standard of the theatres during his reign; the depravity of public sentiment and the general corruption of the times were greatly increased by these mirrors of the manners and life of the court. So utterly foul became the repute of the stage, that, to quote from Sydney"s _Social Life in England_, "Every person who had the slightest regard for sobriety and morality avoided a playhouse as he would have avoided a house on the door of which the red cross bore witness to the awful fact that the inmates had been smitten by the pestilence which walketh in darkness and by the sickness that destroyeth in noon-day. The indecorous character of the stage inflicted much less injury than it would have done had it been covered with a thin veil of sentiment. Those dramatic representations, at which women desirous of maintaining some reputation for modesty deemed it inc.u.mbent upon them to wear masks, were, as may be supposed, studiously avoided by those who really were virtuous." The influence of the metropolis did not extend over the kingdom as it does to-day, so that outside of the tainted circles there were to be found social spheres where the old gentility of the Elizabethan age was maintained, although subjected to such sneers as were directed against them by Dryden, who looked upon them as unfortunate enough to have been bred in an unpolished age, and still more unlucky to live in a refined one. "They have lasted beyond their own, and are cast behind ours."
Artificiality without any pretence to sincerity was the spirit of the times of Charles II.; the maundering sentiments and flagitious bearing of the actors upon the stage were not different from the conduct of the buffoons who masqueraded in t.i.tles and elegant attire at the court of the king of revels. Foppery in speech and in dress and the interlarding of conversation with French phrases found favor among the court followers. It was regarded "as ill breeding to speak good English, as to write good English, good sense, or a good hand."
Women as artists appeared earlier than women as players. For several centuries they had been accustomed, as a polite accomplishment, to illuminate ma.n.u.scripts, and indeed this for a long time was the only form of art worthy of the name in England. There had developed, however, considerable taste and skill in wood carving, as well as further advancement of the ancient art of the goldsmith, which, as we have seen, was developed enough in Anglo-Saxon times to const.i.tute an English school. But art in its more particular meaning was not found domestic to England until the reign of Charles I. It was the influence of the great school of Dutch artists that awakened in England art instinct and created artistic talent. England"s art history may be dated from the time of Van d.y.k.e"s residence in the country, at least in so far as it embraces women. When Van d.y.k.e was at the English court, Anne Carlisle shared with him the royal patronage. The king"s fine taste in art matters had unerringly led him to fix his favor upon this woman, and her works show the undoubted genius she possessed.
The Puritan embroilment, which was destructive to all forms of intellectual advancement as long as it kept the nation in an unsettled state, had a repressive effect upon art; but from the time of the Restoration the stream flowed on with increasing depth and volume, and the list of England"s woman painters not only became creditable to the country, but afforded another criterion by which to prove the lofty possibilities of the s.e.x. Mary Beale, a painter in oil and in water-colors, who received high commendation from the famous portrait painter Sir Peter Lely, was a painstaking and industrious artist. Anne Killigrew, who was maid of honor to the d.u.c.h.ess of York, in the brief span of her life acquired a permanent reputation, not only by her portraits, which included those of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of York, but by her verses as well. These and other women of talent were the precursors of the women who did so much for the art history of the eighteenth century.
In considering the place of woman in literature during the period of which we are writing, it is well to keep in mind the words of Lady Mary Wortley Montague: "We are permitted no books but such as tend to the weakening and effeminating of our minds. We are taught to place all our art in adorning our persons, while our minds are entirely neglected." This opinion of woman has not yet become obsolete, so that it is too much to expect to find, in the seventeenth century, women of the highest literary attainments, and certainly one need not look for women among the creators of literary style and founders of English literature. A literary woman is to some masculine minds a matter of everlasting scorn. Such minds will not be offended in the perusal of the literature of the seventeenth century by finding women wielding the pen for the instruction or the edification of elect circles of superior intellects or to please the vulgar taste of the common people. Excepting as writers of occasional verse or of memoirs, the names of few female authors appear in the literary annals of the period.
Amus.e.m.e.nt and not intellect was the contribution which women were supposed to make to the times of Charles II., and, excepting in matters reprehensible, there was often a degree of simplicity about the amus.e.m.e.nts indulged in that makes one wonder if such ingenuous entertainment does not bespeak less design and craftiness in the natures of those women than is usual to a.s.sociate with plotters and intriguers. Lady Steuart, one of the most noted court beauties, found her chief diversion in sitting upon the floor, with subservient courtiers about her, building card houses. Lord Sunderland treated his visitors to an exhibition of fire eating by the renowned Richardson, who awakened the wonder of his beholders by his feats of devouring brimstone on glowing coals, eating melted beer gla.s.ses, and roasting a raw oyster upon a live coal held upon his tongue. Such mountebanks and jugglers were the successors of similar characters who wandered through the country from castle to castle during the Middle Ages, or became attached to some great lord"s following. Other forms of indoor amus.e.m.e.nts, which would hardly comport with the gravity of the same high circles of society in the nation in these latter times, may be stated. Pepys speaks of one day going to the court, where he found the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of York, with all the great ladies, sitting upon a carpet on the ground, playing: "I love my love with an A, because he is so-and-so; and I hate him with an A, because of this and that;" and he observed that some of the ladies were mighty witty, and all of them very merry. Blindman"s-buff was a favorite game among even older people; and Burnett says that at one time the king, queen, and whole court "went about masked, and came into houses unknown, and danced there with a great deal of wild frolic. In all this they were so disguised that, without being in the secret, none could distinguish them. They were carried about in sedan chairs, and once the queen"s chairman, not knowing who she was, went from her; so she was alone and much disturbed, and came to Whitehall in a hackney coach (some say it was in a cart)."
Scarcely a week pa.s.sed by but that Whitehall was brilliantly illuminated for a ball, at which the king, queen, and courtiers danced the "bransle," which was a sort of country dance, the "corant," swift and lively as a jig, and in which only two persons took part, and other French figures. Billiards and chess were played a great deal, and gambling was a ruling pa.s.sion of the day. All the great women at court had their card tables, around which thronged the courtiers, who won and lost enormous sums. The pa.s.sions which were aroused by gambling often led to violent quarrels, and frequently these were settled by duels, although duelling had been prohibited by the king at the time of the Restoration.
Many fantastic changes had taken place in women"s attire during the reign of Charles. During the Commonwealth, Puritan sentiment, and proscription as well, had reduced the dress of all cla.s.ses to a remarkable uniformity. The costume most common to women consisted of a gown with a lace stomacher and starched kerchief, a sad-colored cloak with a French hood, and a high-crowned hat. The Geneva cloak was no fit covering for the courtesan, and was instantly thrown aside that the b.u.t.terfly which had hidden in this demure chrysalis might emerge fluttering in all its gay and brilliant colors. Loose and flowing draperies of silk and satin took the place of woollen and cotton gowns; the stiff ruff which in the reign of Elizabeth had been facetiously styled "three steps to the gallows," because the fashionables of her day would go to any length to possess it in the most extravagant size and value, had, under the Commonwealth, become much more circ.u.mspect as to its appearance and circ.u.mference, and was esteemed entirely too respectable to comport well with the freedom of the reign of Charles. Then, too, the artistic taste of the day, which ran to portrait painting, had enhanced the estimate of ladies with regard to the matter of their personal charms. So it was regarded not only as artistic, but aesthetic, in a wider sense, to run to realism.
The word "run" is used advisedly, for there was a veritable scramble to get rid of the formal and, it must be conceded, ridiculous ruff.
But when the latter disappeared from the neck and shoulders, there was nothing adapted to fulfil its functions, so that, through a lamentable omission on the part of the English women or their too hasty adoption of French fashions, the shoulders and bosoms of the ladies were given little consideration by the designers or the makers of their gowns.
But the head was not treated so indifferently as the shoulders, for, when the plain top hat of the Puritan was abandoned, the milliner already had something at hand to compensate the ladies for their loss.
Feathers of rare plumage and rich color were employed in the widest profusion. The hoods, too, underwent the general metamorphosis, and emerged from their penitential gray into "yellow bird"s eye," and other tints as indescribable. The new styles exposed their votaries to wide criticism. Many pamphlets appeared whose straightforward t.i.tles showed in what an undisguised manner the subject was to be found treated within them. The general complaint was that immodest dress was not confined to b.a.l.l.s and chambers of entertainment, but that women brazenly appeared in similar costume at church, braving all criticism to satisfy their morbid desire for observation. The mode of hair-dressing of the period ran largely to ringlets, which, as they appear in the portraits of the great ladies of the day, seem at the present time stiff and unartistic. The art of using cosmetics, which had lapsed during the Puritan period, was actively revived, and it was not only the stage beauties, but the court women as well, who used paint in such profusion as almost to disguise their ident.i.ty.
It can easily be seen that a woman of the period must have been a gorgeous spectacle in full dress, with painted face adorned with black patches cut in designs of hearts, Cupids, and occasionally even coaches and four, and with her hair dressed in the prevailing mode, which was to have "false locks set on wyres to make them stand at a distance from the head, as fardingales made the clothes stand out in Queen Elizabeth"s reign." A woman thus attired, leaning upon the arm of a gallant with head adorned by the periwig worn by the men of the day, was ready for any fashionable function. As hospitality on a large and generous scale was a circ.u.mstance of the times, it might be that she would pa.s.s into the hall, with its ma.s.sive, carved furniture, magnificent tapestries, sumptuous furnishings, glittering crystal, elegant plate, and beautiful wall paintings, to a.s.sume her position of mistress of a household and do the honors at a table generous with its viands and ample in all the varied range of English and French cookery. In doing so, she would be governed by the etiquette in whose precepts she had been schooled, and of which the following is a sample: "_Instruction to British Ladies When at Table_--A gentlewoman, being at table, abroad or at home, must observe to keep her body straight, and lean not by any means on her elbows, nor by ravenous gesture disclose a voracious appet.i.te. Talke not when you have meate in your mouthe, and do not smacke like a pig, nor eat spoone-meate so hot that the tears stand in your eyes. It is very uncourtly to drink so large a draughte that your breath is almost gone, and you are forced to blow strongly to recover yourself; throwing down your liquor as into a funnel, is an action fitter for a juggler than a gentlewoman. In carving at your table, distribute the best pieces first; it will appear very decent and comely to use a forke; so touch no piece of meate without it."
The table furnished an opportunity for many pleasant pa.s.sages of repartee, which, however, were apt to be broader in their point and more undisguised in their language than would be tolerated in any society of to-day pretending to the least gentility. Here, too, was engendered frequently the tender sentiment which gave rise to proper attentions to ladies or to gallantry, according to the character of the courtier and his lady-love. When gallantry palled upon the satiated spirits of the courtiers, to preserve their unsavory reputations they had nothing more difficult to do than to stuff their pockets with billets-doux, which they paraded in view of their fellows as evidence of their successful intrigues. When love took a more creditable form, and the lover in formal and open fashion went to pay his addresses to his lady-love, he sallied forth in the evening, accompanied by a band of fiddlers, and serenaded her with some choice verses. After the suitor was accepted and the marriage arranged for, little of sentiment entered into it. There was no attempt to hide the mercenary motives, which were frankly displayed. Indeed, women"s marriage portions were regarded by the seventeenth-century writers as the cause of much wedded misery and sin. It was argued that if these marriage portions were dispensed with, marriage would be more likely to be contracted upon the enduring basis of compatibility and love; but among the n.o.bility, monetary considerations and questions of rank were usually regarded as sufficient motives for marriage, unless pa.s.sion swept aside caution and led to a _mesalliance_. Gallants who serenaded with dishonorable motives were generally treated roughly. A life spent between a town residence and a country house, with frequent attendance at court, comprised the ambitions of the young n.o.bility.
Marriage was frequently regarded simply as an incident which did not materially alter the att.i.tude of either of the contracting parties to the rest of the court personnel.
The manners of the times of Charles II. were not the manners of England sober, but of England intoxicated with the new wine of French frivolity; and with the pa.s.sing away of the king who had led them to worship false G.o.ds, the English people gradually returned to their habitual steadiness. Yet, the dalliance with frivolity had effects to be seen throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century, in the superficiality of the era in regard to woman, and, finally, in a stiff and artificial scheme of convention.
CHAPTER XIII
THE WOMEN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The artificiality of eighteenth-century society was a precursor of the practicality of that of the nineteenth. The influences which had given shape to the society of the time of the Stuarts had pa.s.sed away, and the new influences and forces were in operation. The result of the contest between the Puritan and the sensualist had been a broadened social apprehension; and into this new concept entered harmoniously the catholicity of the worldly spirit and the conservatism of the religious spirit. This was the society which was productive of women of eminence in the arts and literature, as well as of women untalented, but blessed with a broader scope of life, more varied experience and controlled natures, than those who had gone before them.
Society as a whole indirectly profited by the English dalliance with French manners. Corruption was but a circ.u.mstance of the closer relationship, in social ways, of England with the continent. Political animosities and ambitions had more largely than anything else brought England and the rest of Europe into contact, nor was the contact by clashing at an end. A nation generally is not greatly concerned in the projects of princes, so that, while territorial aggrandizement or curtailment or similar benefits or injuries resulted from the wars of England, the salient fact as a social consideration is that the English people were still further broadened from the provincialism which the insularity of their country induced. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the women of England had escaped the local and narrow spirit and separateness of customs which threatened them from England"s beginning, and from which they were saved by recurrent and ever more frequent contact with continental nations.
English society, however, had not become so imbued with the cosmopolitan spirit as to feel at ease in it as in a loose garment; the people were straitened and formal. They were lacking the versatility and adaptability which developed in the nineteenth century, when, amongst women, convention became settled custom, and custom the careful promulgator of social laws. There were present all the evidences of the finer sensibilities which give clear notions in matters intellectual, and society in the last half of the eighteenth century became thoroughly aroused to a social consciousness with regard to the middle and lower cla.s.ses. The industrial revolution and the rise of the school of cla.s.sic economists brought forward great discussions which had for their purpose the determination of the fundamental basis of a nation"s prosperity. Into this discussion women entered as partic.i.p.ants, but very much more largely as interested subjects of the matters involved.
The growth of England"s industries, more than any other single thing, contributed to the well-being of the ma.s.ses of English society, while at the same time it tended to make sharper distinctions among them.
The increase of ease and comfort in living affected largely the character of domestic life; and the wider scope of industry and sterner demands for labor, which were the outcome of a desire to partic.i.p.ate largely in the benefits of the new industries, gave opportunity to individual talent and application; while the unfrugal and shiftless, or the unfortunate, experienced in proportionately greater degree the severity of living. To mining, fishing, farming, sheep rearing, fruit cultivation, weaving, seafaring,--the industries of England other than manufactures,--were added during the seventeenth century gla.s.s manufacture, cotton manufacture, and other industries which were the foundation of England"s material greatness. This list was greatly augmented during the eighteenth century, and the development of manufactures of all sorts created the factory towns, which drew to them, as into a vortex, the populations of the rural districts, and created many problems of modern society in which female and child labor are involved.
Among the women in everyday life, social habits were easy and existence had many elements of contentment. Gossip--which had become differentiated from scandal, because of a wider variety of subjects to chatter about than flagitious conduct, occupied a large proportion of the time of the women. The public gardens and the promenades of the cities, notably the capital, were as much resorted to as during the reign of Charles, and there was as keen an interest in the display of styles and the parade of wealth by the women who rode in their carriages or were carried in their sedan chairs as formerly there had been in the conduct of the gilded set of the Restoration.
Society as such had not as yet reached the coherence which it knows to-day. It was much a matter of cla.s.ses or sections. The "democracy of aristocracy," which makes a cross-section of all the social grades and includes the wealthy, the n.o.ble born, the intellectual and the gifted of all ranks of society, was a later development. It is true that women of gifts did not have to rely upon patrons for their reputation, but had direct access to the public and were sustained by their own worth; nevertheless, the pride of birth was still strong enough to make those who possessed it hold themselves far above even the most gifted and talented of the s.e.x who were not born within the narrow circle of n.o.ble society. Yet it was no longer simply the person garnished with t.i.tles of n.o.bility who attracted the popular eye and was singled out in the crowd; for when women whose only claim to notice was their saintliness of character and Christian service, or their philanthropy, or their literary gifts, or their art attainments, were seen in the places of general resort, they attracted as much attention as did women of rank.