Famous Affinities of History Part 14

Maria Fitzherbert's face was one which always displayed its best advantages. Her eyes were peculiarly languis.h.i.+ng, and, as she had already been twice a widow, and was six years his senior, she had the advantage over a less experienced lover. Likewise, she was a Catholic, and so by another act of Parliament any marriage with her would be illegal. Yet just because of all these different objections the prince was doubly drawn to her, and was willing to sacrifice even the throne if he could but win her.

His father, the king, called him into the royal presence and said:

"George, it is time that you should settle down and insure the succession to the throne."

"Sir," replied the prince, "I prefer to resign the succession and let my brother have it, and that I should live as a private English gentleman."

Mrs. Fitzherbert was not the sort of woman to give herself up readily to a morganatic connection. Moreover, she soon came to love Prince George too well to entangle him in a doubtful alliance with one of another faith than his. Not long after he first met her the prince, who was always given to private theatricals, sent messengers riding in hot haste to her house to tell her that he had stabbed himself, that he begged to see her, and that unless she came he would repeat the act. The lady yielded, and hurried to Carlton House, the prince's residence; but she was prudent enough to take with her the d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re, who was a reigning beauty of the court.

The scene which followed was theatrical rather than impressive.-The prince was found in his sleeping-chamber, pale and with his ruffles blood-stained. He played the part of a youthful and love-stricken wooer, vowing that he would marry the woman of his heart or stab himself again. In the presence of his messengers, who, with the d.u.c.h.ess, were witnesses, he formally took the lady as his wife, while Lady Devons.h.i.+re's wedding-ring sealed the troth. The prince also acknowledged it in a doc.u.ment.

Mrs. Fitzherbert was, in fact, a woman of sound sense. Shortly after this scene of melodramatic intensity her wits came back to her, and she recognized that she had merely gone through a meaningless farce. So she sent back the prince's doc.u.ment and the ring and hastened to the Continent, where he could not reach her, although his detectives followed her steps for a year.

At the last she yielded, however, and came home to marry the prince in such fas.h.i.+on as she could-a marriage of love, and surely one of morality, though not of parliamentary law. The ceremony was performed "in her own drawing-room in her house in London, in the presence of the officiating Protestant clergyman and two of her own nearest relatives."

Such is the serious statement of Lord Stourton, who was Mrs. Fitzherbert's cousin and confidant. The truth of it was never denied, and Mrs. Fitzherbert was always treated with respect, and even regarded as a person of great distinction. Nevertheless, on more than one occasion the prince had his friends in Parliament deny the marriage in order that his debts might be paid and new allowances issued to him by the Treasury.

George certainly felt himself a husband. Like any other married prince, he set himself to build a palace for his country home. While in search of some suitable spot he chanced to visit the "pretty fis.h.i.+ng-village" of Brighton to see his uncle, the Duke of c.u.mberland. Doubtless he found it an attractive place, yet this may have been not so much because of its view of the sea as for the reason that Mrs. Fitzherbert had previously lived there.

However, in 1784 the prince sent down his chief cook to make arrangements for the next royal visit. The cook engaged a house on the spot where the Pavilion now stands, and from that time Brighton began to be an extremely fas.h.i.+onable place. The court doctors, giving advice that was agreeable, recommended their royal patient to take sea-bathing at Brighton. At once the place sprang into popularity.

At first the gentry were crowded into lodging-houses and the accommodations were primitive to a degree. But soon handsome villas arose on every side; hotels appeared; places of amus.e.m.e.nt were opened. The prince himself began to build a tasteless but showy structure, partly Chinese and partly Indian in style, on the fas.h.i.+onable promenade of the Steyne.

During his life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at Brighton the prince held what was practically a court. Hundreds of the aristocracy came down from London and made their temporary dwellings there; while thousands who were by no means of the court made the place what is now popularly called "London by the Sea." There were the Duc de Chartres, of France; statesmen and rakes, like Fox, Sheridan, and the Earl of Barrymore; a very beautiful woman, named Mrs. Couch, a favorite singer at the opera, to whom the prince gave at one time jewels worth ten thousand pounds; and a sister of the Earl of Barrymore, who was as notorious as her brother. She often took the president's chair at a club which George's friends had organized and which she had christened the h.e.l.l Fire Club.

Such persons were not the only visitors at Brighton. Men of much more serious demeanor came down to visit the prince and brought with them quieter society. Nevertheless, for a considerable time the place was most noted for its wild scenes of revelry, into which George frequently entered, though his home life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at the Pavilion was a decorous one.

No one felt any doubt as to the marriage of the two persons, who seemed so much like a prince and a princess. Some of the people of the place addressed Mrs. Fitzherbert as "Mrs. Prince." The old king and his wife, however, much deplored their son's relation with her. This was partly due to the fact that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Catholic and that she had received a number of French nuns who had been driven out of France at the time of the Revolution. But no less displeasure was caused by the prince's racing and dicing, which swelled his debts to almost a million pounds, so that Parliament and, indeed, the sober part of England were set against him.

Of course, his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert had no legal status; nor is there any reason for believing that she ever became a mother. She had no children by her former two husbands, and Lord Stourton testified positively that she never had either son or daughter by Prince George. Nevertheless, more than one American claimant has risen to advance some utterly visionary claim to the English throne by reason of alleged descent from Prince George and Mrs. Fitzherbert.

Neither William IV. nor Queen Victoria ever spent much time at Brighton. In King William's case it was explained that the dampness of the Pavilion did not suit him; and as to Queen Victoria, it was said that she disliked the fact that buildings had been erected so as to cut off the view of the sea. It is quite likely, however, that the queen objected to the a.s.sociations of the place, and did not care to be reminded of the time when her uncle had lived there so long in a morganatic state of marriage.

At length the time came when the king, Parliament, and the people at large insisted that the Prince of Wales should make a legal marriage, and a wife was selected for him in the person of Caroline, daughter of the Duke of Brunswick. This marriage took place exactly ten years after his wedding with the beautiful and gentle-mannered Mrs. Fitzherbert. With the latter he had known many days and hours of happiness. With Princess Caroline he had no happiness at all.

Prince George met her at the pier to greet her. It is said that as he took her hand he kissed her, and then, suddenly recoiling, he whispered to one of his friends:

"For G.o.d's sake, George, give me a gla.s.s of brandy!"

Such an utterance was more brutal and barbaric than anything his bride could have conceived of, though it is probable, fortunately, that she did not understand him by reason of her ignorance of English.

We need not go through the unhappy story of this unsympathetic, neglected, rebellious wife. Her life with the prince soon became one of open warfare; but instead of leaving England she remained to set the kingdom in an uproar. As soon as his father died and he became king, George sued her for divorce. Half the people sided with the queen, while the rest regarded her as a vulgar creature who made love to her attendants and brought dishonor on the English throne. It was a sorry, sordid contrast between the young Prince George who had posed as a sort of cavalier and this now furious gray old man wrangling with his furious German wife.

Well might he look back to the time when he met Perdita in the moonlight on the Thames, or when he played the part of Florizel, or, better still, when he enjoyed the sincere and disinterested love of the gentle woman who was his wife in all but legal status. Caroline of Brunswick was thrust away from the king's coronation. She took a house within sight of Westminster Abbey, so that she might make hag-like screeches to the mob and to the king as he pa.s.sed by. Presently, in August, 1821, only a month after the coronation, she died, and her body was taken back to Brunswick for burial.

George himself reigned for nine years longer. When he died in 1830 his executor was the Duke of Wellington. The duke, in examining the late king's private papers, found that he had kept with the greatest care every letter written to him by his morganatic wife. During his last illness she had sent him an affectionate missive which it is said George "read eagerly." Mrs. Fitzherbert wished the duke to give up her letters; but he would do so only in return for those which he had written to her.

It was finally decided that it would be best to burn both his and hers. This work was carried out in Mrs. Fitzherbert's own house by the lady, the duke, and the Earl of Albemarle.

Of George it may be said that he has left as memories behind him only three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at Brighton, with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and flimsy towers. The second is the buckle which he invented and which Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the story of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence exercised upon him by the affection of a good woman.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX

Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those that have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and as it is perhaps unique in the history of romantic love, I cannot forbear relating it; for I believe that it is full of curious interest and pathetic power.

All those who have written of the French Revolution have paused in their chronicle of blood and flame to tell the episode of the peasant Royalist, Charlotte Corday; but in telling it they have often omitted the one part of the story that is personal and not political. The tragic record of this French girl and her self-sacrifice has been told a thousand times by writers in many languages; yet almost all of them have neglected the brief romance which followed her daring deed and which was consummated after her death upon the guillotine. It is worth our while to speak first of Charlotte herself and of the man she slew, and then to tell that other tale which ought always to be entwined with her great deed of daring.

Charlotte Corday-Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armand-was a native of Normandy, and was descended, as her name implies, from n.o.ble ancestors. Her forefathers, indeed, had been statesmen, civil rulers, and soldiers, and among them was numbered the famous poet Corneille, whom the French rank with Shakespeare. But a century or more of vicissitudes had reduced her branch of the family almost to the position of peasants-a fact which partly justifies the name that some give her when they call her "the Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution."

She did not, however, spend her girlish years amid the fields and woods tending her sheep, as did the other Jeanne d'Arc; but she was placed in charge of the sisters in a convent, and from them she received such education as she had. She was a lonely child, and her thoughts turned inward, brooding over many things.

After she had left the convent she was sent to live with an aunt. Here she devoted herself to reading over and over the few books which the house contained. These consisted largely of the deistic writers, especially Voltaire, and to some extent they destroyed her convent faith, though it is not likely that she understood them very fully.

More to her taste was a copy of Plutarch's Lives. These famous stories fascinated her. They told her of battle and siege, of intrigue and heroism, and of that romantic love of country which led men to throw away their lives for the sake of a whole people. Brutus and Regulus were her heroes. To die for the many seemed to her the most glorious end that any one could seek. When she thought of it she thrilled with a sort of ecstasy, and longed with all the pa.s.sion of her nature that such a glorious fate might be her own.

Charlotte had nearly come to womanhood at the time when the French Revolution first broke out. Royalist though she had been in her sympathies, she felt the justice of the people's cause. She had seen the suffering of the peasantry, the brutality of the tax-gatherers, and all the oppression of the old regime. But what she hoped for was a democracy of order and equality and peace. Could the king reign as a const.i.tutional monarch rather than as a despot, this was all for which she cared.

In Normandy, where she lived, were many of those moderate republicans known as Girondists, who felt as she did and who hoped for the same peaceful end to the great outbreak. On the other hand, in Paris, the party of the Mountain, as it was called, ruled with a savage violence that soon was to culminate in the Reign of Terror. Already the guillotine ran red with n.o.ble blood. Already the king had bowed his head to the fatal knife. Already the threat had gone forth that a mere breath of suspicion or a pointed finger might be enough to lead men and women to a gory death.

In her quiet home near Caen Charlotte Corday heard as from afar the story of this dreadful saturnalia of a.s.sa.s.sination which was making Paris a city of b.l.o.o.d.y mist. Men and women of the Girondist party came to tell her of the hideous deeds that were perpetrated there. All these horrors gradually wove themselves in the young girl's imagination around the sinister and repulsive figure of Jean Paul Marat. She knew nothing of his a.s.sociates, Danton and Robespierre. It was in Marat alone that she saw the monster who sent innocent thousands to their graves, and who reveled like some arch-fiend in murder and gruesome death.

In his earlier years Marat had been a very different figure-an accomplished physician, the friend of n.o.bles, a man of science and original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much hated that he sought refuge in London to save his life.

On his return he was hunted by his enemies, so that his only place of refuge was in the sewers and drains of Paris. A woman, one Simonne Evrard, helped him to escape his pursuers. In the sewers, however, he contracted a dreadful skin-disease from which he never afterward recovered, and which was extremely painful as well as shocking to behold.

It is small wonder that the stories about Marat circulated through the provinces made him seem more a devil than a man. His vindictiveness against the Girondists brought all of this straight home to Charlotte Corday and led her to dream of acting the part of Brutus, so that she might free her country from this hideous tyrant.

In January, 1793, King Louis XVI. met his death upon the scaffold; and the queen was thrust into a foul prison. This was a signal for activity among the Girondists in Normandy, and especially at Caen, where Charlotte was present at their meetings and heard their fervid oratory. There was a plot to march on Paris, yet in some instinctive way she felt that such a scheme must fail. It was then that she definitely formed the plan of going herself, alone, to the French capital to seek out the hideous Marat and to kill him with her own hands.

To this end she made application for a pa.s.sport allowing her to visit Paris. This pa.s.sport still exists, and it gives us an official description of the girl. It reads:

Allow citizen Marie Corday to pa.s.s. She is twenty-four years of age, five feet and one inch in height, hair and eyebrows chestnut color, eyes gray, forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face.

Apart from this verbal description we have two portraits painted while she was in prison. Both of them make the description of the pa.s.sport seem faint and pale. The real Charlotte had a wealth of chestnut hair which fell about her face and neck in glorious abundance. Her great gray eyes spoke eloquently of truth and courage. Her mouth was firm yet winsome, and her form combined both strength and grace. Such is the girl who, on reaching Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:

Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place doubtless makes you wish to learn the events which have occurred in that part of the republic. I shall call at your residence in about an hour. Be so good as to receive me and give me a brief interview. I will put you in such condition as to render great service to France.

This letter failed to gain her admission, and so did another which she wrote soon after. The fact is that Marat was grievously ill. His disease had reached a point where the pain could be a.s.suaged only by hot water; and he spent the greater part of his time wrapped in a blanket and lying in a large tub.

A third time, however, the persistent girl called at his house and insisted that she must see him, saying that she was herself in danger from the enemies of the Republic. Through an open door Marat heard her mellow voice and gave orders that she should be admitted.

As she entered she gazed for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in the tub, the rat-like face, and the s.h.i.+fting eyes. Then she approached him, concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she had purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she told him that there was much excitement at Caen and that the Girondists were plotting there.

To this Marat answered, in his harsh voice: