R O Y A L T Y
IN ALL AGES

T. F. THISELTON-DYER, M.A. Oxon.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

R O Y A L T Y
I N A L L A G E S

The Amusements, Eccentricities, Ac-
complishments, Superstitions, and
Frolics of the Kings and
Queens of Europe
BY
T. F. THISELTON-DYER, M.A. Oxon.
WITH SIX ETCHED PORTRAITS FROM
CONTEMPORARY ENGRAVINGS
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO, Ltd.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
M D C C C C I I I
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press

PREFACE

It has been remarked that to write of the private and domestic acts of monarchs while still alive savours of scandal and bad taste, but when dead their traits of character, however strange and eccentric they may have been in their lifetime, at once become matter of history. Adopting this rule, we have confined ourselves in the present work to dealing with royalty in the past; and, in a field so wide, we have, as far as possible, endeavoured to make each chapter concise and representative of the subject treated. The following pages, whilst illustrating the marvellous versatility of royalty, when seriously analysed tend to show how vastly superior the latter-day sovereigns have been when compared with those of earlier times, many of whose extraordinary freaks and vagaries as much degraded the throne, as the refined and cultivated tastes of her late Majesty Queen Victoria elevated and beautified it.

T. F. THISELTON-DYER.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ETCHED PORTRAITS

ROYALTY

CHAPTER I

ROYALTY AT PLAY

The great Mogul Emperor was a chess player, and was generous enough to rejoice when he was beaten by one of his courtiers, which was the exact reverse of Philip II. of Spain, who, when a Spanish grandee had won every game in which he had played against the King, could not conceal his vexation. Whereupon the skilful but injudicious player, returning home, said to his family: “My children, we have nothing more to do at Court. There we must henceforth expect no favour; the King is offended because I have won of him every game of chess.” Napoleon did not like defeat even at chess, for, if he perceived his antagonist gaining upon him, he would with one hasty movement sweep board and pieces off the table on to the ground.

In some cases, however, if we are to believe the traditions of history, chess has been responsible for some serious fracas. Thus a story is told of William the Conqueror, how when a young man he was invited to the Court of the French king, and during his stay there was one day engaged at chess with the King’s eldest son, when a dispute arose concerning a certain move. William, annoyed at a certain remark made by his antagonist, struck him with the chess-board, which “obliged him to make a precipitate retreat from France to avoid the consequences of so rash an act.”

A similar anecdote is told of John, the youngest son of Henry II., who quarrelled over the chess-board with one Fulco Guarine, a Shropshire nobleman, receiving such a blow as almost to kill him. John did not easily forget the affront, and long after his accession to the throne showed his resentment by keeping him from the possession of Whittington Castle, to which he was the rightful heir. It is also said that Henry was engaged at chess when the deputies from Rouen informed him that the city was besieged by Philip, King of France; but he would not listen to their news until he had finished his game. A curious accident happened to Edward I. when he was playing at chess at Windsor, for, on suddenly rising from the game, the next moment the centre stone of the groined ceiling fell on the very spot where he had been sitting, an escape which he attributed to the special protection of Providence. It is further recorded that Edward I. received from one of the dignitaries of the Temple, in France, a chess-board and chess-men made of jasper and crystal, which present he transferred to his queen; hence it has been concluded that she, too, was skilled in the noble game.

But his son, Edward II., got into disrepute by playing at chuck-farthing, or cross and pile, which was held to be a very unkingly diversion, “and sufficient to disgust the warlike peers who had been accustomed to rally round the victorious banner of his father.” In one of his wardrobe accounts these entries occur: “Item—paid to Henry, the King’s barber, for money which he lent to the King to play at cross and pile, five shillings. Item—paid to Pires Barnard, usher of the King’s chamber, money which he lent the King, and which he lost at cross and pile to Monsieur Robert Wattewille, eight-pence.”[1]

De Foix, on hearing that the Queen of Scots had resolved on the marriage with her cousin Darnley, went to Elizabeth that he might discuss the matter. He found her at chess, and, profiting by the opportunity of discussing the matter, he said: “This game is an image of the words and deeds of men. If, for example, we lose a pawn, it seems but a small matter; nevertheless, the loss often draws after it that of the whole game.”

The Queen replied, “I understand you. Darnley is but a pawn, but may well checkmate me if he be promoted.”

Charles I. was occupied, it is said, at chess when he was informed of the final resolution of the Scots to sell him to the Parliament; but he was so little discomposed by this intelligence that he continued the game in no way disconcerted. A similar anecdote is told of John Frederick, Elector of Saxony, who, having been taken prisoner by Charles V., was condemned to death—a decree which was intimated to him while at chess with Ernest of Brunswick, his fellow-prisoner. But after a short pause he challenged his antagonist to finish the game, played with his usual attention, and expressed his satisfaction at winning. And coming down to the reign of her late Majesty, Queen Victoria, it is said she was fond of most games, enjoying chess or draughts, which in her later days she exchanged for patience. When more actively inclined she would play at ball or battledore and shuttle-cock with the ladies of the Court, a practice which she continued till middle life.

As a warning against the perilous habit of playing chess with a wife, it is related of Ferrand, Count of Flanders, that, having constantly defeated the Countess, she conceived a hatred against him, which reached such a height that when the unfortunate Count was taken prisoner at the battle of Bouvines, she suffered him to remain a long time in prison, although, according to common report, she might easily have procured his release.

It was while playing at chess with a knight, nicknamed the “King of Love,” that James I. of Scotland referred to a prophecy that a king should die that year, and remarked to his playmate, “There are no kings in Scotland but you and I. I shall take good care of myself, and I counsel you to do the same.”

Don John of Austria had a room in his palace in which there was a chequered pavement of black and white marble, upon which living men attired in varied costumes moved under his direction according to the laws of chess. It is also related of a Duke of Weimar that he had squares of black and white marble, on which he played at chess with red soldiers.

Although Louis XIII. firmly prohibited all games of chance at Court, he had so strong an affection for chess that he rarely lost an opportunity of playing a game in his coach whenever he went abroad. In this respect he was very different to Louis IX., who forbade any of his officers to play at dice or at chess; and report goes that his anger on one occasion, at finding the Duke of Anjou engaged in a move of chess, knew no bounds.

Henry III. of France was passionately fond of the childish game bilboquet or “cup and ball,” which, it is said, he used to play even when walking in the street; and piquet is commonly reported to have derived its name from that of its inventor, who contrived it to amuse Charles VI. of France.

The poor imbecile Charles II. of Spain did his best to amuse his young wife Marie Louise of Orleans, but not with much effect. He would play with her at “jouchets,” which appears to have been an amusement of the nature of that known as “spills,” for three or four hours a day—“a game,” writes Madame de Villars, “at which one might lose a pistole during all that time par malheur extraordinaire.”

Indeed, sovereigns, like other mortals, have sought recreation and a rest from the anxieties of life in sometimes what may seem the most childish amusements. One of Napoleon’s favourite games, for instance, was blind-man’s-buff, a pastime which, it may be remembered, Canning and Sir William Scott played with the Princess Caroline whilst at Montagu House. Napoleon, too, was very fond of children, and would carry the infant King of Rome in his arms, and standing in front of a mirror, make all kinds of grimaces in the glass. At breakfast he would take the child upon his knee, “dip his fingers in the sauce, and daub his face with it; the child’s governess scolded, the Emperor laughed, and the child, always pleased, seemed to take delight in the rough caresses of his father.”[2]

Henry IV. of France also delighted in a romp with his children. The story goes that one day, when trotting round the room on his hands and knees, with the Dauphin on his back, and the other children urging him on to gallop in imitation of a horse, an ambassador suddenly entered and surprised the royal family in the midst of their play. Henry, rising, inquired, “Have you children, M. l’Ambassadeur.” “Yes, sire.” “In that case I proceed with the sport.” An anecdote which reminds us of one told by Ælian of Agesilaus, who, on being found by a friend riding on a stick for the amusement of his son, he bade his visitor not speak of it to any one until he was a father himself.

George III. was on one occasion discovered on all-fours, with one of his children riding astride his back; and most readers are acquainted with the well-known painting of “George III. playing at Ball with the Princess Amelia.” His Majesty also took pleasure in a game of backgammon, a source of recreation of which Louis XIV. was fond. One day when playing at this game, a dispute arose about a doubtful throw, the surrounding courtiers remaining silent. The Count de Grammont happening to come in, the King asked him to decide the matter. He instantly answered, “Your Majesty is in the wrong.” “How,” said Louis, “can you decide before you know the question?”

“Because,” replied the Count, “had there been any fault, all these gentlemen would have given it in favour of your Majesty.”

The King submitted to his decision.

Queen Victoria, too, was fond of children, with whom she enjoyed a romp; and Catherine II. of Russia would spend her leisure time in affording infinite delight to the young folk, for whose amusement she would invent all kinds of impromptu games.

Billiards became very popular during the reign of Louis XIV., to whom it was recommended by his physicians as an exercise after meals. It is said that Chamillard, who played with the King, entirely owed his political fortune to the amount of skill which he displayed in this game. In the Mémoires Complets et Authentiques du Duc de Saint Simon, par M. Chernel (1872, vol. ii. p. 29), we read that Louis XIV. during the winter evenings played billiards with M. le Vendôme or M. le Grand, occasionally with Le Maréchal de Villeroy, and sometimes with the Duc de Grammont.

Cards have always been popular playthings with royalty—incidents connected with which will be found in our chapter on gambling. Primero was the fashionable game at the English Court during the Tudor dynasty, and Shakespeare represents Henry VIII. playing at it with the Duke of Suffolk. It was succeeded by a game called “maw,” which appears to have been the favourite diversion of James I. Weldon, alluding to the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in his “Court and Character of King James,” says: “The next that came on the stage was Sir Thomas Monson, but the night before he was come to his trial, the King, being at the game of maw, said, ‘To-morrow comes Thomas Monson to his trial.’ ‘Yes,’ said the King’s card-holder, ‘when, if he does not play his master’s prize, your Majesty shall never trust me.’” This remark, it is said, so ran in the King’s mind that at the next game he excused himself from playing as he was sleepy, remarking that he would play out that set the next night.

And occasionally, it would seem, the play-hours of monarchs have proved almost if not quite fatal. Thus it was in the winter of 1521 that the Count of St. Pol, being elected King of the Bean, Francis I. of France challenged him and his party to a combat with snowballs. Amidst them a brand was flung, which struck the King on the head, and for some days placed his life in jeopardy.

It was on Easter Eve 1498 that Charles VIII. of France proceeded to the battlements of the Castle of Amboise with his queen to watch some of the courtiers playing ball in the fosses below. But traversing a narrow passage, Charles struck his head against the archway of a low door, which, it is said, brought on a kind of fit. He was carried into a little chamber near, recovered his speech once or twice, and after nine hours of agony he died.

CHAPTER II

FREAKS OF ROYALTY

It is impossible to account, in many cases, for the strange and extraordinary freaks of bygone sovereigns on any other ground than eccentricity or madness. It is true that Charles the Fat used to excuse himself for the atrocities into which he plunged, by asserting that he was possessed of a devil, but this, of course, was in banter rather than sincerity. But, whatever the motives which prompted such peculiar vagaries on the part of certain monarchs, foibles of this kind, if not instructive, are certainly amusing.

Thus it is related of Marie Casimire, wife of Sobieski, King of Poland, that one of her amusements was to let herself be drenched by the rain, although at the time she might be magnificently dressed. On one occasion, when Monsieur le Comte de Teil, Conseiller du Parlement de Paris, who had been sent to Poland by the King of England, happened to be near the Queen when it rained very heavily, she said to him, “Monsieur l’Envoi, let us take a walk”—a request which he did not dare to refuse. He wore on that day a fine wig; nevertheless he endured the rain for some time, and then said to her, “Madam, your Majesty is getting wet.” “Say, rather,” answered the Queen, “that you are learning how to spoil your fine wig,” and she continued walking in the rain maliciously a full half-hour.

This, however, was a comparatively trivial and harmless amusement compared with the cruel and outrageous freaks of the Russian Emperor, Ivan IV., who has been described as “one of the most savage, yet one of the most enlightened monarchs that ever reigned.” He was only in his teens when he had one of his attendants worried to death by dogs on the public highway; and in one of the so-called frolicsome moods he would let slip wild bears among the affrighted citizens in the streets, and would calmly say his prayers whilst gazing at the slaughter, making compensation “for any irregularity in the matter by flinging a few coins to the wounded after he rose from his knees.” It is even said that Ivan went so far in his insane freaks as to compel parents to slay their children, and children one another; and where there was a survivor, “the amiable monarch, if he was not too weary, would slay him himself, and would laugh at this conclusion to so excellent a joke.” It is not surprising that partial madness eventually overtook him, for what can be said of a ruler who is reported to have sent to the city of Moscow “to provide for him a measure full of fleas for a medicine.” They answered it was impossible; and if they could get them, yet they could not measure them, because of their leaping out. Upon which he set a mulct upon the city of 7000 roubles.

But Ivan IV. was not the only Russian monarch who indulged in freaks of an irrational nature, although his successors did not stoop to the same cruelty. In the case of Peter III. intemperance has been assigned as the probable cause of some of the absurd actions with which his name has been associated in contemporary memoirs. Rulhière, for instance, who was an eye-witness of the Revolution of the year 1762, tells us that his military mania knew no bounds; he wished that a perpetual noise of cannon should give him in representation a foretaste of war. Accordingly, he one day gave orders that one hundred large pieces of cannon should be fired simultaneously, so that he might have some idea of the noise of battle. And it was necessary, in order to prevent the execution of this whim, to represent to him that such an act would shake the city to the centre. Oftentimes he would rise from table to prostrate himself on his knees, with a glass in his hand, before a portrait of Frederick of Prussia, exclaiming, “My brother, we will conquer the universe together.”

In some instances the conduct of the Russian Emperor Paul was most eccentric, and his vagaries were so extraordinary that they have been explained on the theory of madness. One of the most curious stories about him is related by Kotzebue. He was summoned into the presence of the Emperor, who said to him in German, “You know the world too well not to be adequately informed about political occurrences, and must, therefore, have learned how I have figured in it. I have often made rather a foolish exhibition of myself, and,” continued he, laughing, “it’s right that I should be punished, and I have imposed on myself a chastisement. I want this”—he held a paper in his hand—“to be inserted in the Hamburg Gazette and other newspapers.” He then took him confidentially by the arm, and read to him the following paper which he had written in French:—

“On apprend de Petersbourg que l’Empereur de Russie voyant que les puissances de l’Europe ne pouvoit s’accorder entre elle et voulant mettre fin à une guerre qui la desoloit depuis onse ans vouloit proposer un lieu ou il inviteroit touts les autres souverains de se rendre et y combattre en champ clos ayant avec eux pour ecuyer juge de camp, et héros d’armes leurs ministres les plus éclairés et les generaux les plus habiles tels que Messrs. Thugust, Pitt, Bernstoff, lui même se proposant de prendre avec lui les generaux C. de Palen et Kutusof, on ne sçait si on doit y ajouter foi, toute fois la chose ne paroit pas destituée de fondement en portant l’empreinte de ce dont il a souvent été taxé.”[3]

We may compare this eccentricity with that of Charles I. of England, who would bind himself to a particular line of conduct by a secret obligation. One day he drew aside Dr. Sheldon, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and placed in his hands a paper which detailed certain measures he proposed to adopt for the glory of God and for the advancement of the Church, intimating that he “had privately bound himself by the most awful vow to ensure their accomplishment.” And one particular obligation which the document contained was to perform public penance for the injustice he had been guilty of to Lord Strafford, in consenting to his death. In delivering this paper to Dr. Sheldon, Charles solemnly conjured him to remind him of his contract, should he hereafter ever find him in a condition to perform any one of the articles which it contained.

In his moments of irritation Peter the Great, like William III. of England, would not hesitate to strike the person who had given him offence, whatever might be his rank; and, as his Majesty was easily upset, he was at times very lavish of his blows. His subjects, it is said, did not consider a blow from the Emperor an affront, and thought themselves honoured by an apology. But this was not the case with foreigners, for Le Blond, a French architect whom the Czar had invited into his dominions, having received the stroke of a cane in the first transport of imperial anger, took it so much to heart that he sickened of a fever and died.

The Czar Nicholas was fond of frightening or fascinating people by his eyes, and it is said that one of his terrible glances once terrified a Swedish admiral into the Russian service. On another occasion, we are told how happening to encounter a poor fellow who had strolled into the private part of the Imperial Park, Nicholas gazed at him with so fierce a glance that the trespasser was stricken with brain-fever. This strange peculiarity of the Czar reminds us of Augustus, who, according to Suetonius, was always well pleased with those persons who, when addressing him, looked upon the ground, as though there were a divine splendour in his eyes, too dazzling for them to gaze upon.

Eric XIV. of Sweden in early life was stunned by a violent fall, a circumstance which, it is said, in after years accounted for his lack of judgment, and occasional eccentricity of conduct. His highly suspicious turn of mind made him at times morose, and almost maniacal, causing him to interpret “the most natural and insignificant of gestures as some dreadful telegraphing of hideous treason. At such seasons his violence was frantic, and, after a day marked by acts of frightful outrage, he would make record against himself in his journal that he had sinned, and would then start to commit further crime.” By a terrible irony of fate, when deposed by his brother John, he was thrown into a horrible dungeon, and “there were placed over him men whom he had offended, and who claimed to be avenged. The vengeance which they exacted was diabolical, for they aggravated as far as in them lay the horrors of his position—one of them fastening to his crippled limbs a mass of iron which may yet be seen in the museum at Abo.”[4] But can this be wondered at, when it is remembered how Eric when possessed of power had in his moments of frenzy and freaks of passion sent innocent men to the scaffold, and like a lunatic had, after the performance of some diabolical act, wandered about the fields likening himself to Nero, and heaping execration upon his own head. He was his own enemy, and as such incurred his own destruction.

Some of the characteristics of one of his successors on the throne—the celebrated Christina—were uncommon, for having been educated by men, and brought up under the guardianship of men, she gradually imbibed a dislike of all that was womanly. Her ambition seems to have been to be as much like a man as possible, and nothing seems to have pleased her more than to don male attire. For womanly refinements, too, she had the most profound contempt, and it only coincided with this trait of character that she expressed her conviction of the utter disability of woman to conduct the affairs of a nation. In short, it is said that there was nothing of the woman in her save her sex, and that her presence, voice, and manners, were altogether masculine. Many of her strange freaks of conduct were attributable to this peculiar whim, in accordance with which she not only swore like a dragoon, but encouraged conversation of a by no means refined character. Thus a writer states that one of his friends used to entertain her with stories of a very unseemly nature, with which she was abundantly delighted, and adds, “Yet because there were some of his narrations which did sometimes require more modest expressions than the genuine or natural, chiefly before a Royal Majesty and in a maid’s presence, as she saw him going about his circumlocutions and seeking civil terms, she would boldly speak out the words, though they were never so filthy, which modesty forbids me to write here.” Indeed, her own acknowledgment that she was never nice of speech more or less corresponded with her personal habits, inasmuch as Manneschied, the confessor of Pimentelli, the Spanish ambassador at the Swedish Court, and a great admirer of the Queen, thus wrote of her: “She never combs her hair but once a week, and sometimes lets it go untouched for a fortnight. On Sundays her toilet takes about half-an-hour, but on other days it is despatched in a quarter.” Manneschied then adds, “Her linen was ragged and much torn.” And occasionally, when a bold person would hint at the salubrity of cleanliness she would reply, “Wash! that’s all very well for people who have nothing else to do!”

Nothing, again, pleased Christina more than to indulge in some outrageous freak whereby she would astonish and horrify those around her. When visiting, for instance, the French Court, she startled the stately ladies there by her strange conduct; and according to Madame de Motteville, “In presence of the King, Queen, and the whole Court, she flung her legs up on a chair as high as that on which she was seated, and she altogether exhibited them a great deal too freely.” Then, again, her impatience and irreverence at church were not infrequently matter of public comment. She would use two chairs, one of purple velvet in which she was seated, and one in front of her, “over the back of which she would lean her head or arms, thinking of divers matters.” If the sermon was a trifle long and somewhat prosy, she would begin playing with the two spaniels which usually accompanied her, or she would chat with some gentleman-in-waiting; and, if the sermon did not come to a close, she would rattle her fan on the back of the chair before her, and distract the attention of the congregation, if she could not stop the preacher. But she was perfectly indifferent as to what the public thought of her conduct, and almost up to the end of her life she adhered to the same freedom and laxity of manners. It was towards the close of the year 1688 that she received an anonymous letter intimating that her death was not far off, and that she would do well to set her house in order, which she could commence by destroying the indecent paintings and statues with which her mansion was crowded.

But this note of warning had no effect on Christina, and with a smile she put it in the fire, little anticipating that the prediction would be fulfilled the following year. Despite her many foibles and follies, Christina was a great and remarkable woman, a riddle indeed to many who have read her history. She had a masterful character, and, however much her various eccentricities and habits of life may have created disgust, her intellectual powers, on the other hand, were of no mean order. But one reason, perhaps, which induced her to indulge in such extraordinary freaks of conduct was her supreme contempt for the parade and symbols of worldly power, and the conventionalities of society.

It was no matter of surprise that Gustavus IV. proved an incapable and unreliable monarch, developing eccentricity of character bordering on insanity. What could be expected of one who in his young life was so overdone with religious teaching that “he pored over the Book of Revelations till he became nearly insane, recognised himself as one mysteriously alluded to in Scripture, and hailed in his own person that ‘coming man’ who as prophet, priest, and king was to rule the world”? Thus on his wedding-day, at the completion of the marriage ceremony, he took his bride, Princess Frederica of Baden, to her apartment, and opening the Book of Esther, bade her read aloud the first chapter.

She obeyed, and then wonderingly asked for an explanation of his strange conduct. Gustavus at once expounded the passage, warning the Queen that should she ever disobey her lord and master she would be punished as Vashti had been, and her dignity would be given to another. This was not a happy inauguration of married life, and the young Queen soon found to her bitter disappointment what a miserable existence was enforced upon her. On one occasion, when Gustavus discovered his young wife having a romp with her German maids, he immediately dismissed her playful attendants, and introduced in their place cold and formal aged Swedish ladies, who would have scorned even the idea of such frivolities. But it was in his public as well as his private life that Gustavus indulged in these strange freaks, alienating by his conduct the sympathies of the aristocracy, many of whom, “to mark their indignation, threw up their patents of nobility,” while the people generally did not shrink from showing in an unmistakable manner their annoyance and disgust. The climax of his follies and freaks was reached when he absented himself from his kingdom—from 1803 to 1806—so that he was advertised for on the walls of Stockholm as a stray king, a suitable recompense being promised to any who should restore him to his “disconsolate subjects.” Ultimately, as is well known, he was deposed—his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, ascending the throne as Charles XIII.—and imprisoned in the Castle of Gripsholm, where he amused himself by drawing “a portrait of himself seated on a white horse, trampling upon the Beast”![5]

The Duke d’Alençon, afterwards Duke of Anjou, and his brother Henry III. regarded each other with puerile hatred, a circumstance which led to the most absurd rivalry between themselves. Each bestowed his favour and time, and lavished his resources, on a band of young, handsome, swaggering gallants, to whom the King especially set the example of great extravagance, and, at the same time, effeminacy of dress. The freaks of folly they committed seem scarcely credible, for it is reported that they painted their cheeks, adorned their necks with the most outrageous frills of enormous dimensions, and curled their hair with a nicety and care which exceeded male pretensions. Indeed, Henry III. carried this absurdity so far as actually to appear accoutred in a female garb. “These acts of idiotcy,” writes Crowe,[6] “the people construed to be indicative not merely of perverted taste, but of degrading crime; and the King’s mignons were the object of such universal execration that when they perished by the hands of each other, or of more invidious foes, and when Henry III. consoled himself for their loss by the performance of splendid funeral rites, and the erection of superb mausoleums, the public applauded the acts of vengeance by which these base parasites were slain.” But, contemptible as such conduct was, it certainly lacked the brutality of his predecessor, Charles IX., who, when engaged in the chase, is said to have pursued wild beasts more with the fury of their species than the excitement of man. Thus it is recorded that he would cut off the heads of donkeys, embowel pigs, and would take a pleasure in arranging their entrails butcher-fashion.

Another of the freaks of Charles IX. consisted in his hiring ten young thieves, whom he brought to the Louvre, where he set them to rob the guests of their swords and jewellery, laughing heartily “as he witnessed their success, or saw the unconsciousness of the victims, or beheld their surprise and indignation after they had been despoiled.” These young thieves, says Dr. Doran, who were amply rewarded for the exercise of their ability, “rank among the most singular of hirelings paid to excite laughter in a gloomy king.”

The Comte d’Artois, a brother of Louis XVI., was noted for his frivolous pursuits and his unbecoming follies. One anecdote about him shows the levity of his conduct; and, as it has been observed, a royal duke “who had tried the same jest in England would have been summoned before the next Justice of the Peace”:—

“The Comte d’Artois has taken it into his head to pull down a country house in the Bois de Boulogne, and to rebuild it from top to bottom. It is to be newly furnished, and a fête is to be given there to the Queen. Everybody thought it absurd to attempt to finish such a piece of work in six or seven weeks; yet it has been done—nine hundred workmen having been employed day and night. The most extraordinary part of the case is that, as there was a deficiency of materials, especially of stones, lime, and plaister, and that time was not to be lost in procuring them elsewhere, M. le Comte d’Artois gave orders that patrols of the Swiss Guards should search the main roads, and seize every cart containing materials of this kind which they came across.”

At sixty years of age, Louis I., or Ludwig, King of Bavaria, took under his protection the notorious dancing-woman, Lola Montes, under whose wretched influence the misguided monarch was guilty of the most inconceivable follies. She so outraged every idea of propriety, that on one occasion the mob threatened to pull her house to the ground. But she treated the matter with a high hand; and, to show her contempt for the crowd, flung a dog among them, and she is even said to have thrust her tongue in her cheek at the people. And, when it is remembered that there was scarcely a freak of folly which Ludwig did not do at her bidding, it is not surprising that the public indignation was unbounded. She succeeded, however, in dragging the weak-minded King with her in her fall, whose position, after the terrible scandal and disgrace, had become so unbearable that he found himself forced to abdicate, which took place in the year 1848. In his time of retirement one of the pleasantest associations of his past was the velvet-covered mattress stuffed with beards and moustaches, which the soldiers of his father’s regiment had cut off for the express purpose, and presented to him.

But one of the strangest and most eccentric of modern kings was Ludwig II., known as the “Mad King” of Bavaria, who from his earliest youth appears to have been a dreamer and a visionary. The romantic legends which charmed him as a boy retained their influence over him in after years, and he grew up with the most morbid propensities, never taught to control himself, or to keep his nerves in check. He disliked physical exertion, and an aversion to anything disagreeable became in him a monomania, for he could not endure even the sight of a cripple or of an ill-formed person.[7]

As a boy, we are told, the Castle of Hohenschwangau in the Bavarian Alps fascinated his imagination, for “knights in armour spoke to him; Rhine maidens drew him into their arms; he saw his ancestors, the old Wittelsbach heroes, seated upon their war-horses, their swords drawn, fighting their way into Rome, or resting under the palms by the banks of the Nile.” At two and twenty he betrothed himself to his cousin, Sophie Charlotte—daughter of Maximilian of Bavaria and sister of the Empress of Austria—who afterwards became Duchesse d’Alençon, and perished in the fire at the Bazar de la Charité. But for some reason the match was broken off, and henceforth he became “more melancholy and more enamoured of solitude,” dwelling “in pathetic loneliness, with little society save his brooding dreams—his days, or rather his nights, for he had already begun to invert the division of the twenty-four hours, peopled with the heroes and legends of myth.”

Once only, it is said, did he really rouse himself, when he threw in his lot with Prussia in 1870. But after all it was only a fictitious enthusiasm, for he would not accompany his army, backing out on the plea that he had strained a sinew. He grew tired of life and disgusted with everything, and there seems to have been in his unbalanced mind some jealousy of the Crown Prince Frederick, who had performed the deeds which had ever been the subject of his dreams. And his extraordinary eccentricities got gradually worse, and he acquired the habit of drinking a mixture of champagne and Rhenish wine in which violets floated, consorting only with his servants. Finally, when it was announced to him that his deposition had been decided, he exclaimed, “Let the traitors be thrown into the deepest dungeon, loaded with chains, and leave them to die of starvation.” But not very long afterwards he was removed to the Château of Berg, where he was mysteriously drowned in the Starnberg Lake.

At an early age Alfonso VI. of Portugal had the misfortune to have his limbs and his reason partially paralysed by fever—a circumstance which must account for his wicked and vicious life in after years. On any other ground it is impossible to excuse his conduct, which was infamous and contemptible. But some of his freaks were so outrageous as to be attributable only to insanity, and it is surprising that they should have been tolerated for any length of time. What would be said of a monarch at the present day who, with a set of ruffianly companions, roamed the streets at night, “assaulted passengers, fired into the coaches of the nobles, and routed religious processions at the point of the sword.” We nowadays can scarcely realise a responsible ruler attending midnight orgies of the most disreputable and repulsive kind, and afterwards returning to his palace with flaunting females of the most dissolute and repulsive character. On one occasion, however, in one of his mad freaks he encountered two passengers, and drawing his sword attacked them; but they drew in return, and, after giving his Majesty far more than he bargained for, they left him to be picked up by his followers, who carried him home to bed. A humiliation of this kind was lost on a monarch who was too depraved to have any feeling of self-respect; for, when he was summoned to the bedside of his dying mother, he tarried so long on the way to amuse himself, that when he arrived she had lost the power of sight and speech.

Despite his natural gifts, which were great, there can be no doubt that the texture of Don Sebastian’s mind was inwoven with the threads of that hereditary insanity which broke out so tragically in his cousin, Don Carlos. One of his eccentric freaks was to have the body of John II. lifted from its quiet resting-place in the Abbey of Batalha, where it had lain three-quarters of a century; and which, being found entire and uncorrupted, was placed erect on its feet, clad in kingly robes, and was armed with the rusty sword it had once wielded. Whereupon the Duke of Aveiro was commanded as a token of homage to kiss the withered hand of the corpse, and Sebastian, exclaiming, “Behold the best officer of our kingly office!” turned away to pursue his sepulchral visitations elsewhere.

Not long before his death, Charles II. of Spain had one of those strange funereal yearnings, so distinctive of the last days of nearly every member of the Austrian House of Spain. Thus, Juana la Loca would not surrender the embalmed body of her husband, and Philip II., shortly before he died, called for a skull and placed a crown upon it. Philip IV. went and lay in the niche destined for him in the Pantheon. And similarly, a weird sepulchral fancy animated the decaying brain of Charles II. To indulge his morbid and diseased feelings, he would descend into the royal mausoleum, open the coffins, and look face to face on the chiefs of his race who had worn his crown before him. He went down by the light of torches into the dark vault of the Pantheon, the huge candelabrum was lit, and all the coffins, beginning with that of Charles V., were opened for him in order. Charles V. was much decayed; the features of Philip II. were distorted; Philip III. was nearly perfectly preserved in form, but crumbled into dust as soon as his body was touched. After the kings he passed to the queens, and when that of his first queen was opened, and he saw the form and still charming features of her who had glorified his dark life and brain for a while, his throat was convulsed, tears streamed from his eyes, and he fell with outstretched arms on the bier, crying, “My queen, my queen, before a year is past I will come and join you.”[8] This visit of the last descendant of the House of Austria to view the corpses of his race is one of the strangest scenes in history.

Charles V. had his funeral rites celebrated before him, but, as Dr. Doran writes, the spectacle of the ex-Emperor celebrating his own funeral service has been divested of much of its apparent absurdity by the simple statements of eye-witnesses and modern writers who have reproduced their statements. It was a ceremony, however, on which even Charles did not venture till he had received ecclesiastical permission. He did not attend it in his shroud, nor lie down in his own coffin. There were the ordinary ornaments which the Romish Church uses at the usual services for the dead, and nothing more. The only exception to the ordinary service was when Charles, extinguishing the light which he held, surrendered it into the hands of a priest, in token of yielding up his life to the will of God.

And similarly, we are reminded how Maria Theresa, who survived her husband fifteen years, lived amid the emblems of perpetual mourning. She shut herself up on the 18th of every month, and the whole of every August, the day and month of his death. As her life drew near its end, she spent many days at times in the funeral chapel before the picture of her husband, taken as he lay in his coffin, and her last words, well understood by those around her, were, “I come to thee.”

Queen Victoria was not altogether free from the morbid tendency of mind “which comes of excessive study of incidents of sorrow and suffering,” and her habit of accumulating sepulchral memorials of relations and friends was one manifestation of it.

Her Majesty, too, was a strong believer in the reality and near presence of the spirit world. A writer in the Quiver (March, 1898) states that Mrs. Oliphant’s “Little Pilgrim in the Unseen” was of great interest to her, as, since the death of the Prince Consort, she had manifested a special liking for writings dealing with the mystic and unseen. And to quote from this article:—

“She believes that it is given to our departed loved ones to watch over those who still struggle with the temptations and sorrows of the earthly life. It has been the real consolation of her bereaved years that she felt that the Prince was watching over the events of her life. During her retirement at Osborne, immediately after the Prince Consort’s death, the Queen found ‘her only comfort in the belief that her husband’s spirit was close beside her, for he had promised that it should be so.’ This was told to Dean Stanley by the Queen’s half-sister, the Princess Hohenlohe.”

The belief of this kind, it may be added, in the spiritual world, was one of the links which bound together her Majesty and the late Poet-Laureate in affectionate sympathy. In one of his published letters to the Queen the poet wrote: “If the dead, as I have often felt, though silent, be more living than the living, and linger about the planet in which their earth-life was passed, then they, while we are lamenting that they are not at our side, may still be with us; and the husband, the daughter, and the son, lost by your Majesty, may rejoice when the people shout the name of your Majesty.”

That sentiments such as these found an echo in the heart of her Majesty may be gathered from what she wrote to Lord Tennyson on one of the anniversaries of her wedding-day, which she described as a day that she could never allow to be considered sad: “The reflected light of the sun which has set still remains. It is full of pathos, but also full of joyful gratitude, and he who has left me nearly fifty years ago surely blesses me still.”

And in connection with spiritualism associated with royalty, we may incidentally mention the many stories told of the White Lady of the House of Hapsburg and other weird visitants. Napoleon, as is well known, was haunted by the spirit known as “the little red man,” invariably seen a short time before, it is said, some great disaster befell the Emperor; and among the curious stories of the kind current in this country we are told how George II., when walking on the balcony at Windsor Castle with some of his courtiers, suddenly drew their attention to a singular spectacle in the clouds, where an armed Highlander was clearly seen fighting with a British Grenadier. Several times the Grenadier appeared as if getting the worst of the encounter, but at last it was vanquished, and the picture faded from the sky.

“Thank God,” exclaimed the King, “my kingdom is saved.” Not many days afterwards despatches were received from the Duke of Cumberland, announcing that the Highlanders had been completely routed at Culloden.

And like Henry III., Louis XV. endeavoured to associate profligacy with devotional practices; for he would read sermons to his mistresses, and go down on his knees and pray with his victims in the Parc aux Cerfs. He was fond of talking about maladies, death-bed scenes, and graves, and worms, and epitaphs; he professed to have the gift of reading death in a courtier’s face, and several of them he terrified with a notice of this kind.[9]

The short and tragic life of Don Carlos, son of Philip II., must in a measure be attributed to the vein of insanity in his nature. He behaved in so reckless and violent a manner, that some excuse has been made for the acts of severity which cut short his eccentric career. But his wild follies were such as to bring contempt and discredit on the throne, for he gave blows to one of his attendant gentlemen, called another by opprobrious names, drew his dagger upon another, caused children to be beaten, and, according to the historian Cabrera, he wanted to burn a house down because some water had fallen from one of the windows.

His violence, too, extended itself even to animals; he maimed the horses in his own stables, and he so ill-treated one which his father held in particular affection, that the unfortunate animal died in a few days. And yet his cruelties and eccentricities were not unaccompanied with kindness, for he paid the charges of the education of children thrown on the world without resources, although at the time he was himself much embarrassed with debt.

Many anecdotes are told of Edward I. of England and his strange doings, and of his merry pranks in the royal household. One day, when the Queen went to her palace at Waltham, the King, so runs the story, espied her laundress, Matilda of Waltham, among the lookers-on in the courtyard while the hounds were coupling and the hunters were mounting. Thereupon, in a mischievous mood, he made a wager that Matilda could not ride hunting with them, and be in at the death of the stag. To his surprise she accepted the challenge, mounted the horse, and rode with such success that Edward was fain to pay his fine of forty shillings. In the earlier part of his life Edward appears to have been subject to violent fits of rage; and at the nuptials of his daughter Margaret, having given one of his esquires a rap with his wand without just cause, he afterwards paid him as compensation £13, 6s. 8d. He is also said on more than one occasion to have thrown coronets behind the fire.

But among the merry scenes which took place between Edward and the Queen’s ladies, with whom he now and then indulged in romping, was his being “heaved” on Easter Monday, 1290. It is recorded how seven of Queen Eleanora’s ladies unceremoniously invaded the chamber of the King, and seizing their majestic master, proceeded to “heave” him in his chair, till he was glad to pay a fine of £14 to enjoy “his own peace,” and be set at liberty.

Levity of deportment has been laid to the charge of Edward II., and in one of his freaks he is accused of having made a party on the Thames in a returned fagot-barge, and of buying cabbages of the gardeners on the banks of the river to make his soup. On one occasion, when he was keeping his Court with his queen at Westminster during the Whitsuntide festival of 1317, as they were dining in public in the great banqueting-hall, a masked woman entered on horseback, and riding up to the royal table, delivered a letter to King Edward, who, thinking it contained some elegant compliment, ordered it to be opened and read aloud for the amusement of his courtiers; but, to his great disgust and mortification, it was a cutting satire on his unkingly propensities, setting forth the various calamities which his misgovernment had brought on the country.

But Edward’s frolics were nothing compared with the wild dissipation and mad pranks of Henry V. when Prince of Wales. His poverty, it has been urged, made him reckless, and forced him into company below his rank. Thus one of his freaks caused him to see the inside of a London prison. In one of the street uproars common at the period, the Lord Mayor arrested his favourite servant and carried him before Judge Gascoigne. As soon as the Prince of Wales heard of the detention of his servant, he rushed into the court of justice, where the man stood arraigned at the bar, and endeavoured there and then with his own hands to free him from his fetters, and on the judge interposing he struck him. Gascoigne fearlessly reproved the Prince, and committed him to the prison of the King’s Bench—a punishment to which he submitted with so good a grace that Henry IV. made the well-known remark: “He was proud of having a son who would thus submit himself to the laws, and that he had a judge who could so fearlessly enforce them.”

On another occasion his mad frolic made him an inmate of Coventry gaol, for some of his most outrageous acts were done at a manor of his close to Coventry, called Cheylesmore, a residence appertaining to his Duchy of Cornwall. But John Hornesby, the Mayor of Coventry, disregarding his royal position, took him and some of his friends into custody for raising a riot.

As long as the world lasts the strange marriage freaks of Henry VIII. will be matter of comment. And a peculiarity of Elizabeth, which gave rise to many amusing scenes, was her indecision—a trait of character which occasioned considerable inconvenience, her ministers not even knowing what freak her Majesty’s fickleness of will would next take. The story goes that a carter was once ordered to go with his cart to Windsor to remove a portion of the royal wardrobe. But on his arrival he ascertained that her Majesty had altered the day, causing him to make the second journey in vain; and when on a third summons he attended, and was informed, after waiting a considerable time, that “the remove did not hold,” he clapped his hands and exclaimed, “Now I see that the Queen is a woman as well as my wife!” Elizabeth, as she stood at an open window, overheard this remark and inquired, “What villain is this?” afterwards sending him three angels as a compensation for the inconvenience she had caused him.

A bit of mischief her successor, James I., much enjoyed was to listen to personal allusions in the pulpit. Among those who pandered to this freak was Neile, Bishop of Lincoln, and afterwards Archbishop of York. On one occasion one of the royal chaplains selected for his text St. Matt. iv. 8: “And the devil took Jesus to the top of a mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, saying, All these will I give thee,” &c. He first proceeded “to demonstrate the power of the devil at that period; he then brought his kingdom down to the present time, expressing his belief that as the devil was in possession of such large dominions, there could be no doubt but that he had his viceroys, councillors of state, treasurers, &c. This gave him an opportunity of attributing the several vices of which James’s advisers were accused to the ministers of his Satanic majesty, and portraying their characters accordingly. At last he came to the devil’s treasurer, when he fixed his eyes on the Earl of Cranfield, and pointing at him, he exclaimed: ‘That man who makes himself rich and his master poor is a fit treasurer for the devil.’ Cranfield kept his hat over his eyes, while James sat smiling at his minister’s discomfiture.”[10]

William III. behaved in a strange fashion at church. If ever he happened to be uncovered during the recital of the liturgy, he assumed his hat directly the sermon began. His partisans observed that such was the custom among the Dutch congregations, and pleaded that Jews did the same. But members of the Church of England considered the King’s behaviour irreverent, and were in no way pacified by the examples he followed.

In speaking of his Majesty’s religious freaks, we are reminded of Queen Anne, who was in the habit of dressing herself while her chaplain prayed. On one occasion, when decency compelled the attendants to close the door while the Queen put on some of her under garments, the chaplain suddenly stopped; and on her Majesty’s inquiry as to the reason of this pause, he replied, “Because I will not whistle the Word of God through a keyhole.”

Similarly, it was Queen Caroline’s custom while she dressed herself to have prayers read in an outer room, where there hung a picture of a naked Venus. Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, was one day the chaplain on duty, when the bed-chamber woman-in-waiting conveyed to him the Queen’s command to begin the service, at which he looked up archly at the picture and said, “And a very pretty altar-piece is here!”

CHAPTER III

ROYAL REVELRY

Perhaps no chapter in the social history of royalty has given us a more vivid insight into the merry doings of the sovereigns of the past, in our own and other countries, than that which deals with their drinking and revelry. Indeed, moralists, at one time or another, have been more or less severe in their strictures on what they regarded as the undue freedom displayed at Court festivities, when not infrequently king as well as courtiers were in a state of deplorable incapacity.

The orgies, for instance, in which Peter the Great revelled were, it is said, as reckless and abandoned as those of his contemporary the Regent d’Orleans; but probably no one save Peter would have employed them to ascertain the hidden thoughts of his courtiers. According to De Villebois,[11] he was in the habit of inviting men whom he secretly disliked, in order that he might carefully note down the words which escaped them when drunk, and sometimes even for the purpose of getting rid of them by inducing them to drink themselves to death. The immediate cause of his own death was the aggravation of a loathsome disease, under which he had long been labouring, by a debauch at one of his conclaves—those travesties of the election of a Pope which, “amidst the most outrageous drunkenness and the grossest buffoonery, he held yearly, partly in order to keep up the contempt of his subjects for the Latin Church, and partly also to ridicule the office of Patriarch, which he had abolished.”[12] And, similarly, Frederick William I. of Prussia, who himself was a hard drinker, loved to make his guests drunk; his daughter even states that he did so to her bridegroom, the hereditary Prince of Bayreuth, on his wedding-day. Carlyle has fully described the royal tap-rooms which were established in Berlin, at Potsdam, and during summer at Wusterhausen, as a source of recreation at the Court of Frederick William I. That at Berlin, furnished in the Dutch fashion, has been kept unaltered, with the large silver beer can from which the malt liquor was drawn by means of a tap into the jugs and tankards. The visitor is shown, too, the strangers’ book, in which the autographs of Frederick the Great and the Czar Peter are preserved.

But perhaps one of the most drunken and dissolute monarchs that ever disgraced a throne was one of Peter’s predecessors, Ivan IV., of whom it has been said that he was “ever exemplarily devout when he was most stupidly drunk.” His habitual intemperance, however, made him cruel, prompting him to commit all kinds of diabolical crimes—his indulgence in strong drink eventually rendering him hopelessly insane; for what other excuse could be made for his conduct as exemplified in his smiting his own son dead by blows from an iron bar in a fit of fury.

The merits of French wines were long ago appreciated by royalty, and in early times our own wine trade with France was very considerable when English kings were proprietors of the French wine districts. But it would seem that even royalty has cracked legions of bottles in discussing the divers deserts of Burgundy and champagne, although it is said imperial authority is in favour of the latter. When the Emperor Wenceslaus visited France in the fourteenth century to negotiate with Charles VI., it was impossible ever to get him sober to a conference. “It was no matter,” he said; “they might decide as they liked, and he would drink as he liked, and then both parties would be on an equality.”

In the midst of the distress with which France was harassed in the reign of Charles VII., and while the English were in possession of Paris, his Majesty amused himself with balls, entertainments, and revelry. The brave La Hire, coming to the King one day for the purpose of discussing with him some important business, found him actively occupied in arranging one of his pleasure parties, who asked what he thought of his preparations. “I think, sire,” he said, “that it is impossible for any one to lose his kingdom more pleasantly than your Majesty.”

And another French king who brought into more or less contempt the throne was Francis I., by giving himself up to his pleasures. It is said that he framed a Court of which licentiousness was the custom, and from which justice, temperance, and every Christian as well as chivalric virtue was banished.[13]

The King of Hungary was in the habit of sending yearly to the abdicated Polish king, Stanislaus Leczinski, at Nancy, a little cask of imperial Tokay, which was received at the gates of his palace under an escort of grenadiers. But, as it has been observed, “Little casks will soon run dry if the spigot be often turned,” and when the Tokay was out, Stanislaus would sigh for more. He was not able to purchase it, for the produce was small and imperial property. He resolved to imitate it, and after various trials he succeeded, by mixing Burgundy with ingredients only known to himself, in composing what he thought might pass for Tokay. He kept his secret, and when the annual imperial cask arrived—it contained but a hundred bottles—he made presents of his own Tokay to his courtiers, and kept the genuine wine for himself. The lords of the Court were “delighted at the favour conferred on them, but when they discovered that his ex-Majesty had distributed no less than six hundred bottles, they thought of the readiness of his concocting hand, and laughed at the trick he had played them. The Stanislaus Tokay was not consumed so quickly as the imported wine, but it rose in value with its years, a single bottle having fetched the exorbitant price of forty-two francs. It was indifferent wine, but an ex-king made it, and the price was paid not merely for the liquor, but for the name of the composer.” But this is only one of the many amusing anecdotes related of Stanislaus, who was famed for being the most courteous of hosts, entertaining not only nobles but artists, and philosophers, at his well-laden table. Indeed, after his abdication, Stanislaus kept a princely establishment, the splendour and cost of which was not infrequently the subject of comment. On one occasion, when he heard that the daughters of Louis—Adelaide and Victoria—had set out from Metz to Luneville to visit their grandfather, the ex-king ordered magnificent preparations for their reception, which prompted his steward to remark that so much splendour was not needed for his “petites filles”; but Stanislaus, with a smile, replied: “Mes petites filles sont plus grandes que moi.”

The dissolute and extravagant habits of the Court of Gustavus III. of Sweden were most severely condemned, and rightly so, for we are told that whilst revelry and pageantry in constantly varying shapes distinguished his effeminate and luxurious Court, misery and famine extended themselves rapidly amongst the labouring poor, from one extremity of Sweden to another. The groans of the wretched who perished of want, the curses of the degraded paupers who were reduced to seek for such food as the King’s well-fed hounds would have turned from with loathing, produced not the least retrenchment. Meanwhile Gustavus continued his guilty magnificence, heedless of, and indifferent to, the misery around him; and which, it is said, was greatly aggravated, if not actually caused, by his wasteful magnificence and profligacy. It is not surprising that the excessive taxation necessary to support the King’s expenditure and extravagances found vent in dangerous disturbances.

It would have been well had he taken a lesson from the great Christina, who, it is said, occasionally passed days without drinking, detesting wine and beer, and having no special taste for any other liquid, with the exception of rose-water, of which she was extremely fond. Oftentimes when young she would repair to the Dowager’s toilet-table, and there refresh herself with her favourite cosmetic, until she was one day caught in the act, when “the dowager lady administered to her such a whipping that Christina could never think of it, to her latest hour, without a feeling of uneasiness.”

The able ruler of Denmark for sixty years, the defender of the Reformed religion—Christian IV.—was not above enjoying a carouse, and on his visit to this country in 1606 he was invited with his brother-in-law, James I., to a festival at Theobalds, the seat of the Prime Minister Cecil, Lord Salisbury, when it appears that the revels were marked by scenes of intemperance, an amusing account of which has been left by Sir John Harrington. He tells us that “the sports began each day in such manner and sort as well-nigh persuaded me of Mahomet’s Paradise. We had women, and indeed wine too, of such plenty as would have astonished each beholder. Our feasts were magnificent, and the royal guests did most lovingly embrace each other at table. I think the Dane had strangely wrought on our good English nobles, for those whom I could never get to take good liquor now follow the fashion, and wallow in beastly delights. The ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxication. In good sooth, the Parliament did kindly to provide his Majesty so seasonably with money, for there have been no lack of good living, shows, sights, and banquetings from morn to eve.” From this and similar accounts, the Danish and English monarchs seem to have had a good time, and not to have spared the costly liquor put before them, abandoning themselves to unrestrained excess. But some excuse must be made for the royal delinquents on this occasion, when it is remembered that it was a special gala time in honour of the Danish sovereign.

Charles V., Emperor of Germany, drank in proportion as he ate, excess in each case having hastened the termination of his failing health. Iced beer was one of his favourite drinks, which was often administered as soon as he rose in the morning. When Roger Ascham saw his Majesty on one occasion in Germany, on St. Andrew’s Day, sitting at dinner at the feast of the Golden Fleece, he writes: “He drank the best that I ever saw. He had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, and never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish”—a no mean performance.

But suffering, caused by chalk-stones and gout, did not induce him to moderate his mode of living, and to be more sparing in his tankards of ale and flasks of wine. And, unfortunately, his medical men had not the moral courage to dissuade him from drinking what was daily aggravating his gout, but allowed him to satisfy every appetite by providing palliations. And so he went on in his excesses, till his frame, worn out by disease, sank from exhaustion. It would appear that this monarch’s drinking proclivities were at the time well known in this country, as may be gathered from a return which was made by order on the occasion of his visit to Henry VIII. The city authorities appear “to have been afraid of being drunk dry by the swarming Flemings in the Emperor’s train. To avoid such a calamity, a return was made of all the wine to be found at the eleven wine merchants and the twenty-eight principal taverns then in London; the sum total of which was 800 pipes.”

In alluding to Henry VIII., it may be noted that history has given many anecdotes of the drinking habits of his predecessors on the English throne. Thus Rapin observes that William I. balanced his faults by “a religious outside, a great chastity, and a commendable temperance, but that his son was neither religious, nor chaste, nor temperate; whilst Malmesbury adds that he met with his tragical end in the New Forest after he had soothed his cares with a more than usual quantity of wine.”[14]

The tragedy of Henry I.’s reign was the loss of the ill-fated White Ship with Prince William, only one out of its 300 passengers surviving to tell the tale—a poor butcher of Rouen, named Berthould, who climbed to the top of the mast, and was rescued by some fishermen. To quote an oft-told story, King Henry and his heir embarked at Barfleur for England in separate vessels, when the Prince, to make the passage pleasant, not only took with him a number of the young nobility, but ordered three casks of wine to be given to the crew, with the result that the sailors were for the most part intoxicated when they put to sea at nightfall, and allowed the vessel to strike upon a rock. It is recorded that Henry was never again seen to smile, although he survived this terrible event fifteen years, having hastened his end by a surfeit of lampreys.

Unlike their father Henry II., Geoffrey, Richard, and John were far from abstemious. According to Giraldus, so dissolute and hot was Geoffrey in his youth, that “he was equally ensnared by allurements, and driven on to action by stimulants;” whilst one of the metrical romances of the period has left a graphic picture of the royal Yuletide revelry at this period, which lasted for twelve days, during which time excess rather than sobriety was the rule. D’Aubigné, quoting from Matthew Paris, declares that John died of drunkenness and fright—a statement endorsed by Sir Walter Scott in his “Ivanhoe,” where he writes: “It is well known that his death was occasioned by a surfeit upon peaches and new ale.” An amusing anecdote tells how, when King John made his last visit to Nottingham, he called at the Mayor’s residence, and at the house of the priest of St. Mary’s. But, finding neither ale in the cellar of the one nor bread in the cupboard of the other, he ordered every publican in the town to contribute sixpenny-worth of ale to the Mayor yearly, and every baker to provide the priest with a halfpenny loaf weekly.

Edward I. found little pleasure in the pleasures of the table; but his successor, Edward II., is said to have given way to intemperance, and it has been suggested that “had not the banqueting-room been oftener employed than the council-chamber, opportunities might not have occurred for the rebellion of favourites, for which the festal board was answerable.” The mad dissipation of Henry V. when Prince of Wales has been immortalised by Shakespeare, but, to his credit, the responsibility of the crown made him an altered man, and among his troops at Agincourt drunkenness was counted a disgrace. Indeed, so impressed was Henry with the bane of intemperance that it is said he would gladly have cut down all the vines in France. The last years of Edward IV.’s life were spent in luxurious and intemperate habits, which had most fatal effects on his health; and some idea of the lavish expenditure at this period may be gathered from the Paston Letters, where an account is given of an

EDWARD I.

intended progress of his Majesty, wherein Sir John Paston is urged to warn William Gogney and his fellows “to purvey them of wine enough, for every man beareth me in hand that the town shall be drank dry, as York was when the King was there.”

And coming down to Henry VIII. again, it appears that he was often intoxicated, and found pleasure in keeping the lowest company. And, as it has been observed, “his right hand, Wolsey, was actually put in the stocks by Sir Amias Powlett, when he was rector of Lymington, for drunkenness at a neighbouring fair.”

The consort of Queen Mary soon found out the favourite English drink, and for the first time he drank some ale at a public dinner, remarking that he had come to England to live like an Englishman. Elizabeth seldom drank anything but common beer, “fearing the use of wine, lest it should cloud her faculties.” And Leicester writes to Burleigh that at a certain place in her Majesty’s travels “there was not one drop of good drink for her, ... he were fain to send forthwith to London, and to Kenilworth, and divers other places where ale was; her own ale was so strong as there was no man able to drink it.” But, abstemious and temperate as her Majesty was, exception has been taken to the costly extravagance displayed at the Kenilworth pageant, when, it is stated, no less than 365 hogsheads of beer were drunk, in addition to the daily complement of 16 hogsheads of wine.

James I. was fond of drink, and reference has already been made to the visit of his jovial brother-in-law, which led to one more scene of inebriety. His partiality was for “sweet rich wines,” and Coke tells us that he indulged “not in ordinary French and Spanish wines, but in strong Greek wines.” Even when hunting he was attended by a special officer, who constantly supplied him with his favourite beverages. On one such occasion Coke’s father managed to obtain a draught of the royal wine, which, writes his son, “not only produced intoxication, and spoiled his day’s sport, but disordered him for three days afterwards.”[15] It is said, however, that James would next day remember his excesses, “and repent with tears;” and as Mr. Jesse adds, “the maudlin monarch weeping over the recollections of the last night’s debauch must have been an edifying sight to his courtiers.”

Whatever the failings of Charles I. might be, he could not be accused of that indulgence in strong drinks which had caused so much scandal in previous reigns. Thus Lord Clarendon writes: “As he excelled in all other virtues, so in temperance he was so strict, that he abhorred all debauchery to that degree, that at a great festival solemnity where he once was, being told by one who withdrew from thence, what vast draughts of wine they drank, and that there was one earl who had drunk most of the rest down and was not himself moved or altered, the King said that he deserved to be hanged; and that earl coming shortly after into the room where his Majesty was, in some gaiety, to show how unhurt he was from that battle, the King sent one to bid him withdraw from his Majesty’s presence; nor did he in some days after appear before him.”

But the same could not be said of Charles II., concerning whose revels many curious anecdotes have been told. At a supper given by the Duke of Buckingham he tried to make his nephew, the Prince of Orange, drunk. The Prince was somewhat averse to wine, and at the period in question was paying his addresses to his future consort, the Princess Mary. However, having been induced to join in the evening’s debauch, he became the gayest and most frolicsome of the party. On their breaking up, the Prince even commenced smashing the windows of the maids-of-honour, and “would have forced himself into their rooms had he not been timely prevented.”[16]

An account of one of Charles’s debauches after a hunting party in 1667 is amusingly told by Pepys,[17] who heard it from Sir Hugh Cholmely, an eye-witness. “They came,” he says, “to Sir G. Carteret’s house at Cranbourne, and there were entertained, and all made drunk; and being all drunk, Armerer did come to the King and swear to him: ‘By G—, sir,’ says he, ‘you are not so kind to the Duke of York of late as you used to be.’ ‘Not I?’ says the King; ‘why not?’ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘if you are, let us drink his health.’ ‘Why, let us,’ says the King. Then he (Armerer) fell on his knees and drank it; and having done, the King began to drink it. ‘Nay, sir,’ says Armerer, ‘by G—, you must do it on your knees.’ So he did, and then all the company: and having done it, all fell a-crying for joy, being all maudlin and kissing one another; the King the Duke of York, and the Duke of York the King, and in such a maudlin pickle as never people were.”

On another occasion Charles was dining with Sir Robert Viner, during his mayoralty, when he rose to depart. The good Mayor, however, had indulged rather too freely in his own wines, and taking hold of the King, he swore that he should remain and have another bottle. Charles, it is said, “looked kindly at him over the shoulder, and repeating with a smile a line of the old song—

‘He that’s drunk is as great as a king’—

remained as long as he wished.”[18]

And it is worthy of record that when Ford erected waterworks on the Thames in front of Somerset House, the queen of Charles II.—after the manner of the Princess Borghese, who pulled down a church next to her palace because the incense made her feel sick and the organ produced headache—ordered the works to be demolished since they obstructed a clear view on the river. It may be mentioned, too, that at this period tea as a beverage was in favour at the Court of Charles II. owing to Queen Catherine, who had been used to drink it in Portugal.

James II., on the other hand, was most averse to hard drinking, and a contemporary writes how “the King, going to mass, told his attendants he had been informed that since his declaring against the disorder of the household, some had the impudence to appear drunk in the Queen’s presence; ... but he advised them at their peril to observe his order, which he would see obeyed.”

The drinking habits of William III. are well known, and the banqueting-house at Hampton Court, which was used by him as a smoking and drinking room, has been described as a royal gin-temple. Among his drinking companions were Lord Wharton and the Earl of Pembroke. In one of his moments of hilarity he said to the former: “I know, Tom, what you wish for: you wish for a republic. I shall bring over King James’s son.” To which Lord Wharton replied, “That is as your Majesty pleases.” William, having been warned that the Earl of Pembroke was quarrelsome over his cups, said, “I will defy any one to quarrel with me, as long as I can make the bottle go round.” But the King was mistaken, for that night Pembroke used language personally offensive to him, and was carried drunk from the apartment to bed. The next morning, alarmed at his conduct, he hastened to the palace to ask forgiveness.

“Make no apologies,” replied the King. “I was told you had no fault in the world but one, and I am glad to find it is true, for I dislike people who have no faults.”[19]

The scandal of the time, too, accused the Queen of fondness for drink, but it is certain that her physicians warned her against a strong spiritual cordial which, when ill, she was in the habit of taking in large quantities.

One of the failings laid to the charge of Queen Anne was a love of strong drink; but, as it has been remarked, “the supposition that she was in the habit of having secret recourse to the bottle, as affording the means of adventitious excitement, seems to rest on the widespread scandal of the period and a few contemporary lampoons.” In some verses, “On Queen Anne’s Statue in St. Paul’s Churchyard,” this allusion is made:—

“Here mighty Anna’s statue placed we find,
Betwixt the darling passions of her mind;
A brandy-shop before, a church behind.
But why the back turned to that sacred place,
As thy unhappy father’s was—to Grace?
Why here, like Tantalus, in torments placed,
To view those waters which thou canst not taste;
Though, by thy proffered Globe, we may perceive,
That for a dram thou the whole world wouldst give.”[20]

And again:—

“When brandy Nan became our queen,
’Twas all a drunken story;
From noon to night I drank and smoked,
And so was thought a Tory.
Brimful of wine, all sober folk
We damned, and moderation;
And for right Nantes we pawned to France
Our goods and reputation.”[21]

But the Duchess of Marlborough, despite her hostility to the Queen’s memory, defends her character from this aspersion: “I know,” says she, “that in some libels she has been reproached as one who indulged herself in drinking strong liquors, but I believe this was utterly groundless, and that she never went beyond such a quantity of strong wines as her physicians judged to be necessary for her.”

Coming to the Hanoverian period, if George II. reflected little dignity on the throne, he is said to have been over his punch a cheerful and sometimes an amusing companion. Despite his inordinate love of women, he was always temperate, whereby, says Lord Waldegrave, he was preserved from many of the infirmities of old age. George III., too, was most abstemious, and a story is told that, on his visit to Worcester in 1788, the Mayor, knowing that his Majesty never took drink before dinner, asked him if he would be pleased to take a jelly; whereupon the King replied, “I do not recollect drinking a glass of wine before dinner in my life, yet upon this pleasing occasion I will venture.” A glass of rich old Mountain was served, when his Majesty immediately drank “Prosperity to the Corporation and Citizens of Worcester.” That the King continued to adhere to his rigid habit may be illustrated by an incident which happened twelve years afterwards. One morning, when visiting his stables, he heard this conversation between the grooms: “I don’t care what you say, Robert, but every one agrees that the man at the Three Tuns makes the best purl in Windsor.”

“Purl, purl!” said the King promptly. “Robert, what’s purl?” Which on his Majesty being informed was warm beer with a glass of gin, caused him to add, “I daresay, very good drink, but too strong for the morning; never drink in the morning.”

But George IV. was the opposite of his predecessor, for intemperance, as it has been said, was a feature of his moral career, a proclivity which Huish informs us very nearly cost him dear while yet a youth.[22] At a dinner-party at Lord Chesterfield’s house at Blackheath, the guests drank to excess and engaged in riotous frolic. One of the company “let loose a big fierce dog, which at once flew at a footman, tore one of his arms terribly, and nearly strangled a horse. The whole party now formed themselves into a compact body and assailed Towzer, who had just caught hold of the skirts of the coat of his Royal Highness, when one of the guests felled the dog to the ground. In the confusion the Earl of Chesterfield tumbled down the steps leading to his house, and severely injured the back of his head. The Prince, who scarcely knew whether he had been fighting a dog or a man, jumped into his phaeton and there fell asleep, leaving the reins to his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, who drove him safely to town.”

One of the strangest acts of his life was his conduct upon the arrival of his bride-elect, Caroline of Brunswick, which Lord Malmesbury thus tells: “I introduced the Princess Caroline to him. She very properly attempted to kneel to him. He raised her (gracefully enough) and embraced her, said barely one word, turned round, retired to a distant part of the apartment, and calling me to him, said, ‘Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.’ I said, ‘Sir, had you not better have a glass of water?’ Upon which he, much out of humour, said with an oath: ‘No; I will go directly to the Queen.’” No wonder the Princess remarked to Malmesbury, “Mon Dieu, est-ce que le Prince est toujours comme cela?” According to Lord Holland, on his wedding-day the Prince had drunk so much brandy that he could scarcely be kept upright between two dukes.

Another bacchanalian story is associated with the Pavilion at Brighton. It seems that the Duke of Norfolk—now a very old man, and celebrated for his table exploits—had been invited by the Prince to dine at the Pavilion, who had concocted with his royal brothers a scheme for making the old man drunk. Every person at table was enjoined to drink wine with the Duke—a challenge which the old toper did not refuse. But “he soon began to see that there was a conspiracy against him; he drank glass for glass; he overthrew many of the brave. At last the first gentleman of the empire proposed bumpers in brandy. One of the royal brothers filled a glass for the Duke. He stood up and tossed off the drink. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I will have my carriage and go home.’ The Prince urged him to remain, but he said ‘No,’ for he had had enough of such hospitality.” The carriage was called, and he staggered in as best as he could, and bade the postillions drive to Arundel. They drove him for half-an-hour round and round the Pavilion lawn; the poor old man fancied he was going home: the liquor had proved too potent for him. And when he awoke that morning he was in bed at the Pavilion.[23]

The King’s successor, William IV., was a strong advocate for temperance, although he enjoyed his wine and entered heartily into the merriment of the social board. It is related how, on the death of the keeper of Bushey Park, William, then Duke of Clarence, appointed the keeper’s son to succeed him. This young man broke his leg, a circumstance which elicited the practical sympathy of the Duke. But on his recovery the young man took to drinking, to check which propensity the Duke required his attendance every night at eight, when, if he appeared the worse for drink, he reprimanded him the following morning. The Prince’s efforts were fruitless, for the keeper died of intemperance soon afterwards.

CHAPTER IV

ROYAL EPICURES

Royalty in times past has had many an accomplished epicure, as learned in culinary lore as in the practice of the cuisine. Charlemagne took a warm personal interest in the management of his table, and Hardicanute, one of our Danish kings, was so great a gourmand that he was designated “Swine’s Mouth”—his table, it is said, having been covered four times a day with the most costly viands that the air, sea, or land could produce. It was Henry de Valois who brought into fashion aromatic sauces and various spicy dainties, inheriting his taste for cooking from Catherine de Medicis, who introduced into France not only ices, but much of the culinary art from Italy; while the Prince de Soubise, immortalised by the sauce named after him, was a connoisseur of no mean order. He could boast of an excellent cook, but a man with princely notions of expenditure. One day the Prince announced his intention to him of giving a supper, and demanded an estimate. The first article on which the Prince cast his eyes was this: “Fifty hams;” whereupon he inquired, “Are you going to feast my whole regiment?”

“My lord,” replied the cook, “you do not understand our resources; give the word, and these fifty hams which confound you, I will put them all into a glass bottle no bigger than my thumb.” Accordingly the Prince nodded, and the article passed.

Charlemagne once ate cheese mixed with parsley seeds at a bishop’s palace, and liked it so much that ever after he had two cases of such cheese sent yearly to Aix-la-Chapelle—a device which Gay has noted:—

“Marbled with sage, the hardened cheese she press’d.”

Charles the Great ate venison with special pleasure, and Henry IV. of France ate melons and oysters whenever possible—a taste which reminds us of that of Frederick, son of Ernest “the Iron,” who on recovering from amputation of the leg one day resolved on dining on melons, his favourite dish. He was told that such a diet would be fatal to him, as it had already been to one Austrian archduke of his house; but he took no heed of the advice. “I will have melons,” said he, “betide what may!” Of melons, accordingly, he ate to his heart’s content, and death followed shortly afterwards.

Louis XIII. was fond of early fruit, and he had strawberries in March, and figs in June. Fagon, physician to Louis XIV., was a famous expert in the culinary art, and in the declining days of his illustrious master devised for him the cotelette à la Maintenon. It appears that the mutton cutlets of Madame de Maintenon were enveloped in curl papers, but Fagon arranged a more artistic and nourishing dish, in which unboned cutlets were spread with nourishing sauce, minced vegetables, and seasoning. The appetite of Louis XIV. in the prime of life had been prodigious, and the Duchess of Orleans tells us in her Memoirs that she had often seen him eat four plates full of soup, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a plate of salad, mutton hashed with garlic, two slices of ham, a dish of pastry, in addition to fruit and sweetmeats. Hence it is not surprising that in this monarch’s reign cooking made the most rapid advances, being at one time employed to give a zest to his glories, and at another to console him in their decline.

It is fortunate for royalty that the history of gastronomy can boast of few such rash acts as that committed by the ex-Emperor Wenceslaus, who, when residing at Prague, where he reigned as King of Bohemia, after his ejection from the imperial throne, once punished a cook who had sent up to him an ill-dressed capon by roasting him on a spit before his own fire. The story, as Dr. Doran says,[24] “might be held to be groundless, were it not that of petty German potentates there are similar stories told which are well authenticated.” But a tragic occurrence of a different character happened in the reign of Louis XIV., who was devoted to gastronomy, and for whose use liqueurs were invented in his old age when, it is said, he could scarcely endure existence without a succession of artificial stimulants. The closing scene of Vatel has often been told, who, to quote the words of the Almanach des Gourmands, “immolated himself with his own hands because the sea-fish had not arrived some hours before it was to be served. So noble a death ensures you, venerable shade, the most glorious immortality. You have proved that the fanaticism of honour can exist in the kitchen as well as in the camp, and that the spit and the saucepan have also their Catos and Deciuses.” Madame de Sévigny, narrating this pathetic instance of self-devotion, thus writes:—

“I wrote you yesterday that Vatel had killed himself. I here give you the affair in detail. The King arrived on the evening of the Thursday; the collation was served in a room hung with jonquils; all was as could be wished. At supper there were some tables where the roast was wanting, on account of several parties which had not been expected. This affected Vatel. He said several times, ‘I am dishonoured; this is a disgrace that I cannot endure.’ He said to Gourville, ‘My head is dizzy; I have not slept for twelve nights; assist me in giving orders.’ Gourville assisted him as much as he could. The roast which had been wanting, not at the table of the King, but at the inferior tables, was constantly present to his mind. Gourville mentioned it to the Prince; the Prince even went to the chamber of Vatel and said to him, ‘Vatel, all is going well; nothing could equal the supper of the King.’ He replied, ‘Monseigneur, your goodness overpowers me; I know that the roast was wanting at two tables.’ ‘Nothing of the sort,’ said the Prince; ‘do not distress yourself, all is going on well.’ Night came; the fireworks failed; they had cost sixteen thousand francs. He rose at four the next morning, determined to attend to everything in person. He found everybody asleep. He meets one of the inferior purveyors, who brought only two packages of sea-fish; he asks, ‘Is that all?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ The man was not aware that Vatel had sent to all the seaports. Vatel waits some time; the other purveyors did not arrive; his brain began to burn; he believed that there would be no more fish. He finds Gourville; he says to him, ‘Monsieur, I shall never survive this disgrace.’ Gourville made light of it. Vatel goes upstairs to his room, places his sword against the door, and stabs himself to the heart; but it was not until the third blow, after giving himself two not mortal, that he fell dead. The fish, however, arrives from all quarters; they seek Vatel to distribute it; they go to his room, they knock, they force open the door; he is found bathed in his blood. They hasten to tell the Prince, who is in despair. The Duke wept; it was on Vatel that his journey from Burgundy hinged. The Prince related what had passed to the King with marks of the deepest sorrow.”[25]

Amidst his other luxuries, Louis XV. was not unmindful of the pleasures of the table, and it is generally understood that tables volantes were invented under his eye. “At the petits soupers of Choisy,” says the poet Rogers, “were first introduced those admirable pieces of mechanism—a table and a sideboard which descended and rose again covered with viands and wines. And thus the most luxurious Court in Europe, after all its boastful refinements, was glad to return at last, by its singular contrivance, to the quiet and privacy of humble life.” Louis XVI., on the other hand, is said to have been somewhat neglectful of his table, a circumstance which, it has been remarked, “was utterly inexcusable, since for a time the great Ude was a member of his establishment.”

But Louis XVIII. was an epicure of the first water, and was nicknamed “Des-huitres” (a pun on dix-huit), because like all the Bourbons he was a great feeder, and especially fond of oysters. One day, when his physician reproached his cook with “ruining the royal health by savoury juices, the dignitary of the kitchen remarked that it was the office of the cook to supply his Majesty with pleasant dishes, and that it was the duty of the doctor to enable the King to digest them.”[26] He had the Duc d’Escars for his grand maître d’hôtel, a disappointed man, however, as he died inconsolable at not having given his name to a single dish after having devoted his whole life to the culinary art. He did not lose the confidence of his royal master, with whom, when he was closeted to discuss some new dish, the ministers were kept waiting in the antechamber, and the next day the following announcement regularly appeared in the official journals: “M. le Duc d’Escars a travaillé dans le Cabinet.” The fate of M. d’Escars was the harder because he died a victim to gastronomy. It appears that Louis XVIII. had invented the truffes à la purée d’ortolans, and, reluctant to disclose the secret to an unreliable menial, he invariably prepared the dish with his own hands, assisted by the Duc. On one occasion they had conjointly prepared a dish of more than ordinary dimensions, and duly consumed the whole of it. In the middle of the night the Duc was seized with a fit of indigestion, and his case was declared hopeless. Loyal to the last, he ordered an attendant to awake and inform the King, who might be exposed to a similar attack. His Majesty was roused and told that the Duc was dying of his invention. “Dying!” exclaimed Louis; “dying of my truffes à la purée? I was right then. I always said that I had the better stomach of the two!”

The petits soupers of the Regent Duke of Orleans were famous, and conferred a celebrity on the scene of them sufficient to justify the reply of the Frenchman who, on being asked by a stranger in a remote part of Europe if he could tell him the direction of Paris, made answer: “Monsieur, ce chemin-là vous conduira au Palais Royal.” There is a vague tradition that the chef of the Regent was pre-eminent in a dinde aux truffes.

The Revolution in France bade fair to seriously check the progress of the culinary art, and “the destruction of the pre-existing races of Amphitryons and diners-out was actually and most efficiently accomplished by it.” But eventually the upstart chiefs of the Republic and the plundering marshals and parvenu nobles of Napoleon proved, as far as gastronomy was concerned, no bad substitutes for the old feudal nobility. When Napoleon was in good humour at the result of a diplomatic conference, he was in the habit of taking leave of the plenipotentiaries with, “Go and dine with Cambacérès,” who was second consul under the Republic and arch-chancellor under the Empire—a man who never allowed the cares of government to distract his attention from what he conceived to be the great object of life. His table was, in fact, an important state-engine, as appears from the anecdote of the Genevese trout sent to him by the municipality of Geneva, and charged 300 francs in their accounts. The imperial Cour des Comptes, having disallowed the item, was interdicted from meddling with municipal affairs in future. Among the many stories told of Cambacérès, it is said that on one occasion, being detained in consultation with Napoleon beyond the appointed hour of dinner, when the fate of the Duc d’Enghien was the topic under discussion, he was observed to grow restless and impatient. At last he wrote a note, the contents of which Napoleon suspecting, nodded to an aide-de-camp to intercept the despatch, which he found to be a note to the cook, conveying this message: “Gardez les entremets—les rôtis sont perdus.”

Napoleon himself was a very fast eater, and at a grand couvert at the Tuileries, from the moment he and his guests sat down till coffee was served, not more than forty-three minutes elapsed. They were then bowed out. It was a rule, too, with Napoleon that the moment appetite was felt, it should be satisfied; and his establishment was so arranged that at all hours chicken, cutlets, and coffee might be forthcoming at a word. But this habit of eating fast and carelessly is commonly supposed to have paralysed him “on two of the most critical occasions of his life—the battles of Borodino and Leipsic, which he might have converted into decisive victories by pushing his advantages as he was wont. On each of these occasions he is known to have been suffering from indigestion.” On the third day of Dresden, too, the German novelist, Hoffman, who was present in the town, asserts that the Emperor would have done much more than he did, but for the effects of a shoulder of mutton stuffed with onions.

The general order to his household was to have cutlets and roast chicken ready at all hours, night and day, a rule which was carefully observed by his maître d’hôtel, Dunand, who had been a celebrated cook. One day when Napoleon returned from the Conseil d’Etat in one of his worst tempers, a déjeuner à la fourchette, comprising his favourite dishes, was served up, and Napoleon, who had fasted since daybreak, took his seat. But he had scarcely partaken of a mouthful when “apparently some inopportune thought or recollection stung his brain to madness,” and, receding from the table without rising from his chair, he uplifted his foot—dash! went the table, crash! went the déjeuner, and the Emperor springing up paced the room with rapid strides. Dunand looked on, and quick as thought the wreck was cleared away, an exact duplicate of the déjeuner appeared as if by magic, and its presence was quietly announced by the customary, “Sa Majesté est servie.” Napoleon felt the delicacy, and “Merci bien, mon cher Dunand,” with one of his inimitable smiles, showed that the hurricane had blown over.

Prince Henry of Condé, in addition to his many other faults, was accused of being too fond of his ease, and when he was reproached with his immoderate taste for the pleasures of the table, he was wont to say, in a dull way, “They affirm that I am always at eating-houses since I left Paris; I have been there only twice.”

Another epicure of a high order was Frederick the Great, who was extremely fond of highly seasoned meats and French or Italian made dishes. Every morning, and sometimes the evening before, the bill of fare was presented to him, which he often altered himself; and during dinner he would make pencil marks against the different items of the bill of fare, which he discussed afterwards with the maître d’hôtel. In a kitchen account of the year 1784, it was stated that the extra consumption amounted to 25 dollars, 10 groschen, 1⅕ pfennig; but Frederick wrote under it: “Robbery, for there were about one hundred oysters on the table, price 4 dollars; cakes, 2 dollars; liver, 1 dollar; fish, 2 dollars; Russian cakes, 2 dollars—total, 11 dollars. As there has been an extra dish to-day, herrings and peas, which may cost 1 dollar, everything beyond 12 dollars is barefaced robbery.”[27]

The King kept at all times a sharp look out, and one day he remarked to his Minister of State, Von Herder, after reprimanding a servant who had put a bottle of wine in his pocket: “Have I not every reason to knock these ragamuffins on the head? Don’t you see that if I let them have their own rascally way I should soon not have a penny left to assist my distressed subjects.” His table was generally served with eight dishes—four French, two Italian, and two prepared according to his peculiar fancy, and from his own receipts. And it was one of his favourite maxims that “he who is not content with eight dishes will not be satisfied with eighty.” One of the last bills of fare—August 5, 1786—twelve days before his death, was as follows:—

August 5.—Dinner: His Majesty’s Table

On the other hand, Frederick William I. was served in the plainest manner, partly with the coarsest food, such as bacon and peas, or ham and green kale—his favourite dish. His two special fish were lobsters and oysters. There is still the draught of a bill of fare in existence which Frederick William gave as an example to the Crown Prince, when the latter was at Cüstrin:—

• Soup of veal with force meat balls of river pike, sorrel and chevril.
• Beef with white kale.
• Mutton-carbonade with green peas.
• River carp from the Spree, with cherry fool.
• Craw-fish with butter.
• Fricassee of young chicken.
• Pickled ox cheek and cow heel.
• Roast mutton with cucumber sauce.

But the pertinacity with which Charles V. of Spain gratified his appetite, under all circumstances, rivalled even that of Frederick the Great. It is said that before rising in the morning, potted capon was usually served to him, prepared with sugar, milk, and spices, after partaking of which he would turn to sleep again. At noon he dined on a variety of dishes, soon after vespers he partook of another meal, and later in the evening he supped heartily on anchovies, or some other savoury food; and after his abdication the same propensity accompanied him to his monastic retreat at Yuste. Fish of every kind was his taste—eels, frogs, and oysters occupying an important place in the royal bill of fare. Potted fish, especially anchovies, found special favour with him, and on an eel pasty he particularly doted. Soles, lampreys, and flounders were sent in large quantities from Seville and Portugal. The nobles in the neighbourhood, who knew his weakness for the pleasures of the table, constantly sent him presents of game and vegetables, and the churchmen were equally attentive. The Prior of our Lady of Guadalupe, the Archbishop of Saragossa, the Bishop of Plasencia, and the Archbishop of Toledo were liberal in their contributions. To wash down this extraordinary quantity of food, Charles drank in proportion. And Sastrow, who saw Charles V. at the Diet of Augsburg in the year 1546, states in his “Pomeranian Chronicle”: “His dinner was served by young princes and counts, four courses always of six dishes each. The dishes being placed before him, the covers were removed, and he shook his head at those of which he did not wish to partake; but if he fancied one he nodded, and drew it towards him. Goodly pasties, venison, and savoury-made dishes were sometimes taken away, while he kept back a sucking pig, calf’s head, or such like. He had no one to carve for him, nor did he use the knife much himself; but he first cut his bread in small pieces, then stuck his knife into the joint where he fancied a piece, scooped it out, or otherwise tore it with his fingers.”[28]

He was just turned thirty when his confessor, Cardinal Loaysa, wrote to him to urge him to leave off eating fish, which always disagreed with him, and he added, “I am told that your chest can often be heard farther off than your tongue.” Subsequent letters from the same honest counsellor contain many similar warnings, one of which closes with these words: “If your Majesty will give the reins to your appetite, I tell you that your conscience and bodily health must go down-hill.”

But these gastronomic excesses brought on intense suffering, nor did experience teach him moderation. With few teeth and impaired digestion, he “continued to eat from as many dishes, and to empty as many flasks, as in the days when his powers were great, his health flourishing, and his exercise regular. His medical men were his abettors, for they allowed him to satisfy every appetite, without attempting to restrain him.”[29] And it was by a strange irony of fate that when Death began to close his jaws upon the Emperor, there were those in his vicinity “who were suffering from a worse vertigo than that which springs from old age and an abused stomach—the vertigo of famine. In their sufferings the hungry peasantry forgot their respect for him. They stripped his kitchen-garden, plundered his orchards, impounded his cattle, drew the fish from his ponds, and waylaid and rifled his mules which traversed the hunger-district laden with dainties.”

Peter the Great was another very decided epicure, and one of his favourite dinners was the following: A soup with four cabbages in it, gruel, pig, with sour cream for sauce, cold roast meat, with pickled cucumbers or salad, lemons and lamprey, salt meat, ham, and Limburg cheese. And, it may be added, there is preserved in Ballard’s Collection in the Bodleian Library the bill of fare of a breakfast and dinner, which the Czar and his party—twenty-one in number—partook of at Godalming on his return from a visit to Portsmouth, consisting at breakfast of half a sheep, a quarter of lamb, ten pullets, twelve chickens, seven dozen of eggs, and salad in proportion, three quarts of brandy and six quarts of mulled wine; at dinner, five ribs of beef, weight three stone; one sheep, fifty-six pounds; three quarters of lamb, a shoulder and loin of veal boiled, eight pullets, eight rabbits; two dozen and a half of sack, and one dozen of claret. But, as it has been remarked, some of our own countrymen have almost rivalled the Czar and his companions. At Godalming—probably at the same inn that Peter the Great patronised—two nobles, dukes, are reported to have stopped, as they intended, for a few minutes, while sitting in their carriages, to eat a mutton chop, which they found so good that they devoured eighteen chops, and drank five bottles of claret.

Catherine II. of Russia did not care for elaborate cookery: her favourite dish was boiled beef with salted cucumber; her drink, water with gooseberry syrup. Among her cooks there was one who cooked abominably; but, when this was pointed out to her, “she refused to dismiss the man, as he had been in her service too long.” She merely inquired when his turn came, and on sitting down to table would say, “Ladies and gentlemen, we must exercise our patience, we have a week’s fast before us.”[30]

An enthusiastic epicure was the Polish King, Stanislaus Leczinski, who invented many a new dish, and succeeded in vastly improving the style of cooking, astonishing the Lorrainers, amongst other things, by having served up at his table dishes of meat with fruits, both of which had been cooked together. Geese which had been plucked when alive, then whipped to death, and marinées were set down in his bill of fare as foreign birds; and after a similar fashion turkeys were metamorphosed into coqs de bruyères, and were served at table buried under the strong-smelling herbs of Lorraine. One year was remarkable for the entire failure of the fruit crop, but Stanislaus would not be deprived of his dessert; for, turning his attention to confectionery, he made delicate compositions of sugared vegetables, especially turnips, and even now the Lorrainers dip their babas—cakes in which there are raisins de caisse and saffron—into their wine, and think of the royal inventor.

The story goes that on one occasion there appeared on the table of Stanislaus a large pie, and the guests were admiring its dimensions, beauty, and odour, when all of a sudden the almond cakes which covered it flew in all directions, and from beneath them leaped up Bébé, the ex-king’s favourite dwarf, armed like a knight. The whole table was in a roar of laughter, with the exception of one noble guest, whose nose the dwarf had pricked with his lance, and who vowed vengeance for the two or three drops of blood which fell. But, it is said, Stanislaus loved his dwarf so well that he provided for his security by placing him under the care of two soldiers of his bodyguard.

Then again, Ferdinand I. of Naples was an epicure in fruit, and was wont to pride himself on the excellent varieties which were produced in his royal gardens, one of which was designated “Paradise.” Many years ago, too, Prince Metternich first tasted rhubarb in this country, and was so delighted with it that he had some plants sent to his Austrian garden. On the occasion of a large party in the following year, the Prince ordered rhubarb to be served up dressed as it was in this country. But the cook knew nothing of the English mode of cooking it, and selecting the large leaves served them up as spinach. As might be expected, the guests made wry faces at this unsavoury dish, and henceforth rhubarb was discarded from the Prince’s table. And, it may remembered, Ludovico, the Duke of Milan, carried this kind of epicurean luxury so far that he actually had a travelling fruit garden, the trees being brought to his table that he might gratify his taste by gathering the fruit with his own hands. Charles XII. of Sweden was often satisfied with simple bread and butter, and Joseph II. of Austria with omelets and hard bread.

Don Sebastian of Portugal, being no epicure himself, determined to train his people by issuing a sumptuary edict that none of his subjects might have more than two dishes, and those of the simplest character, for their meals; but he forgot that no decree could alter the daily life of his people.

Bianca of Milan, whom Maximilian the “Moneyless” married for her dowry, died of indigestion brought on by eating too freely of snails—“the large and lively sort,” reared for the market in the fierce heat below. Royal fatalities of this kind have been numerous. Thus in 1740 Charles, the brother and successor of Joseph I., not only went out hunting in the wet when he had the gout, but persisted in eating voraciously of mushrooms stewed in oil. Like Louis Philippe, he would not believe his medical advisers as they stood at his bedside “disputing as to whether mushrooms were a digestible diet or the contrary;” but, dismissing them from his presence, he ordered his favourite delicacy, the penalty for eating which was his death.

Among our early kings who in some measure patronised the culinary art may be mentioned Richard Cœur de Lion, who loved venison, “the stealers of which he punished by the most horrible of mutilations;” while his brother John, who was equally fond of venison, is reported to have given great offence to certain clerical gentlemen by a joke at dinner upon a fat haunch, which, he said, “had come from a noble hart that had never heard mass,” which was regarded as a reflection on their corpulency.

Edward III. paid every attention to good cheer; and as many as two thousand cooks are said to have been employed in the royal kitchen of Richard II., his chief cuisinier having been known by the initials C. S. S., under which he wrote a culinary work, “On the Forme of Cury,” in which Richard II. is spoken of as his royal master, “the best and royallest viander of all Christian kynges.”

A porpoise was a fashionable dish in the time of Henry V., who first had it at the royal table, and England, it is said, had never seen a king who gave dinners on so extravagantly profuse a scale as Edward IV.[31]

Henry VIII. was an epicure, and a liberal rewarder “of that sort of merit which ministered to the gratification” of his palate, on one occasion having been so well pleased with the flavour of a new pudding that he gave a manor to the inventor. It may be added that Cardinal Campeggio—one of the legates charged to treat with Henry VIII. concerning his divorce from Catherine—drew up a report on the state of the English cookery, as compared with that of Italy and France, for the special use of the Pope.

Anne Boleyn appears to have been very much of an epicure, and when staying, in the year 1527, at Windsor, Henry sent her by Heneage, who was the gentleman-in-waiting, a dish from his own table for supper; and yet even that did not content her, for all the time, it is said, she was hankering after Wolsey’s dainties, and expressing her wish “for some of his good meat, as carpes, shrimpes, and other delicacies.” And when in the year 1535 Viscountess Lisle, who was ambitious of obtaining appointments for two of her daughters in the royal household, sent her some dotterels, which were at that time esteemed a dainty dish, and calculated to tickle the palate of an epicure queen, she received from a friend the following note: “The Queen did appoint six of your dotterels for her supper, six for Monday dinner, and six for supper. My Lord of Rochford presented them himself, and showed her how they were killed new at twelve of the clock in Dover, of the which she was glad, and spake many good words towards your ladyship’s good report, as I was informed by them that stood by.”[32]

As for the royal table of Elizabeth, nothing could surpass the solemn order in which it was laid out, or the number of triple genuflections which accompanied every movement of the noble waiters; but all this was only for show, as the meat was finally taken off the table into an inner room, where the Queen herself dined in the utmost privacy and simplicity.[33] Her Sunday’s dinner on the 19th of November 1576 consisted of beef, mutton, veal, swan, goose, capons, conies, friants, custards, and fritters for the first course. For the second, lamb, kid, herons, pheasant, fowls, godwits, peacocks, larks, tarts, and fritters.

Her average dinner was varied with plovers, veal pies, custards, boiled partridges, boiled beef, snipes, pheasants, chicken pies, and tarts, and cost on an average £4 a dinner.

Her fish dinners were of great variety. The first course included long pike, salmon, haddock, whiting, gurnet, tench, and brill; the second, sturgeon, conger, carp, eels, lamperns, chine of salmon, perch, lobster, tarts, and creams; the side dishes were sturgeon, porpoise, fish collops and eggs, dories, soles and lampern pies, cod, boiled conger, bream, and red fish; the second course occasionally included warden pie, smelts, boiled veal, boiled mutton, pullets, partridges, and panado.

In the succeeding reign feasting was carried to a riotous extent, and it has been computed that the household expenditure of James I. was twice as much as that of Queen Elizabeth, amounting to £100,000 a year. A pig was an animal of which James had an abhorrence, and in his “Counterblast to Tobacco” he says, that were he to invite the devil to dinner he would place three dishes before him—first, a pig; secondly, a poll of ling and mustard; and thirdly, a pipe of tobacco to assist digestion. The state of cookery under Charles II. is indicated by the names of Chiffinch and Chaubert, to whose skill Sir Walter Scott has borne testimony in his “Peveril of the Peak.” But it is questionable whether epicures of the present day would appreciate the Duke of York’s taste, who, when instructed by the Spanish ambassador to prepare a sauce, recommended one consisting of parsley, dried toast pounded in a mortar, with vinegar, salt, and pepper. Charles II., however, if not a decided epicure, was fond of gastronomy, and in a ballad of the “New Sir John Barleycorn,” the knighting of the loin of beef has been ascribed to him:—

“Our Second Charles of fame facéte,
On loin of beef did dine;
He held his sword, pleased, o’er the meat,
Arise, thou fam’d Sir Loin.”

But Fuller, in his “Ecclesiastical History,” relates of Henry VIII. at the Abbey of Reading, how “a sirloin of beef was set before him, so knighted, saith tradition, by this King Henry;” and, according to another account, James I., on his return from a hunting excursion, so much enjoyed his dinner, consisting of a loin of roast beef, that he laid his sword across it and dubbed it Sir Loin. And at Chingford, in Essex, is a house called “Friday Hill House,” in one of the rooms of which is an oak table with a brass plate thus inscribed: “All lovers of roast beef will like to know that on this table a loin was knighted by King James I. on his return from hunting in Epping Forest.”

When Cosmo III., the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was in England, Charles II., on the evening before his departure, supped with him at the house of his Highness, when a singular adventure occurred, which the Grand Duke thus relates:—

“The entertainment was most superb, both as to the quantity and quality of the dishes. The supper was served up in eighty magnificent dishes, many of which were decorated with other smaller ones, filled with various delicious meats. To the service of fruit succeeded a most excellent course of confectionery, both those of Portugal and other countries famous for the choiceness of their sweetmeats. But scarcely was it set upon the table when the whole was carried off and plundered by the people who came to see the spectacle of the entertainment; nor was the presence of the King sufficient to restrain them from the pillage of these very delicate viands, much less his Majesty’s soldiers, armed with carbines, who guarded the entrance of the saloon, to prevent all ingress into the inside, lest the confinement and too great heat should prove annoying; so that his Majesty, to avoid the crowd, was obliged to rise from the table and retire to his Highness’s apartment.”

An amusing little anecdote is told by Lady Marlborough of William III., who thus writes: “I give an instance of his worse than vulgar behaviour at his own table when the Princess dined with him. It was the beginning of his reign, and some weeks before the birth of the Duke of Gloucester. There happened to be just before her a plate of green peas, the first that had been seen that year. The King, without offering the Princess the least share of them, drew the plate before him, and devoured them all. The Princess Anne confessed when she came home, that she had so much mind for the peas that she was afraid to look at them, and yet could hardly keep her eyes off them.”

Prince George of Denmark, consort of Queen Anne, was renowned for his appetite, and for the bent of it towards pastry, which reminds us of the readiness with which Charles XII. was wont to swallow raspberry tarts, and Frederick II. Savoy cakes.

Under Queen Anne, who had Lister, one of the editors of the Apicius, for her pet physician, and who “achieved the highest honour of gastronomy by giving her name to a pudding,” cookery did not suffer from any lack of encouragement; but soon after the accession of the House of Brunswick a fashion was introduced which somewhat threatened to retard the progress of cookery. “The last branch of our fashion,” says Horace Walpole, “into which the close observation of nature has been introduced, is our desserts.” Jellies, biscuits, sugar-plums, and creams have long since given way to harlequins, gondoliers, Turks, Chinese, and shepherdesses of Saxon China. But these, unconnected, and only seeming to wander among groves of curled paper and silk flowers, were soon discovered to be too insipid and unmeaning. By degrees, meadows of cattle, of the same brittle materials, spread themselves over the table; cottages rose in sugar, and temples in barley-sugar; pigmy Neptunes in cars of cockle-shells triumphed over oceans of looking-glass, or seas of silver-tissue.... The Intendant of Gascony, on the birth of the Duke of Burgundy, amidst many other magnificent festivities, treated the noblesse of the province with a dinner and a dessert, the latter of which concluded with a representation, by wax figures moved by clock-work, of the whole labour of the Dauphiness, and the happy birth of an heir to the monarchy.”[34]

George I. was fond of good living, and was indiscreet, it is said, in what he ate. His too free indulgence in sturgeon and other strong food, and his custom of partaking of hearty suppers at late hours of the night, counteracted the exertions made by nature in his behalf. On the 3rd of June 1727 the King left Greenwich for Holland, and on reaching Delden, and taking supper with the Count de Twittel, he indulged too freely in melons, an act of imprudence to which was ascribed the disorder that caused his death.

A characteristic anecdote is told of George II., to the effect that the House of Commons having gratified him on some point in which the interests of Hanover were concerned, he sent for his German cook, and said to him: “Get me a very good supper, get me all the varieties;” and he added, “I don’t mind expense.”[35] The mention of his German cook reminds us of the poor opinion he had of our own cooks, insisting that “no English cooks knew how to roast.”

George III. lived like an ascetic, for fear of corpulence and gout; and light diet was one of the grand fundamentals in his idea of health. In “A Sketch of their Majesties’ Domestic Life at Kew during the Summer Season” of 1775, in the Annual Register, it is said: “His Majesty feeds chiefly on vegetables, and drinks but little wine. The Queen is what many private gentlewomen would call whimsically abstemious; for, at a table covered with dainties, she prefers the plainest and simplest dish, and seldom eats of more than two things at a meal.”

The excellent health which George III. long enjoyed, as well as his exemption from the obesity which was constitutional in his family was once, in the course of a conversation with Lord Mansfield, attributed by him to the following circumstance. He happened to pay a visit to his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, when the conversation turned on the Duke’s increased corpulency. “It was a constitutional malady,” remarked his Royal Highness, from which on reaching middle age he could scarcely be absolved. But temperance and abstinence, he said, were the best remedies, and if neglected, he added, “depend upon it that nothing can prevent your Majesty arising to my size.” Such was the impression made upon the King’s mind that, as he assured Lord Mansfield, from that moment he resolved to check his tendency to obesity by inuring himself to habits of the strictest temperance.[36] And many years afterwards, congratulating himself on his excellent health, he remarked: “The fault of his constitution was a tendency to excessive fat, which, however, he kept in order by the most vigorous exercise and by the strictest attention to a simple diet.” Mrs. Delaney, one of the company, commending him for his remarkable forbearance, he exclaimed, “No, no; I only prefer eating plain and little to growing diseased and infirm.”[37] It would seem the pet potage of George III. was a rich vermicelli soup, with a very few green chevril leaves in it—a preparation which with his more epicurean successor was also equally a favourite.

Carème, a lineal descendant of the celebrated chef of Leo X., who received the name of Jean de Carème—Jack of Lent—for a soup-maigre which he invented for the Pope, was induced, by persevering solicitations and the promise of a salary of £1000 a year, to become chef to George IV., then Regent, but he left him at the end of a few months. The Emperors of Russia and Austria then made new advances to him, but in vain, for Carème accepted an engagement with Baron Rothschild of Paris. But, however great an epicure George IV. might be, he was of opinion that a roast neck of mutton is a dinner fit for a prince. When Prince of Wales he happened on one occasion to partake of bubble-and-squeak at a bachelor’s table in Shropshire, this homely dish so pleasing him that it was afterwards very often seen at Carlton House. A roast fowl was the favourite dish of William IV., a black bottle of sherry being uniformly placed on the table near his Majesty.

It is evident that the gastronomic tastes of royalty, at one time or another, have been diverse and numerous. The late Duke of Cambridge, being on a visit to Belvoir Castle for the celebration of its owner’s birthday, was shown the bill of fare for the day, skilfully arranged by an admirable chef, and on being asked whether there was anything else that he fancied, replied, “Yes, a roast pig and an apple dumpling.” Messengers were at once despatched in all directions, and at length a pig was happily found, notwithstanding the season.

A wild boar’s head from the Black Forest would elevate the plainest dinner into dignity, and the late King of Hanover was clearly of this opinion, for he used to send one to each of his most esteemed friends in England every Christmas; and it was a test of political consistency to remain long upon his list, for “all who abandoned his Majesty’s somewhat rigid creed of orthodoxy in Church and State were periodically weeded out.”

Queen Victoria was most simple in her diet, luncheon being her favourite meal, at which we are told a sirloin of beef and a boiled chicken generally appeared on the bill of fare. Of Scotch cookery she was very fond, and was even known to partake of the national dish of “haggis.”

CHAPTER V

CURIOUS FADS OF ROYALTY

It is recorded how a certain Spaniard, who once attempted to assassinate a king, Ferdinand of Spain, on being put on the rack could give no other reason for his strange conduct but an inveterate antipathy which he had taken to the King as soon as he saw him:—

“The cause which to that impelled him
Was, he ne’er loved him since he first beheld him.”

Although, happily, such an exceptional case as this is almost unique, yet in a minor degree it illustrates a phase of character which is of almost universal application. Thus, for instance, going back to an early period, the Emperor Heraclius at the age of fifty-nine was seized with an unconquerable terror at the sight of the sea. On his return from his Syrian expedition he sojourned in the palace of Herea, on the shore of the Hellespont, and the story goes that the princes of Constantinople were compelled to span the strait with a bridge of boats, and protect it on both sides with planks and branches of trees, so that one could pass over it without seeing the water. Likewise, the Emperor Augustus was terribly afraid of lightning, and as a safeguard not only carried about his person a seal’s skin, but on the approach of a storm took shelter in an underground chamber.

But coming to later times, Henry III. of France could not remain in the same room with a cat, a fact which reminds us of the Duke d’Epernay, who swooned on seeing a leveret, although, curious to say, the sight of a hare did not produce a similar result. And it was the sight of an apple that always put Vladislaus, King of Poland, into fits. Queen Elizabeth detested as ominous all dwarfs and monsters, and seldom could be prevailed upon to bestow an appointment—either civil or ecclesiastical—on an ugly man. She liked to be surrounded by the young and handsome, and she studiously shunned all crippled or deformed persons. She carried this fad to such an extreme that she refused the post of a gentleman usher to an unexceptional person, for no other reason than the lack of one tooth; and “whenever she went abroad, all ugly, deformed, and diseased persons were thrust out of her way by certain officers, whose duty it was to preserve her Majesty from the displeasure of looking on objects offensive to her taste.” Aubrey relates the following story as an illustration of Elizabeth’s peculiarity on this point: “There came a country gentleman up to town who had several sons, but one an extraordinary handsome fellow, whom he did hope to have preferred to be a yeoman of the Guard. ‘Had you spoken for yourself,’ quoth Sir Walter Raleigh, ‘I should have readily granted your desire, but I put in no boys.’ Then said the father, ‘Boy, come in,’ and the son enters—about eighteen or nineteen years of age—but such a goodly proper youth as Sir Walter had not seen the like, for he was the tallest of all the Guard. Sir Walter not only swore him in, but ordered him to carry up the first dish at dinner, when the Queen beheld him with admiration, as if a beautiful quaint young giant had stalked in with the service.” And Lord Bacon, speaking of this whim of Elizabeth, writes: “She always made sedulous inquiries regarding the moral qualifications of any candidate for preferment, and then considered his mien and appearance. Upon one such occasion she observed to me, ‘How can the magistrate maintain his authority, if the man be despised.’”

Elizabeth’s strong aversion to unpleasant smells was well known at Court. One day the stout Sir Roger Williams, kneeling to her to beg a suit, which she was unwilling to grant, and yet ashamed to deny, she exclaimed, “Sir Roger, your boots stink”—hoping to divert the conversation. “No, no, your Majesty,” replied the brave Welshman, “it’s not my boots, it’s my suit.” We are reminded of Louis XI., who had a conceit, says Burton, “that everything did stink about him; all the odoriferous perfumes they could get would not ease him, but still he smelt a filthy stink.”

According to common report, James I. shuddered at the sight of a drawn sword, and Sir Kenelm Digby, in his “Powder of Sympathy,” says that when James knighted him he very narrowly escaped having the sword thrust into his eyes, his Majesty turning away his face to avoid the sight of the naked weapon—a peculiarity which he attributes to the fright occasioned to his unhappy mother by the assassination of Rizzio in her presence. In a caricature of the time King James was exhibited with an empty scabbard, and in another as having his sword so firmly fixed in the scabbard that it was impossible to draw it out.

William III. had an intense hatred of mourning. When the King of Denmark died, September 4, 1698, Prince George expressed a wish that on this account his Majesty would allow the Princess and himself to congratulate him on his birthday, November 4, without doffing their sable weeds, under the impression that the favour would be granted, as “the late kings, Charles II. and James II., never wished any persons in recent mourning for their relatives to change it for coloured clothes on such occasions.” King William’s ideas, however, respecting mourning were more consonant with those of Henry VIII.; and his Majesty, although Christian V. of Denmark was a near relative of his own, “signified his pleasure that their Royal Highnesses were to visit him in gay Court dresses, or to keep away.”[38]

To such an extent did George II. carry his love of exactness, even in the minutest affairs of life, that it is said he never even allowed his pleasures to interfere with it. For some years after he had ascended the throne, writes Mr. Jesse,[39] his custom was to visit his mistress, Lady Suffolk, every evening at nine o’clock. Sometimes he was dressed and in readiness before the prescribed time, and “on these occasions he used to pace his apartment for ten minutes together with his watch in his hand, waiting till the moment of departure had arrived.”

George II., too, in moments of fretfulness and impatience would vent his feelings by kicking his hat about the room. “When incensed either with his Ministers or his attendants,” writes Wraxall, “he was sometimes not master of his actions, nor attentive to preserve his dignity. On these occasions his hat, and it is asserted his wig, became frequently the objects on which he expended his anger.”

But the fads and eccentricities of royalty have been illustrated in a variety of ways. A notable instance having been Ferdinand II., Grand Duke of Tuscany, who died in 1670, and who was known as the “Fool of his Health,” from the anxiety with which he attended to his health. “I have frequently seen him,” writes the Abbé Arnauld, “pacing up and down his chamber between two large thermometers, upon which he would keep his eyes constantly fixed, unceasingly employed in taking off and putting on a variety of skull-caps of different degrees of warmth, of which he had always five or six in his hand, according to the degree of heat or cold registered by the instruments.” This, he adds, “was a mighty pleasant sight to behold, for there was not a conjurer in all his dominions more dexterous in handling his cups and balls than was this prince in shifting his caps.”

Strange, again, was the behaviour of Charles II. of Spain, who was sometimes sunk in listless melancholy, and was occasionally a prey to the wildest and most extravagant fancies. At one time he was weak-minded enough to be induced to believe that his malady was the same as that of the wretched individuals in the New Testament who dwelt among the tombs. At another time a sorceress who lived in the mountains of the Asturias was consulted about his malady. Several persons were accused of having bewitched him, and at last the rite of exorcism was recommended, which was actually performed. Nor was this all, for his Majesty had terrible visions of demons, and kept monks and priests by his side to exorcise them. He believed himself to be the cruel victim of sorcery, and to have been charmed with a portion of the brains of a corpse administered in a cup of chocolate, to counteract the malignant influences of which it was proposed to diet him on hens fed with vipers’ flesh. Even the people, too, believed that he was enchanted, and called him the “bewitched king”—a name which is traditionally preserved to the present day.[40] Instances of a kindred nature are noted elsewhere in the chapter which deals with the superstitions of royalty, where it will be seen how at one time or another the credulity of crowned heads has been responsible for many foolish acts, and in some cases it has been productive of immense harm.

The early period of female domination through the regency of the Queen-mother, Marie Anne of Austria, had made such an impression on Charles II. when young that he felt a horror at the sight of a petticoat, and turned aside when he met a lady. His former governess, the Marquesa de los Velez, had to wait six months to get a word from him. With such antipathy to women, it seemed improbable that he would regard with any favour the mention of marriage, but during the negotiations for an alliance with Marie Louise, this aversion suddenly changed, and, when the miniature of the Princess was sent to him, “he wore the picture on his heart, addressed fine speeches to it,” and as soon as he was informed that she was en route for Spain, he set out to meet her.

When Isabella, mother of Philip II., was, writes D’Israeli,[41] “ready to be delivered of him, she commanded that all the lights should be extinguished: that, if the violence of her pain should occasion her face to change colour, no one might perceive it. And when the midwife said, ‘Madam, cry out, that will give you ease,’ she answered, ‘How dare you give me such advice? I would rather die than cry out.’”

In truth, the fads of sovereigns, with their royal etiquette, were frequently carried to such lengths as to make martyrs of them. According to another absurd story from the same source, Philip III., when seated by the fireside, was once nearly suffocated with heat from the large quantity of wood that the fire-maker had kindled; but “his grandeur would not suffer him to rise from the chair, and the domestics could not presume to enter the apartment, because it was against the etiquette. At length the Marquis de Potat appeared, and the King ordered him to damp the fire; but he excused himself, alleging that he was forbidden by the etiquette to perform such a function, for which the Duke d’Ussada ought to be called upon, as it was his business. The Duke was gone out, the fire burnt fiercer, and the King actually endured it rather than derogate from his dignity.” But, it is said, his blood was heated to such a degree that an erysipelas of the head appeared the next day, which, succeeded by a violent fever, carried him off in the twenty-fourth year of his reign. And what can be more ludicrous than the following: The palace was once on fire; a soldier who knew the King’s sister was in her apartment, and must inevitably have been consumed in a few minutes by the flames, rushed in at the risk of his life, and brought her out. But Spanish etiquette was wofully broken, and the loyal soldier was brought to trial and condemned to death. The Spanish princess, however, in consideration of the circumstance, condescended to pardon the soldier, and saved his life.[42] Churchill might indeed well exclaim—

“Spain gives us pride—which Spain to all the earth
May largely give, nor fear herself a dearth.”

Leopold the “Angel,” second son of the Emperor Ferdinand, would rear the most odoriferous plants, but inflicted on himself the mortification of never going near enough to smell them, imagining that by this act of self-denial he was thereby adding a step to a ladder of good works, “by which he hoped to scale heaven!”

Peter the Great had a strong aversion to being looked at in public, a peculiarity which when visiting this country kept him almost entirely aloof from the gaieties of the Court. On the birthday of the Princess Anne, when a grand ball was given by William III. at Kensington, curiosity so far prevailed over his diffidence as to induce him to express a wish to be present. But he contented himself with occupying a small apartment where, without being seen himself, he could be a spectator of the festive scene. On another occasion, writes Lord Dartmouth, Peter had a mind to see the King in Parliament, “in order to which he was placed in a gutter upon the house-top, to peep in at the window, where he made so ridiculous a figure that neither King nor people could forbear laughing, which obliged him to retire sooner than he intended.” It was probably from what was styled “the lantern” in the roof of the old House of Commons that the Czar witnessed the proceedings below. And many other anecdotes illustrative of this peculiar fad are to be found in the biographies of his Majesty.

Immediately on ascending the throne of Prussia, Frederick William’s mania for crimping and recruiting giants broke out with such force as to be the talk of Europe, “and the terror of every mother of a stalwart youth, not only in his own dominions, but in the neighbouring principalities.” So violently had his agents gone to work, that before the year 1713 was ended he issued a proclamation “not to stop the passengers on the post, as had been done several times.” Indeed, a regular man-hunt was instituted throughout all the villages, even during divine service. Once a rural pastor died of the shock occasioned by seeing his taller sacramental communicants carried off en masse by a recruiting party, “who thought that the Sunday congregation would spare them all further trouble in hunting through the cottages.” In 1720 this was repeated, but so violent was the indignation that an insurrection ensued.[43] From 1713 to 1735 it is said that Frederick William sent 12,000,000 of dollars for recruiting purposes into foreign countries, in connection with which may be quoted the following humorous but tragic occurrence: “In the duchy of Juliers, a Baron Hompesch, who was crimp-in-chief, once bespoke by way of strategy of a very tall master-joiner, who did not know him, a cupboard as long and as broad as the artisan himself. After some days the Baron called to take away the cupboard, but complained that it was of insufficient length. In a fit of alacrity the long-legged joiner laid himself full length within the cupboard as a proof that Hompesch was mistaken; but suddenly the door was fastened by the people whom Hompesch had in waiting, and the unfortunate joiner was carried off as a recruit. On opening the cupboard afterwards he was found dead. Hompesch, however, was condemned to death, but the King commuted his sentence to imprisonment for life.”[44]

Numerous anecdotes have been told illustrative of Frederick William’s other fads and eccentricities. Sometimes he would signify his rejection of what he considered an absurd petition by drawing on the margin an ass’s head and ears. One day a baron of ancient patent having complained of another baron taking precedence of him, the King wrote on the petition: “Mere folly; whether a man sits above me or below me, my birth remains the same.” Oftentimes he would ask people in the streets who they were, a peculiarity which made nervous people evade the royal presence. One day when a Jew saw the King approaching he took to his heels and ran; but Frederick William pursued him in hot haste, and when he overtook him, asked, “Why did you run away from me?” “From fear,” answered the Jew, whereupon his Majesty gave him a heavy thwack with his cane, and said that he “wished himself to be loved, and not to be feared.”

And even while distracted with the gout, his eccentricity showed itself; for, as a hymn was being sung to him, at the passage, “Naked shall I go hence,” he interrupted the singers and said, “No—I shall be buried in my uniform.”

Gregory of Tours, speaking of the “Do-nothing kings” of France, says that they sat at home “and gormandized like brute beasts,” showing themselves, as Dr. Doran writes, “once a year perhaps to the people, in state robes.” Such conduct was not to be commended, and so little was Childeric III. ever seen that he was known as the “Phantom King,” his chief amusement having consisted in curling his hair and dressing his beard. Equally apathetic and indifferent to his duties was Ferdinand I. of Austria. And, as an instance of his weak mind, one day he remarked in the imperial palace at Vienna, “I once very readily paid a visit to one of the theatres in the suburbs; but I don’t know—I can’t make out whether they wanted me or not.” It seems he thought he was there to put his signature to some document, “and he was puzzled as to whether he had been asked to do so or not.”

Frederick III. often fell asleep whilst the most important affairs of the State were being discussed, which acquired for him the nickname of “Emperor Night Cap.” When the Turks were destroying the villages and harvests of his people, he amused himself in his garden picking caterpillars out of his roses, and catching slugs with buttered cabbage leaves.[45]

His indolence so exasperated his wife Eleanor, that she said to her son Maximilian in a fit of anger, “On my word, if I thought you would be like your father, I should be ashamed of being the mother of such a king.” Frederick was too lazy, it is said, to turn the handle of a door, but kicked till some one came to open it, or he burst it in. He paid the penalty of his stupidity, for by so doing he one day hurt his foot, and as mortification threatened the surgeons cut it off. “Ah me!” said Frederick, “a healthy boot is better than a sick Emperor.” His exact opposite was Frederick the Great, who was wont to exclaim, “Nothing is nearer akin to death than idleness. It is not necessary that I should live, but it is necessary that whilst I live I be busy.”

Of the many despicable traits of character of Louis XV., not one, perhaps, was more odious than his mania for speculating in corn. He became the chief partner of a company which forestalled corn. From the exceptional advantages this company enjoyed, “it created local and artificial famine in the different provinces for purposes of private gain. The King thus traded on the hunger of his people,” and, as it is added, “the most abject courtier of Versailles could not avoid feeling a twinge of shame when he noted on his bureau day by day the lists of the prices of grain in the different provinces as a guide for speculation.” From such shameful dealings arose the legend of the Pacte de famine, which lingered in the memories of the people, and the spectre of which arose in terrible form during the most horrible scenes of the Revolution.

And Louis XI. in a capricious mood once promoted a poor priest whom he found sleeping in the porch of a church, that the proverb might be verified, that to lucky men good fortune will come even when they are asleep.

Lastly, it has been said that the restlessness of Don Sebastian was the despair of his attendants. From one end to the other of his little kingdom there was a perpetual shifting of the royal quarters, “as the royal vagrant hurried in search of novelty and excitement, from Coimbra to Cape St. Vincent, from Almeirim to Alcobaça, to Salvaterra.” Impenetrable to fatigue or hardship, the day afforded too scanty a scope for his activity, and the dead of night often found him exhausting his feverish impatience of repose in long hours of solitary pacing on the sandy shores of the Tagus, or under the dense gloom of the forest arcades of Cintra. And in Sebastian we are reminded of Charles XII. of Sweden, who, determined to brave the seasons as he had done his enemies, ventured to make long marches during the cold of the memorable winter of 1709, in one of which 2000 of his men died from the cold, in allusion to which Campbell, in “The Pleasures of Hope,” writes:—

“Or learn the fate that bleeding thousands bore,
Marched by their Charles to Dnieper’s swampy shore;
Faint in his wounds, and shivering in the blast,
The Swedish soldier sank, and groaned his last.”

CHAPTER VI

DANCING MONARCHS

It is recorded that Nero, during a dangerous illness, made a vow that if he recovered he would dance the story of Turnus in Virgil; and the great Scipio Africanus amused himself with dancing, “not,” writes Seneca, “those effeminate dances which announce voluptuousness and corruption of manners, but those manly, animated dances in use among their ancestors, which even their enemies might witness without abating their respect.” Indeed, dancing has always been a favourite amusement amongst all classes of society, having from an early period been countenanced by the example of the Court. Thus it is said that Edward II. paid one Jack of St. Albans, his painter, for dancing on the table before him, and making him laugh excessively.

After the coronation dinner of Richard II., the remainder of the day was spent in rejoicings, and we are told how the King, the prelates, the nobles, the knights, and the rest of the company danced in Westminster Hall to the music of the minstrels. Several of our English monarchs were noted for their skill in dancing, and none, perhaps, more than Henry VIII., who was particularly partial to this mode of diversion. At this period, when masques and pageants were much in vogue, the King himself was occasionally “a frequent performer as well as spectator,” and numerous anecdotes have been handed down of his dancing feats. Thus, at the festivities held at Westminster in honour of the birth of a prince on New Year’s Day 1511, the King and a selected company danced before Catherine’s throne, executing their stately pavons and “corantos high” with the utmost success; at the conclusion of which the young King bade the lady spectators come forward and pluck the golden letters and devices from his dress, and that of his company. An unlooked-for incident followed, for a vast crowd of the London populace, who were the constant witnesses of the Court ceremonials in the middle ages, rushed forth and plucked off with startling rapidity the glittering ornaments from himself, and his noble guests. Not only were the ladies despoiled of their jewels, but the King himself was stripped to his doublet and drawers. The King, laughing heartily, took the matter in good part, and treated the whole scramble as a frolic, remarking that “they must consider their losses as largess to the commonalty.”[46]

Catherine of Aragon excelled in Spanish dances, and at the festivities in honour of her marriage with Prince Arthur—her short-lived bridegroom—apparelled in Spanish garb, she gave an exhibition of her high proficiency in this mode of dancing. On this occasion, too, the dancing of Henry Duke of York and his sister, Lady Margaret, the young Queen of Scots, gave such satisfaction that it was renewed, when the young Duke, finding himself encumbered with his dress, “suddenly threw off his robe and danced in his jacket with the said Lady Margaret, in so good and pleasant a manner that it was to King Henry and Queen Elizabeth great and singular pleasure.”

Again, on New Year’s Day 1515, Henry VIII. performed a ballet with the Duke of Suffolk and two noblemen and four ladies, the young Duchess of Savoy being supposed to be in love with Suffolk. After dancing had been continued for some time, the company took off their vizors, and when they were known, “the Queen heartily thanked the King’s grace for her good pastime, and kissed him.” But on the very day this ballet was performed the King of France died, and his fair bride was left a widow, after having been married less than three months.

Another interesting instance of Court dances at this time is given by Hall, who tells how, on the King’s visit to France with Anne Boleyn—lately made Marchioness of Pembroke—a magnificent reception was given by him at Calais in honour of the French sovereign, at which, after supper, “came in the Marchioness of Pembroke, with seven ladies, in masking apparel of strange fashion, made of cloth of gold, slashed with crimson tinsel satin puffed with cloth of silver and knit with laces of gold. These ladies were led into the state chamber by four damsels dressed in crimson satin, with tabards of pine cypress. Then the lady marchioness took the French king, the Countess of Derby the King of Navarre, and every lady took a lord. In dancing, King Henry removed the ladies’ vizors, so that their beauties were shown.” It was then discovered by the French king that he had been dancing with an old acquaintance—no other than the lovely English maid-of-honour of his first queen; and having conversed with her some time apart, he sent her a present on the next morning of a jewel valued at 15,000 crowns.

Queen Elizabeth was a great patroness of the dance, which accounts for its having flourished in her reign. It is said that she bestowed the office of Lord Chancellor on Sir Christopher Hatton, not so much for his knowledge of the law, but because he wore green bows on his shoes, and danced the pavon to perfection, to whom mention is made in Gray’s humorous lines:—

“Full oft within the spacious walls,
When he had fifty winters over him,
My grave Lord Keeper led the brawls,
The seals and maces danced before him.

His bushy head, and shoe strings green,
His high-crown’d hat and satin doublet,
Moved the stout heart of England’s queen,
Tho’ Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it.”

Many notices occur, too, of Queen Mary’s participation in the revelry of her father’s court, and we find her figuring, in her young days, as a dancer in Court ballets. Some courtly adulator, who had been present at a ball at which many danced with her royal father, appears to have been much struck with her charms, making her appearance the subject of a poetic effusion, wherein he tells us:—

“Ravished I was, that well was me
O Lord! to me so fain [willing]
To see that sight that I did see,
I long full sore again.

I saw a king and a princess
Dancing before my face,
Most like a god and a goddess;
I pray Christ save their grace.”

Charles II. was specially fond of dancing. Writing from Cologne to Henry Bennett on the 18th of August 1655, he says: “Pray, get me pricked down as many new corrants and farrabands, and ‘other little dances’ as you can, and bring them with you, for I have got a small fiddler that does not play ill on the fiddle.”

The last day of the year 1662 concluded with a grand ball at the palace of Whitehall, and Pepys tells us that he got into the room where the dancing was to take place, which was crowded with fine ladies. “By-and-by comes the King and Queen and all the great ones. After seating themselves, all rose again; the King took out the Duchess of York, the Duke the Duchess of Buckingham, the Duke of Monmouth my Lady Castlemaine, other lords other ladies, and they danced ‘the brantle.’ Afterwards the King led a lady a single coranto, and then the lords, one after another, other ladies; very noble it was, and pleasant to see. Then to country-dances, the King leading the first, which he called for by name as ‘Cuckolds all awry,’ the old dance of England. The manner was, when the King dances, all the ladies in the room, and the Queen herself, stand up; and, indeed, he dances rarely, and much better than the Duke of York.” Pepys adds that it was reported the King reprimanded Lady Gerard as he was leading her down the dance, for having spoken against Lady Castlemaine to the Queen, and forbade her to attend her Majesty any more.

Pepys, too, gives a graphic account of a ball given at Whitehall, in the year 1666, to celebrate the Queen’s birthday, on which occasion he contrived to climb up to a loft, where he obtained a view of the festive scene, which he thus describes: “It was indeed a glorious sight to see Mrs. Stuart in black and white lace, and her head and shoulders dressed with diamonds, only the Queen none (as she was in mourning for her mother), and the King in his rich vest of some rich silk and silver trimming; the Duke of York and all the other dancers wore cloth of silver. Presently, after the King was come in he took the Queen, and about fourteen more couple there were, and began the brantle. After the brantles a corant, and now and then a French dance: but that so rare, that the corants grew tiresome, and I wished it done, only Mrs. Stuart danced mighty fine; and many French dances, especially one the King called ‘the new dance,’ which was very pretty. But, upon the whole, the business of the dancing itself was not extraordinary pleasing. About twelve at night it broke up.” Indeed, Queen Catherine is said to have been childishly attached to dancing, and in some verses, entitled “The Queen’s Ball,” published in the State Poems, she is styled:—

“Ill-natured little goblin, and designed
For nothing but to dance and vex mankind.”

Pepys further tells us how he was admitted by his acquaintance, Lady Peterborough, into the apartments of the Duchess of York at Whitehall when the young Mary Stuart was taking her dancing lesson, which incident he thus describes: “Stepping to the Duchess of York’s side to speak to my Lady Peterborough, I did see the young Duchess, a little child in hanging sleeves, dance most finely, so as almost to ravish me, her ear is so good, taught by a Frenchman that did heretofore teach King Charles II. and all the royal family, and the Queen-mother herself, who do still dance well.”

It may be added that the first introduction of the royal sisters, Mary and Anne, was their performance of a ballet, written for them by the poet Crowne, called “Calista, or the Chaste Nymph,” acted December 2, 1674. They were trained for this performance by Mrs. Betterton, the principal actress at the King’s Theatre, the ballet being remarkable for the future historical parts of the performers. The Lady Mary of York was the heroine, Calista; her sister the Lady Anne, Nyphe; Lady Harriet Wentworth performed Jupiter. The epilogue was written by Dryden, and addressed to Charles II.

In after years, when Mary assumed the burden of regal dignity, she was exposed to the malevolent misinterpretation of a Court to which she was almost as much a stranger as was her husband himself. She was considered too fond of the frivolous gaieties from which in truth she shrank, and she writes: “The world who cannot see the heart ... began to take notice of the change that was in my life, and comparing my way of living in Holland to that here, were much scandalised to see me grown so remiss.” But this kind of criticism, which was unjust, did not prevent her pursuing the course she considered right; and although on the King’s birthday in 1689 a ball was given at her desire, she tells us:—

“I really thought it no proper time, when war was round about, and my father himself engaged against us.... Yet such is the depravation of this age and place where I live, none seems to think of such things, and so, ill-custom prevailing, there was a ball, but by my writings may be seen how I endeavoured to spend that day as also the next, which was Gunpowder Treason, God be praised for it.”

The following particulars of a grand ball given at Marli in July 1705, at which the royal exiles of St. Germains were present, is a proof of the respectful consideration with which they were treated by Louis XIV. At the upper end of the saloon in which the ball took place were placed three fauteuils for the King of France, the widowed Queen of England, and her son—Mary Beatrice, as in the lifetime of her royal consort, occupying the centre seat. The titular King of England opened the ball with his sister, the King of France standing all the time they were dancing. This mark of respect, it is said, he would have done every time the young royal pair danced together, had not Mary Beatrice induced him to be seated; and even then it was not till he had paid them this token of regard twice or thrice that he would consent to sit down.

The introduction in the Russian Court of foreign dances coincided with the adoption of foreign dress and other customs; hence in the time of Peter the Great ignorance of the minuet, or of Polish and English dances, was looked upon as a serious defect in education. During the latter part of her life the Empress Anne was fond of listening to the jests of her buffoons. At the conclusion of these exhibitions her maids of honour would sing to her, and occasionally she would watch them dance. One day, according to the “Memoirs of the Princess Daschkov,” she commanded four of the principal beauties of St. Petersburg to perform a Russian dance before her. But they became so nervous at the stern glance of the Empress that, losing all presence of mind, they forgot the figure of the dance, and amidst the general confusion were electrified by the approach of her Majesty, who, advancing towards them in a fit of rage, gave each a sound box on the ear, and ordered them instantly to begin over again, which they did, half dead with fear.[47] The Empress Elizabeth was an accomplished dancer, and in order to see the minuet danced to perfection it was commonly said one should go to the Russian Court. Catherine II. was very fond of the ballet, and gave it every possible encouragement, taking an active pleasure in most kinds of pantomimic ballet. Amongst some of the many anecdotes told of this sovereign, it is related how she treated her maids of honour almost as if they were her own daughters. Noticing one day that Freiline Potocka, who had lately come to the Court, had no pearls, she immediately seized the opportunity of a fancy dress ball, to which the girl came in the disguise of a milkmaid, in order to slip a superb necklace into the pail that she had put down whilst dancing. “It is you, madame, ... it is your Majesty,” she stammered on discovering the present. “No!” replied the Empress, “the milk has curdled.”[48]

In the year 1798 a curious and most imposing ballet was given at Court in honour of the Czarina and the Grand Duke. It was called “The Conquered Prejudice,” and was of a most elaborate character, the most imposing stage effects being introduced. And, coming down to recent years, Théophile Gautier, describing the opening of a Court ball in 1866, tells how the spectators in the ball-room of the Winter Palace separated so as to leave free a pathway of which they formed the hedges. Every one in position, the orchestra played a majestic air, and with slow steps the promenade began, led by the Emperor giving his hand to some lady whom he was desirous of honouring. They were followed by the rest of the Court, all according to precedence, and gradually “the cortège of brilliant uniforms goes on increasing: a nobleman leaves the hedge and takes a lady by the hand, and this new couple take their place in the procession, keeping step by step with the leader. And what adds to the originality of the Russian Court is, that from time to time a young Circassian prince in his fastidious Oriental dress, or a Mongolian officer, will join the cortège.”

Portuguese dances having long been famous, it is not surprising that at most Court festivals dancing was in high repute. King Dom Pedro I. is reported to have been a great votary of the dance, and the Portuguese historian, Ferñao Lopes, tells how, mad with sorrow at the loss of his wife, Inez de Castro, he would in the weary hours of nighttime, as he lay sleepless, order a troop of soldiers “to form a hedge from his palace, and to hold lighted torches that he might dance between them, and thus give bodily expression to the vehemence of his grief.”[49] But a monarch who degraded and brought dancing into the lowest repute was Alfonso VI.—a wicked and unscrupulous sovereign, whose conduct, as already noted, seemed to savour of insanity. Thus, when his country was in the greatest peril, he indulged in every kind of infamy. While his soldiers and his English allies[50] were spilling their blood in defence of his dominions, he devoted his time to ruin himself and his country. His palace, it is said, “particularly his residence at Alcantara, afforded a scene at which the most immodest might blush.” He violated the nunneries, assailed the affrighted sisters with rough wooing, and at once terrified and disgusted them by fitting up a stage in the choir of the church at Alcantara, on which he not only had theatrical performances and unseemly dances, “but compelled the unhappy nuns to honour them with their presence.” This was a pleasing spectacle for a responsible ruler, and one well worthy of the days of a Nero. But one of his successors on the throne—John V.—was of a very different turn of mind; for although a munificent patron of literature and the fine arts—founding the Academy of History at Lisbon—he was a great lover of music and the theatre, and spent large sums in importing singers and dancers from Italy, and actors from France.

Dancing was a monomania with Philip III. of Spain and Portugal, and his Prime Minister distinguished himself as the best dancer of his time—the result being that the whole aristocracy of Spain and Portugal became affected by the dancing rage, which was ridiculed by Manuel de Mello.

The wife of Ferdinand VI. of Spain, the Infanta of Portugal, was haunted by the fear of death and of poverty—apprehensions which she tried to conquer by the extravagant indulgence of a passion for music and dancing. With this melancholy, and oppressed by asthma and unwieldy corpulency, she could scarcely have been a very graceful dancer, for M. de Noailles said of her, “Son visage est tel qu’on ne peut la regarder sans peine.”

A romantic tale is told of Queen Joan of Naples, who, at a magnificent feast given in her castle of Gaeta, gave her hand to Galeazzo of Mantua for the purpose of opening the ball. At the conclusion of the dance the gallant knight knelt down before his royal partner, and, as an acknowledgment of the honour conferred upon him, he made a solemn vow not to rest until he had subdued two valiant knights, and had presented them prisoners at her royal footstool, to be disposed of at her pleasure. Accordingly, after a year spent in visiting various scenes of action in Brittany, England, France, Burgundy, and elsewhere, he returned and offered his two prisoners of rank to Queen Joan. The Queen received the gift very graciously, but, declining to avail herself of the right she had to impose rigorous conditions on the captives, she gave them liberty without ransom, in addition to bestowing on them several marks of liberality.

An early Danish ballad tells how one of the ancient kings of Denmark, dancing at a wake with a fair peasant girl, requested her to sing to him, which she did in tones so clear and thrilling that she woke the Queen Sophie, who had retired to bed. Her Royal Highness’s curiosity being aroused, she got up, put on her purple mantle, and went out to see what sort of girl the songstress might be. On seeing her husband dance with the peasant girl, the Queen’s jealousy was excited, and she exclaimed that it was “a monstrous thing that Signellile”—the peasant girl—“should dance with Denmark’s king.” So she ordered one of her attendants to bring her “the richly moulded horn” filled with wine, giving instructions for an edder-corn to be first dropped in. Then, when the King asked his royal consort if she would not dance with him, Queen Sophie replied—

“Before a place in the dance I fill,
Must drink to my health fair Signellile.”

Whereupon Signellile took the horn, and though she

“Drank but a sip to quench her thirst,
Her guileless heart in her bosom burst.”

In China dancing has from a remote period held a conspicuous place in Court ceremonies. At the present day it takes the form of an act of homage to the sovereign, for which performance special mandarins are appointed. This dance is performed by the greatest in the land, and at stated times an imposing sight may be witnessed at the imperial palace, when men coming from all parts of Asia render tribute to the Emperor by songs and dances. On one occasion, when the dance was at its glory in China, “the Emperor showed the appreciation he felt for his Viceroys by the number of the dances with which he received them when they came into his presence. If he was displeased with their administration, he would reprove them silently by allowing only a few dances, performed by a small number of coryphées.” It would seem, too, that emperors “did not disdain the study of the dance, or its performance in public; they generally devoted the autumn to the former, and the spring to the latter, and the feast of ancestors was the greatest occasion for the dance. In 1719 the son of the Emperor danced before his father and the whole assembled Court.”

At the French Court dancing from an early period was in high repute, and the intermezzi or entremets—from which sprang dances—performances held at banquets to entertain the guests whilst waiting for the courses, can be traced back to the year 1237, when St. Louis gave a wedding feast to his brother Robert at Compiègne. It is related that at this feast a knight rode across the hall on horseback over a large tight-rope stretched above the heads of the guests.[51] With the Medicis the splendid dance entertainments were introduced into France; and we read how Catherine de’ Medicis, while plotting the massacre of St. Bartholomew, amused herself by witnessing the antics of a troupe of Italian players, called “I Gelosi,” which consisted of mimic acting varied with comic dances.

It is said that Jacques Coetier, a French physician, was the only person who could curb the uneven spirit of Louis IX., which he did by making an artful use of that dread of death to which the King was subject. Thus Coetier, trading on this peculiarity, would often say to his Majesty, “I suppose one of these days you will dismiss me, as you have done many other servants; but mark my words, if you do, you will not live eight days after it.” By repeating this menace from time to time, Coetier not only kept himself in his station, but actually succeeded in persuading the King to bestow upon him valuable presents. He paid, however, considerable attention to the mind of his royal master, and to divert his attention and to amuse him during his indisposition, he would arrange to have rural dances performed under his window.

Henry IV. and his great minister, Sully, were lovers of the ballet, and Louis XIII. danced on the stage with all his Court.

Louis XIV. enjoyed performing various characters in the ballet, a recreation he pursued till he became too corpulent, when he abandoned it for fear of making himself an object of ridicule. Some idea of the importance of dancing at the Court of Louis XIV. can be gained from Molière, who goes so far as to say in the Bourgeois Gentilhomme “that the destiny of nations depends on the art of dancing.” Monsieur de Lauzun, the favourite of Louis XIV., owed his fortune to his grace in dancing in the King’s quadrille. And, as Dumas writes, “many more than one nobleman owed the favour he enjoyed at Court to the way he pointed his toe, or moved his leg.” Indeed, Louis XIV. not only busied himself with the composition of ballets, but danced in them, and took dancing lessons from Beauchamps for twenty years.[52] Until he was thirty-two he danced with professional ballet-dancers, a fad which, it has been said, suggested itself to him from some lines in Racine’s Britannicus, wherein Nero’s dramatic proclivities are ridiculed. His last appearance was on February 13, 1669, in the Ballet of Flora. Indeed, so devoted was Louis to the pastime, that in one ballet he actually played no less than five successive characters, those of Apollo, Mars, a Fury, a Dryad, and a Courtier; and actually submitted to the fatigue of assuming the several costumes, frequently as often as three times during the week.[53] Benserade had the exclusive privilege of composing the libretti of these ballets, which, it is said, “were one continued ovation to the young monarch, who was not in his own person exempted from the delivery of the most exaggerated and fulsome self-praise.” But such was the taste of the time.

The Allemande Française—a mediæval German dance introduced into France about the year 1600—was a favourite of Louis XIV. and of Napoleon. Louis XIV. was also specially fond of the courante, which he is said to have performed better than any one else. And it may be added that on the 21st of January 1681, when the then Dauphiness, the Princess de Conti, and some other ladies of the first distinction in the Court of Louis XIV., performed a ballet with the opera, called Le Triomphe de l’Amour, it was received with so much applause, that on the 16th of the following May, when the same opera was acted in Paris, at the Theatre of the Palais Royal, it was thought indispensable for the success of this kind of entertainment to introduce female dancers, who have ever since been a support of the opera.

Among the many amusing anecdotes told of Louis XIV. when still in his minority, it is related that one evening, in 1655, Queen Henrietta and her daughter were invited to see the King dance at a ball, which Anne of Austria gave in her private apartments. The party was of rather a juvenile character; the dancers were from the age of the Princess of England, who was about eleven, to the age of Louis XIV., who was just sixteen. At this time Louis was in love with Marie de Mancini—niece of Mazarin—and as she was not at the party, he chose to dance with her sister, the Duchess de Mercœur, and led her out as his partner in the brawl. But the Queen-Regent observing his action, at once stepped forth, took the niece of Mazarin from him, and commanded him to dance with the young Princess of England. Queen Henrietta, alarmed at the contretemps, assured the King “that her daughter would not dance—she was too young; besides she had hurt her foot, and could not be his partner.” The result was that neither Louis nor the Princess Henrietta danced that evening, the youthful King remarking later on in a sullen mood that “he did not like little girls.”

In 1640 the Duc d’Enghien, son of Prince Henry of Condé, was affianced to Claire Clémence, a niece of Richelieu, and the account given by the Duc d’Aumale of the marriage and the behaviour of the Prince at the accident which befell his bride whilst dancing, gives far from a pleasing idea of Court refinement at that period: “The marriage was celebrated at the palace of the Cardinal, and was followed by brilliant festivities.... Mirame had received the plaudits of an illustrious assembly, at which—a memento of the military processions of Rome—several general officers appeared who were prisoners of war. After a representation had been given, followed by new comic pieces, the theatre was transformed, as it were by enchantment, and the Duc d’Enghien, leading in the Queen, opened the ball with her. It was remarked that the young Duchess, embarrassed in a coranto by the high-heeled shoes she wore to increase her low stature, fell; the Court laughed, and her husband joined in the laughter. The pallor and disordered appearance of the Duc were also noticed.”[54]

Marie Antoinette was fond of dancing, and was a great admirer and patroness of Augustus Vestris, the god of dance, as he was styled. She was instrumental in bringing back the “gavotte” into fashion as a Court and society dance, which had been originally a peasant’s diversion, taking its name from Gap, in Dauphiné. It appears to have been introduced at Court in the sixteenth century, “when, to amuse the royal circles, entertainments were given consisting of dances in national costume, performed by natives of the various provinces, and to the sound of appropriate instruments.” Numerous accounts have been given of the brilliant part Marie Antoinette so often played in the festive scenes of the Court of Versailles, the following conveying a faint notion of the grace and popularity which marked her early but ill-fated life: “The ball opened with four quadrilles; in the first the dress was the old costume of France, the second represented a set of morris-dancers, the third was that of the Queen—Tyrolese peasants, the fourth wild Indians.... In the interval between the dances the Queen took occasion to say a kind word to every one. She particularly noticed foreign ladies, among them Lady Ailesbury and three English ladies. They were treated by the Queen with a grace and a courtesy which was much remarked and approved. I shall only add that the Queen every day brings the elegance of the Court to a higher degree of perfection.”[55]

It was owing to a tumble sustained by a royal princess at a Court ball some twenty years ago that waltzing has been forbidden at the State balls at Berlin or Potsdam. And that the polka is not considered altogether free from danger is shown by the fact that the German Emperor one day summoned the generals commanding the various troops stationed in and around Berlin, and directed them to instruct those officers who were not able to dance properly to abstain from attempting to do so at imperial receptions.

Indeed, the history of most countries is full of incidents illustrative of dancing customs at Court, and on certain special occasions it would seem that feats in dancing formed one of the many attractions to amuse royalty. When Isabel of Bavaria, queen of Charles VI. of France, made her public entry into Paris, among other extraordinary exhibitions prepared for her reception was the marvellous performance, according to St. Foix, of a rope-dancer.

CHAPTER VII

ROYAL HOBBIES

Whether it be Nero constructing his hydraulic clocks, or Prince Rupert experimenting in his laboratory, or Philip of Burgundy contriving houses full of diableries, such as hidden trap-doors, undermined floors, and the like, we find the same habit illustrated among rulers of every age and country. When it was suggested to Dr. Johnson that kings must be unhappy because they are deprived of the greatest of all satisfactions, easy and unreserved society, he observed that this was an ill-formed notion. “Being a king does not exclude a man from such society. Great kings have always been social. The King of Prussia, the only great king at present”—this was the Great Frederick—“is very social; Charles the Second, the last King of England who was a man of parts, was social; our Henries and Edwards were all social.”

And this is specially the case with the amusements of royalty, which have oftentimes been of the most rough and arduous nature. But, as Lord Brougham once remarked, “Blessed is the man who has a hobby-horse;” and Cæsar wrote, “Under my tent, in the fiercest struggles of war, I have always found time to think of many other things”—a habit which has been recognised as a secret of strength.

A hobby which was destined to have an unforeseen result was that of Peter the Great for boat-building, which manifested itself when he was sixteen years of age, and was accidental. When wandering one day about one of his country estates near the village of Ismaílovo with his companion Timmermann, he espied an old storehouse, on ransacking which with boyish curiosity his eye fell on a boat that lay in a corner, turned bottom upward.

“What is that?” he inquired.

“That is an English boat,” replied Timmermann; “and if you had sails in it, it would go not only with the wind, but against the wind.”

But the boat was too rotten for use, and some time necessarily had to elapse before the little craft was put in working order with a mast and sails. The difficulty, however, was soon overcome by Carsten Brandt, who some years previously had been brought from Holland by the Tsar Alexis for the purpose of constructing vessels on the Caspian Sea, and under his superintendence it was launched on the river Yaúza; “And mighty pleasant it was to me,” writes Peter in the preface to the “Maritime Regulations,” where he describes the beginning of the Russian navy. Henceforth his mind was intent upon boat-building and navigation, and in the year 1691 he went to Lake Plestcheief, where he remained for a fortnight in a small palace built for him on the shore of the lake. “It was,” according to Eugene Schuyler,[56] “a small, one-storey wooden house, with windows of mica, engraved with different ornaments, the doors covered for warmth with white felt;” and here he occupied himself with building a ship, and worked so zealously that he was “unwilling to return to Moscow for the reception of the Persian ambassador, and it was necessary for Leo Naŕyshkin and Prince Boris Golitsyn to go expressly to Pereyaslávl to show him the importance of returning for the reception, in order not to offend the Shah.” The boat which he found at Ismaílovo has ever since borne the name of the “Grandsire of the Russian Fleet,” and is preserved with the greatest care in a small brick building near the cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul within the fortress of St. Petersburg. In the year 1870, on the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of his birth, it was one of the chief objects of interest in the great parade of St. Petersburg; and in 1872 it was conveyed with much pomp and ceremony to Moscow, where for a time it formed a part of the Polytechnic Exposition.

But, as it has been observed, “perhaps one of the most interesting and extraordinary circumstances in the history of mankind is that the despotic monarch of a mighty dominion should descend from his throne and travel as a private person in the train of his own ambassador sent to Holland. On arriving there, he first took up his abode in the Admiralty at Amsterdam, and afterwards enrolled himself among the ship-carpenters, and went to the village of Sardam, where he wrought as a common carpenter and blacksmith with unusual assiduity, under the name of Master Peter. He was clad and fed as his fellow-workmen, for he would not allow of vain distinctions.”

In the following year he passed over to England, where, in the space of four months, he completed his knowledge of shipbuilding. After receiving every mark of respect from William III., he left this country accompanied by several English shipbuilders and carpenters, whom he treated with great liberality in his naval dockyards, and subsequently he is said to have written several essays on naval matters.

John Evelyn, in his Diary, alludes to the Emperor’s visit, and under January 1698 makes this entry: “The Czar of Muscovy being come to England, and having a mind to see the building of ships, hired my house at Say’s Court, and made it his Court and palace, new furnished for him by the King.”

And while the Emperor was in his house one of Evelyn’s servants thus wrote to him: “There is a house full of people, and right nasty. The Czar lies next your library and dines in the parlour next your study. He dines at ten o’clock and six at night, is very seldom at home a whole day, very often in the King’s yard or by water, dressed in several dresses. The King is expected here this day; the best parlour is pretty clean for him to be entertained in. The King pays for all he has.”

Peter the Great was also in the habit of frequenting the different workshops and manufactories, and among the places he frequently visited were the forges of Müller at Istia. It was here that he employed himself in learning a blacksmith’s business, succeeding so well that on one occasion he forged eighteen poods of iron, putting his own particular mark on each bar, one of which is preserved at St. Petersburg. One of his predecessors, Feodor, son of Ivan IV., exercised his strength by ringing church bells, which was one of his favourite hobbies.

Alexander III. of Russia also took great delight in manual labour, and one of his favourite pastimes was to fell huge trees, saw them into planks, plane them, and generally prepare them for the cabinet-maker. His physique, which was exceptionally powerful, enabled him to indulge in this hobby. Some idea of his strength may be gathered from the fact that he could twist and break thick iron pokers and bars with his hand, render pewter tankards into bouquet holders, whereby he justified his title of the “Russian Samson.” In his younger days he was able to bend a bar of iron across his knees, or to burst in a strong door with his shoulder. In this respect he was not unlike William the Conqueror, of whom it is said that no one but himself could bend his bow, and that he could, when riding at full speed, discharge a long-bow with unerring aim. And Edward I., it is reported, was so adroit and active, that he could leap into his saddle by merely putting his hand on it. Charlemagne is reputed to have been so strong as to be able to take a horse-shoe in his hands and snap it. Augustus the Strong of Saxony was a man of herculean muscular powers, who could lift weights, straighten horse-shoes with his two hands, and go through other exercises which astonished his subjects. And such was the muscular strength of Don Sebastian that, by the mere pressure of his knees, he could make his charger groan and sweat; and it may be added that all manly exercises which required vigour and agility were favourite hobbies of Don Sebastian. When the “wind blew hurricanes and the waves dashed wildly over the bar of Lisbon, the inhabitants of the capital watched often with eager suspense the progress of a small vessel, having at the main the royal standard, as it ploughed its way through the foaming waters, for on board that frail ship was the hope of the nation, King Don Sebastiaõ. ‘There is no bravery, nor merit, nor profit to be gained by going on board in a calm,’ replied the King to the expostulation of his Council.”[57] It may be added, too, that Cymburga of Poland, who was married to Ernest the “Iron,” cracked her nuts with her fingers, and when she trained her fruit trees, she hammered the nails into the wall with her clenched knuckles.

The Albanian Prince, George Castriot, better known as Scanderbeg, was a strong man, for he could cut off a bull’s head at a single stroke. Mahomed II. invited him to send the sword which had performed so remarkable an exploit. It was sent, but the Sultan, finding that it differed not from any other weapon of the kind, expressed his dissatisfaction. Scanderbeg retorted that he had sent him his sword as desired, but could not send the arm which had wielded it.

Charles V. of Spain had a decided taste, and, as it would seem, talent for mechanical pursuits, and when in Germany had invented a carriage for his own accommodation. After his abdication he would often amuse himself, with his companion Torriano, in making little puppets—soldiers performing their exercises, girls dancing with their tambourines, and if the account be true, wooden birds that could fly in and out of the window.[58] When he entered Nuremberg, of the many forms of welcome which he there encountered, none pleased him more than the artificial eagle which flew to meet him.[59]

He had also a turn for the mathematical sciences, and, like Louis XVI., a passion for timepieces; and the difficulty which he found in adjusting his clocks and watches is said to have drawn from the monarch a philosophical reflection on the absurdity of his having attempted to bring men to anything like uniformity of belief in matters of faith, when he could not make any two of his timepieces agree with each other. On one occasion the maître d’hôtel, much perplexed how to devise a daily supply of rich and high-seasoned dishes to suit his palate, told his royal master—knowing his passion for timepieces—that “he really did not know what he could do, unless it were to serve up his Majesty a fricassee of watches.” And like her illustrious relative, Charles V., Queen Mary had a decided taste for clocks, for they form a prominent article in her yearly expenditure.

And among the many great and useful problems which Charles discussed with Torriano, mention is made of a bold and gigantic project, which was duly accomplished after his death by Gianello, and consisted in raising the waters of the low-lying Tagus to the heights of Toledo. According to Bourgoing, the remains of this ingenious machine are still to be seen on the high rocky peninsula occupied by the city; and, near them, “ruins still more ancient, which must have formed part of an aqueduct designed to convey water to the height of Alcazar, from springs seven or eight leagues distant—a legacy at once useful and magnificent, by which the Romans have marked their residence in more than one place in Spain.”

Speaking of Louis XVI.’s taste for mechanics, we are told how over his private library were a forge, two anvils, and a vast number of iron tools, various common locks, as well as some of a secret and elaborate kind. It was here that “the infamous Gamin, who afterwards accused the King of having tried to poison him, and was rewarded for his calumny with a pension of twelve hundred livres, taught him the art of lock-making. When teaching the King his trade, Gamin took upon himself the tone and authority of a master.” The King, according to Gamin, “was good, forbearing, timid, inquisitive, and addicted to sleep; he was fond to excess of lock-making, and he concealed himself from the Queen and the Court to file and forge with me. In order to convey his anvil and my own backwards and forwards, we were obliged to use a thousand stratagems, the history of which would never end.”[60]

In his private apartments were his collection of instruments, charts, spheres, globes, and also his geographical cabinet. And, in addition to these, there were to be seen drawings of maps which he had begun, and others that he had finished. He inherited some from Louis XV., and he often busied himself in keeping them clean and bright.[61]

We may note that amongst the earliest pieces of modern mechanism associated with royalty was a curious water-clock presented to Charlemagne by the Kaliph Haroun al Raschid. In the dial-plate there were twelve small windows, corresponding with the divisions of the hours. The hours were indicated by the opening of the windows, which let out little metallic balls which struck the hour by falling on a brazen bell. The doors continued open till twelve o’clock, when twelve little knights, mounted on horseback, came out at the same instant, and, after parading the dial, shut all the windows, and returned to their apartments.

Another automaton was that of the philosopher John Müller, and most elaborate, consisting of an artificial eagle which flew to meet the Emperor Maximilian when he arrived at Nuremberg on the 7th of June 1470. After soaring aloft in the air, the eagle is stated to have met the Emperor at some distance from the city, and to have returned and perched upon the town gate, where it waited his approach. On the Emperor’s arrival the eagle stretched out its wings, and saluted him by an inclination of its body.