rrying, when a great-grandmother, that
worthless fop, Beau Fielding. It is not strange that she should have
regarded Wycherley with favor. His figure was commanding, his
countenance strikingly handsome, his look and deportment full of grace
and dignity. He had, as Pope said long after, "the true nobleman look,"
the look which seems to indicate superiority, and a not unbecoming
consciousness of superiority. His hair indeed, as he says in one of his
poems, was prematurely gray. But in that age of periwigs this misfortune
was of little importance. The Duchess admired him, and proceeded to make
love to him, after the fashion of the coarse-minded and shameless circle
to which she belonged. In the Ring, when the crowd of beauties and fine
gentlemen was thickest, she put her head out of her coach-window, and
bawled to him, "Sir, you are a rascal; you are a villain;" and, if she
is not belied, she added another phrase of abuse which we will not
quote, but of which we may say that it might most justly have been
applied to her own children. Wycherley called on her Grace the next day,
and with great humility begged to know in what way he had been so
unfortunate as to disoblige her. Thus began an intimacy from which the
poet probably expected wealth and honors. Nor were such expectations
unreasonable. A handsome young fellow about the court, known by the name
of Jack Churchill, was, about the same time, so lucky as to become the
object of a short-lived fancy of the Duchess. She had presented him with
five thousand pounds, the price, in all probability, of some title or
pardon. The prudent youth had lent the money on high interest and on
landed security; and this-judicious investment was the beginning of the
most splendid private fortune in Europe. Wycherley was not so lucky. The
partiality with which the great lady regarded him was indeed the talk of
the whole town; and sixty years later old men who remembered those days
told Voltaire that she often stole from the court to her lover's
chambers in the Temple, disguised like a country girl, with a straw hat
on her head, pattens on her feet, and a basket in her hand. The poet was
indeed too happy and proud to be discreet. He dedicated to the Duchess
the play which had led to their acquaintance, and in the dedication
expressed himself in terms which could not but confirm the reports which
had gone abroad. But at Whitehall such an affair was regarded in no
serious light. The lady was not