next morning, describing the occurrence, says, that “last night Mr. Dryden, the famous poet, going from a coffee-house in Covent Garden, was set upon by three persons unknown to him, and so rudely by them handled, that, as it is said, his life is in no small danger.” The reporter adds that the attack was supposed to have been made out of a private grudge, and not for the purpose of robbery. The only coffee-house in or near Covent Garden that Dryden could have been coming from, was Will’s. He was the oracle of Will’s, where, seated in a chair expressly reserved for him, he gave out the law to a hushed crowd of disciples. He was to Will’s what Ben Jonson had been before him to the Apollo Club in the old Devil Tavern, at Temple Bar.
The newspaper was right. It was not for the purpose of robbery that Mr. Dryden, the famous poet, was waylaid on his way home from Will’s, but to revenge the imaginary wrongs of some “persons of quality” who suspected that he had lampooned them, and who, without waiting to obtain proof of the fact, hired three ruffians to beat, or, as it might be, murder him. Outrages of this kind were not uncommon. Buckingham employed the notorious Colonel Blood to assassinate the Duke of Ormond; Mr. Thynne was killed in Pall Mall by the bravos of Count Königsmark; and Sir John Coventry escaped with his life at the cost of a slit nose. In all such cases, however, there was undeniable provocation, while in Dryden’s case there was none of which a scintilla of evidence could be produced. The plot of this little drama is a microcosm of the age.
Louise de Quérouaille, at the age of nineteen, rather more than ten years before the attack upon Dryden, was appointed maid of honour to the Duchess of Orleans, the sister of Charles II. She was descended from a decayed Breton family, and was considered a great beauty, with a child-like expression of sweetness in her face, rich clustering hair, and a voluptuous form. The king saw her, for the first time, in the train of the duchess at Dover in 1670, and immediately afterwards, when the unfortunate duchess was taken off by poison, Louise was invited into England, received with a prodigality of attention that looked like what it meant, and appointed maid of honour to the queen. She at once acquired an ascendancy over the king, which she preserved up to the end of his life against all comers. In two years she was created by letters patent, baroness of one place, countess of another, and Duchess of Portsmouth, besides being made a duchess and peeress of France, with considerable revenues, by Louis XIV., who thus secured her influence as a secret agent at the English court. The splendour of her appointments far transcended the modest state of the queen. Her apartments at Whitehall were miracles of luxury and costliness. She was the sovereign power in the palace. In vain other mistresses intrigued against her, or, for a time, succeeded in ensnaring her Squire of Dames; he was sure to return to her, and to become more enthralled than ever. All the courtiers and men of gallantry were at her feet; and prominent amongst them was Rochester. His reputation, probably, recommended him to her special confidence, which he is said to have enjoyed.
But incessant vigilance was necessary to the maintenance of her ascendancy. There was always a rival in the field, and it required consummate tact to manage a situation in which the end was almost certain to be sacrificed by the slightest betrayal of the means. The only way to keep the king was to humour his inconstancy. A little wayward, pretty jealousy, dashed with a few skilful tears, flattered the vanity of the monarch; while jealousy in earnest would have interfered with his pleasures and risked his favour. The least indiscretion would have been fatal. Few women could have steered successfully through such rocks and quicksands for twelve or fourteen years. The genius of Louise de Quérouaille was exactly adapted to the position. The aim of her life was the acquisition of wealth and influence; and she was not encumbered with a heart that threw any obstacles in her path.
About the time of which we are speaking, Nell Gwynne, the orange-girl and actress, who was also lodged at Whitehall, as a lady of the Privy Chamber, divided the king’s attentions with the Duchess of Portsmouth. They were his bright and his dark spirits. The one, gay, hearty, and unselfish; the other, subtle and patient, with airs of melancholy and fits of pouting, made different approaches to his weak and easy nature, and from opposite points of attraction kept him vibrating between them. These circumstances were notorious at court, and furnished scandal for many a flippant jest on the back-stairs.
It was some time in 1679 that a copy of verses, entitled “An Essay on Satire,” got about in MS., and fell into the hands of the Duchess of Portsmouth. In this piece, after the fashion of the day, several notorieties were assailed, including Danby the lord high treasurer, Aylesbury, Shaftesbury, Essex, who afterwards committed suicide in the Tower, Sir Thomas Armstrong, subsequently executed for his participation in the Rye-House Plot, and Rochester, described as a wit at second hand, whose entire life was licentious and insincere. These portraits would probably have excited no further notice than a running fire of squibs and pasquinades, and some rough joking in the taverns, if the author had not also flown at higher game. Not content with satirising the poets and politicians, he ascended to the king’s mistresses, and in plain language, which one would rather not transplant into a modern page, depicted their contrasted characters, and the different ways in which they held his Majesty in thraldom: the one affecting smiles, the other tears; the one jilting, the other selling him (which latter was true enough, so far as Portsmouth was concerned, although, if Colley Cibber may be believed, the former was not true in reference to Nelly), and both betraying his honour; the whole winding up with a couplet which was more likely to wound the self-love of a pampered woman than all the rest:
Was ever prince by two at once misled,
False, foolish, old, ill-natured, and ill-bred?
