Hortense adroitly changed the subject to the reputed beauty of Nell’s undergarments. In a heartbeat, Nell raised her skirts and showed the ambassador her petticoats, stockings, and garters. It is interesting to contemplate what else she might have shown him, as underpants were not worn. Whatever he saw, the ambassador was evidently delighted. In his official report to the foreign office in Paris, this worthy gentleman lavished ample praise on Nell’s undergarments “and certain other things that were shown to us all,”55 and proclaimed he had never seen anything “more magnificent.”56
6. Loving Profitably—The Wages of Sin
Beauty is potent, but money is omnipotent.
ONE DAY IN THE LATE 1850S A GROUP OF FRENCH COURTIERS visited an old castle under restoration. Among the group was Napoleon III’s mistress, Marie-Anne de Ricci, Countess Walewska, an Italian charmer who had married the son of Maria Walewska, and Napoleon. The countess pointed to a lizard gargoyle and remarked, “It is very well executed, but such a water pipe must be very expensive.” The emperor’s minister of the household, Marshal Vaillant, replied angrily, “Less expensive than yours, Madame.” When another member of the party remonstrated with him for his rudeness, he continued, “This drainage has cost us four million francs!”1
The mistress, as opposed to the wife, could be dismissed at any moment with no financial settlement. Her powerful friends at court supported her only while she retained power, expecting favors in return. Exiled and reviled, the former royal mistress could find herself flying from the zenith of magnificence to the depths of poverty and disgrace at a moment’s notice.
The wise royal mistress, therefore, began to collect for her retirement as soon as she was appointed, ensuring a lavish lifestyle to cushion her inevitable fall. Cash was always handy, as well as jewels, gilded carriages, fine horses, and gold and silver plate—objects which could easily be converted into cash should the deposed mistress suddenly find herself sent packing into exile.
Royal mistresses also coveted titles—countess, marquise, and duchess—which gave them an official position at court on a par with other courtiers. The titles came with castles and rent-producing lands, which also provided cash if managed well. Additionally, most royal mistresses received annual pensions for their services. The problem with titles, lands, and pensions was that they could always be revoked if the political winds reversed direction. Cash and its equivalent were always preferable in times of emergency.
Ironically, this lining of the royal mistress’s pockets with taxpayer money so enraged the king’s family, court, and subjects that she had to line them even more quickly.
Athénaïs de Montespan loved profitably indeed. When she began her affair with Louis XIV, her best pair of diamond earrings was in hock. Within a short time, she built three navy vessels for the king at her own expense, and recruited the crews from her native region of Poitou.
English royal mistresses did not have it quite as easy as their fair French counterparts. While the Sun King’s word was law, his contemporary Charles II often found his gifts to royal mistresses blocked by court officials. Lord Chancellor Clarendon—who controlled much of Charles’s money—made known that he was “an implacable enemy to the power and interest she [Barbara, Lady Castlemaine] had with the King, and had used all the endeavors he could to destroy it.”2 He knew that Lady Castlemaine’s “principal business was to get an estate for her and her children,”3 and “to pay her debts, which she had in few years contracted to unimaginable greatness, and to defray her constant expenses, which were very excessive in coaches and horses, clothes and jewels.”4 The king’s requests for gifts to Lady Castlemaine never seemed to make it past Lord Clarendon’s desk, and the king had to find other paths by which to route his largesse.
Jewels
Most royal mistresses were known for their greedy love of fine jewelry, and many flaunted finer gems than the queen. It was not only vanity which prompted the mistress to weigh down her neck and ears, wrists and fingers with diamonds, but the omnipresent fear of sudden disgrace. Indeed, jewelry was the commodity closest to cash. A king’s ransom could be stuffed into a small sack or sewn into hems and bodices if the mistress needed a hasty escape—as some did.
In 1662 when the Muscovite ambassador brought Charles II rich presents from the czar—furs and jewels amounting to £150,000—Lord Chancellor Clarendon begged the king not to give them away to “anyone.” By “anyone” the chancellor meant the grasping Lady Castlemaine. Charles promised. Stymied here, Lady Castlemaine then persuaded her royal lover to give her every Christmas present he had received from the peers—many were jewels intended for Charles to pass on to his queen. Soon Lady Castlemaine was loaded down with jewels “far out-shining the Queen,” according to diarist John Evelyn, who saw her at a palace celebration.5 Courtiers were not pleased to see their gifts to the king adorn his nasty mistress.
Lady Castlemaine had excellent credit with London jewelers, as they knew the king would pay her bills. There are some records of her purchases—a ring for £850 and two diamond rings for a total of £2,000.
In 1666—a year when sailors in the Royal Navy were given worthless vouchers instead of pay—the king cleared Lady Castlemaine’s debts to the amount of thirty thousand pounds, which included jewelry and gold and silver plate—and bought her more jewelry. Unsatisfied with such bounty, Lady Castlemaine helped herself to the king’s Jewel House in the Tower of London, signing documents agreeing to return the jewelry and plate that she had borrowed. But somehow she always managed to turn the loan into a gift.
England’s prince regent, who later became George IV, was so generous in dispensing valuable jewelry to his lady friends that he single-handedly made his jeweler a multimillionaire. Horribly in debt, chased by creditors, the heir to the throne made monthly visits to the London showroom of Rundell and Bridge. In October 1807 the prince spent nearly two thousand pounds (approximately two hundred thousand dollars in today’s money) on more than thirty pieces of jewelry inlaid with precious gems, including eight bracelets, four brooches, several silver serving dishes, and fine snuffboxes. It was his habit, when wooing a new mistress, to present her first with a miniature portrait of himself or a lock of his hair in a locket surrounded by diamonds. As the affair progressed he would lavish her with emerald rings, ruby necklaces, and a matched pair of sapphire bracelets.
It should come as no surprise that it was a mistress of George IV who amassed the greatest heap of gemstones during her tenure. Lady Conyngham was an unlikely royal mistress—fat and kind, rich and rapacious. In 1820, at the age of fifty, she found her way into the bed of the far heavier sixty-year-old king.
Lady Conyngham immediately reaped the rewards of her services in jewelry. The king gave her a large sapphire surrounded by diamonds which had belonged to the Stuart monarchs. When taking it from the Royal Treasury, the king had said the sapphire must go in his coronation crown. Instead, it appeared on Lady Conyngham’s ample waist. Upon King George’s death in 1830, Lady Conyngham—having been reminded by the government of Madame du Barry’s unfortunate death on the guillotine—very decently returned the sapphire and other royal gems to the keeper of the privy purse, saying she was not certain that the late king should have given them to her.