80 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



resemble those of a sheep in a dream. This naturally gave a bad impression of her 

 wit, which was unfortunate, for her intelligence was far brighter than anyone 

 expected. However, she was fresh, and new ; and the lovely Frances Stewart had 

 not exhausted the King by any special call upon his brains, so. . . ." to 

 be brief, the aid of the zealous and unwearied Progers was called in, and 

 Miss Wells was soon contributing her share to quenching the Royal thirst for 

 beauty. 



Of them all the King loved Frances Stewart the best. He sculled down from 

 Whitehall alone one evening and climbed over the wall of Somerset House to see 

 her after she had been married ; and he would without a doubt have married her 

 if the Queen had not been restored to life after a serious illness, by the kindness 

 which Hamilton cynically attributed rather to the King's politeness than to his 

 real feelings. " Mrs. Stewart," writes the impressionable Pepys, " with her sweet 

 eye, little Roman nose, and excellent faille, is now the greatest beauty, I think, I 

 ever saw in my life." I have reproduced Sir Peter Lely's painting of her, before 

 the cruel marks of smallpox had spoilt her expression. His canvas hangs now at 

 Hampton Court ; but her face and figure are stamped in more durable and far 

 more popular material and have been carried about at one time and another 

 in the pockets of everyone of my readers, for it was from Frances Stewart, Duchess 

 of Richmond, that the Britannia was modelled for the penny piece upon the coinage 

 that we still employ. Rotier did his first sketch for it after seeing her on horseback 

 at Newmarket. 



Louise de Kerouaille, if I may linger still among such fascinating company, 

 put many a pretty nose out of joint when she became Duchess of Portsmouth, and 

 those who believe in Mignard's charming presentment of her in the National 

 Portrait Gallery can easily understand it. She became the mother of Charles 

 Lennox, Duke of Richmond. One of her rivals had long before been fairly- 

 compelled to abdicate, for Barbara Villiers, wife of Roger Palmer, Earl of 

 Castlemaine, was beaten by Nell Gwynne's audacious charms even before she 

 was shelved with the title of Duchess of Cleveland. Pretty Nell herself never 

 acknowledged defeat at all. She was, I suspect, always happier within sound of 

 Bow Bells than on any racecourse in the world, even when she had a chance of 

 laughing at Rochester over his losses, or winning a wager from George Villiers, 

 second Duke of Buckingham, that profligate son of a reckless father, for whom 

 Dryden's lines (written of a better man) would be too flattering : 





