Baby Face, Charles II’s French mistress

Andrew Taylor profiles Louise de Keroualle, the Breton ‘baby faced’ girl who became one of Charles II’s most long-lasting mistresses, Nell Gwynn’s worst enemy — and a French spy. She appears in his latest book, The Shadows of London.

Who is often described as the Merry Monarch? The answer of course is Charles II, who had more mistresses in the course of his life than Henry VIII had wives. There has always been an unholy connection between sex and power.

The catalyst for The Shadows of London, the latest novel in my Marwood and Lovett series, was Dr Linda Porter’s Mistresses (Picador, 2020), a refreshingly down-to-earth account of the more important women who shared Charles II’s bed. It strips away the veneer of laddish gaiety and shows the tawdry beneath.

One chapter deals with the career of Louise de Keroualle, the impoverished Breton aristocrat who became Charles’s chief mistress during the second half of his reign. Louise was certainly well-born — she was distantly related to Louis XIV — but she needed to marry a rich man if she was to avoid the nunnery, the usual fate for unmarried Frenchwomen of her class.

Her relatives found her a position as a maid of honour to Minette, the Duchess of Orleans, who was Louis’s sister-in-law and Charles’s sister. When Minette unexpectedly died, her distraught brother offered members of her household a home in England. Louise accepted, probably because she had run out of options in France.

Once in London, she caught the roving eye of the King almost at once. She was then just 21, he was nearly twice her age. He laid siege to her. And she, though friendless and dependent, resisted him for a whole year.

But there were other players in this game: from the start, her seduction was an affair of state.

Charles had recently agreed to a controversial alliance with his cousin, Louis XIV of France. The French government was delighted by the possibility of installing a malleable young Frenchwoman in the King’s bed. It would strengthen Charles’s attachment to France. Moreover, pillow talk might be a useful source of intelligence while also providing a discreet channel for the French to influence Charles in his hours of ease.

This isn’t speculation. The letters that passed between the French ambassador, Colbert de Croissy, and the French foreign ministry, are quite explicit. Louis XIV himself took an active interest in the business.

The diarist John Evelyn witnessed the long-drawn-out ritual of sexual conquest from afar. He was a royalist to the bone, but his loyalty to Charles II was increasingly strained by the louche behaviour of the King and his court.

Evelyn was not impressed by his first sight of the Queen’s new maid of honour at an entertainment for the young Prince William of Orange.

He confided to his diary on 1 November, 1670: “I now also saw that famed beauty (but in my opinion of a childish simple & baby face) Mademoiselle de Quirreval, lately maide of honour to Madame [Minette], and now to be so to the Queene.”

The French were not the only players in this cynical game. Lord Arlington, the most powerful man in England after the King, had been one of the architects of the French alliance. It suited his purposes to work with Colbert de Croissy to establish Louise in the King’s bed.

At last it was arranged for her to join a large house party at Euston Hall, Arlington’s palatial country house near Newmarket. The King and most of the court were in the neighbourhood for the horse racing.

It is difficult to establish the precise sequence of events that led to Louise’s seduction. Not only are the sources fragmentary and sometimes contradictory but, as Dr Porter crisply points out, her “biographers, both French and English, have written a great deal of nonsense about Louise.”

My account in The Shadows of London is at least plausible, though much of it is necessarily invented.

At the time, Evelyn was one of about 200 guests at Euston Hall — not quite one of the inner circle, but close enough to know what was happening. In his entry for the 9-15 October, 1671, he recorded with disapproval and perhaps a hint of prurience:

“It was universaly reported that the faire Lady — was bedded one of these nights, and the stocking flung, after the manner of a married Bride: I acknowledge she was for the most part in her undresse all day, and that there was fondnesse, & toying, with that young wanton; nay ’twas said, I was at the former ceremonie, but tis utterly false, I neither saw, nor heard of anything, tho I had ben in her Chamber and all over that appartment late enough; & was my selfe observing all passages with curiosity enough: however twas with confidence believed that she was first made a Misse as they cald those unhappy creatures, with solemnity, at this time &c…”*

Baby Face had at last succumbed to the overwhelming pressures from those around her. Louis XIV signalled his gratitude by sending a diamond necklace to Lady Arlington, who had actively assisted the plot.

Louise was Charles’s principal mistress for the remaining 14 years of his life. It’s probable that after the first year or so, sex became less important, not least because he gave her syphilis and then dosed her with mercury, leaving her with lifelong ill health.

Nevertheless the King lavished gifts on her, and spent many of his hours of relaxation in her company. His nickname for her was Fubs. Such was his devotion to her, he named one of his yachts HMY Fubs.

Meanwhile, Londoners hated her. Nell Gwynn, a rival mistress, called her Squintabella and made sure everyone knew it. Most commentators at the time believed that Louise was a grasping young woman who made the most of the opportunities that fate had cast her way. Later historians have tended to follow their lead. Her career as the King’s mistress certainly gives ample evidence for this view.

After Charles’s death in 1685, she lost much of her enormous wealth and all of her power. She moved to France, where she became increasingly religious. She died in 1734 at the age of 85.

In The Shadows of London, I have tried to suggest a more nuanced version of the young Louise. She was surrounded by powerful men who forced her into a role she had not chosen. Should we condemn her for trying to make the best of a bad job?

*The quotations from Evelyn’s Diary are taken from the Everyman edition, edited by ES de Beer, selected and introduced by Roy Strong (Everymans Library 291)