Although I have made almost an encyclop?dia of notes touching exalted personages who, since the decline or the suppression of official fools, have shown a disposition to perform the office on their own account, neither my space nor my sympathy for the persevering reader who has thus far accompanied me, will admit of my placing a hundredth part of them before the public. A few instances, however, I will at once proceed to give, only premising, that it was lucky for a people when the Prince, in playing the Fool, enacted his part without inflicting anything very detrimental upon his subjects. Among those whose follies may be said to have been comparatively harmless, is to be reckoned that Prince who was called the Fool of his Health, namely, Ferdinand II., Grand Duke of Tuscany, who died in 1670, and was remarkable for the anxiety with which he attended to his health. “I have frequently seen him,” says the Abbé Arnauld, “pacing up and down his chamber between two large thermometers, upon which he would keep his eyes constantly fixed, unceasingly employed in taking off and putting on a variety of skull-caps of different degrees of warmth, of which he had always five or six in his hand, according to the degree of heat or cold registered by the instruments. This, I can assure you, was a mighty pleasant sight to behold, for there was not a conjuror in all his dominions more dexterous in handling his cups and balls than was this prince in shifting his caps.” If this was silly, it at least was in better taste than characterized the proceeding of the Princess of the Asturias, at381 Madrid, when Saint-Simon took ceremonious leave of her before he returned to France, in 1722. In full court, and to all his formal compliments and speeches, her Royal Highness only replied by a loud rattling noise in the trachea, which she repeated as he concluded each of his addresses to her. The poor Duke was stupefied, but the court was in fits of laughter, and hilariously admired the jest.
The great Condé furnishes us with another example of this class of fools. A village schoolmaster once came to him with an address. As the speaker bowed low, on commencing his speech, Condé, quick as thought, vaulted over his back. With equal rapidity, the orator turned and continued his speech, but Condé’s folly was uppermost, and laying a light hand upon the pedagogue’s shoulder, over he bounded again, lightly as an equestrian in a “daring act” of the harmless arena. The baffled speaker then gave up the attempt, and left the princely fool to the enjoyment of the recollection of his folly.
The father of the last Duke of Mantua, Charles III., was another of those illustrious personages who preferred being his own fool, and after a singular fashion too. He loved to go abroad in the dirtiest of disguises, and accompanied by an escort of equally ill clad bullies for his defence. It was his sport to assail all he met in the coarsest terms, and when some persons thus assaulted, more impatient than others, fell upon him in return, with tongue or cudgel, he would laugh till he was sore, and then his escort came to the rescue. On other occasions, he would enter the shops of vendors of very breakable materials, and taking up mirrors or drinking glass, or any other fragile matter that came to hand, he would let it fall to the ground, and find double provocation to laughter in the ruin he had committed and in the expressions of unrestrained abuse which were showered on him in consequence.
Something of madness must have lurked under this;382 but in the next buffoon we shall only see a development of natural disposition.
The dexterity of a quack doctor at a fair made of Peter the Great his own fool, when the humour took him to play the character. The Czar had seen the fellow, on a platform, skilfully pushing out teeth with the end of a ladle, or picking them out with the point of a dagger. Peter paid for instruction in the art, and forthwith began to practise it on his courtiers, whose teeth were never safe within their lips. It happened on one occasion that a Russian officer had exposed himself to the Czar’s wrath, by being absent from a post at which Peter had especially placed him. It was necessary that the offender should meet his enraged sovereign, and his friends gave him up for lost, when he entered the audience chamber. But the officer, as he crossed the threshold, pulled out his handkerchief, pressed it to his cheek, and advanced towards the Czar with a growl of agony. Peter, delighted at the prospect of a patient, pushed him into a chair; the officer opened wide his jaws, and the Czar tugged at his gums with a fury that made the sufferer roar as if he had been under the knout, but which was attended by the extraction of two useful and stupendous grinders. Peter looked at the teeth, and then at his patient, whose lips were still open with pain and discoloured by blood. The Imperial surgeon laughed and danced with delight; but looking in the face of the officer, his own darkened with rage, on recognizing the offender. The latter, shuddering at the look, sank back in his chair and opened his jaws wider, indicative of another offering from the same source. What could the amateur dentist do? He laughed louder, danced more wildly with ecstasy, pulled out another tooth, and dismissed the crafty but clever patient, with full pardon.
The Czarina Elizabeth, in a milder form it is true, suffered also under this malady of folly. This lady’s delight was, never to sign any document brought to her by her383 ministers, till she had worn them out by her refusals. When the Grand Chancellor Besterfchef laid before her a paper which required her name at the bottom of it in order to give it validity, she would toss the pen across the room, begin dancing round the minister, who turned upon his knees to meet her face and to implore her, with tears in his eyes, to cease from such folly. The Czarina only danced on, laughing the more immoderately as she observed the embarrassment and the tears of the Chancellor. The latter however seldom left her till he had made her ashamed of playing the fool, and of interrupting public business by refusing to scrawl her name to a state paper.
At a semi-barbarous court like that of Russia, the above traits are not very surprising. At that of Spain, which boasted so loudly of its solemn grandeur, dignity, and refinement, we find a more surprising instance, but quite different from that I have mentioned of the Princess of the Asturias.
The Spanish royal family of the last century affords us an instance of the Heir to the Throne not only being his own fool, but of his raising his friends to the dignity of folly, by conferring on them its insignia. Lord Ligonier, the husband of one of Alfieri’s worthless idols, was English Ambassador at the court of Madrid during a portion of the reign of Charles III., which lasted from 1759 to 1788. After Lord Ligonier’s introduction to the King, he was conducted to the apartments of the Heir to the Crown, the Prince of the Asturias. The latter was, subsequently, that Charles IV. who was his own Queen’s especial fool throughout the term of their married lives. As Lord Ligonier approached the Prince’s chamber, he saw issuing therefrom a number of grandees, each wearing, with proud gravity, a fantastic fool’s cap. On inquiring the meaning of such a pageant, he was informed that his Royal Highness possessed the fancy of distinguishing his most cherished friends as his “fools.”384 The Prince, too, was often pleased to confer this mark of his favour on celebrated foreigners. Lord Ligonier was alarmed.
“I represent,” he said, “a great sovereign; and am myself a foreigner not altogether unknown. I must add, that my gracious master would be seriously offended, if the Prince of the Asturias were to think proper to cover the representative of the King of England with this decoration. You had better go in, Sir,” said he to his introducer, “and say as much to his Royal Highness.”
The reluctant official undertook the mission; but he presently returned, with the intimation that the Prince could not give up an old-established custom. Upon which, Lord Ligonier turned on his heel, declaring that he would not visit a Prince who thus exposed an Ambassador to insult. The court officials were thrown into a state of amusing terror by this declaration; they maintained, that if the Ambassador retired, it would be a flagrant insult on the Prince. Ultimately, and after many messages and countermessages had passed between the Prince in his room, and the English Envoy in the antechamber, announcement was made that the Prince of the Asturias would not attempt to clap the fool’s-cap on the head of Lord Ligonier. His lordship consequently entered the apartment, but not without being more than usually vigilant against surprise. He found the sage Prince with his back to the hearth, and with his hands behind him. The Prince remained in that position, and invited the Ambassador to approach. The English lord obeyed; but as he advanced, he perceived that the Prince held a paper object, and the Ambassador stopped short to converse with his Royal Highness at a very respectful distance. At the conclusion of the interview, he had to bow low; but, as a sailor might say, his weather eye was open, and he............