The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (63 page)

He was a shrewd politician, a charming man who was loved by most of his subjects, much interested in horse racing, fishing, and naval matters, and even tolerant of rival religions. The “Merry Monarch” was, all in all, a good king.

SEX LIFE:
The Puritans chose to represent Charles as a sexual monster, but in the intervening years, especially in biographies written in our own time, another picture of the “Merry Monarch” emerges. The man did indeed enjoy sex enormously; he was good at it, well equipped for it, pursued it vigorously, and, as a handsome man and king, was never short of willing partners. He didn’t, however, cross the fine line between being very active and being compulsive. His standards were high; he did not bed every available woman.

And despite his energetic extramarital sex life, he was always attentive to Catherine, who quickly learned that forbearance and tact were the best means of exerting influence on her husband. Although they had no heir, it was not through lack of trying. They made love regularly, and Catherine was said to have suffered two miscarriages in her futile attempt to provide him with legitimate offspring.

Charles’ code of sexual ethics was summed up in his belief that God would never damn a man for “allowing himself a little pleasure” and that “to be wicked and to design mischief is the only thing that God hates.” He lived up to his code, allowing himself much more than a little pleasure and yet not causing intentional harm to any of his partners. Where other powerful men discarded their mistresses, Charles pensioned his off with an income and a title and did the same for their children.

He loved what might be called elaborate sexual games, little dramas incorporating more or less consciously arranged role-playing, with Charles himself as the central character. He loved to see women dressed as men, a taste which did not hint at all at homosexuality but sprang rather from the many “breeches parts” written into Restoration plays, roles intended to allow shapely young actresses to scamper about the stage in tight-fitting breeches rather than skirts.

Charles loved it on stage and in the boudoir.

As part of the game playing, he was in a position to indulge in the creation of complex sexual “menus.” Two mistresses at the same time, for example, in separate residences, one of whom was a highly sexual and sensual libertine, and the other a coy virgin playing with dolls and whetting the king’s appetite but refusing to satisfy it. Or an elegant lady and a saucy actress. Charles’ sex life seems to have been one in which, literally, there was never a dull moment.

When boredom did threaten, the king relied on Will Chiffinch, his trusted private messenger, to arrange for the secret nocturnal visits of nameless but highly attractive wenches.

As a young man of 15 he was introduced to sex by his former governess, Mrs. Wyndham, after which he indulged an early taste for older women.

Eventually his partners got younger and his sexuality more adventuresome, and then in his later years he tended to seek more settled relationships, usually one at a time in what might be called “serial monogamy.”

Although he didn’t consider himself handsome (he once exclaimed,

“Odd’s fish, I am an ugly fellow!” upon examining a quite realistic portrait), women found his tall, strong frame and dark sensual visage to be exciting. He loved his reputation as a sexual animal. The king was often called “Old Rowley,” after a famous stallion, well endowed and in great demand as a stud.

While passing through the halls of his palace one day, Charles heard a young woman singing a satirical ballad entitled “Old Rowley, the King.” He immediately knocked on the door of her apartment, and when she asked who was there he replied, “Old Rowley himself, madam.” According to the wit and poet John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: “Nor are his high Desires above his Strength; / His sceptre and his p—k are of a length, / And she that plays with one may sway the other….”

SEX PARTNERS:
Nell Gwyn’s rise to fortune was a storybook affair. Her father was an inveterate ne’er-do-well who breathed his last in debtors’ prison.

Her mother was an alcoholic, whose contribution to her daughter’s future was to get her a job as a barmaid in her bawdy house, and who eventually died brandy-besotted and ditch-drowned. Sweet, saucy Nell became one of the first English-speaking actresses in history (since before that only preadolescent boys had played women’s roles) and therefore one of the first to use her sprightly antics on the stage to catch the eye, and other more private parts, of a king. Her king was Charles II, although she called him her “Charles the Third” because she had already had two lovers named Charles before him. She provided the perfect mingling of sugar and sauce to the sensual banquet that Charles devoured. Witty, playful, coarse, flashing sweet and vulgar in turn, stimulating Charles with mock coyness and then satisfying him with her own very real sexuality, she was a perfect mistress to the king. Another of her charms was her perfect calves and thighs, which she bared on stage—and Charles was a leg man.

The common people loved Nell because she was one of them, a “girl of the London streets” made good. One afternoon as she rode along in the handsome carriage Charles had given her, she was suddenly the target of the jeers and curses of the unwashed rabble. Her carriage had been mistaken for that of Charles’ other mistress, the elegant, haughty, and strikingly beautiful Louise de Kéroualle, who, because she was French and Catholic, many suspected of being little better than a spy for King Louis. Nell poked her head out of the carriage window, smiled winningly, and cried out: “Pray good people, be civil!

I am the
Protestant
whore!” The people were delighted. It also pleased the king and the people that Nell did not care to enter into politics. As an anonymous poet of the period put it:

Hard by Pall Mall lives a wench call’d Nell;

King Charles the Second he kept her.

She hath got a trick to handle his prick

But never lays hands on his sceptre.

All matters of state from her soul she does hate,
And leave to the politic bitches.

The whore’s in the right, for ‘tis her delight,

To be scratching just where it itches.

Charles reveled in the contrast between the saucy Nell and the cultured Louise. He also enjoyed the contrast between two of his other playmates, the shy, demure, virginal Frances Stuart, who apparently never gave in to Charles although she was much pursued, and the rapacious, voluptuous Barbara Palmer (also known as Lady Castlemayne), of whom diarist Samuel Pepys wrote: “My Lady Castlemayne rules him, who hath all the tricks of Aretino [a 15th-and 16th-century pornographer] that are to be practised to give pleasure—in which he is too able, having a large—; but that which is the unhappiness is that, as the Italian proverb says, ‘A man with an erection is in no need of advice.”’ Pepys was more than a little jealous.

The unattainability of Lady Castlemayne’s opposite—the virginal Frances—was mirrored to some extent in his bittersweet relationship with his sister, Henrietta Anne. Fourteen years his junior, she was a frail, beautiful woman with an exceptionally kind and loving nature. Shortly before Charles’

coronation she married Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, a petty and spiteful man who was jealous of his wife’s natural charm and well known for his interest in members of his own sex. Forced to look elsewhere for understanding and affection, she turned to Charles and served as his intermediary, or “private channel,” to her brother-in-law, King Louis XIV. When Henrietta Anne died at age 26, the last words she whispered were, “I have loved him [Charles] better than life itself and now my only regret in dying is to be leaving him.” On learning of her death, Charles became ill with grief and suffered an unprecedented physical collapse.

The rest of Charles’ partners fall into two categories, those such as Moll Davis and Catherine Pegge whom he publicly acknowledged and by whom he had a dozen children, and the numerous passions of the moment by whom he fathered many unacknowledged children. As the Duke of Buckingham put it, a king is supposed to be the father of his people, and Charles certainly was father to a good many of them.

HIS THOUGHTS:
“I never interfere with the souls of women but only with their bodies when they are civil enough to accept my attentions.”

—R.W.S.

The Sexual Politician

CLEOPATRA (69–30 B.C)

HER FAME:
The last queen of Egypt,

Cleopatra has come to be identified with

decadence, cunning, and exotic beauty.

For 30 years she was a dominant figure in

Mediterranean affairs of state, using her

personal attractions to further her political ambitions.

HER PERSON:
Cleopatra was a Mace—

donian Greek descended from Ptolemy,

one of Alexander the Great’s generals,

who ruled Egypt upon Alexander’s

death. An intellectual by nature, she was

the first member of the royal family who

bothered to learn the Egyptian language,

and she reportedly was fluent in many

other tongues. She was educated in Hellenistic as well as Egyptian traditions, and was considered culturally superior to some of the greatest statesmen of Rome. With a long hooked nose and a large mouth, Cleopatra was not especially beautiful, but her body was slender and well proportioned and she was a master of the cosmetic arts. She was an enchantress by virtue of her mannerisms, movements, and moods, and it was said that the sweetness of her melodic voice resembled the sound of a lyre.

SEX LIFE:
Historians have recorded that Cleopatra staged weeks of nightly orgies, at which those in attendance engaged in various forms of debauchery.

The lascivious atmosphere of her court during her love affair with Roman leader Mark Antony showed how she played to his notorious taste for obscene jokes and sexually provocative conversation. For his entertainment she kept a performer of erotic dances at court. Cleopatra and Antony visited the pleasure resorts outside of Alexandria, and they formed a dining club, the Inimitables, where guests participated in lewd theatricals. One Roman guest played Glaucus the sea god, dancing and crawling on his knees, his naked body painted blue.

The orgies led to a rash of scandals about Cleopatra’s personal sex life. Rumors spread that she promiscuously indulged in fellatio; some Greeks called her Meri-ochane, which means “she who gapes wide for 10,000 men.” In one account she was supposed to have fellated 100 Roman noblemen in a single night. The idea that Cleopatra was a harlot was developed by her enemies, one of whom, King Herod of Judea, claimed that she attempted to seduce him. His assertion is probably false, because Cleopatra’s principal aim was to keep in the good graces of her lover, Antony, a formidable political ally.

SEX PARTNERS:
In accordance with the Egyptian custom of marriage between royal siblings, Cleopatra was married to two younger brothers: first to Ptolemy XIII in 51 B.C., when she was 18, and shortly after his death in 47 B.C. to the 12-year-old Ptolemy XIV. There was no physical consummation of these marriages, which were arranged only because a male co-ruler was necessary for her to be queen.

Although some sources maintain that Cleopatra began her sex life at the age of 12, it is entirely possible that she took her first lover nine years later, choosing the 52-year-old dictator of Rome, Julius Caesar. Fleeing her country amidst a power struggle with her brothers and sisters, the 21-year-old queen presented herself to Caesar at his palace in Alexandria, smuggled past guards in a carpet or a roll of bedding. She quickly captivated the notorious womanizer and their love affair began, thus ensuring her political position. Even though he was already married, an Egyptian marriage possibly took place between Caesar and Cleopatra, and he soon moved her and their son, Caesarion, to Rome, installing them in one of his homes. He publicly proclaimed her influence over him by placing a statue of her in a temple dedicated to Venus, thus arousing Rome’s anger by deifying a foreigner. Because Caesar had no legitimate son, the possibility of an Egyptian successor caused much resentment toward the queen, and she was often referred to as a whore in the bawdy songs sung by Caesar’s soldiers.

Upon Caesar’s murder by his political adversaries, Cleopatra returned to Egypt, where she learned of the emergence of a new Roman leader. Ruggedly handsome, with a muscular build, broad forehead, and aquiline nose, Mark Antony, like Caesar, had a weakness for the opposite sex. Determined to seduce him, Cleopatra sailed to Tarsus in an opulent barge with purple sails, silver oars, and a poop deck of gold. The music of lutes and flutes announced the arrival of the queen, who was dressed as Venus and surrounded by attendants dressed as cupids and the Graces. For several days she staged elaborate banquets and bestowed expensive gifts upon the somewhat unsophisticated soldier-statesman and his officers. By the time a power struggle with Caesar’s nephew, Octavian, forced Antony back to Rome, she had conceived twins by him. Several years later he left his new wife, Octavia—sister of Octavian—and returned to Cleopatra’s side. The rupture in his relations with Octavian led to two years of war, which culminated in Antony’s and Cleopatra’s defeat at Actium.