Let us note a circumstance.  Josiana had le tour.

This is easy to understand when we reflect that she was, although illegitimate, the queen’s sister—­that is to say, a princely personage.

To have le tour—­what does it mean?

Viscount St. John, otherwise Bolingbroke, wrote as follows to Thomas Lennard, Earl of Sussex:—­

“Two things mark the great—­in England, they have le tour; in France, le pour.”

When the King of France travelled, the courier of the court stopped at the halting-place in the evening, and assigned lodgings to his Majesty’s suite.

Amongst the gentlemen some had an immense privilege.  “They have le pour” says the Journal Historique for the year 1694, page 6; “which means that the courier who marks the billets puts ‘pour’ before their names—­as, ‘Pour M. le Prince de Soubise;’ instead of which, when he marks the lodging of one who is not royal, he does not put pour, but simply the name—­as, ‘Le Duc de Gesvres, le Duc de Mazarin.’” This pour on a door indicated a prince or a favourite.  A favourite is worse than a prince.  The king granted le pour, like a blue ribbon or a peerage.

Avoir le tour in England was less glorious but more real.  It was a sign of intimate communication with the sovereign.  Whoever might be, by birth or favour, in a position to receive direct communications from majesty, had in the wall of their bedchamber a shaft in which was adjusted a bell.  The bell sounded, the shaft opened, a royal missive appeared on a gold plate or on a cushion of velvet, and the shaft closed.  This was intimate and solemn, the mysterious in the familiar.  The shaft was used for no other purpose.  The sound of the bell announced a royal message.  No one saw who brought it.  It was of course merely the page of the king or the queen.  Leicester avait le tour under Elizabeth; Buckingham under James I. Josiana had it under Anne, though not much in favour.  Never was a privilege more envied.

This privilege entailed additional servility.  The recipient was more of a servant.  At court that which elevates, degrades. Avoir le tour was said in French; this circumstance of English etiquette having, probably, been borrowed from some old French folly.

Lady Josiana, a virgin peeress as Elizabeth had been a virgin queen, led—­sometimes in the City, and sometimes in the country, according to the season—­an almost princely life, and kept nearly a court, at which Lord David was courtier, with many others.

Not being married, Lord David and Lady Josiana could show themselves together in public without exciting ridicule, and they did so frequently.  They often went to plays and racecourses in the same carriage, and sat together in the same box.  They were chilled by the impending marriage, which was not only permitted to them, but imposed upon them; but they felt an attraction for each other’s society.  The privacy permitted to the engaged has a frontier easily passed.  From this they abstained; that which is easy is in bad taste.