II. FLASHPOINT...

Mary Villiers, A Character Profile
(Sources)

Unlike her extroverted father and younger brother, 'Mall' Villiers was a discreet presence in the Stuart inner ring. Her natural predilection to secrecy doubtless explains the relative scarcity of hard information about this splendid woman; indeed, a recent biographer of her brother, George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, overlooks Mary Villiers altogether. Yet, we can deduce from contemporary sources, three of her distinguishing traits: (i) utmost privacy in all personal affairs (she swore friends to strictest secrecy when she married Colonel Howard in a clandestine ceremony, e.g.); (ii) special talents, dating from childhood, in tricks, gags, intrigue, mimicry, and impersonation; and (iii) passionate loyalty to her two families: Villiers (her birth family) and the royal Stuarts (her adoptive family).

Touching her chief delight, a passion for all things clandestine and unusual, we begin with the origin of Mary's coterie name, "Butterfly." Most commentary on 'Mall' reconstructs the charming "Butterfly" story, which was first recorded by her glamorous French contemporary and friend of the English court, Marie Catherine le Jumelle de Berneville, the Baroness D'Aulnoy (or Dunois) in her Mémoires de la Cour d' Angleterre (The Hague, 1694; see Sources link, above). This juvenile incident from D'Aulnoy bears repeating here for what it reveals of 'Mall''s quick wit and delight in disguise, even as a young girl. Here is the story.

As the teen-age widow of her first husband, Charles Lord Herbert, the young Mary Lady Herbert was observed from a window in Whitehall by the future Charles II as she played in the royal fruit trees. Still attired in her fluttering widow's weeds, Mary was thought (at such a distance) to be a large exotic insect or rare bird; and Charles promptly ordered Endymion Porter, his father's Gentleman of the Bedchamber, to kill the creature and return with some of its feathers. As Porter approached the dark, moving object, he found only a frolicking Lady Mary. Hearing of his mission, she playfully directed Porter to conceal her in a large basket and deliver her "captured" to the palace. "Finding this creature, my Prince, in your garden, and it being so beautiful a butterfly," Porter reportedly explained, "I could not kill it, but have captured it live for your pleasure." When Charles opened the basket, Lady Mary jumped out, embraced the Prince, and was promptly given the pet name, "Butterfly." According to D'Aulnoy, 'Mall' was well known as "Butterfly" and "Papillon" in London and in Paris, where she often visited the King's beloved sister, "Minette," the Duchesse d' Orléans (D'Aulnoy 230ff).

It is not surprising that Sir Anthony Van Dyck, the King's "principalle Paynter in Ordinary," and a chief client of Mary Villiers's father, George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, found a favorite subject in Mary Villiers. His many portraits of her comprise something of a portrait historié of Lady Mary's long, dramatic life. Cleverly exploiting the power of portraiture to both construct and disseminate her own celebrity, Mary Villiers systematically recorded a series of stunning images of herself for her contemporaries and for history. More so than any other of her circle, Charles's imported Flemish master created the public persona of this Stuart duchess. But regardless of the immobile mask of the portraiture medium, he found ways to transmit aspects of her character. One of his earliest paintings of Lady Mary reveals something of her high spirits and love of display (Image 8). This engaging double portrait of the teen-aged Mary Villiers, with her young cousin, Charles Arran, later Duke of Hamilton, as Cupid, is most recently dated by Van Dyck specialists to "circa 1635," the year of her nuptials to Charles, Lord Herbert, her first husband (Wheelock 296). The North Carolina Museum of Art, whose collection includes a studio copy of this portrait (Image 8, above), dates the picture to "about 1636." But in view of two potential allusions in this portrait, it may have been painted just a bit later, circa 1637, to commemorate the happier (and more fertile) union of Mary Villiers and James, Duke of Richmond, the King's first cousin. We see that Mary is richly costumed in accoutrements befitting the ducal rank. Her sable-trimmed cape, for example, may allude to her new ducal rank at this time, fur or fur-trimmed garments traditionally associated with royals and nobles. Buckingham's black marble sarcophagus, e.g., includes a bronze-gilt effigy of his family, cast by Hubert Le Seur, in which he is figured in his full-length ducal ermine cape (Lockyer 458). Moreover, the portrait's decorative iconography includes an amusing clue to 'Mall' Villiers's "Butterfly" persona. In addition to the rich palette of color she personifies, her floral headpiece appears, upon magnification, to be secured by two gold butterfly-shaped fasteners. Such an articulate detail makes this portrait one of Van Dyck's most poetic renderings of, evidently, his favorite sitter. The overall surface texture, high color, and attitude of his subject carry a distinctive air of elevated class, befitting a Villiers, a Stuart, and famed daughter of Fortune. Few butterflies are more ostentatious than this newest of Stuart duchesses. It would seem that Mary Villiers delighted in her pet name, "Butterfly," and that she lived up to her cognomen with panache. As we shall see her youthful "butterfly" prank of the late 1630s evidently inspired her literary persona, her pseudonym, and the title-page device of her curious book project of 1679 (Spenser, "Muiopotmos; the Fate of the Butterfly").