Olive, the Regent's
mistress, was 'the great wheel of the machine,' in which Fanny 'had
her corner,' at Saint Germains. 'Your female teazers,' James calls
them in a letter to Bolingbroke. Not a word is said of a love affair.
How the Fifteen ended we all know. Ill-managed by Mar, perhaps
betrayed by Bolingbroke, the rising collapsed. Returning to France,
James dismissed Bolingbroke and retired to Avignon, thence to Urbino,
and last to Rome. In 1719 he describes 'Mrs. Oglethorpe's letters' as
politically valueless, and full of self-justifications, and 'old
stories.' He answers them only through his secretary; but in 1722 he
consoled poor Anne by making her a Countess of Ireland. Anne's bolt
was shot, she had had her day, but the day of her fair sisters was
dawning. Mr. John Law, of Lauriston _soi-disant_, had made England too
hot to hold him. His great genius for financial combinations was at
this time employed by him in gleek, trick-track, quadrille, whist,
loo, ombre, and other pastimes of mingled luck and skill. In
consequence of a quarrel about a lady, Mr. Law fought and slew Beau
Wilson, that mysterious person, who, from being a poverty-stricken
younger son, hanging loose on town, became in a day, no man knows how,
the richest and most splendid of blades.
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