CHAPTER X.
Anecdotes of Swift and Addison—Publication of the Examiner—Charge brought in the Examiner against the Duchess.
It augured ill for the Whig party when men of letters, who were not attached to any faction, took up their position, at this juncture, under the Tory banners. Amongst these, the most obnoxious was the Dean of St. Patrick’s, whose intimacy with the leaders of both parties rendered the choice which he meant to take still a problem. In one of his letters, he declared, that the best intelligence he got of public affairs was from the ladies; Mr. Addison, his friend, being nine times more secret to him than to anybody else, because he had the happiness of being thought his friend.
Addison was right: for Swift’s friendship, at this period more especially, conferred no crediton any public man. Like that changeable reptile, the chameleon, he appeared of one colour in the morning, of another in the afternoon. Disappointed in the preceding year by Lord Halifax, who had written to him that he and Addison had entered into a confederacy never to “give over the pursuit, nor to cease reminding those who could serve him,” till his worth was placed in that light in which it ought to shine, Swift was now seriously undertaking to devote his great powers to that cause which prospered best, retaining still the friendship of Addison, and enjoying a free admittance into the houses of Halifax and Somers.
It was in January, 1710, that the first invitation of Bolingbroke to Swift to dine with him, had foreboded no good to the party whose weakened fortresses such generals in literature were to attack. Swift’s answer, with his wonted assumed independence and freedom, that “if the Queen gave his lordship a dukedom and the garter honours, and the Treasury just at the end of them, he would regard him no more than he would a groat,”—meant no more than that he intended to accept the invitation, and all the good things that might follow this token of favour.
It was in this year that a series of attacks on the former ministry was concerted between Bolingbroke,Swift, Atterbury, and Prior, in defence of the Tory party. They were published weekly, but were of short continuance, under the name of the “Examiner.” The essays contained nothing but political matter, very circumstantially and forcibly placed before the reader, and carried on with a subdued, but bitter irony, perhaps better calculated to influence the public mind than those bursts of indignant eloquence which startle the passions, and do not always convince the understanding.
Addison, writing to Swift at this period, declares, after expressing his wish again to eat a dish of beans and bacon in the best company in the world, (meaning his friend,) that he is forced to give himself airs of a punctual correspondence with Swift at St. James’s coffee-house, to those friends of Swift who have a mind to pay their court to the then Irish secretary:[180]yet Swift at that very time had satirised Lord Wharton, Addison’s patron, in terms so outrageous as to meet with the reprobation of the learned and moderate Dr. King, Archbishop of Dublin.
Such a paper as the “Examiner” had been, in the opinion of Swift, long required, to enlighten the public mind, and to disabuse the ignorant of those errors into which they had fallen respectingthe late ministry; and, accordingly, one of its most elaborate papers is occupied in discussing the charge of ingratitude, made against the Queen and her advisers, for dismissing the Duke of Marlborough from his employments.
After a long enumeration of the benefits which had been conferred on the Duke, and stating, in a manner unparalleled for ingenuity and eloquence, the unexampled rewards and privileges he had received, he follows the attack upon the Duke by another, still more insidious, on the Duchess.[181]
“A lady of my acquaintance appropriated twenty-six pounds a year out of her allowance for certain uses which the lady received, or was to pay to the lady or her order, as was called for. But after eight years, it appeared upon the strictest calculation that the woman had paid but four pounds a year, and sunk two-and-twenty pounds for her own pocket; ’tis but supposing twenty-six pounds instead of twenty-six thousand, and by that you may judge what the pretensions of modern merit are, where it happens to be its own paymaster.”
From this hateful insinuation the Duchess amply cleared herself, in her Justification. Doubtless Swift was indebted to the female politicians who gave him such good information, for the darkhints which he threw out in so ungallant, so dastardly a manner, couched in terms to which it would be difficult to reply. Years afterwards, when most of the actors of those days except herself were in the grave, resting alike from political turmoils, and from the disturbances of their own passions, the Duchess met the accusations brought against her, and justified her character.[182]Her arguments, succinctly detailed in her Vindication, include the following observations.
At the time of her first disagreements with the Queen, she endeavoured, as she asserts, through a friend, to remove those impressions against her which Anne had imbibed. She wrote long accounts of the malice of her enemies, and stated her own grounds of justification. On one point only did the Queen vouchsafe an observation. “When,” says the Duchess, “I had set forth the faithfulness and frugality with which I had served her in my offices, and had complained of the attempts made by the agents of her new friends to vilify me all over the nation, as one who had cheated my mistress of vast sums of money, her Majesty, on this occasion, was pleased to say, ‘Everybody knowscheating is not the Duchess of Marlborough’s crime.’”
After seven-and-twenty years’ service, the Queen, when the question as to her offences wasurged by the Duchess, alleged none but that of inveteracy against “poor Masham;” “yet,” says the Duchess, “the ready invention of others, who knew nothing of my conduct, but whose interest it was to decry me, could presently find in it abundant matter of accusation.”[183]
These gross calumnies, eagerly devoured by the credulity of party rage, determined the object of such unwarrantable censures, to write and publish something in her own justification, and produced a memorial, which for various reasons did not at that time see the light, but which the Duchess eventually wove into the form of that animated narrative, her “Conduct.”
Her performance of her trust as mistress of the robes was attacked in libels, and charges of exorbitance and of peculation assailed her on all sides.
Her explanation of the circumstances under which she exercised her office, completely exonerates her from these grave accusations. But, through her clear and business-like vindication, few readers of our day will care to follow her. Interspersed with inuendoes against Harley, who “hired his creatures to misrepresent her as no better than a pickpocket,” and interwoven with letters, and with compared accounts, between the expenses of Queen Mary and those of Queen Anne, the Duchess’s defence, on these heads, will readilybe taken for granted. It appears that in 1712 she drew up a statement, which, for certain reasons, was not published. Horace Walpole, looking at the close only of her Vindication, as critics are wont to do, might well call it the “Chronicle of a Wardrobe, rather than of a reign.” Yet against such enemies as the Duchess encountered, it was essential to preserve, and to insist upon, those accounts of mourning and other expenses, of new clothes and old clothes, sums given for the decorous attire of the maids of honour after the Prince of Denmark’s death, coronation accounts, and other matters, which the calumniated Duchess was obliged to produce, to justify her integrity.
The following passage is curious, as showing the accurate and close manner in which the Duchess dealt, and the strict manner in which she insisted upon all points of expense being referred to herself.[184]
It was the custom, according to her account, for the tradesmen who were employed by the royal family, to pay immense sums to the masters of the robes for that privilege, and to reimburse themselves by putting extravagant prices upon their goods. This dishonest practice, disgraceful to the royal household, was first broken through by the Duchess, who exacted no such perquisitesfrom the tradesmen; neither would she suffer them to charge exorbitantly, as had been their custom. In discharging their accounts she was equally exact. Every bill was paid when the goods were delivered. A certain Mrs. Thomas, a confidential agent of the Duchess, was the person to whom the office of payment was given; and she was remunerated “by old clothes and other little advantages,” to the amount of between two and three hundred a year; but never allowed to take money from tradespeople.
The Duchess next expatiates upon her management of the privy purse, the yearly allowance for which was twenty thousand pounds,[185]“not,” as she declares, “half the sum allowed in King William’s time, and indeed very little, considering how great a charge there was fixed upon it by custom—the Queen’s bounties, play money, healing money,[186]besides the many pensions paid out of it. The allowance was augmented to twenty-six thousand pounds before I left the office. But in those two years Mrs. Masham was become the great dispenser of the Queen’s money, I only bringing to her Majesty the sums that were called for.”
But the responsibility of these places, which was so ungraciously requited by the public,was soon finally closed. On the return of the Duke of Marlborough from the Hague, in December, he perceived that all confidence in the Whig ministry was at an end: the Queen herself telling him that he was not, as usual, to receive the thanks of the two Houses of Parliament, but that she expected he would live well with her ministers. At first the Duke, still anxious to carry on the war, resolved to be patient, and to retain his command; but finding that the Duchess had again, by express command of the Queen, been forbidden to come to court, he resolved, perhaps too late for his own dignity and that of his wife, to carry to her Majesty the surrender of all her employments. It was readily accepted. The Duchess of Somerset was made groom of the stole, and had charge of the robes; and Mrs. Masham was appointed keeper of the privy purse.
The Duchess may now be considered to have retired for a season wholly from political life; and, indeed, the bright but harassing course which she had passed was never resumed.
It would be curious to inquire into the actual nature of her feelings upon this occasion. Her employments were, as we have seen, reluctantly, and not without urgent reason, resigned. The love of money has been assigned as a cause of this tardy compliance with the evident, thoughnot expressed, wishes of the Queen. But whilst it is impossible wholly to defend both the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough from this charge, much may also be accorded to the hope, which the Duchess retained to the last, of regaining the affections of her alienated sovereign. Reproached by the Whigs as the cause of their dismissal, prompted by Godolphin, and perceiving that the fame of her husband, or at least the final accomplishment of his too extensive projects, depended on the party being kept together, there is every reason to excuse, on other grounds, the late surrender of what she had so long maintained. The promise that her employments should be bestowed on her daughters, was now wholly neglected; for the Queen’s partiality had become little less than personal hatred, and it was not long before the affections of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough were assailed in their tenderest point.
From Somers, who blamed her as the cause of the misfortunes of his party, the Duchess received but little condolence on the loss of all her honours.[187]In Sunderland, whom she lately censured, in language the most vituperative, as the imprudent source of much mischief to the Duke her husband, she now beheld a warm and fearless advocate of the Duke, and of her own cause. Godolphin, himself deserted by those of his partywho had not courage to let their fortunes sink with his, was still faithful and kind, and if he reproved, condemned her not.
Godolphin was now, by the new parliament, accused of having occasioned the national debt, and of misapplying the public money. He defended himself with the eloquence of truth. At last, driven from every charge, the adverse party, headed by the Earl of Rochester, accused him of embezzling twelve thousand pounds paid by the Duke of Queensbury into the exchequer. Godolphin, wishing to expose the malignant temper of his adversaries, made excuses, as one who had forgotten, but who would call to mind what he had done with the sum. Many of the members inveighed against him with bitterness at this excuse. “The old man,” says Cunningham, “made a show of falling into a fit of the epilepsy, and of being quite dejected: at last, when he had sufficiently tried and discovered the temper of the House, and how they stood affected towards him, behold her Majesty’s warrant and sign manual, which he produced for the twelve thousand pounds in question.” On the sight of this his adversaries were silenced.
In the ensuing year, 1711, the Duke of Marlborough was dismissed from all his employments; and with this event the Duchess’s account of her conduct closes. The influence of the French,the existence of strong prepossession in favour of the Pretender among most of the ministers, with the exception of Harley, and the necessity of sacrificing to the desire of a peace the general who had always opposed that measure, were the inducements, in the opinion of the Duchess, to this act on the part of the Queen. It was executed with as little feeling as could well be imagined. Historians have compared this act of ingratitude to the conduct of Justinian to Belisarius. The dismissal was written by the Queen herself, and in reply she received from Marlborough a calm, respectful, dignified, but fruitless remonstrance.[188]
At the close of her “Vindication,” the Duchess makes the following observation to the nobleman to whom that work was addressed.[189]“Thus, my lord, I have given you a short history of my favour with my royal mistress, from its earliest rise to its irrecoverable fall. You have seen with admiration how sincere and how great an affection a Queen was capable of having for a servant who never flattered her. And I doubt not but your friendship made some conclusions to my advantage, when you observed for how many years I was able to hold my place in her regard, notwithstanding her most real andinvariable passion for that phantom which she called the church—that darling phantom which the Tories were for ever presenting to her imagination, and employing as a will in the wisp to bewilder her mind, and entice her (as she at last unhappily experienced) to the destruction of her quiet and glory. But I believe you have thought that the most extraordinary thing in the whole fortune of my favour, was its being at last destroyed by a cause, in appearance so unequal to the effect,—I mean Mrs. Abigail Hill. For I will venture to affirm, that whatever may have been laid to my charge of ill behaviour to my mistress, in the latter years of my service, is all reducible to this one crime—my inveteracy to Mrs. Masham. I have, indeed, said that my constant combating the Queen’s inclination to the Tories, did in the end prove the ruin of my credit with her; and this is true, inasmuch as without that her Majesty could never have been engaged to any insinuations against me.”
The Duchess of Marlborough was now at liberty to follow the bent of her own inclinations, and to fix her residence where she pleased. She gave up her apartments in St. James’s Palace, immediately after the surrender of her offices of state, but she retained that of Ranger of the great and little parks of Windsor, one of thegrants from her sovereign that she valued most. The Lodge of the great park was, as the Duchess remarks, a very agreeable residence, and Anne had remembered, in the days of their friendship, that the Duchess, in riding by it, had often wished for such a place. The little Lodge, which was only a fit abode for the under-keepers, was given by the Duchess to one of her brothers-in-law, who laid out some five or six thousand pounds upon it; whilst her grace spent a scarcely less sum on the great lodge. The office, by virtue of which the Duchess claimed this residence, was afterwards the source of endless contentions, and of epistolary controversies, which, if they served no other purpose, exhibited the powers of mind which the Duchess possessed, in the clearest manner.[190]
For some time after her retirement from court, the Duchess, however, lived at Holywell House, St. Albans: she maintained as much magnificence as any subject ever displayed, both when she resided in the country, and also when she made Marlborough House, in London, her abode.[191]
That the Duke’s popularity was still considerable among the lower classes, was apparent from the reception which he met with upon his lastreturn from Holland, on which occasion a crowd met and attended him from the city, and he had some difficulty in avoiding the acclamations which were uttered.[192]Yet it was at this time that he was greeted by that scurrilous pamphlet entitled, “Reasons why a certain general had not the thanks of either of the two Houses of Parliament, &c.”
We may now presume, the storm being over, although its fury had not been weathered, that since their political career was for a time closed, the Duke and Duchess might return to private life, contented to pass together the remaining portion of their married life. The frequent separations, which war had rendered necessary, had been a perpetual source of regret to the good Duke, whose heart was framed for domestic life. In all his letters, he expresses that longing for home, that desire for an uninterrupted union with one whom he idolized, which hitherto had been precluded, both by the great general’s arduous duties, and by the necessary attendance at court, imposed on the Duchess by her offices, even during the short intervals when Marlborough was permitted to relax from his toils.
That yearning for the fulfilment of his dearest hopes—hopes cruelly deferred—was, at length,gratified. Marlborough, the slave of his country, the instrument and the controller at once of states and allied armies,—Marlborough, at length, was free,—at length he was permitted, even constrained, to return to the ordeal of private life; for to all men who have played a conspicuous part on the great theatre of the busy world, a domestic sphere must prove an ordeal which few, so situated, sustain with credit.
Since the first years of their early marriage, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough had scarcely passed a year of uninterrupted conjugal enjoyment. The youth and beauty of the Duchess had been the ornament of the court, in the absence of her husband, and had been the source of his pride, augmenting his anxiety to return home to one who was pre-eminently formed to fascinate the imagination. They were now reunited; but the Duchess was no longer the youthful beauty whose very errors charmed, and whose slightest word of kindness enraptured the doating heart of her fond husband. She was a disappointed woman: morose, captious, and, though not penurious, yet to an excess fond of wealth. The cares of a numerous family had proved temptations, not incentives to virtue and exertion. Her children loved her not; and her later days were passed in family differences, which wring thetender heart, and bow down the feeble spirit; but which aroused all the ardour of a fiery and unrelenting temper, such as that which the once lovely Duchess, now “old Sarah,” displayed.[193]
She was one of those persons whom misfortunes chasten not. It is related of her, that even during the Duke’s last illness, the Duchess, incensed against Dr. Mead, for some advice which she did not approve,sworeat him bitterly, and following him down stairs, wanted to pull off his periwig.[194]Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of Winchester, was present at this scene.
The violence of her temper is incontestibly proved; her affection for the Duke has been doubted. But, however she may have tried the deep-felt, and, even to the last, ardent attachment of the incomparable Marlborough, there is every reason to conclude that she honoured, she even loved, the husband whom she often grieved in the waywardness of her high spirit. No man can retain a sincere, a strong attachment for a wife who loves him not. Conjugal affection, to endure, must be reciprocal. There must be a fund of confidence, that, in spite of temper, in defiance of seeming caprice, assures a real kindness beneaththose briery properties. Marlborough knew that he was beloved.
To the domestic hearth he brought, on the other hand, qualities such as few men engaged in public life could retain; such as few men in those days, in any sphere, could boast. Since his marriage, a holy and high-minded fidelity to the object of his only pure love, to his wife, had marked invariably his deportment. He brought home, therefore, a mind undebased, virtuous habits, conscious rectitude; and confidence in his wife, and self-respect, were ensured.[195]
In his love for his children, as a son, as a brother, as a master, Marlborough was equally amiable. “He was, in his private life, remarkable for an easiness of behaviour, which gave an inimitable propriety to every thing he did and said; a calmness of temper no accident could move;[196]a temperance in all things which neither a court life nor court favours could corrupt; a great tenderness for his family, a most sincere attachment to his friends, and a strong sense of religion, withoutany tincture of bigotry.”[197]Such is the epitome of his private character. He was, also, endowed with that rare quality in man, patience; his campaigns, and all their attendant hardships, had taught him not to expect, like most of his sex and class, that every event in domestic life should contribute to his individual comfort. An anecdote told by Mr. Richardson, the painter, exemplifies this rare and super-excellent quality.
Riding one day with Mr. Commissary Marriot, the Duke was overtaken by a shower of rain. The Commissary called for and obtained his cloak from his servant, who was on horseback behind him. The Duke also asked for his cloak; his servant not bringing it, the Duke called for it again, when the man, who was puzzling about the straps, answered him in a surly tone, “You must stay, if it rains cats and dogs, till I get at it.” The Duke only turned to Marriot, saying, “I would not be of that fellow’s temper for the world.”
The Duke possessed another attribute, peculiarly essential to the tranquillity of private life;—freedom from suspicion. It was his superiority to little jealousies which rendered him the rival, without being the enemy, of those great men withwhom he was associated;—the friend as well as coadjutor of Eugene, the beloved of generals and potentates, as well as of soldiers. The same quality pervaded his calm mind in his domestic sphere. With the strongest affections, he was the husband of a beautiful and gifted woman, yet, devoid of misgivings respecting the lofty and sincere character of her whom, being constrained to leave, he quitted without a fear, to encounter all the adulation of courts: a perfect reliance on her prudence, her conduct, on all but the control of her temper, marks his letters to the Duchess.
The same feature of mind is conspicuous in the friendships of Marlborough. Though the scandalous world imputed to the intimacy of his wife with his dearest friend, Godolphin, motives which it is easy to attach to any friendship between persons of different sex, the confidence which Marlborough reposed in that friend, in absence, under circumstances the most trying, was never shaken. He knew the principles of action which actuated his wife; principles far more adequate to keep a woman pure, and a man faithful, even than the strongest attachment. Integrity of purpose is the only immutable bond.
For his generous and happy confidence, Marlborough was well repaid. His friendship for Godolphin, the only stay of his public career,and his affection for his wife, ended only with existence.
We must recur to the question, what were the feelings, the pursuits, the enjoyments of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough in private life? In order adequately to discuss this subject, it is necessary to draw a sketch of the state of the country, and of parties, after the retirement of the Duke and Duchess; and to show how, unhappily, the leisure of these, their latter days, was disturbed by cabals, and by schemes of ambition with which they would have done wisely to have dispensed; and which darkened those years which might otherwise have been devoted to objects of higher and more enduring interest.
Dr. King, Archbishop of Dublin, writing to Swift, in alluding to the various factions which had prevailed in England, remarks, “I believe I have seen forty changes; nor would I advise my friend to sell himself to any (government) so as to be their slave.”[198]
This advice was not very likely to be acceptable to the individual, nor to the age in which the good prelate wrote. Swift, as it is apparent in those letters which he addressed to the unhappy and infatuated Stella—letters sufficiently disgusting to have cured any woman of an ill-placedattachment—betrays with an unblushing coarseness, characteristic of the times, his readiness to prostitute his talents to which party soever would be the least likely, as they had found him “Jonathan,” “to leave him Jonathan.”[199]
The Whig party in literature, boasted, in 1710, when faction was at its height, the names of Addison, Steele, Burnet, Congreve, Rowe, and others. The Tory side, those of Bolingbroke, Atterbury, Swift, and Prior. But when Swift, after a vigilant study of the political atmosphere, declared himself ready to take the whole burden of periodical warfare on his shoulders, Addison meekly retired from the contest, leaving his friends to be assaulted and laid low by this irresistible champion.
A series of attacks upon all the members of government was now carried on with vigour for some years; but Swift, the intimate associate of the Masham family, directed his inuendoes, and the force of his irony, chiefly against the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, both in prose and verse. Those well-known stanzas, beginning
“A widow kept a favourite cat,At first a gentle creature;But when he was grown sleek and fat,With many a mouse and many a rat,He soon disclosed his nature,”
“A widow kept a favourite cat,At first a gentle creature;But when he was grown sleek and fat,With many a mouse and many a rat,He soon disclosed his nature,”
“A widow kept a favourite cat,At first a gentle creature;But when he was grown sleek and fat,With many a mouse and many a rat,He soon disclosed his nature,”
“A widow kept a favourite cat,
At first a gentle creature;
But when he was grown sleek and fat,
With many a mouse and many a rat,
He soon disclosed his nature,”
are attributed alike to the Dean and to Prior. The virulent observations on eminent persons, in Swift’s “Four Last Years of the Reign of Anne,” excited even the indignation of Bolingbroke.
These attacks extended, of course, to the Duchess; but after her complete retirement from a public career, and when the total cessation of all intercourse between her and Queen Anne annihilated the former favourites, such animadversions on her, in particular, became of rare occurrence.
The retirement of St. Albans was, indeed, more than once invaded by the scurrilous sneers of those who, perhaps, envied the calm but not neglected retreat of the injured Marlborough. Contented, as he was wont to say, with his share of life and fame, he had, at this time, doubtless made up his mind to bid adieu for ever to politics; but his adversaries gave even to his amusements some peculiar meaning; and various comments in the newspapers of the day were intended at once to point out the party of friends with whom he held frequent commune, and to introduce a reflection side-ways, on the imputed narrowness of the Duke’s conduct.[200]
The visit of Prince Eugene, in 1712, brokeupon this privacy. Eugene became acquainted with the dismissal of Marlborough, when on his passage, at the Nore, receiving at the same time a caution from Mr. Drummond, a spy of Bolingbroke’s, who was despatched by government to receive him, “that the less he saw of the Duke of Marlborough the better,”—a caution which the fine spirited Prince sedulously and openly disregarded. The well-known and happy allusion which he made to Marlborough’s disgrace showed the good-breeding and amiable feeling which subsisted between these mighty men, and was conceived in better taste than most compliments. When Harley, entertaining Eugene, declared that he looked upon that day as the happiest of his life, since he had the honour to see the greatest general of the age in his house, Eugene wittily replied, “that if it were so, he was obliged to his lordship for it;”—alluding to Harley’s dismissal of Marlborough from his command of the army.
Stung by his country’s ingratitude, and threatened even with a prosecution, which for the credit of England was stopped, Marlborough was driven on one occasion, and one occasion only, to abandon his usually cool and dignified forbearance. When the Earl of Poulett, in a debate in the House of Lords, referred to him, under thedescription of a “certain general, who led his troops to the slaughter to cause a great number of officers to be knocked on the head, in a battle, or against stone walls, in order that he might dispose of their commissions,” the patience of the Duke could endure no longer. He challenged the Earl, and a duel was only prevented by the interposition of the Secretary of State, and by the express command of the Queen.[201]
The death of Lord Godolphin, an event which took place under the Duke’s own roof, at St. Alban’s, on the 15th of September, 1712, determined Marlborough to quit England, and to reside abroad until better times should return. The Duchess fully concurred in this scheme; which became the more and more necessary to their mutual peace, since not even could she and the Duke enjoy and return the ordinary courtesies of society, without incurring observation and provoking suspicion. Marlborough was furnished with a passport, it is said, by the instrumentality of his early favourite, and secret friend, Bolingbroke; and in October the Duke sailed from Dover for Ostend.
His request to see the Queen, and to take leave, was refused, and they never met again. But her Majesty is declared to have expressed her hopesthat the Duke would be well received in foreign parts, and some say that Lord Treasurer Harley, not Bolingbroke, granted the passport, in opposition to the general opinion of the ministry, who dreaded Marlborough’s influence at the court of Hanover.
In February, 1713, the Duchess, having remained to settle her husband’s and her own affairs, followed his grace, and joined him at Maestricht, whence they went to Aix-la-Chapelle. It was during her residence abroad that the Duchess employed her leisure hours in writing that portion of her vindication, which she addressed to Mr. Hutchinson.[202]
Thus was the Duke of Marlborough, then sixty-two years of age, and the Duchess in her fifty-second year, driven from their country by the machinations of a party too strong for them to resist without the especial favour of the Queen. Anne is said coolly to have remarked to the Duchess of Hamilton, “The Duke of Marlborough has done wisely to go abroad.”[203]But no expressions of regret are recorded of her Majesty’s, upon the occasion of two old and long esteemed friends having thus quitted her dominions.
Notwithstanding that the passport permittedthe Duke, with a limited suite, to go into foreign parts, wherever he might think fit, and recommended him to the good offices of all “kings, princes, and republics,” he had some reason to apprehend a plot for seizing his person, at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he lived incognito.[204]
As if misfortune had set its mark upon him, the death of Godolphin was followed by that of his faithful friend, and the affectionate correspondent of the Duchess, Arthur Maynwaring, whose death was caused by a cold caught in walking late in the gardens of St. Albans, with the Duchess.
The sentiments of the Duke upon the subject of his wife’s consent to quit, for the first time, when no longer in the prime of life, her native country—a sacrifice in those unsettled days,—are expressed in a letter written before the Duchess joined him at Aix-la-Chapelle, with a warmth of gratitude truly touching.
At Frankfort the Duke and Duchess resided for some time, and there they heard, in security, but in dismay, of events which affected the interests of the country they had left behind. The peace of Maestricht, the details of which “our enemies will tell with pleasure,” as Bishop Fleetwood observed, was a source of the deepest mortification to Marlborough, who thus beheld thelabours of his life, the blood of thousands, and the resources of his country, utterly thrown away.
The secession of England from the grand alliance, and the renewed intercourse between her court and that of France, first clandestinely, and afterwards openly, must have added sharp stings to the private vexations of Marlborough.
Yet the people of England, indignant at the suspected project of altering the succession, marked their sense of the attempt by heaping insults upon the Duc d’Aumont, the French ambassador. They assembled for days before the gates of Ormond-house, where he resided; they uttered acclamations whenever they saw him of “No Papist! no Pretender!” and put up a bunch of grapes at his door, in derision of his alleged sale of French wines and other goods, free of duty, for his own and his master’s profit.[205]
The return of several noted Jacobites who had been outlawed, their insolence in the elections, and the publication of popular tracts in favour of the Pretender’s title, all contributed to this party clamour.
In the midst of these discontents, the increasing maladies of the Queen were the subject of universal alarm, both to Whigs and Tories,—the former dreading lest her death should againengage the country in a civil war; the latter trembling for that power of which her life was the sole stay.
The latter days of the once apathetic Anne were overshadowed by the gloom of mental uneasiness, and of corporeal suffering. Her frame was racked by the gout, her mind by the contending counsels of interested advisers, and by the dread of being governed by those to whom she gave the fair-sounding name of friends. She was harassed with repeated applications to strengthen the Act of Settlement by naming her successor. Her former professions of zeal for the Protestant religion, and the heartfelt conviction that her brother ought, by right of inheritance, to succeed her, created a struggle in her weak but conscientious mind. “Every new application to the Queen concerning her successor was,” says an eminent historian, “a knell to her heart, confirming, by the voice of a nation, those fearful apprehensions which arose from a sense of her increasing infirmities;” whilst the motion of the Earl of Wharton, that a premium should be offered for apprehending the Pretender, whetherdeadoralive, excited an indignation in the unhappy Queen, which caused, in her reply, a departure from that official dignity to which she was so much attached.[206]
The Duchess of Somerset had first succeeded the Duchess of Marlborough in the Queen’s regard and confidence. This lady appears to have been much more worthy of the trust, either than her predecessor, or the intriguing Lady Masham, who succeeded her. A Whig at heart, the Duchess of Somerset acted, secretly, as a counterpoise to the too violent tendencies of the ministry from which her husband was dismissed. She probably tended to preserve Anne from an avowed predilection, that secret desire, which lay at the Queen’s heart—the succession of her brother; and she had the great merit of preventing Swift from being made a bishop.[207]But even the Duchess exercised not that ascendency over the mind of Anne which had been attained by her earliest companion, the Duchess of Marlborough. The Queen, like many persons who have been disappointed in the objects of their regard, became suspicious, and extremely tenacious of her free-will. She even took pleasure in refusing those who were dearest to her, favours which they required, lest she should be suspected of again being governed. She became slow and cautious in conferring obligations; differing from her former practice, when she had been wont to thrust benefits upon the Duke andDuchess of Marlborough, and to command them to receive, “and make no more words about it.”[208]The attention, and, as it was probably with justice called, obsequious service of the Duchess of Somerset, soothed the pride which had been irritated by previous neglect. Mrs. Masham often offended her Majesty by what the Queen called too much party spirit; but eventually her influence prevailed.
The consideration which the Duchess of Somerset acquired was of slower growth than that obtained by her artful rival. The Duchess of Marlborough, indeed, attributed to a desire of acquiring the Queen’s favour, a little incident, of which she gives the following lively account, in her letter to Mr. Hutchinson. The narrative shows upon what a slender fabric royal approbation is founded.
“There was one thing more that happened about this time, in which the Duchess of Somerset was particularly concerned, and which was turned to a very malicious story against me. The case was this. At the christening of the child of Mr. Merydith’s, in which the Duchess of Somerset was to stand godmother with me, I was pressed very much to give the name, which it was properly her place to do, and upon thataccount I refused it, till at last, to end the dispute, it was agreed by all that the child was to have the Queen’s name. After this had been settled, I turned to the Duchess of Somerset, and said to her in a smiling way, that “the Duke of Hamilton had made a boy a girl, and christened it Anne, and why should not we make this girl a boy, and call it George?” This was then understood to be meant no otherwise than a jest upon the Duke of Hamilton, as it plainly was, and the Duchess of Somerset laughed at it, as the Queen herself, I dare say, would have done, if she had happened to be present. But this, as I had it afterwards from very good hands, was represented to the Queen in as different and false a way as possible, who was told that I said, ‘Don’t let the name of the child be Anne, for there was never one good of that name.’ I leave you to judge who was the most likely to give this story this ridiculous turn; and who was to find their account in it.
“When some such stories as those had made a great noise in the world, and all my friends were much offended at the baseness of this way of proceeding against me, in order to make a greater breach betwixt the Queen and me, I remember particularly Mrs. Darcay, falling upon that subject, I suppose accidentally, would needspersuade me to try and set all things right again with the Queen, by clearing up some of the false stories which had been made of me to her, of disrespectful things I was said to have spoke of her, several of which she repeated to me, and said she was sure the Queen had been told of them. These were some of them nothing else but what are properly called Grub-street stories; and therefore, as it was with some reluctancy that she had brought me to talk so much upon this subject, so I had still less inclination to engage in the defence of myself about these matters.”[209]
The poor Queen was not long destined to enjoy her partialities in peace. When the preference which Harley had received from the Queen declined, or rather when he had offended Lady Masham, that mercenary favourite could then discover and disclose to others, that the “Dragon,” as Harley was called in derision by her and her familiar associates, had been the most “ungrateful man” to the Queen, and “to his best friends, that ever was born,” and had been “teasing and vexing the Queen without intermission for the last three weeks.”[210]The same lady draws a mournful picture of the annoyances, importunities, and almost unkind usage, with which thepoor Queen was assailed, by those whose party spirit she had fostered by her own vacillations.
The Tories beheld with dismay the undoubted decline of the Queen, and hailed each transient improvement in her health with undue elation. In the latter years of her life, political tergiversation became so common as scarcely to excite surprise. “Lord Nottingham,” says Swift, “a famous Tory and speechmaker, is gone over to the Whig side; they toast him daily, and Lord Wharton says, it is Dismal (so they call him from his looks) will save England at last.”[211]
“The least disorder that the Queen has,” says Swift, writing, in 1714, to Lord Peterborough, “puts us all in alarm; and when it is over, we act as if she were immortal.”[212]Harassed by political rivalships, each combatant, “the Dragon,” and Mercurialis, (Bolingbroke,) being resolved, as it was said, to die hard, the Queen and the Duchess of Somerset were supposed to entertain the notion of there being no “Monsieur le Premier,” but that all power should reside in the one, and profit in the other.
“Never,” wrote Dr. Arbuthnot to Dean Swift, “was sleep more welcome to a weary traveller than death to the Queen. It was frequently herlot, whilst worn with bodily suffering, to be an agitated and helpless witness of the bitter altercations of the Lord Treasurer Harley and of her Secretary for Foreign Affairs. It was her office, good-naturedly to check the sneers of the former, and to soothe the indignant spirit of Bolingbroke. In their mutual altercations ‘they addressed to each other such language as only cabinet ministers could use with impunity.’[213]Yet the Dragon held fast with a dead grip the little machine, or in other words, ‘clung to the Treasurer’s staff.’”[214]
To the disgrace both of Harley and Bolingbroke, if anything could disgrace politicians so venal, they each had recourse, in their extremity, to men of totally opposite principles to those which they had long professed. Harley addressed himself to Lord Cowper, and to the Duke of Shrewsbury, whose popularity with those who favoured the house of Hanover was greatly increased by his late conduct in Ireland. But neither of these influential personages would link themselves to the equivocal measures and falling fortunes of Harley.
Bolingbroke formed a scheme which proved equally unavailing, to rescue him from impending ruin. His superior influence with LadyMasham, and his correspondence with the Pretender, had secured him, as he believed, the favour of the Queen: yet he courted the Whig party, and resolved to avail himself again of that support which had been his earliest stay—the friendship and co-operation of the Duke of Marlborough.
The Duke had been expected, several times during the last year of Queen Anne’s reign, to arrive in England. At one time it was said that St. James’s, at another that Marlborough-house, was in preparation for his reception.
As affairs drew on towards the crisis, both Whigs and Tories solicited Marlborough to add his influence to their wasting strength. The Duke had been accused of having entered into an amicable and political correspondence with both parties; but from this charge he has been ably and effectually vindicated.[215]Throughout the political conflicts which had agitated the court of England since he had left her shores, Marlborough had maintained a steady correspondence with his friends, but had expressed a firm refusal to deviate from those principles which had occasioned his exile, or to approve of the peace of Utretcht, or to abandon his desire for the Hanoverian succession. Acting as a mediator between the Electoral Prince and the party wellaffected to him in England, he distrusted the sincerity of Harley’s pretended exertions, and resolutely decided that he would hold no intercourse with a minister of whose hollowness he had already received many proofs. Nor was the Duchess less determined never to pardon the injuries which she conceived herself and her husband to have received from Harley. All offers of his aid, all attempts to lend to him the influence which Marlborough’s military and personal character still commanded, were absolutely rejected.
At the court of Hanover, the Duke and Duchess saw, as it were, reflected, the cabals of their native country.
The year 1714, marked by other signal events, witnessed the death of the Electress Sophia, at a moment when the Elector was hesitating whether to accept an invitation from the Hanoverian party in England, to repair to that country, and to take his seat in the House of Lords as Duke of Cambridge, the writ to which title he had recently received. The Electress died in May; her sudden decease having been hastened, it was supposed, by her anxiety that Prince George should make the important journey to which he had been solicited. The earnest hope of this accomplished and ambitious Princesshad been, to have “Sophia, Queen of England,” engraved on her tomb; and she missed this object of her desires only by a space of two months.
The last hours of Queen Anne’s weary existence were now drawing to an end. As she had begun her life in a political tempest, so was it to close. Sharp contentions between Lady Masham and Harley permitted little of peace, and no chance of recovery, to the easy and broken-spirited Queen. Lady Masham had now bid open defiance to Harley, nor could the mediation of the Duke of Shrewsbury, from whom much was expected, effect a truce of amity in the distracted cabinet.
What the intentions of the dying Queen actually were, with respect to a new ministry, cannot now be determined. It is not improbable but that, had she lived, Bolingbroke would have succeeded Harley. The dismissal of Harley took place on the twenty-seventh of July, three days only before the Queen’s death. Her Majesty explained to the lords of the privy council her reasons for requiring him to resign the staff; namely, his want of truth, his want of punctuality, “the bad manners, indecency, and disrespect,” with which he treated her.[216]A cabinet council was held on the evening of the twenty-seventhof July, to consult as to what persons were to be put into commission for the management of the Treasury. Five commissioners were named; but it is remarkable that several of those so specified declined taking office in times so perilous, and of a nature so precarious. The consultations upon this matter lasted until two o’clock in the morning, and were accompanied by contention so bitter and violent, that the Queen, retiring, declared to one of her attendants “she should not survive it.”[217]
This conviction of her approaching end seemed to be prophetic. On Thursday, the twenty-ninth of July, the cabinet council were to have met again, but the Queen had then sunk into a state of stupor, which was relieved by cupping, an operation which she preferred to the common mode of bleeding. Her physician, Dr. Shadwell, declared that recent agitation had driven the gout to her head. Her case was now considered almost hopeless, and the council was deferred; yet her Majesty appearing to be relieved by the operation which she had undergone, hopes were again kindled. On the ensuing evening she rested well, rose with an impetus of vigour sometimes given to the departing spirit, and, after undergoing some duties of the toilet, looked earnestlyupon a clock which stood in the room. One of the bedchamber women, observing that her gaze was fixed, asked her Majesty “what she saw in the clock more than usual?” The Queen answered her not, but turning her head towards her, the affrighted attendant saw death written on her countenance. She was again bled, and again she revived.
Meantime the privy council assembled at the Cockpit were apprized, through the Duchess of Ormond, of her Majesty’s condition. The memorable scene which ensued has been often told. The ministers immediately adjourned to Kensington, and the physicians being consulted, and having declared that their sovereign was still sensible, she was recommended by the unanimous voice of the council to appoint the Duke of Shrewsbury Lord Treasurer. Anne, expiring, could summon strength to approve this choice, and to place the Treasurer’s staff in the hands of the Duke, begging him to use it for the good of her people. After this effort she sank unmolested into her last slumber.
The heralds-at-arms, and a troop of the life guards, were in readiness to mount twenty-four hours before the Queen’s death, to proclaim the Elector of Brunswick King of England; so great was the apprehension of thePretender. After this, even, and when despatches had been sent to the Elector of Brunswick, the Queen’s pulse became stronger, she began to take nourishment, and many around her entertained hopes. “But this,” says her historian, “was but the flash of a dying light.” The Bishop of London in vain stood by, ready to administer the eucharist, which she never revived sufficiently to receive. She died without signing the draught of her will, in which bequests were made to her servants. By this informality, Lady Masham, Dr. Arbuthnot her physician, and others, were deprived of legacies.
Thus, though long expiring, Anne’s last offices of religion were incomplete, her wishes unfulfilled.[218]Her subjects, expectant of her death, were, for the most part, frightened to the last lest she should recover. She had erred in rendering herself the head of a faction, rather than the impartial ruler of a free people. Yet such was her peculiar position on coming to the throne; so important a barrier did she constitute against the dreaded restoration of her brother and his line; so unoffending was her personal deportment, so sincere her love for the church, and, according to the extent of her capacity, so excellent were her intentions, that Anne reigned inthe hearts of the people. Her faults as a governor were viewed with a forbearing and extenuating spirit. Her errors were attributed to her advisers. Her simplicity of character, her ignorance of the world, and her credulity, the consequence of these two negative qualities, were well understood. She was easily intimidated by the notion, diligently infused into her mind, that she should one day experience from the Whigs the same sort of conduct as had cost her grandfather, Charles the First, his crown and life.[219]Her capacity was slow in receiving, and equally slow in parting with impressions. She had a great diffidence in any person placed in an office of responsibility, an unfortunate one of her own judgment, which rendered her too yielding to the persuasions of those whom she called her friends. The bitter pen of the Duchess of Marlborough, which attributes to her character unbounded selfishness, must not be too readily credited. Her early surrender of her superior right to William, her attention and affection to her consort, her very faults as a monarch, prove her to have been remarkably devoid of that quality, when we consider her isolated position in society. That Anne was not blessed, nor cursed, as it may prove, with that sensitiveness which belongs to higher minds,and which can only by such be turned to the best of purposes, does not detract from her amiable and domestic qualities, but rather heightens the value of that principle which could render her an affectionate wife, patient and unwearied in the hours of sickness; a generous friend, whose partiality caused her to overstep the landmarks of etiquette, and to disregard the boundaries of rank; a beneficent patron of the poor clergy; an excellent, because a just, orderly, and economical mistress. It has been justly said, that her conduct to her father was the only stain upon her domestic virtues; and she appears to have atoned for it by a continual penitence. She died childless, attended on her deathbed only by interested dependents,[220]and followed to her grave by manywho had earnestly desired her death. Her decease was followed by the return of early friends from whom she had been long separated, and who awaited that event before they could cease to be exiles.