CHAPTER XVIII.
Old age and decline of the Duchess—Her incessant wrangling with Sir Robert Walpole—Her occupations—The compilation of her Memoirs.
It is now necessary to touch upon the closing scene of the Duchess’s long and eventful life. Let it not be supposed that it passed in a calm retirement from the turmoils of the world, or in the agitating though small sphere of domestic faction. She was a politician to the last; but the gales which had in early life driven her along, now blew from a different direction. She despised and reviled the Whig administration of Sir Robert Walpole, with as much inveteracy as she had formerly manifested towards Lord Rochester and Lord Oxford. She considered the mode of managing public affairs to be disgraceful to her country.[383]She professed to deem it a sacred dutyto use every exertion to defeat the measures of the minister, Walpole; and perhaps that profligate minister had, in the three kingdoms, no enemy more potent, as far as the influence of property was concerned, and certainly not one more determined, than Sarah Duchess of Marlborough.
It was in vain that the minister attempted to conciliate her by proffered honours. Few of the favours which he had to confer came up to her ideas of what her family and her influence merited. Sir Robert had revived the order of the Bath, a measure described by his son as an “artful bank of thirty-six ribbons to supply a fund of favours in lieu of places.” “He meant too,” adds the lively historian, “to stave off the demands for garters, and intended that the red should be a step for the blue, and accordingly took one of the former himself.” He offered the new order to the Duchess for her grandson, the Duke, and for the Duke of Bedford, who had married one of her granddaughters. The answer he received was a haughty intimation that her grandson should take nothing but the garter. “Madam,” answered Sir Robert, “they who take the Bath will sooner have the Garter.” He proved the sincerity of this assurance, by taking thegarter himself in the year following, with the Duke of Richmond, who, like himself, had been previously installed knight of the Bath.[384]
On the accession of George the Second, the hated ascendency of Walpole, greatly to the wrath of the Duchess, gained fresh strength. The King doubtless preferred another man, but the Queen’s influence was all-powerful; she had long desired Sir Robert, whose stability in power was, in this instance, based upon his knowledge of mankind, and who proffered to her Majesty that respectful devotion which the rest of the world assigned to the mistress, not to the wife of George the Second. The Queen repaid this proof of discernment by a preference which ceased only with the existence of the minister. Before the real choice of the King had become public, and when it was still supposed that Sir Spencer Compton was to be premier, the King and Queen received the nobility at their temporary abode at Leicester-house. Lady Walpole, as her son relates, could not make her way between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor approach nearer to the Queen than the third or fourth row. But no sooner did the gracious Caroline perceive her, than she exclaimed, “There,I am sure, I see a friend.” The crowd fell back, and, “as I came away,” said her ladyship, “I might have walked over their heads.”[385]
This predilection would, independent of her injuries, be sufficient to account for the Duchess’s aversion to the very Princess whom, some years before, she had extolled as a model of excellence. The Queen, it might have been thought, would have possessed a hold over her good opinion, from the very nature of her education, which she received from the careful and judicious hands of the electress Sophia, the “nursing mother” of the Hanoverian interests. But nothing could mitigate the aversion and contempt of the Duchess towards the new school of Whiggism, which, to her penetrating view, but little resembled the disinterested spirit of Godolphin, or the unflinching adherence of her son-in-law Sunderland to what he termed patriotism. That word had now gone quite out of fashion, and it consisted with Sir Robert Walpole’s notions of perfect good-breeding, upon which it was his weakness to pique himself, to laugh generally at those high-minded sentiments which the Duchess, to her credit, ever professed, and the absence of which, however often they might be violated in thefrailty of human nature, could not be compensated by the “pompous pleasantry”[386]with which Walpole satirised all that is good and great.
The Duchess has left on record the workings of her powerful mind. With an intellect unenfeebled by age, whilst she described herself, in 1737, as a perfect cripple, who had very little enjoyment of life, and could not hold out long, she gave ample proof that her reasoning faculties were unimpaired, her discernment as acute as it had ever been; and that wonderful power, the result of both qualities, of seeing into the events of futurity as far as the concerns of this world are involved, had in her arrived at a degree of perfection which can scarcely be too much admired.
It was her practice to write down her impressions and recollections of the various circumstances in which she had been engaged, and to entrust them to such friends as were likely to be interested in those details. Many of these productions she put into the hands of Bishop Burnet. Her character of Queen Anne; her able account of Sacheverell, written with impartiality and clearness; her character of Lord Halifax, of the Duke of Shrewsbury, Lord Somers, Lord Cowper, Swift and Prior, and others, have been preservedamong her papers, and were composed expressly for her friends.[387]It was during the Duchess’s residence abroad that she is supposed by Dr. Coxe to have written her long letter in vindication of her general conduct to Mr. Hutchinson; from which unpublished document many facts in this work have been taken. But in 1788, a little book, called “Opinions of the Duchess of Marlborough,” collected from her private papers, was printed, but not published, with a preface, and notes by an anonymous editor, known to be Sir John Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Hailes. These memoranda, for they scarcely deserve a more imposing name, were commenced in the year 1736, and terminated in 1741. They are undoubtedly genuine, and are written with a spirit and fearlessness which plainly speak their source.[388]The learned antiquary and eminent historian who collected and honoured them with a preface, was not an admirer of the high-spirited lady, upon whose political conduct he has commented unsparingly in his memorials of Great Britain. Yet he could scarcely have done more to place the Duchess on a footing with the many other female writers who have added to the stores of British literature, than in preserving, as theshadow of his name must preserve, these specimens of the occupations of her solitary hours.
The aversion of the Duchess to Sir Robert Walpole appears to have been the ruling passion of her mind. “I think,” she writes, “’tis thought wrong to wish anybody dead, but I hope ’tis none to wish he may be hanged, for having brought to ruin so great a country as this.” Yet she declares herself still partial to the Whig principles, observing, nevertheless, that both parties were much in fault; and the majority in both factions she calls by no milder term than “knaves,” ready to join with each party for the sake of individual benefit, or for the purpose of carrying any particular measure.[389]
Like many other old persons, the Duchess viewed the world through the medium of a dark veil, which years and disappointments had interposed before her intellectual perceptions. The world was no longer the same world that it had been. Honour, patriotism, loyalty, had fled the country, and she, “though an ignorant old woman,” as she called herself, could anticipate that national degradation begins with laxity of principle. She upheld stoutly the purity of former times, of that “well-intentioned ministry,” of which Swift had successfully sapped the foundations. Deceivedby everybody, as she averred, and not able to depend upon a thing which she heard, she yet perceived that, as long as Walpole continued in power, the general demoralisation was progressing; and that he would continue in power until the Queen died, she was equally and mournfully certain.
The Duchess was not a character to sit still and complain, and her efforts to resist what she justly deemed the influence of a corrupt administration were earnest and laudable. She resolved, as she said, for the good of her country, that wherever she had an ascendency, the partisans of the hated minister should meet, in the elections, with a spirited resistance. It was in her power to procure the return or the rejection of any members that she pleased, in Woodstock and in St. Albans. On one occasion she managed to defeat an objectionable candidate, in a manner truly ingenious and characteristic. A certain Irish peer having put up at St. Albans, daring to brave her dislike to him and to his party, she took the following method to vanquish him. His lordship had formerly written and printed, at his own expense, a play. He had also offered it to the managers of one of the theatres, by whom it had been rejected. It was, however, circulated, but treated with so much contumacy by thecritics, that the peer bought it up; and some curiosity being excited upon the subject, the copies that remained dispersed became extremely valuable, and were sold for a guinea a piece. Expensive as they were, the Duchess resolved to collect all she could, even at that price. She was even at the expense of having a second edition printed, and hundreds of them given to the freemen of St. Albans, and people hired to cry them up and down the town whilst the election was going on. The result was, that the unfortunate nobleman lost his election, through the ridicule that was thus skilfully pointed at him with his own weapons.[390]
The Duchess at first hailed with delight the rising talents of Lord Carteret, whose disinterested and aspiring mind excited her lively admiration. Upon the motion of censure upon Sir Robert Walpole, made by Mr. Sandys, her hopes of the country revived, yet she dreaded lest the influence of the minister behind the throne might continue, after a “golden bridge” had been made for him to pass over to his unhonoured retirement. She lived to see Sir Robert Walpole driven to the very threshold of the Tower, and to learn that he had been compelled to the expedient, almost unparalleled in effrontery, ofoffering through the Bishop of Oxford a bribe to the Prince of Wales of fifty thousand pounds, to detach him from the party by whom he had been espoused. The indignant refusal of the Prince to accept of any conditions while Sir Robert Walpole remained at the head of affairs, completed the downfal of the despised, but still indefatigable minister. The Duchess had the mortification of seeing him, in spite of contempt, protected by the sovereign, and honoured by a peerage; and still more, of learning that he had succeeded by bribes and insinuations to corrupt and divide his foes, and to frustrate the scheme of his impeachment, the only proof of public honour that had been signalised for many years.[391]
Lord Carteret, her favourite, who had spoken against Walpole, in her grace’s opinion, as well as man could, who had exerted against the minister the powers of what was, in the estimation of an incomparable judge,[392]the ablest head in England, was, with Mr. Sandys, the first to embrace the offers of a court, and to accept employments and honours, upon the condition that Walpole should remain unpunished. This the Duchess, in her own manner, foretold. She who knew courtiers and statesmen well, “was confidentthat there was nothing Sir Robert Walpole so much desired as to secure himself by a treaty of quitting with safety;” and “that there were some so desirous to have the power, that they would give him a golden bridge to go over; and that there would be a scheme to settle a ministry from which she could not believe that England would receive any good.” Events proved the justness of this prediction.
It was not until two years before her death that the Duchess ventured to give to the world what she considered as a complete vindication of herself. When the work, entitled “An Account of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, from her first coming to Court in the year 1710,” was published, she was eighty-two years of age. Her conviction must have been that she could not live long; to life she had, according to her own statement, become indifferent, but she still cherished a desire for justification in the eyes of posterity. The charges alleged against her were avarice, insolence, and ingratitude to her royal mistress. Doubtful of her own powers of executing a complete and connected work, the Duchess selected as the nominal historian of her life, Nathaniel Hooke, best known as the compiler of a Roman history, and long the companion, and in some respects a dependent, of thegreat and learned. Hooke had been a sufferer in the South Sea bubble, after which epidemic infatuation he described himself, in a letter to the Earl of Oxford, as in some measure happy to find himself at that time “just worth nothing;” that being considered, at the period in question, as an escape compared with the heavy burden of debts. The cause of the Duchess’s preference to Hooke is not discoverable, since he was a Quietist and a Mystic, and had evinced the sincerity of his religious opinions by taking a Catholic priest to Pope on his deathbed, to the great annoyance of Bolingbroke.[393]The Duchess did not object to Hooke on that account, and gave him the large sum of five thousand pounds, on condition that he would aid her in her work. She would not, however, allow him to make use of all her letters, and they were, according to the historian’s statement, sadly garbled at her grace’s desire.[394]In the course of their mutual task, however, certain conversations arose, in which the Duchess perceived, or fancied she perceived, an intention on the part of Hooke to beguile her into popery. The result was a violent quarrel; but whether before or after the completion of the work does not appear.Hooke, in extenuation of the quarrel, stated, on his own part, that finding her grace without religion, he had attempted to infuse into her mind his own opinions.
Whether this account be true or not, it is acknowledged that by the united efforts of the Duchess and the historian in her pay, a work was produced of singular power and interest. A reference to the passages from this curious narrative, quoted in this work, will prove the truth of the foregoing observation. The distinctness of the statements, the nervous simplicity of the language, and the fearlessness of the sentiments of the work, convey to the mind a conviction of the sincerity and conscious rectitude of the writer. No traces of mental decay are evident; but it is not difficult to perceive in the abrupt termination of some passages, the curtailing hand of some cautious critic, according to Horace Walpole, that of the historian.
No sooner did the “Account” appear, than it was attacked by various anonymous writers. The Duchess had compiled her work in the form of a letter, and a similar framework was adopted in the construction of several of the answers to her Vindication. It is remarkable that she addressed her justification to Lord Cholmondeley, the third Earl of thatname, the son-in-law of Sir Robert Walpole. The public eagerly perused the publication, yet it is said not to have made any considerable impression in favour of the Duchess at the time in which it appeared.
The “Vindication of her Conduct,” as it is entitled, was not, however, the only work that the Duchess compiled in her own defence. Several of her manuscript narratives are now for the first time made serviceable in compiling this work. But there appears, from a passage in one of her letters to Mr. Scrope, to have been another book, which she showed only to a few confidential friends, and, among the number, to Mr. Scrope.
“I am going,” she writes to him, “to make you a more unreasonable request than I ever have yet done, or I hope ever shall, which is, that you will give me one hour of your time to read the enclosed book, some time when you happen to have so much leisure, and send it me back when you have done with it; for though it is printed, I would not by accident have it made public. When I printed a letter to vindicate my own conduct, when I had the honour of serving Queen Anne, I thought it necessary to say something upon the subject of the enclosed book; but after it was done I thought it was better to show it to a few of my particular friends, because they wereso near relations that would be exposed by it, for all the facts are as well proved as what I think is possible you may have read in the accounts given of my honest endeavours to serve her Majesty Queen Anne; and as to all that relates to accounts, from your own office, you must know the relation is true.”
To this communication Mr. Scrope replies, after, in his answer, referring to other matters, “I herewith return to your grace the book you were pleased to send me, which I read with an aching heart.”[395]
Happily for her grace’s fame, she was vindicated by one man of ability, Henry Fielding, whilst her traducers, except in one instance, were devoid of talents sufficient to bear down the testimony of her plain facts, or to weaken the effect of her shrewd arguments.[396]The Duchess was unfortunate in provoking the malignant wit of Horace Walpole, whose satire, couched in terms of playful gossip, like nauseous medicines in sweet syrup, has been spread far and wide in his universally popular works. Horace Walpole isan instance, that to be what Dr. Johnson calls a “good hater,” it is not necessary to cherish the brooding enmities of a misanthropic retirement, in which the angry and vindictive passions are supposed to be fostered with propitious care. The only proof of attachment which he evinced to his family was his bitterness towards their foes, a bitterness indulged with all the rancour of a worldly man, who knows not the virtue of forbearance. His estimate of the Duchess’s character is well known. He allows her not one good quality, and seems to experience a gratification such as fiends might betray, when, in a tone of exultation, he announces her death.
The dislike which the Duchess manifested for Sir Robert Walpole was attributed by his son to a base spirit of revenge. Among the few favourites whom she possessed among her relations, was Lady Diana Spencer, afterwards Duchess of Bedford. It became, according to Horace Walpole, a scheme of the Duchess of Marlborough to marry this young lady to Frederic Prince of Wales. She offered her to his royal highness with a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds. He accepted the proposal, and a day was fixed for the nuptials, which were to be solemnized secretly at the Lodge in the Great Park at Windsor; but Sir Robert Walpole gained intelligenceof the plot, and “the secret was buried in silence.”[397]
In the gloom of the sick chamber, to which by the infirmities of old age she was frequently confined, the unbroken spirit of the Duchess showed itself still. “Old Marlborough is dying,” writes Horace Walpole to his friend Sir Horace Mann; “but who can tell? Last year she had lain a great while ill, without speaking; her physicians said she must be blistered, or she would die; she called out, ‘I won’t be blistered, and I won’t die.’ If she takes the same resolution now, I don’t believe she will.”[398]
This passage forms a melancholy sequel to hints of infirmities, and reflections on approaching death, contained in the Duchess’s Opinions. As on this subject the least reserved of our species are seldom disposed to converse, since the stranger knoweth not the heart, and “intermeddleth not” with its joys or sorrows, we may receive, as her genuine sentiments, the plaintive reflections of the feeble and declining Duchess, couched in such terms as these.
“It is impossible,” she writes in 1737, “that one of my age and infirmities can live long; and one great happiness there is in death, that oneshall never hear more of anything they do in this world.”
In another passage, she expresses herself so weary of life, that “she cared not how soon the stroke was given, and wished only that it might be given with as little pain as possible.”
Her grace’s amusements became yearly more and more circumscribed. In former years she had occupied her shrewd and masculine mind with purchases of land, which she bought in the firm belief, or at least with the excuse of belief to her own mind, that a “sponge” might do away with all the funded property, and that land would “hold longest.” It appears from her will that she was incessantly making additions to the immense landed property in which she possessed a life interest, and even went to the city herself, when nearly eighty years of age, to bid for Lord Yarmouth’s estate. Her quarrels with Sir Robert Walpole began, as we have seen, upon the subject of “trust-money,” and they seem to have hinged upon that same matter even so late as the year 1737.[399]
As the darkened day drew to its close, the poor Duchess was fain to be contented to amuse herself by writing in bed, in which shackled position much of her “Vindication” was penned byher.[400]She frequently spoke six hours a day, in giving directions to Hooke. Then she had recourse to a chamber-organ, the eight tunes of which she was obliged to think much better than going to an Italian opera, or an assembly.[401]Society seems to have afforded her little pleasure. Like most disappointed and discontented persons, she became attached to animals, especially to her three dogs, who had those virtues in which human beings, in her estimation, were so greatly deficient. Satiated with the world, the Duchess found, in the numerous visitants to Marlborough-house, few that were capable of friendship. Hers was not a mind to cull sweetness from the flowers which spring up amid the thorns of our destiny. She knew no enjoyment, she declared, equal to that accompanying a strong partiality to a certain individual, with the power of seeing the beloved object frequently; but she now found the generality of the world too disagreeable to feel any partiality strong enough to endear life to the decrepit being that she describes herself to have become.
The Duchess, during the latter years of her life, changed her residence frequently. Sometimes she remained at Marlborough-house, butexchanged that central situation for the quiet of Windsor-lodge or of Wimbledon. Yet at Windsor-lodge she was tantalised with a view of gardens and parks which she could not enjoy; and Wimbledon, she discovered, after having laid out a vast sum of money on it, was damp, clayey, and, consequently, unhealthy.[402]Wrapped up in flannels, and carried about like a child, or wheeled up and down her rooms in a chair, the wealthy Duchess must, nevertheless, have experienced how little there was, in her vast possessions, that could atone for the infirmities of human nature.
A very few months before her death she requested an extension of the lease of Marlborough-house, the term of which had been extended in the reign of George the First. This residence had been built at the entire expense of the Duke of Marlborough, who had likewise paid Sir Richard Beelings two thousand pounds for what the Duchess calls a pretended claim which he had upon the land; so that she considered that she had as just a claim “to an extension as any tenant of the crown could have;” yet she deemed it prudent to make the application to government whilst Mr. Pelham was at the head of the Treasury, “he being the only person in that station who would oblige her, or to whom shewould be obliged;” adding to this remark, that Mr. Pelham “had been very civil to her, and was the only person in employment who had been so for many years.” The letter in which this petition was contained was written in June 1744, and the Duchess died in October. Such was the clearness of her faculties, and so strongly were her desires still fixed upon all the privileges which she thought she merited.
Had she been blessed with an exalting and practical faith, such a faith as elevates the heart, and chastens those angry passions and wilful discontents which embitter the dark valley of old age far more even than bodily suffering, the Duchess, looking around her upon those whom she had the power to bless, might have been happy. But, without by any means imputing to her that scepticism with which it was the fashion of the day to charge her, it must be allowed that there is no reason to suppose that the Duchess’s path in life was illumined by those rays which guide the humble and practical Christian through the changes and chances of the world. Her views were all bounded to the scene before her: a spoiled child, the victim of prosperity, as well as its favourite, she received the bounties of Providence as if they had been her due, whilst she aggravatedits dispensations of pain by a murmuring spirit.[403]
In the midst of her unenjoyed wealth, some acts of charity employed her later days. Such persons as had fallen into decay, were never, if they bore good characters, repulsed by her.[404]Imposition of any kind she detected instantly, and exposed it in her own eccentric and fearless manner. Having, on one occasion, sent a costly suit of clothes to be made by a certain fashionable dressmaker, Mrs. Buda, the Duchess, on the dress being completed, missed some yards of the expensive material which she had sent. She discovered and punished the fraud in the following manner. Mrs. Buda had a diamond ring which she valued greatly, and wore frequently when attending the Duchess’s orders. The Duchess pretended to be pleased with this ring, and begged a loan of it as a pattern. Having kept it some days, she sent it to Mrs. Buda’s forewoman, with a message importing that it was to be shown to her, as a token between her grace and Mrs. Buda that a certain piece of cloth should be returned instead. The woman, knowing the ring, sent the Duchess the remnant ofcloth which had been fraudulently kept by Mrs. Buda; upon which the Duchess sent for Mrs. Buda, and putting the ring into her hand, said, that since she had now recovered the cloth which had been stolen from her, Mrs. Buda should regain the ring which the Duchess had kept.[405]
As she grew older, the firm grasp with which she had ever endeavoured to hold her temporal possessions became more tenacious. She seems to have tired out the Treasury with frequent complaints respecting disputed points which concerned her office of Ranger of Windsor Park, and to have been wonderfully grateful to the powers that had the ascendant for civility to which for years she had been unaccustomed. “You have drawn this trouble upon yourself,” she writes to Mr. Scrope, secretary to Mr. Pelham, “by a goodness I have not found in any body these many years.”[406]And with corresponding humility she begs him to excuse the length of her letter, for, having none of her servants in the way, she found herself obliged to make use of a female secretary, who was not very correct;“but the hand,” adds the poor old Duchess, “is plain enough to be read easily; the worst of it is, that it looks so frightfully long, that a man of business will turn it before he reads it.”[407]Such was the subdued tone in which the Duchess, a year before her death, addressed the official whom in former days she would have commanded.
The vigour and clearness of intellect which had ever distinguished the Duchess, were spared to her until the last. Even in her letters to Mr. Scrope, written mostly in 1743, there is an exactness, distinctness, and force not often to be met with in female correspondence at an earlier age. Her letters on business, and she seems to have passed her days in writing them, are peculiarly clever; sufficiently explicit, but without a word too much. Throughout the Duchess’s letters there is, notwithstanding the asperity of her general remarks, no appearance of discourtesy. In her correspondence with Mr. Scrope, she begins as if addressing a stranger, but, on perceiving that he to whom she wrote entered kindly into her concerns, she becomes gracious, then friendly, and, lastly, even confidential.
To her other concerns was added the charge ofWindsor Park, and all the affairs contingent on that office, which the Duchess rendered, when she had nothing else to employ her, a source of irritation, and of occupation.
Queen Caroline, as we have seen, upon the refusal of the Duchess to sell some part of her property at Wimbledon to her Majesty, threatened to take away the annuity of six hundred pounds a year, coupled with the office of Ranger. The threat, to the disgrace of that eulogised Princess, was put into execution; and during Mr. Pelham’s administration, and very shortly before her death, the Duchess applied, through Mr. Scrope, for the restitution of her salary. “Though,” she says, “I have a right to the allowance, I have no remedy, since the crown will pay, or not pay, as they please.” Her arguments for her claims are written with admirable clearness, but couched in terms of earnestness at which one cannot but smile, when we reflect that the writer, now upwards of eighty, who displayed such solicitude for the restitution of the sum of six hundred pounds yearly, not to talk of arrears, which she seems to think were hopeless, was in the receipt of an annual income of at least forty thousand pounds. But it was her right; and the pleasure, perhaps, of triumphing over the injustice ofQueen Caroline, then in her grave, moved her to exertion on this subject.
“I have a right,” says this pattern of exactness, “by my grant, to five hundred pounds a year for making hay, (in Windsor Park,) buying it when the year is bad, paying all tradesmen’s bills, keeping horses to carry the hay about to several lodges, and paying five keepers’ wages at fifteen pounds a year each, and some gate-keepers, mole-catchers, and other expenses that I cannot think of. But as kings’ parks are not to be kept as low as private people’s, because they call themselves kings’ servants, I really believe that I am out of pocket upon this account, besides the disadvantage of paying ready money every year for what is done, and have only long arrears to solicit for it.”[408]
A more satisfactory and genial occupation, one would suppose, than wrangling for rights and sums of money which would soon be useless to her, might have occupied many of the Duchess’s declining days. In the month of September, previous to her death, she describes herself as having entered into a “new business,” which entertained her extremely; tying up great bundles of papers to assist very able historians to write a Life ofthe Duke of Marlborough, which would occupy two folios, with the Appendix.
The arrangement of these papers seems to have afforded the Duchess considerable pleasure. Her feelings were rendered callous by age, and she could now peruse with a poignant regret the correspondence of her husband and of Godolphin. The Lord Treasurer, occupied and harassed as he always was, took no copies of his letters, but desired his friend to keep them, so that they had been carefully preserved, and amounted to two or three hundred in number.
Such materials, together with the minute accounts of all continental affairs, would form, the Duchess felt assured, “the most charming history that had ever yet been writ in any country; and I would rather,” she adds, in a spirit with which all must sympathise, “if I were a man, have deserved to have such an account certified of me, as will be of the two lords that are mentioned, than have the greatest pension or estate settled upon me, that our own King, so full of justice and generosity, will give to reward the quick and great performances brought about by my Lord Carteret, and his partner the Earl of Bath.”
With this reverence for the dead, and contempt for the living, the Duchess proceeded withher task; observing, (then in her eighty-fourth year,) “that it was not likely that she should live to see a history of thirty or forty years finished.”
As autumn approached, her strength seemed more and more to fail. In answer to Mr. Scrope’s inquiries respecting her health, she replies, “I am a little better than I was yesterday, but in pain sometimes, and I have been able to hear some of the letters I told you of to-day; and I hope I shall live long enough to assist the historians with all the assistance they can want from me: I shall be contented when I have done all in my power. Whenever the stroke comes, I only pray that it may not be very painful, knowing that everybody must die; and I think that whatever the next world is, it must be better than this, at least to those that never did deceive any mortal. I am very glad that you like what I am doing, and though you seemed to laugh at my having vapours, I cannot help thinking you have them sometimes yourself, though you don’t think it manly to complain. As I am of the simple sex, I say what I think without any disguise; and I pity you very much for what a man of sense and honesty must suffer from those sort of vermin, which I have told you I hate, and always avoid. I send you a copyof a paper, which is all I have done yet with my historians. I have loads of papers in all my houses that I will gather together to inform them; and I am sure you will think that never any two men deserved so well from their country as the Duke of Marlborough and my Lord Godolphin did.”
One of the last topics of courtly gossip which seems to have disturbed the Duchess’s mind, was the quarrel between George the Second, his son, and the Princess of Wales, upon occasion of the Princess’s sudden and hazardous removal from Hampton Court to St. James’s, previous to the birth of his Majesty George the Third. The Duchess warmly espoused the part of the Prince and Princess, wished them well out of their difficulties, and esteemed Queen Caroline a very hard-hearted grandmother, because, instead of being mightily glad that the Princess’s hour of trial was “well over,” she was extremely angry with the Prince for not consulting the usual ceremonies on this momentous occasion.
Several charitable institutions perpetuate the Duchess’s bounty, and the principal of these, the almshouses of St. Albans, was founded upon a scheme equally benevolent and judicious. It was intended for decayed gentlewomen, and until, for electioneering purposes, the characterof its inmates was changed, it retained its useful character of a respectable home and shelter for gentlewomen whose pecuniary circumstances rendered such an asylum desirable.
Several other anecdotes of her benevolence and generosity are recorded; among others, one of munificent generosity is supplied by the newspapers of the day. One of the firm of the Childs was oppressed, nearly to his ruin, by an opposition from the Bank. Upon this occasion, a member of the family stated his case to the Duchess of Marlborough, who placed the following order in his hand:—
“Pay the bearer the sum of one hundred thousand pounds.
“Sarah Marlborough.
“Sarah Marlborough.
“Sarah Marlborough.
“Sarah Marlborough.
“To the Governor and Companyof the Bank of England.”
“To the Governor and Companyof the Bank of England.”
“To the Governor and Companyof the Bank of England.”
“To the Governor and Company
of the Bank of England.”
It is needless to state that the Bank dropped the quarrel; but their persecution made the fortune of the banker.
Until the beginning of October, 1744, the Duchess of Marlborough appears to have continued capable of transacting business; for we find, on the sixth of that month, a letter writtento her from Mr. Scrope, whom she had presented with her picture, begging for an interview with her grace; and in a previous letter he intimates that he has some message from Mr. Pelham to deliver to the Duchess. Thus, to the last, her concerns, those of Windsor Lodge, the renewal of the lease of Marlborough-house, and the more commendable, but too late deferred task of compiling the memoirs of her husband, engrossed her mind. What portion of her thoughts was given to the Maker who had sent her into the world endowed with singular faculties, who had entrusted her with many talents, for which soon she would be responsible to her God, does not appear. She sank, at length, to rest. Her death took place at Marlborough-house, on the 18th of October, 1744.[409]
The personal qualities of this remarkable woman require little comment; in the narrative of her life they are sufficiently displayed. The advantages with which nature qualified her to play a conspicuous part in society have been rarely combined in woman. Of extraordinary sagacity, improved alone by that species of education which the world gives, her mind displayedalmost masculine energy to the latest period of her existence. Her judgment, though biassed by her passions, exemplified itself in the clear and able estimate which she made of the motives, opinions, and actions of her contemporaries. Time has proved the value of her observation.
To an extraordinary capacity for business, the Duchess of Marlborough united great facility in expressing, and in making others comprehend, all that she desired them to understand. From her earliest years, her mind soared above the pursuits of her young companions. The puerile recreations of a court could not shackle the vigorous intellect which disdained the captivity of etiquette. Compelled by circumstances to endure the society of a Princess whom she despised, her mind never sank to the level of that of the placid and unaspiring Anne. Even amidst the irksome duties of perpetual attendance on one who had little to recommend her except good nature, the grasping intellect of the youthful favourite was gaining opinions on topics generally connected with politics, and with such themes as affected her interest and that of her future husband. The capacity of Anne remained stationary; and that of her companion, amid similar occupations to those of her young mistress,and enjoying only the same opportunities, like a plant entangled amongst others of slower growth, although shackled, yet acquired vigour.
With few opportunities of mental culture, except such as society offered her, with scarcely the rudiments of education, Sarah Duchess of Marlborough became, at an early age, the affianced wife of a man who was, like herself, practical, not erudite, the scholar of the world, the pupil of fortune. At the time of this early engagement, she probably possessed, along with the vivacity, the sweetness and attractions natural to her sex. The world, and a love of politics, that bane to delicacy and grace in woman, had not then hardened her nature, and increased the acrimony of her temper. She became the wife of Marlborough, the associate of his associates, the companion, the friend of the eloquent, of the lettered, and the brave. Her capacity grew in the congenial sphere now formed around her. Her observation, by nature accurate, was exercised upon subjects worthy of her inspection. She learned, by conversation, by experience, to think and to reason. For many years she took but a trivial share in the public events which agitated the nation; but she viewed from “the loophole of retreat” all that was important, with a mind enlightened by the sound and moderate opinionsof Godolphin, from whom she was, in fact, much more rarely separated than from her husband. The Lord Treasurer could never, indeed, teach her to love William the Third, who had graciously overlooked his defection; but he restrained her vehemence, he regulated her expressions; and it was not until Godolphin had sunk under the cruel disease which consumed him, that the Duchess became intractably violent. Thus, formed by circumstances into a reflecting, shrewd, and energetic being, the Duchess of Marlborough, when her mind attained, along with her frame, its full growth, and that lasting vigour for which both were remarkable, began to turn with disgust from the irksome duties which her offices at court imposed upon her unwilling mind. The daily round of ceremonials which she was compelled to witness became revolting to her; the monotony of Anne’s mind inspired her with contempt. It was with difficulty, as she confessed years afterwards, that she brought herself to endure the society of one whose conversation consisted, like that of James her father, in a constant repetition of one favourite idea; a species of discourse far more dispiriting than absolute silence.
The imperious temper of Sarah was fostered by the meek disposition and mean understandingof her royal mistress. As she grew into political importance, she probably ceased to be the engaging and attractive woman whose loveliness gained universal admiration. Henceforth, her empire, excepting with regard to her husband, appears to have been over the intellect alone; and whilst she was at once the pupil and the adviser of Godolphin, she was no longer beloved as a parent; her influence over the affections of those with whom she was connected melted away when politics absorbed her thoughts.
There can be no doubt but that, whilst the virtues of the Duchess were not many, her faults were egregiously exaggerated by contemporary writers. The principal accusations against her relate to avarice, ingratitude towards Anne, arrogance of demeanour, and a spirit of intrigue. The grounds upon which this formidable array of demerits rests, have been fully discussed in the foregoing portion of this work. That the Duchess was of a most grasping disposition, that she coveted money, thirsted for power, place, honour, everything that could raise her to a pinnacle in that world which she loved too well, cannot be denied. The attempts at peculation, and the corrupt and dishonest practices with which she has been charged, are, however, succinctly and satisfactorily disproved by her. Though greedy to an excessof wealth, she was not dishonest. Queen Anne truly said that cheating was not the Duchess’s crime; and no individual could be a more exact or competent judge than the Princess who uttered that sentence. It appears, indeed, that the Duchess endeavoured very diligently to reform the royal household; that she caused an order to be passed, prohibiting the sale of places; that she never exceeded, and, in some instances, refused the usual perquisites of her office; that, far from encroaching on royal bounty, she refused frequently large sums from the Queen when Princess; and that, after Anne’s accession, the value of her presents to the Duchess was so contemptible that the latter, in her letter to Mr. Hutchinson, has given a list of them, which borders, from its meanness, on the absurd.
The conduct of the Duchess towards her sovereign has been, by party writers, severely stigmatised, and not without justice. There was, on both sides of this memorable quarrel, much to blame. A long course of arrogance, imprudence, and negligence, on the part of the Duchess, led to the alienation of Anne. Yet even the Queen specifically declared, and reiterated, that she had no fault to allege against the haughty Sarah, except “inveteracy to poor Masham.” It was not in the Duchess’s nature to check thatinveteracy. A generous, high-minded line of conduct was beyond her power. Yet, at any rate, the alleged cause of her disfavour was not a crime of heinous character. It was the mode in which she revenged the injuries which she received, that constitutes her delinquency. Her character of her royal mistress was written in the spirit of revenge; her pen was fledged with satire as it traced the lines in which the follies and defects of Anne are described. Years failed to soften the bitterness of her vindictive spirit. Death had not the power to disarm her rancour. The publication of certain letters, an act with which she frequently threatened the Queen;[410]the careful insertion in her narrative of every circumstance that can throw ridicule upon a mistress once her benefactress, one who descended from her high rank to claim the privileges of friendship: these are acts which must be heavily charged upon the Duchess. Age and affliction ought to have taught the relentless writer a better lesson. The Queen was no more—the Duchess tottering towards the tomb. Their mutual animosities should not by the survivor have been dragged forth to gratify revenge.
Such a breach of confidence, such an outrageupon the sacred name of friendship, society ought not to pardon. Such an offence, of too frequent occurrence, where disgust has superseded confidence, renders affection a snare to be dreaded by the unsophisticated mind, and must entirely preclude those who hold offices of responsibility from the necessary relief of confidence; and, were such acts of treachery excused, monarchs might indeed tremble, before they indulged the amiable inclinations of minds not corrupted by the intoxicating possession of power.
The office which the Duchess held about the person of the Queen rendered silence an imperative claim of honour; but, with an unrelenting coarseness, the Duchess laid bare the very privacies of the closet, the foibles, the vacillations, the manœuvres, the weaknesses, the peculiarities of her sovereign. No self-justification could be worth such a price—revenge upon the memory of one silent in the grave.
As a wife and as a mother, the Duchess stands not pre-eminently high. She was born for the public, and to the public she was devoted. Her sentiments of patriotism, however commendable, would have been well exchanged for duty to her husband, and patient affection for her children. Her gross partiality to some of her grandchildren, in preference to others, revealed the source of hermisfortunes as a mother. Wherever such a noxious fungus as injustice grows within the domestic sphere, peace and affection take their leave. Hence those divisions which the possession of a large fortune in the hands of a family entails upon the junior branches, among whom there is not the foundation of a happy confidence. The precise sources of those irritating bickerings does not appear in the published correspondence relating to the domestic concerns of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough; but it is too probable that the miserable dissensions between his wife and daughters, which embittered the Duke’s life, originated in jealousies on pecuniary matters.
In what is commonly termed purity of morals, the character of the Duchess of Marlborough has descended to posterity without a stain. Whatever direction the calumnies of the day may have taken in that respect, their influence was ephemeral. No historian of respectability has dared to attach a blemish to the purity of her lofty deportment. She esteemed the probity, and she was powerfully influenced by the sterling sense, of Lord Godolphin; but her attachment was in no degree greater than that of the Lord Treasurer’s affectionate friend, her husband. No similar aspersion with respect to any other individual appears in the lampoons of the day. In amoral sense, in so far as it comprises the purity of a woman’s conduct, the Duchess is therefore unimpeached. She was in that respect worthy of being the wife of the great hero who worshipped her image in absence, with the romantic devotion of love, unabated even by indifference. But when we speak of female excellence, to that one all-important ingredient must be added others, without which a mother, a wife, and a friend, cannot be said to fulfil her vocation. Sweetness, forbearance, humanity, must grace that deportment, in the absence of which virtue extorts with difficulty her need of praise. The lofty temper which could scarcely be restrained in the presence of the staid and decorous Queen Mary, expanded into acts of fury, when time and unlimited dominion over her sovereign and her husband had soured that impetuous spirit into arrogance.
In reviewing the long life whose annals we have written, it is not easy to point out the benefits which the Duchess conferred upon society. Endowed with natural abilities of a very uncommon order; with a person so remarkably beautiful, that it would have bestowed a species of distinction upon a female in a humble station; possessing a most vigorous constitution, which seemed destined to wear out, with impatience, her heirs and her enemies; raised to rank, her coffersoverflowing with wealth; she appeared marked out by destiny to effect some signal good for a country in whose concerns she took an active part. What distress might she not, with her enormous wealth, have relieved; what indigent genius might she not have brought forth to light; what aids to learning by endowments might she not have bestowed; what colleges might she not have assisted; what asylums for the miserable might she not have provided! Of these laudable undertakings, of intentions so beneficent, we find, compared with her enormous means, but few instances. There are some laudable endowments, some impulses of benevolence recorded, which make one hope that there may have been more, unseen, unknown. But a truly amiable mind would not have been solely occupied by what she deemed her claims and her wrongs; it would, when the fervour of the noon-day was over, have delighted in those kind acts which cheer the evening of life. To the last she was grasping, accumulating, arranging. To the world, in its worst sense, she gave up the powers of a mind destined for higher things. The immense accumulation of her wealth spoke volumes against the extension of her charity. To each of her heirs, Charles Duke of Marlborough, and to his brother, Lord John Spencer, she bequeathed a property of thirtythousand a year, besides bequests to others, particularly enumerated in her singular will.[411]
But taking into account all the errors that she committed, and the good acts which she omitted, Sarah Duchess of Marlborough had still some noble qualities to command respect. Her hatred of falsehood stands foremost in bold relief among these attributes. Supposing that the great world of those days resembled, in its leading features, the luxurious and fashionable portion of the community in these, her sincerity was a virtue of rare occurrence. Her motives, her very foibles, were laid bare for the inspection of her associates. Her unadorned and accurate account of all those affairs in which the busy portion of her life was passed, was never attacked for untruth. She resolutely exposed all that she hated and despised; but she was equally averse to duplicity in her own personal conduct, and resentful towards it in others. Her plain dealing with the Queen, even her loss of temper and occasional insolence, rise high in estimation when contrasted with the vile duplicity of Mrs. Masham, and the servility and intriguing meanness of Harley. That she was not able to cope with such enemies as these, is to her credit. With her indignation at the stratagems by whichshe was secretly undermined, we must cordially sympathise. There was something high-minded in her endeavours to prevent the Duke from ever taking office again; and in the last conditions to her will, that those who so largely benefited by it should forfeit their share if they ever took office under a monarch whom she disliked, and a ministry whom she despised. Her virtues, like her faults, were of the hardy order. There was nothing amiable in the Duchess’s composition, to present her good qualities in fair keeping, or to render her an object for affectionate veneration in her old age. Her sincerity was ever too busy in unveiling the faults of others: it was unaccompanied by charity. Her resentments ended only with her existence.
The Duchess of Marlborough was interred in the sumptuous monument at Blenheim, in the chapel, in the same vault which contained the remains of the Duke, after they were removed thither from Westminster Abbey.
In the Duchess’s will, which occupied eight skins of parchment, she ordered that her funeral should be strictly private, and with no more expense than decency required, and that mourning should only be given to those servants who should attend at her funeral.
She appointed Hugh Earl of Marchmont, andBeversham Filmer, Esq., her executors, to whose charge she left in trust her almost countless manors, parsonages, rectories, advowsons, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, in no less than eleven counties.
By a proviso in her will, she rendered it void, as far as he was concerned, if ever her grandson Lord John Spencer should become bound or surety for any person, or should accept from any King or Queen, of these realms, any office or employment, civil or military, except the rangership of the Great or Little Park at Windsor. She left ample bequests to many of her servants, not forgetting twenty pounds a year to each of her chairmen. One of the most remarkable items of her codicil was the sum of ten thousand pounds to William Pitt, Esq., afterwards Earl of Chatham, for the noble defence he had made in support of the laws of England, and to prevent the ruin of his country. But the sum of twenty thousand pounds to Philip Earl of Chesterfield, accompanied by the bequest of her best and largest diamond ring, appears sadly disproportioned to the small sums which she bequeathed to near relations. Those who are desirous of further particulars can satisfy their curiosity by referring to the Appendix. The Duchess was said to have left, besides her numerous legacies, property tothe amount of sixty thousand pounds per annum to be divided amongst her two grandsons, Charles Duke of Marlborough, and his brother Lord John Spencer. It is remarkable that one clause in her will prohibits the marriage of any of her grandsons under the age of twenty-one, on penalty of losing the annuity bequeathed to them, and of having half of the proposed sum transferred to their wives.
In closing this narrative of a long life—this estimate of a remarkable person, it must be observed that many allowances are to be made for the errors and failings displayed by the individual whose character has been described. Her youth witnessed an age of self-indulgence, and of moral degradation: the period of her maturer years was marked by civil strife, and by the anarchy of faction. A perilous course of prosperity attended the middle period of her career. Disappointment, dissensions, calumny, misfortune, and neglect, commenced with her decline, and accompanied her slow decay, to the last moment of her existence. Those who hopelessly covet wealth, honour, and celebrity, may read the life of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough with profit, and rise from the perusal, resigned to fate.