Mrs. A. T. Thomson

“ This seeming disposition to relent in favour of the Marlborough family was, however, the effect of a deep policy. Anne, naturally obstinate, and close in her expressions, had been taught lessons of duplicity, and rendered more than ever the tool of a faction. Mrs. Masham’s influence was, indeed, becoming too notorious to be endured, not only by the Whigs, but by men of influence and popularity, who were not especially attached to either party. The sway of the lofty and arbitrary Duchess had been, for many reasons, endured with a degree of patience which the world could not extend to her rival. ”

“ On the sixteenth of August, the King embarked at Orange-Holder, and landed two days afterwards at Greenwich. Every ship in the river saluted the royal vessel as it sailed, and multitudes thronged the banks of the Thames, uttering loud acclamations of joy at the arrival of the monarch. Yet George the First, a man of plain understanding, without ambition, the romance of monarchs, felt, it is said, that he had arrived to claim a crown not his own, and had an uncomfortable notion all his life, that he was somewhat of a character to which nature had little disposed him, an usurper. ”

“ To thirst still for power, and to be bowed down ever and anon by a secret but all-pervading influence; to witness one day the altered countenance of her royal mistress, and to experience, the next, relentings of her sovereign’s weak mind; to suffer the sneers of her adversaries, and to encounter the still more grating pity of her friends; to be blamed by all parties, and even reviled by almost all the Whig leaders, save the devoted and moderate Marlborough, or the 125faithful Godolphin,—these were the trials of the Duchess’s middle age. ”

“ Maynwaring justly observes, in writing to the Duchess, speaking of the Duke’s desire to exalt his importance as a party-man, “For a man that has no talents to do any one thing in the world, to think that he is to do everything, and to have all preferments pass through his hands, is something so much out of the way, that it is hard to find a name for it.”
The Duchess of Marlborough had, in former days, thoroughly understood, and as thoroughly despised, the shallowness of his grace of Somerset’s understanding, and the unbounded arrogance of his pretensions. ”

“ The Duchess was, at the time of the Duke’s death, sixty-two years of age. Her health appears to have been still unbroken; her beauty far less impaired than that of many much younger women. Her income was more than ample, since she found means, even when maintaining a princely establishment, to accumulate sums, and to purchase lands, which she left to her grandchildren. Her wit, her experience, her consequence in society as the widow of Marlborough, all contributed to give her a proud distinction in that gay world to which she was devoted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Notwithstanding the great general’s services, it was, however, manifest that his influence, and that of the Duchess, were now, from some cause or other, deeply undermined. The Duke, as well as the Duchess, suffered great vexation from this new and unforeseen apprehension; for it is easy to be happy without tasting power, but difficult indeed to part with it after long possession. It was in the answer to some communications from the Duchess that Marlborough wrote these touching words, betraying all the weariness of worldly anxieties. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After the return of the Duke and Duchess to England, it was the arduous office of the Countess of Sunderland to interpose her mild influence between the hasty temper of her husband and the overbearing spirit of her mother. She was the only one of “Marlborough’s daughters” who could brook the maternal authority, exercised even over her grown-up children with unsparing rigour; and Marlborough regarded this dutiful and forbearing child with peculiar affection, on that very account. ”

“ The year 1709, which witnessed the almost final alienation of the Queen from her early favourite, was disgraced by the strange spectacle of Dr. Henry Sacheverell’s trial, his punishment, and triumph.
A celebrated female historian has well observed, that it is difficult to say “which is most worthy of ridicule,—the ministry, in arming all the powers of government in their attack upon an obscure individual, or the public, in supporting a culprit whose doctrine was more odious than his insolence, and his principles yet more contemptible than his parts.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Extraordinary as the displays of violent passion in the Duchess of Marlborough may appear in modern days, when every exhibition of natural feeling, whether good or bad, is carefully suppressed by the customs of society, there were not wanting, in her own sphere, ladies of high rank, equally arrogant though less gifted, between whom common report hesitated on which to bestow the distinction of being the most absurd, outrageous, and repulsive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lady Mary was yet in her prime, when the Duchess, morose, and a cripple, delighted to visit her, and to entertain her brilliant friend, and be in turn entertained. The great world, its hollowness, and its consequent disappointments, were sufficiently unveiled to both, to render the confidence of social life comparatively delightful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The moral character, as well as the intellectual powers, of Marlborough, underwent a remarkable change in the course of his chequered career. Few of those men, perhaps erroneously called heroes, could ever look back upon their progress to military fame with so little cause for remorse as John Duke of Marlborough. He left a name unsullied by cruelty. A remarkable combination of strong affections, with a natural suavity of temper, rendered him the beloved friend of men whose nature was not disposed to friendship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In his union with this amiable woman Bishop Burnet was eminently happy. Her influence in society tended, as that of every woman should, to make virtue throw its beams “far in a naughty world;” to elevate domestic, sober qualities in the eyes of men, by proving them to be compatible with the highest attainments; to be the counsellors as well as the solace of those whose vocation leads them to dive into the troubled waters of life. ”

“ The marriage between the two great families of Churchill and Montague was intended to propitiate the favour both of Whigs and Tories, by adding connexions among each of those parties to the interests of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Never was there a period in which party spirit manifested itself with greater virulence than at the present juncture, and the contentions in parliament were so vehement, that a dreadful storm seemed impending over the country. ”

“ Godolphin now experienced, in the decline of his fortunes, the mutability of all other friendships, the hollowness and selfishness of public men. It is easy to the interested to persuade themselves that they really contemn those who are not only no longer useful to them, but whose friendship might even be prejudicial. The Duke of Somerset, once the friend of Marlborough, as his Duchess had been of the Duchess—a man of great pride, and of considerable influence—now seceded from his once intimate associates, piqued by the Duke’s refusing a regiment to his son. ”

“ The Duchess in vain waited all the day at Windsor, after sending her letter, in expectation of a reply. Mrs. Masham was, however, obliged to consult with her great director, before she could frame an answer on so “nice a matter.” It was, indeed, no easy point to explain, that a poor relation, only a dresser, as the Duchess remarked, and she a groom of the stole, should conceal from a relation to whom she owed everything, that affair which most concerned her; whilst the Queen, who, for thirty years had never disguised one circumstance from her faithful Freeman, should be led into the plot. ”

“ Lord Rochester, who, as long as he remained in existence, was the chief object of the Duchess’s political displeasure—the thorn which, in the midst of her greatness, rankled in her side—was a man highly esteemed, not only by the party whose tenets he zealously and powerfully supported, but by the country in general. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”