CHAPTER XIV.
Death of the Marquis of Blandford—His character. 1702–3.
How often does it occur, that in the hurry of life some event interposes to show us the fruitlessness of our cares—to prove to us our position, as powerless instruments in the hand of Providence—to mark the weakness of our wills, and the transient nature of all that we prize, and of all that we have sought to gain, by rising early, and late taking rest, and eating the bread of carefulness!
Whilst the Duchess of Marlborough, by the workings of her powerful mind, swayed the destinies of party, and governed her sovereign, it was decreed that a chastising hand should humble and restrain her; that the blow should be aimed in the tenderest part, calculated, to lower her proudest aspirations, and to touch with poignancy those maternal affections of which even the most worldly are never destitute, but which the worldly taste only in bitterness; for interest and pleasure deaden the daily emotions and gentle pleasures of domestic life, whilst they cannot wholly avert the sting which the dormant affections receive.
The Duchess had borne her husband two sons. Of these, Charles, the younger, died at an early age. John, the elder, survived until the age of seventeen, when, in all the promise of future celebrity and excellence, he was taken from his parents, just as their hopes of him, their pride of him, and their love of him, had raised their expectations to the utmost height.
Commanding in person, and strong in intellect,[[475]] this noble youth united with the high spirit of his mother, the gentleness, and graciousness, and strong principles of his father. His religious habits, his frequent attendance on the holy sacrament, his assiduity in his studies, and the regularity of his conduct, proved that, how much soever his parents had been absorbed in the concerns of the world, and in the pursuit of greatness, they had neither neglected the formation of his intellect, nor the far more important yet corresponding culture of his sense of duty, and his best affections.
Well might the bereaved parents afterwards exclaim with Congreve, when death had robbed them of this star which shed a ray of brightness on their path of life,
To mourn thy fall, I’ll fly the hated light,
And hide my head in shades of endless night;
For thou were light, and life, and wealth to me;
The sun but thankless shines that shows not thee;
Wert thou not lovely, graceful, good, and young,
The joy of sight, the talk of every tongue?
Did ever branch so sweet a blossom bear,
Or ever early fruit appear so fair?[[476]]
The original intention of the Duke and Duchess was, that their son should, by the favour of the Queen, fill the place of master of the horse to the young Duke of Gloucester. Upon the death of that young Prince, Lord Blandford was sent to King’s College, Cambridge, having been prepared for that seminary of knowledge by his previous education at Eton. At Cambridge he was placed under the tuition of Mr. Hare, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, the chaplain subsequently, and the friend and correspondent, of the Duke and Duchess. Under his guidance, and enjoying the friendship of Horace, afterwards Lord Walpole, the young nobleman added credit to his name, by a regularity which would have become the lowliest as well as the most exalted member of the university. His classical attainments were considerable; the courtesy of his manners accorded with an affectionate and modest nature; and his good sense appreciated the important benefits of that college discipline, from which a feebler or more presuming mind would have revolted.
With all these excellencies—the excellencies which would have adorned him in private life, had he been spared—Lord Blandford cherished the ambition to resemble and to emulate his father, in the brilliant course of a military career.
When scarcely sixteen, he entreated permission to join the campaign in the Netherlands. His request was not gratified; for although Marlborough could not repel a thirst for distinction which so well accorded with his own nature, the mother of the high-spirited youth dreaded for her child the dangers which appear not to have overwhelmed her at any time with apprehensions for his father. Lord Blandford, nevertheless, ardent and resolute, persisted in his desires, and sought to obtain for himself and Horace Walpole commissions in the cavalry, that they might serve at the same time, and in the same regiment.
The parent, who dreaded for her son perils by land, and perils by sea, was doomed to lose him by that fatal complaint, which then, in most instances, baffled medical skill, and proved the scourge of society. The small-pox raged in Cambridge. Lord Godolphin, who was at Newmarket, wrote to the inquiring mother accounts of her son’s health, which were calculated to satisfy her maternal anxieties, whilst yet the disease had not attacked the delicate, and, as it seems, prematurely gifted youth. Lord Churchill, the lord treasurer acknowledged, was thin almost to emaciation; but he dwelt more minutely upon the displays of his mental and moral qualities than on his health.
“I repeat to you that I find Lord Churchill very lean. He is very tractable and good-humoured, and without any one ill inclination that I can perceive. And I think he is grown more solid than he was, and has lost that impatience of diverting himself all manner of ways, which he used to have. This is truly just as I find him, and I thought it might not be improper to give you this account, that you might be the better judge whether you would desire to see him now, according to the proposal I made in my letter of yesterday, or stay for that satisfaction until my Lord Marlborough comes over.”[[477]]
This was in August, 1703. In October, Lord Godolphin received the young nobleman as a guest in his house at Newmarket, where, unhappily, the small-pox then raged. But it was vainly hoped, by precautions, to avert the risk of infection.
“What you write,” thus Lord Godolphin addressed the anxious mother, “is extremely just and reasonable; and though the small-pox has been in this town, yet he, going into no house but mine, will, I hope, be more defended from it by air or riding, without any violent exercise, than he could probably be anywhere else.”
In a few days afterwards, more particular accounts reached the Duchess, and her maternal pride must have been highly gratified by the encomiums which so consummate a judge of character as Lord Godolphin passed upon her son.
“Your pretty son,” as the lord treasurer terms him, “whom I have just now parted from; and I assure you, without flattery or partiality, that he is not only the best natured and most agreeable, but the most free-thinking and reasonable creature that one can imagine for his age. He had twenty pretty questions and requests, but I will not trouble you with the particulars till I have the honour to see you.”
The foregoing opinion was the last expressed by this well-judging and warm friend, concerning him upon whom the fondest hopes were placed. How gratifying, yet how mournful! Yet the noble youth was prepared for that better sphere to which he was thus early called, to spare him, in mercy, from the snares and troubles of the world, in which he might otherwise have acted a conspicuous, but probably not a happy part.
The letter was followed by alarming intelligence. The small-pox, in its most malignant form, had attacked the darling of these distinguished parents. The Duchess hastened to Cambridge, and found her son in great danger. She sent to London for additional medical assistance, and the Queen, feeling as a mother bereaved, and acting with her usual consideration, despatched two of her own physicians in one of the royal carriages. The medicines were also sent by express from London. But the cares, the fears, the hopes, the efforts of all those who were interested in the young man, were unavailing. The fatal disorder ran rapidly its devastating course. Dr. Haines and Dr. Coladon, the court physicians, hastened in vain to aid the expiring youth. The grief of the highest, and the sympathy of the lowest, individuals in her Majesty’s realms, availed not: for his hour was come. How far we are, in such instances, to look to secondary causes, it is difficult to say; but it is easy to suppose that the imperfect knowledge of disease in those unscientific days, the unnatural and irritating mode of treating it which prevailed, even within the memory of man, may have aided that consciousness of the importance of his recovery to his parents, and the painful observance of their grief, in increasing the danger of the amiable and lamented youth.
The Queen took his illness to heart, as if it had been the scene of her own sad deprivation acted over again.
“I writ two words to my dear Mrs. Freeman,” she says, addressing the Duchess, “and could not help telling her again that I am truly afflicted for the melancholy account that is come this morning of poor Lord Blandford. I pray God he may do well, and support you. And give me leave once more to beg you, for Christ Jesus’ sake, to have a care of your dear precious self; and believe me, with all the passion imaginable, your poor, unfortunate, faithful Morley.”
Lord Godolphin, in a calmer, but equally kind, equally friendly strain, thus proffers the valuable consolations of a sympathetic heart. “The best use of one’s best friends is, to assist and support one another under the most grievous afflictions. This is the greatest trial of your submission and resignation to the Divine Providence that God Almighty could possibly send you, and consequently the greatest opportunity of pleasing Him, by that respect and submission which is always due to his severest trials; and, at the same time, the greatest occasion of letting the whole world see that God Almighty has blessed you with a Christian patience and fortitude, as eminent as the reason and understanding by which you are justly distinguished from the rest of your sex.”
The concern of a friend is expressed in the foregoing fragment; the anguish of a father in those passages which follow.
The character of Marlborough, the great, the affectionate, the good, the pious, shines forth in these extracts.
“I am so troubled at the sad condition this poor child seems to be in, that I know not what I do. I pray God to give you some comfort in this great affliction. If you think anything under heaven can be done, pray let me know it, or if you think my coming can be of the least use, let me know it. I beg I may hear as soon as possible, for I have no thought but what is at Cambridge.
“I writ to you this morning,” he adds, “and was in hopes I should have heard again before this time, for I hope the doctors were with you early this morning. If we must be so unhappy as to lose this poor child, I pray God to enable us both to behave ourselves with that resignation which we ought to do. If this uneasiness which I now lie under should last long, I think I could not live. For God’s sake, if there be any hope of recovery, let me know it.”[[478]]
These mournful anticipations were followed by the too probable result. Within a few hours after the unhappy father had written this letter, he set off for Cambridge, where he arrived only in time to see his son expire, on the morning of Saturday, the twentieth of February, 1704.[[479]]
The condolence of friends and relations, and the sympathy even of foes, followed this event. To the chosen place of Lord Blandford’s interment, in King’s College Chapel, whose sacred walls had witnessed his early and late piety, beneath whose roof he had been a constant attendant at morning and evening prayers,—the disconsolate parents followed the earthly remains of their lost treasure. An inscription, in elegant Latin, on a monument erected to his memory, perpetuates the recollection of his early promise. Not only of the highest rank by descent, but of the most exalted virtues, the external qualities of one so favoured by fortune, and endowed by nature, corresponded, as the inscription states, with his mental attributes. He possessed, it is said, the stately and manly form, and the surpassing symmetry, which constitute the perfection of manly beauty.[[480]] In the quickness of his faculties alone did he resemble his mother. His admirable humility, and sweetness of manners, in the midst of all that rank and affluence could effect to spoil him, were the bright reflection of his glorious father. In purity of conduct, though introduced early to a court life, between the period of his leaving Eton and entering on an academic life at Cambridge, he was more happy than that parent; for men are to be judged by circumstances. A sense of religious duty (the only effectual safeguard) led to a “strict observance of decorum, that rather,” says an historian, “seemed innate, than acquired.”[[481]] He retained of the court nothing but its politeness, and desired, in the bright prospects which apparently awaited him, nothing but true honour and distinction, not from his position alone, but from his own strenuous exertions.
His parents were deeply, but differently affected by their calamity. The high spirit of the Duchess was subdued, and the best dispositions of her heart were touched, by this bereavement: but ambition soon regained its ascendency over her soul, and the chastening hand was forgotten in the busy interests of the day, the hour. Marlborough, on the contrary, though quickly summoned to a fresh campaign, carried about with him the yearning tenderness, the mournful, though no longer poignant regrets, which a sensitive mind retains for a beloved and lost object. After the first bitter pangs had been assuaged, he set off for the seat of war; but in the heart of enterprize, amid the busiest scenes in which he was engaged, the father recalled all that he had hoped and planned for his lost son. In a letter to Lord Godolphin, written from Cologne, he says:
“I have this day seen a very great procession; and the thoughts how pleased poor Lord Churchill would have been with such a sight, have added very much to my uneasiness. Since it has pleased God to take him, I do wish from my soul I could think less of him.”[[482]]
Alas! how many parents may utter the same natural but fruitless wish!
The Duchess, unfortunately for those who feel an interest in probing the long since tranquillized emotions of her turbulent spirit, imposed upon the Duke a condition, with which, in the true spirit of honour, he complied, (though, as he states himself, with regret,) of burning the letters which she wrote to him. She seems, however, to have written in a kind and consolatory manner, and we may infer from the lively gratitude of her husband, that such was not always her custom. What a picture of real attachment is presented in the following passage of the Duke’s answer!
“If you had not positively desired that I would always burn your letters, I should have been very glad to have kept your dear letter of the 9th, it was so very kind, and particularly so upon the subject of our living quietly together, till which happy time comes, I am sure I cannot be contented; and then I do flatter myself I should live with as much satisfaction as I am capable of. I wish I could recal twenty years past, I do assure you, for no other reason but that I might in probability have longer time, and be the better able to convince you how truly sensible I am at this time of your kindness, which is the only real comfort of my life; and whilst you are kind, besides the many blessings it brings me, I cannot but hope we shall yet have a son, which are my daily prayers.”[[483]]
His earnest solicitude on the subject of her health seems to have been fully shared by the Duchess with respect to him. Marlborough, like many men whose minds are tasked to the utmost of their bodily strength to bear, suffered severely from the headache. How that over-wrought frame and intellect at last broke down, it is melancholy to reflect.
“I have yours of the eighteenth, by which I find you were uneasy at my having the headache. It was your earnest desire obliges me to let you know when I have those little inconveniences of the headache, which are but too natural to me; but if you will promise to look upon my sicknesses as you used to do, by knowing I am sick one day and well another, I must not be punctual in acquainting you when I am uneasy. I think you are very happy in having dear Lady Mary with you; I should esteem myself so, if she could be sometimes for an hour with me; for the greatest ease I now have is sometimes sitting for an hour in my chair alone, and thinking of the happiness I may yet have, of living quietly with you, which is the greatest I propose to myself in the world.”
At the very time of his investing the fortress of Huy, after being distracted by opposing councils, compelled to adopt plans which he disapproved, and harassed by fatigues, being often fourteen hours of the day on horseback, and marching sometimes five days together,[[484]]—it was in the midst of these trials of strength and patience that his heart turned towards home, and he found leisure, in the midst of a camp, to write those beautiful letters, unequalled for simplicity, and in the true expression of a tender and noble nature.
Lord Godolphin had written to his friend the painful intelligence that he thought the Duchess to be much out of health. This information roused all the tenderness and apprehensions of the hero’s sensitive mind.
“For God’s sake,” he writes, “let me know exactly how you are; and if you think my being with you can do you any good, you shall quickly see you are much dearer to me than fame, or whatever the world can say; for should you do otherwise than well, I were the unhappiest man living.”
Notwithstanding the offer of this noble sacrifice—noble in one who was not merely carried on by impulse, but who had laid plans of the greatest extent for the aggrandizement of his country—the Duchess, who appears to have been a domestic tyrant, could never be wholly satisfied without incessant expressions of regard and devotion. She could not forbear, even at this distance, adding to his many troubles by her exacting spirit. She scrutinized even the language of affection, with the fastidiousness of a spoiled child, loath to be contented.
From the following and other passages, we are led to conclude that the hopes of having a child to supply the loss of him from whom he had been severed, were, at one time, revived in the Duke’s mind. On a former occasion he wrote to his wife thus:—
“What troubles me in all this time is your telling me that you do not look well. Pray let me have, in one of your letters, an account how you do. If it should prove such a sickness as that I might pity you, yet not be sorry for it, it might make me yet have more ambition. But if your sickness be really want of health, it would render me the unhappiest man living.”
These hopes were further raised, only, unfortunately, to be frustrated. In all other respects the Duchess of Marlborough, pre-eminently blessed, was destined to that one cankering disappointment—that the children of the son-in-law whom she least loved, became the heirs of those honours so dearly purchased by Marlborough.
“I have just now,” says the Duke, in one of his letters, “received yours of the sixth. What you say to me of yourself gave me so much joy, that if any company had been by when I read the letter, they must have observed a great alteration in me.”[[485]]
Yet, with his usual delicacy and consideration, he writes in a consolatory strain, when it appeared to the Duchess that he thought more of his disappointed hopes, than of the ill health which caused them. He urged upon her the tranquillizing of her busy mind, by quiet, and cessation from business, and by looking to higher sources of comfort than the adulation of society, or the favours of a monarch. The chastening hand was not extended to Marlborough in vain, when he could think and write in terms such as these. After entreating his wife to think as little as possible of worldly business, and to be very regular in her diet, which he trusts, by the aid of a good constitution, may set her right in time, he addresses her in the following beautiful strain:—
“Op-heeren, Aug. 2.
“I have received yours of the twenty-third, which has given me, as you may easily believe, a good deal of trouble. I beg you will be so kind and just to me, as to believe the truth of my heart, that my greatest concern is for that of your own dear health. It was a great pleasure to me, when I thought we should be blessed with more children; but as all my happiness centres in living quietly with you, I do conjure you, by all the kindness which I have for you, which is as much as man ever had for woman, that you will take the best advice you can for your health, and then follow exactly what shall be prescribed for you; and I do hope that you will be so good as to let me have an exact account of it, and what the physicians’ opinions are. If I were with you, I would endeavour to persuade you to think as little as possible of worldly business, and to be very regular in your diet, which I should hope would set you right in a very little time, for you have naturally a very good constitution. You and I have great reason to bless God for all we have, so that we must not repine at his taking our poor child from us, but bless and praise him for what his goodness leaves us; and I do beseech him, with all my heart and soul, that he would comfort and strengthen both you and me, not only to bear this, but any correction that he should think fit to lay on us. The use, I think, we should make of his correction is, that our chiefest time should be spent in reconciling ourselves to him, and having in our minds always that we may not have long to live in this world. I do not mean by this that we should live retired from the world, for I am persuaded that by living in the world, one may do much more good than by being out of it; but, at the same time, to live so as that one should cheerfully die when it shall be his pleasure to call for us. I am very sensible of my own frailties; but if I can ever be so happy as to live with you always, and that you comfort me and assist me in these my thoughts, I am then persuaded I should be as happy and contented as it is possible to be in this world; for I know we should both agree, next to our duty to God, to do what we ought for the Queen’s service.”
Happy would it have been for the Duchess, had these higher principles of conduct guided her future path through life. But while the afflictions which bore down the spirit of her husband sank into a good soil, in the mind of this ambitious and restless woman, schemes for the aggrandizement of her family soon succeeded to the gloom of her son’s deathbed, and effaced all the solemn lessons which she had there learned.