Anne was a personage altogether of an inferior stamp. In many points she resembled strongly the other members of her family who have figured in history. Like Charles the First, she was pious, generous, and affectionate, but obstinate, and not devoid of duplicity when it suited her purpose. Her religion had not, however, the sublimated character of that which consoled the unhappy Charles in adversity; but became, like all her other dispositions, a habit, an implicit faith, a formal observance, rather than a sentiment. Her nature was a strange compound of warm affections and of repelling coldness. As in all weak minds, her friendships were called into being by the gratification of her selfish inclinations; and hence, as the Duchess of Marlborough well describes them, “they were flames of extravagant passion, ending in indifference or aversion.”[[63]] With those defects which proceeded from deficient cultivation, Anne, however, as a lady of elevated rank, and afterwards as a ruler, possessed some admirable qualities. Her sense of duty supplied the place of strong sensibility. She was a kind mistress; as a wife, incomparable; though lavish to her favourites, (an hereditary trait,) not to be led by them into what she disapproved; just and economical, gracious in her manners, and desirous of popularity. Her nature was placid, her temperament phlegmatic; great designs and lofty sentiments were not to be expected from one of so gentle and easy a temper; but in propriety she equalled, if she could not excel, her reflective and discreet sister. In the early part of her life she was, like the Stuarts generally, extremely well-bred, until unnecessary and indecorous familiarity with her inferiors broke down the effects of early habit.
In person Anne was comely, and of that ample conformation and stature well adapted for royalty. Her love of etiquette, and her exactness in trifles, were convenient and commendable qualities in the rules of a court, in the days of the good old school; and an attention to those forms which are much observed in the monarch of a people prone to free discussion, rendered her a favourite with the public. Her figure, before it became matronly, or in the words of the Duchess, (after their quarrel,) “exceeding gross and corpulent,” was esteemed graceful; her face was agreeable, though, from a weakness in her eyes, her countenance had contracted somewhat of a scowl, described by the Duchess, whilst she admits that “there was something of majesty” in the Queen’s look, “as mixed with a sullen and constant frown, that plainly betrayed a gloominess of soul and a cloudiness of disposition within.”[[64]] But this may have been the effect of years and of care, when the complexion also participated in the coarseness of the person, induced, as it was said, by the use of cordials, to which the Prince her husband incessantly invited his consort.[[65]]
To complete the portrait of Anne, the beauty of her hands, and the sweetness of her voice in speaking and reading, must not be forgotten: they were universally allowed; whilst her graceful delivery in addressing the Houses of Parliament met with incessant applause.[[66]] It is remarkable that with such respect was Anne treated by her subjects, that the Peers, in her presence, waived the privilege of wearing hats in parliament, to show that they are hereditary legislators.[[67]]
Such was the Princess Anne; and few contrasts could be more singular than herself, and the friend whom she selected for her confidante, and whom she made many sacrifices to conciliate.
The Duchess of Marlborough, according to Swift, was the victim of “three furies which reigned in her breast, the most mortal of all softer passions, which were—sordid avarice, disdainful pride, ungovernable rage.”[[68]] The first of these demons may be the companion of middle age: rage and pride may have haunted the young and lovely maid of honour; but avarice is not the vice of youth. In all lesser points of disposition and feeling, the Princess and her favourite were dissimilar. The Princess was a lover of propriety and etiquette, even to an inspection of the ruffles and periwigs of her servants. Her sense of decorum was so nice, that, on her accession to the throne, she caused the bust of herself on the gold coin to be clothed as it was, according to ancient custom, on the silver. Nothing offended her, as Queen, so much as a breach of the customary observances; and Lord Bolingbroke having visited her one day in haste, in a Ramillie tie, she remarked “that she supposed his lordship would soon come to court in his nightcap.”[[69]]
For the Duchess of Marlborough, in her old age, and probably still more in the days of her youth, to dwell on trifles, was a burden too heavy for one of so impetuous a nature. Though we are not authorised to conclude from the assertion of her enemy, “that she delighted in disputing the truth of the Christian religion, and held its doctrines to be both impossible and absurd,”[[70]] yet it is certain, from her own avowal, that she was a latitudinarian in matters of form, and detested and set at defiance those who made “the church” a word of excuse for intolerance and faction.
The occupations in which these young friends delighted were also totally dissimilar. The Duchess, all her life, delighted in conversation, in which the Princess not only did not excel, but in which she took little pleasure.[[71]] Anne was an accomplished performer on the guitar; she loved the chase, and rode with the hounds until disabled by the gout. Her companion found the amusements of the court very tedious, and but little suited to her restless and energetic mind. But habit on the one hand, and interest on the other, soon reconcile differences. From playing together as children, the Princess learned, first, to prefer her companion to any other child; next to endure, then to love, the plain-spoken, fearless girl, who, according to her own account, and to that of her friend Dr. Burnet, never flattered any one; then soon grew up a sentimental feeling, which they called friendship, and distinctions of rank were laid aside, and names of familiarity adopted in place of titles of honour.[[72]] When the Princess became the wife of George of Denmark, she made it her earnest request to her father that her friend should be appointed one of the ladies of the bedchamber—a wish with which James, an affectionate parent, readily complied. The Duchess of Marlborough, when arranging, in hours of sickness and in old age, the materials for her Vindication, thus simply relates the steps preparatory to her preferment.
“The beginning of the Princess’s favour for me,” says the Duchess, “had a much earlier date than my entrance into her service. My promotion to this honour was chiefly owing to impressions she had before received to my advantage. We had used to play together when she was a child, and she had even then expressed a particular fondness for me. This inclination increased with our years. I was often at court, and the Princess always distinguished me by the pleasure she took to honour me, preferably to others, with her conversation and confidence. In all her parties for amusement I was sure, by her choice, to be one; and so desirous she became of having me near her, that upon her marriage with the Prince George of Denmark, 1683, it was at her own request to her father I was made one of the ladies of the bedchamber.”[[73]]
Assisted by the force of early associations, the stronger mind quickly asserted an influence over the weaker intellect, an influence retained so long as prudence directed its workings. But the Duchess, in what appears to be an impartial statement of facts, declares that she owed this influence partly to a dislike which the Princess had imbibed against Lady Clarendon, her relation and first lady of the bedchamber, who, according to the Duchess, “looked like a mad woman, and talked like a scholar.” And, indeed, she adds, “her Highness’s court was so oddly composed, that I think it would be making myself no great compliment if I should say, her choosing to spend more of her time with me than with any other of her servants did no discredit to her taste.”
The writer of the foregoing paragraph might, however, have carried away the palm from women superior even to the Countess of Clarendon, whom she has been accused of misrepresenting. Beautiful according to the opinion of her contemporaries, her beauty indeed appears, in the portraits painted in her bloom of youth, to have been commanding as well as interesting. Her figure is asserted to have been peculiarly fine, and her countenance was set off by a profusion of fair hair, which she is said to have preserved, without its changing colour, even at an advanced age, by the use of honey-water.[[74]] Several years after she had become a grandmother, the freshness of her lovely complexion, and her unfaded attractions, caused her, even in the midst of four daughters, each distinguished for personal charms, to be deemed pre-eminent among those celebrated and high-bred belles.[[75]]