“And now,” says the Duchess, “it being publicly known that the quarrel was made up, nothing was to be seen but crowds of people of all sorts flocking to Berkeley-house, to pay their respects to the Prince and Princess: a sudden alteration which, I remember, occasioned the half-witted Lord Carmarthen to say one night to the Princess, as he stood close by her in the circle, ‘I hope your highness will remember that I came to wait upon you when none of this company did;’ which caused a great deal of mirth.”
But although matters were thus publicly made up, the King, at least in the opinion of the Duchess, never cared to testify the slightest public respect for Anne, nor to conciliate her regard. From the beginning of his reign, when he committed the heinous offence on which much stress was laid, that of disappointing the Princess of a plate of peas on which she had set her mind,[[295]] to the last hour, he was still mightily indifferent to the placid, but, it must be acknowledged, somewhat uninteresting Anne. But all his affronts were borne with imperturbable patience by the Princess. When she waited upon his Majesty at Kensington, no more respect was shown her than to any other lady, “till the thing caused some discourse in town, after which Lord Jersey waited upon her once or twice down stairs, but not oftener. And if any one came to meet her,” continues the Duchess, “it was a page of the back-stairs, or some person whose face was not known. And the Princess, upon these occasions, waited an hour and a half, just upon the same foot as the rest of the company, and not the least excuse was made for it.”[[296]]
All this submission was very galling to the proud, high-spirited favourite, who would have braved William in presence of his whole court, had she been the Princess, rather than have paid one tribute of respect to the careless and contemptuous monarch. Lady Marlborough looked on indignant, and was of opinion that the Princess conciliated a great deal too much. She could not endure that her royal mistress should move a single step that she would not have taken in her place; nor was there a single advance on Anne’s part of which she approved, except her last letter to the Queen, and her offer of visiting her dying sister.[[297]] This candid acknowledgment she makes with an almost indecent boldness, not to be wondered at in one who, in her later days, defended herself, in a court of justice, a suit against her grandson.[[298]]
It must, indeed, be allowed, that the list of petty grievances with which the Duchess swells the indignities offered to the Princess Anne, appears, at this distance of time, puerile and vexatious. Her complaints are detailed with a solemnity which seems ridiculous, now that all the stirring passions which gave importance to those incidents are at rest. Her narrative, sarcastic as it is, was unfortunately polished by the hired assistance of Hook, the historian, and, after repeated revisions, which must have shorn many pungent and characteristic passages, was given to the disappointed public, respectably moderate. Still these “annals of a wardrobe,” as Horace Walpole designates them, this “history of the back stairs,” possess—as even he who speaks of “old Marlborough” with bitter contempt is fain to allow—some “curious anecdotes, some sallies of wit, which fourscore years of arrogance could not fail to produce in so fantastic an understanding.”[[299]]
With the account of the death of Queen Mary, much of the Duchess’s caustic satire subsides. Still she has a few touches reserved for William. Even the sorrow which the monarch experienced, and his desolate situation in a foreign country, where he reigned unloved, did not soften the unceasing aversion and contempt with which the Duchess regarded the royal widower.
His first grave offence, after Mary’s decease, was his silence in regard to a letter written by the dutiful and subservient Anne, congratulating his Majesty upon the honour done to his name and adopted country, by the taking of Namûr. Probably the King would have received congratulations with a better grace, from any one than from her, who might regard herself as having a sort of partnership interest in the glory of England. Good wishes from Anne were somewhat like the next heir to an estate setting forth a strain of rejoicing, on the growth of timber, or on the improvement of lands, to him who was actually in possession. The King took no notice of the humble epistle, or, in the Duchess’s words, “showed his brutal disregard for the writer,” by never returning “any answer to it, nor so much as a civil message.”[[300]]
The next offence, and it certainly was one which spoke ill of William’s good breeding, was his compelling Prince George to wear coloured clothes on the royal birthday, almost immediately after the death of his brother, the King of Denmark. The Prince, knowing that deep mourning was sometimes allowed in certain instances, requested, through Lord Albemarle, permission to keep on his mourning when he paid his respects to his Majesty.[[301]] William’s ungracious reply was, that he should not see his brother-in-law unless he came in colours; and the subservient Prince was forced to comply.
“I believe,” says the Duchess, after relating this instance of William’s contemptuous conduct, “I could fill as many sheets as I have already written, with relating the brutalities that were done to the Prince and Princess in this reign. The King was, indeed, so ill-natured, and so little polished by education, that neither in great things nor in small had he the manners of a gentleman.”[[302]]
The Duchess makes no allowance for his Majesty’s habits and character. Precise as he seems to have been in the article of Prince George’s attire, William hated formalities, and especially those public addresses which must be so peculiarly tedious to a sovereign. Respecting this very siege of Namûr, touching which he gave so much offence to the Duchess, he committed an act of ill-breeding towards no less an individual than the mayor of a borough. This worshipful person having come to court to present an address, combining the two dissimilar topics of condolence for the death of the Queen, and congratulation for the success at Namûr, introduced himself by saying that “he came with joy in one hand and grief in the other.” “Pray put them both into one hand, good Mr. Mayor,” was the King’s laconic remark, heedless of the impression which he made upon formal courtiers and ladies in waiting, who, like the Duchess of Marlborough, could sooner pardon a defect in morals, than a solecism in manners.[[303]] It was probable, from his Majesty’s known aversion to compliments, public and private, that he intended no offence to the Princess Anne, when he committed the “brutality” of not answering her letter.
Notwithstanding the spirit manifested in these animadversions by the Countess of Marlborough, the Earl sought every opportunity of maintaining the good understanding between the Princess and the court.[[304]] This he justly thought of importance, possibly for the reason avowed by Dalrymple, that an apparent reconciliation between the royal family had all the good effects of a real one, “because it obliged inferior figures to suspend their passions by the example of their superiors.”[[305]] But Marlborough, although taking an active part in the House of Lords, was not at present allowed to enter the royal presence, though having a “fair and very great reversion” of favour.[[306]]