The Duchess could not long endure this; and, upon the occasion of a thanksgiving for the victory of Oudenarde, and after the memorable siege of Brussels, her wrath broke forth. She still, in spite of her threats, held the office of groom of the stole, which brought her into frequent, unfortunate collision with the Queen. The efforts to please, which the haughty Duchess now condescended to make, were constantly counteracted by her rival. The following letter is truly characteristic. Pique, pride, effrontery, are curiously manifested in its expression.[[144]]

“I cannot help sending your Majesty this letter, to show how exactly Lord Marlborough agrees with me in my opinion, that he has now no interest with you; though, when I said so in the church on Thursday,[[145]] you were pleased to say it was untrue: and yet I think that he will be surprised to hear that, when I had taken so much pains to put your jewels in a way that I thought you would like, Mrs. Masham could make you refuse to wear them, in so unkind a manner; because that was a power she had not thought fit to exercise before. I will make no reflection upon it; only that I must needs observe that your Majesty chose a very wrong day to mortify me, when you were just going to return thanks for a victory obtained by Lord Marlborough.”

The Queen thought proper to answer this epistle in the following words. The contest had now arrived at its climax.

“Sunday.

“After the commands you gave me on the thanksgiving-day of not answering you, I should not have troubled you with these lines, but to return the Duke of Marlborough’s letter safe into your hands, and for the same reason do not say anything to that, nor to yours enclosed with it.”

It was impossible for the Duchess, on receiving so extraordinary a letter, to remain silent; and, in truth, she was one of those whom rebuke could not abash, nor argument silence, nor invective intimidate. She again took up the pen, not, as she assured her Majesty, with any view of answering the Queen’s letter, but of explaining what she had said at church. This explanation, like most others, tended to make the matter considerably worse. “I desired you,” says the Duchess, continuing to address the Queen in the character of an equal, “I desired you not to answer me there, for fear of being overheard; and this you interpret as if I had desired you not to answer me at all, which was far from my intention. For the whole end of my writing to you so often, was to get your answer to several things in which we differed, that if I was in the wrong you might convince me of it, and I should very readily have owned my mistakes.”

The Duchess proceeds to say, that she hopes that, some time or other, the Queen may find time to reflect upon the unanswerable arguments which the Duchess had laid before her, and that her Majesty would also occasionally listen to the advice of my Lord Marlborough, and then she would never more be troubled with disagreeable letters from her. “The word command,” adds the Duchess, “which you use at the beginning of your letter, is very unfitly supposed to come from me. For though I have always writ to you as a friend, and lived with you as such for so many years, with all the truth, and honesty, and zeal for your service that was possible, yet I shall never forget that I am your subject, nor cease to be a faithful one.”[[146]]

This correspondence appears to have had the effect only of widening the breach. It is one peculiarity of our sex, or, at any rate, of the least reflective portion, that the affections once alienated, cannot, by reasoning, by persuasion, even by concession, be restored to their accustomed channel. At Anne’s side there stood a whisperer ever ready to pour into the royal ear the antidote to all the medicine of too wholesome truth, which the Duchess, in her hardihood, dared to administer. It was indeed her boast, that when, without prejudice or passion, she knew the Queen to be wrong, she should think herself wanting in her duty not to tell her Majesty her opinion, “and the rather, because no one else dares to speak out upon so ungrateful a subject.”

The poor Queen went on, therefore, much in the same state of indecision and mystery as that in which her life had been passed for years; closeted every night with Mrs. Masham and Harley, and watched at every avenue by the Duchess and her emissaries. When the ministry suspected that the Queen was under the influence of the discarded but dreaded Harley, the Duchess despatched a letter full of remonstrances and reproaches, written with her “usual plainness and zeal.” But finding that by this mode she could make no impression upon her Majesty, the Duchess sought an interview, and begged to know what her crime was that had produced so great an alteration in the Queen. This inquiry drew from Anne a charge of inveteracy and of persecution against “poor Masham,” and a declaration that the Queen would henceforth treat the Duchess as it became her to treat the Duke of Marlborough’s wife, and the groom of the stole; but she forbore specifying any distinct charge against the discarded favourite.

On receiving this letter, the Duchess began a work which it seems she had some time contemplated; namely, a careful review of all the faithful services which, for about twenty-six years, she had performed towards the Queen; of the favour with which she had been honoured, and of the use which she had made of that favour; and of the manner in which she had now lost it, by means of one whom she had raised out of the dust.[[147]] To savour her apology with some sacred associations, the Duchess prefixed to it the directions given by the author of “The Whole Duty of Man,” with regard to friendship; and the directions in the Common Prayer before the Communion with regard to reconciliation, together with the rules laid down by Bishop Taylor on the same head; and in offering this memorial, the subdued, but not humiliated Duchess, gave her word to her Majesty, that if, after reading these compilations, she would please to answer in two words that she was still of her former opinion, she, the Duchess, would never more trouble her on that head as long as she lived, but would perform her offices with respect and decorum, remember always that Anne was her mistress and her Queen, and resolve to pay her the respect due from a faithful subject to a Queen.