This despatch was sent from St. Albans, and the Queen promised that she would read and answer it. But ten days afterwards the paper was unread, and the only consolation which the Duchess received for this negligence was a kind look and a gracious smile from her Majesty, as she passed to receive the communion; “but the smile and the look,” adds the Duchess, “were, I had reason afterwards to think, given to Bishop Taylor and the Common Prayer Book, and not to me.”
Meantime the Queen, after more than twenty-five years of matrimony, became a widow. Prince George, in October, sank under the effects of a long-continued asthma, which, during the last few years of his life, had kept him hovering on the brink of the grave. The Queen, who had been throughout the whole of her married life a pattern of domestic affection, had never, during the last trying years of his life, left the Prince either night or day. She attended him with assiduity, and proffered to her sick consort those patient services which are generally supposed only to be the meed of females in the humbler walks of life.
The Prince merited her affection; his manners were amiable, and his conduct respectable; and he had not embarrassed the Queen by taking a conspicuous share in politics. The “Monsieur est il possible” of King James was neither deficient in sense nor in information; but his powers of expression were inferior to his capacity for gaining knowledge.[[148]]
The Queen, unsentimental though well intentioned, plunged deeper and deeper into petty political intrigues, after the respectable occupation of tending her invalid husband was at an end. Her grief was as edifying as her conjugal affection had been exemplary; yet the parliament, not thinking it too late for such addresses, petitioned her Majesty that she would not allow her grief for the Prince’s death to prevent her from contemplating a second marriage. But Anne continued to be, or, as some said, to seem inconsolable. She avoided the light of day, and could not endure the conversation of her dearest friends, but seemed, as in affliction it is natural so to do, to revert to those companions of her earlier years who had witnessed the felicity of her married life.
Several weeks had elapsed since the Queen and the Duchess had met, when the latter was apprised that the existence of the Prince of Denmark was drawing to a close. The Duchess, warm in her temper, warm in her feelings, wrote on this occasion to her royal mistress to express her determination to pay her duty, in inquiring after her Majesty’s health, and to declare that she could not hear of so great a misfortune and affliction as the condition in which the Prince was, without offering her services, if acceptable to her Majesty.
This letter was scarcely penned, before further tidings of the Prince’s danger arrived; and the Duchess, setting off for Kensington, carried her letter with her, and sent it to the Queen, with a message that she waited her Majesty’s commands. Anne could scarcely be much flattered by a tribute of respect, which was prefaced by the Duchess with these offensive words:—“Though, the last time I had the honour to wait upon your Majesty, your usage of me was such as was scarce possible for me to imagine, or for any one to believe,” &c. &c. She received her haughty subject “coolly, and as a stranger.” The Duchess, however, touched by her royal mistress’s impending calamity, persevered. It was her lot, after witnessing the nuptials of the Queen with the Prince of Denmark, and after participating for years in their sober privacy, to be present at his last moments. It was her office to lead the Queen from the chamber of death into her closet, where, kneeling down, the Duchess endeavoured affectionately to console the widowed sovereign, remaining for some time before her in that posture of humiliation.
The Queen’s conduct in this peculiar situation, and at this critical moment, was singularly characteristic of her feeble, vacillating character, on which no strong impression could be made. Whilst the Duchess knelt before her, imploring her Majesty not to cherish sorrow, by remaining where the remembrance of the recent solemn scene would haunt her, but to retire to St. James’s; whilst the arrogant but warm-hearted Duchess forgot all past grievances in her attempts to solace a mistress from whom she had received many favours; the poor Queen’s fluttered spirits were affrighted by the recollection of Mrs. Masham, and of the party who would resent this long and private interview. She yielded, however, to the Duchess’s remonstrances, and promised to accompany her to St. James’s; and, placing her watch in the Duchess’s hand, bade her retire until the finger of that monitor had reached a certain point, and to send Mrs. Masham in the interval. A crowd was collected before the antechamber, and the Duchess, emerging from the royal closet, determined, though the game was lost, at least not to betray her defeat. She behaved on this occasion with the address, and dignity, and self command, which a knowledge of her own well-meant intentions, and her long experience in the world, imparted. She ordered her own coach to be prepared for the reception of the Queen, and desired the assembled courtiers to retire, whilst her Majesty, amidst her complicated feelings of grief and embarrassment, should pass through the gallery. The Queen, moved like a puppet to the last by the spirited and intellectual woman who was formed to command, came forth, leaning on the arm of the Duchess. “Your Majesty,” said the lofty Sarah, “must excuse my not delivering your message to Mrs. Masham; your Majesty can send for her at St. James’s, how and when you please.”
The Queen, apparently insensible to the spirit of this reply, or preoccupied by fears as to what “poor Masham” would think, moved along the gallery, whispering some commission to Mrs. Hill, the sister of Mrs. Masham, as she went along, and casting upon Mrs. Masham, who appeared in the gallery with Dr. Arbuthnot, a look of kindness, though without speaking. She was sufficiently composed, on entering the carriage, to intimate to Godolphin that she wished the royal vaults at Westminster to be inspected previous to the interment of the Prince, in order to ascertain whether there would be room for her body also,—if not, to choose another place of interment; and in these topics the drive from Kensington to St. James’s was occupied. It was not thought by the Queen incompatible with the deep feeling which she professed, to busy herself with those minutiæ to which minds of a common stamp affix so much importance, connected with the disposition of the dead.—The Duchess has commented upon the Queen’s particularities, with the freedom natural to her. After a conference with Lord Godolphin at St. James’s, during which the Duchess retired, the Queen, to use her own expression, “scratched twice at dear Mrs. Freeman’s door,” in hopes of finding the Lord Treasurer within the Duchess’s apartments, in order to bid him, when he sent his orders to Kensington, order a great number of yeomen of the guard to be in attendance to carry the “dear Prince’s body” down the great stairs, which were very steep and slippery, so that it might “not be let fall.”
The transient reconciliation which thus took place between the Queen and the Duchess was not of long duration. Mrs. Masham, indeed, retired that same evening from the supper-room, where the Duchess appeared to attend upon her Majesty; and Anne cautiously forbore to mention “poor Masham’s” hateful name. But when in private, Anne was almost continually attended by the insidious Abigail, and the Duchess rarely entered the royal presence without finding her rival there, or, what was worse, retiring furtively at her approach; and she soon ascertained that the very closet where she had knelt in sorrow and compassion before her sovereign—where she had striven to act the part of consolation—was the scene of Mrs. Masham’s influence. It seemed, indeed, strange that Anne should select for her daily sitting-room the closet which her deceased consort had used as his place of retirement and prayer, and the prying Duchess soon penetrated behind the screen of widowed proprieties. She has laid bare the occupations of the royal mourner, whilst closeted for many hours of the day in Prince George’s apartments. The Duchess, indeed, suspected that some peculiar motive could alone induce Anne to disregard the mournful associations with that retreat; and resolving to ascertain the cause, she had the mortification to discover the true reason of Anne’s choice: this was, that the “back-stairs belonging to it came from Mrs. Masham’s lodgings, who, by that means, could bring to her whom she pleased.”[[149]]