In the ensuing year, 1711, the Duke of Marlborough was dismissed from all his employments; and with this event the Duchess’s account of her conduct closes. The influence of the French, the existence of strong prepossession in favour of the Pretender among most of the ministers, with the exception of Harley, and the necessity of sacrificing to the desire of a peace the general who had always opposed that measure, were the inducements, in the opinion of the Duchess, to this act on the part of the Queen. It was executed with as little feeling as could well be imagined. Historians have compared this act of ingratitude to the conduct of Justinian to Belisarius. The dismissal was written by the Queen herself, and in reply she received from Marlborough a calm, respectful, dignified, but fruitless remonstrance.[[188]]
At the close of her “Vindication,” the Duchess makes the following observation to the nobleman to whom that work was addressed.[[189]] “Thus, my lord, I have given you a short history of my favour with my royal mistress, from its earliest rise to its irrecoverable fall. You have seen with admiration how sincere and how great an affection a Queen was capable of having for a servant who never flattered her. And I doubt not but your friendship made some conclusions to my advantage, when you observed for how many years I was able to hold my place in her regard, notwithstanding her most real and invariable passion for that phantom which she called the church—that darling phantom which the Tories were for ever presenting to her imagination, and employing as a will in the wisp to bewilder her mind, and entice her (as she at last unhappily experienced) to the destruction of her quiet and glory. But I believe you have thought that the most extraordinary thing in the whole fortune of my favour, was its being at last destroyed by a cause, in appearance so unequal to the effect,—I mean Mrs. Abigail Hill. For I will venture to affirm, that whatever may have been laid to my charge of ill behaviour to my mistress, in the latter years of my service, is all reducible to this one crime—my inveteracy to Mrs. Masham. I have, indeed, said that my constant combating the Queen’s inclination to the Tories, did in the end prove the ruin of my credit with her; and this is true, inasmuch as without that her Majesty could never have been engaged to any insinuations against me.”
The Duchess of Marlborough was now at liberty to follow the bent of her own inclinations, and to fix her residence where she pleased. She gave up her apartments in St. James’s Palace, immediately after the surrender of her offices of state, but she retained that of Ranger of the great and little parks of Windsor, one of the grants from her sovereign that she valued most. The Lodge of the great park was, as the Duchess remarks, a very agreeable residence, and Anne had remembered, in the days of their friendship, that the Duchess, in riding by it, had often wished for such a place. The little Lodge, which was only a fit abode for the under-keepers, was given by the Duchess to one of her brothers-in-law, who laid out some five or six thousand pounds upon it; whilst her grace spent a scarcely less sum on the great lodge. The office, by virtue of which the Duchess claimed this residence, was afterwards the source of endless contentions, and of epistolary controversies, which, if they served no other purpose, exhibited the powers of mind which the Duchess possessed, in the clearest manner.[[190]]
For some time after her retirement from court, the Duchess, however, lived at Holywell House, St. Albans: she maintained as much magnificence as any subject ever displayed, both when she resided in the country, and also when she made Marlborough House, in London, her abode.[[191]]
That the Duke’s popularity was still considerable among the lower classes, was apparent from the reception which he met with upon his last return from Holland, on which occasion a crowd met and attended him from the city, and he had some difficulty in avoiding the acclamations which were uttered.[[192]] Yet it was at this time that he was greeted by that scurrilous pamphlet entitled, “Reasons why a certain general had not the thanks of either of the two Houses of Parliament, &c.”
We may now presume, the storm being over, although its fury had not been weathered, that since their political career was for a time closed, the Duke and Duchess might return to private life, contented to pass together the remaining portion of their married life. The frequent separations, which war had rendered necessary, had been a perpetual source of regret to the good Duke, whose heart was framed for domestic life. In all his letters, he expresses that longing for home, that desire for an uninterrupted union with one whom he idolized, which hitherto had been precluded, both by the great general’s arduous duties, and by the necessary attendance at court, imposed on the Duchess by her offices, even during the short intervals when Marlborough was permitted to relax from his toils.
That yearning for the fulfilment of his dearest hopes—hopes cruelly deferred—was, at length, gratified. Marlborough, the slave of his country, the instrument and the controller at once of states and allied armies,—Marlborough, at length, was free,—at length he was permitted, even constrained, to return to the ordeal of private life; for to all men who have played a conspicuous part on the great theatre of the busy world, a domestic sphere must prove an ordeal which few, so situated, sustain with credit.
Since the first years of their early marriage, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough had scarcely passed a year of uninterrupted conjugal enjoyment. The youth and beauty of the Duchess had been the ornament of the court, in the absence of her husband, and had been the source of his pride, augmenting his anxiety to return home to one who was pre-eminently formed to fascinate the imagination. They were now reunited; but the Duchess was no longer the youthful beauty whose very errors charmed, and whose slightest word of kindness enraptured the doating heart of her fond husband. She was a disappointed woman: morose, captious, and, though not penurious, yet to an excess fond of wealth. The cares of a numerous family had proved temptations, not incentives to virtue and exertion. Her children loved her not; and her later days were passed in family differences, which wring the tender heart, and bow down the feeble spirit; but which aroused all the ardour of a fiery and unrelenting temper, such as that which the once lovely Duchess, now “old Sarah,” displayed.[[193]]
She was one of those persons whom misfortunes chasten not. It is related of her, that even during the Duke’s last illness, the Duchess, incensed against Dr. Mead, for some advice which she did not approve, swore at him bitterly, and following him down stairs, wanted to pull off his periwig.[[194]] Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of Winchester, was present at this scene.
The violence of her temper is incontestibly proved; her affection for the Duke has been doubted. But, however she may have tried the deep-felt, and, even to the last, ardent attachment of the incomparable Marlborough, there is every reason to conclude that she honoured, she even loved, the husband whom she often grieved in the waywardness of her high spirit. No man can retain a sincere, a strong attachment for a wife who loves him not. Conjugal affection, to endure, must be reciprocal. There must be a fund of confidence, that, in spite of temper, in defiance of seeming caprice, assures a real kindness beneath those briery properties. Marlborough knew that he was beloved.