“Think, madam, what will become of those two dear children which you, with all the reasons in the world, love best, should they be (which God in heaven forbid) so unfortunate as to lose you.
“I can preach most feelingly on the subject, having been taught, from the ingratitude of the world, the want of true friendship in it; and, from the most unnatural falsehood of nearest relatives, how uneasy it is, upon a bed of sickness, to think of leaving helpless and beloved children to merciless and mercenary (and it is ten million to one but they prove both) trustees and guardians; and had I not trusted in God, in my late dangerous indisposition, that he would not bereave my two dearest innocents of me their affectionate father, such thoughts had killed me. But God has been merciful to me, and so I from my soul pray he may be in preserving you to them.
“I could give many more reasons for your grace’s being in this place at this time; but these will prove sufficient to one so discerning,” &c.
Lord Coningsby’s children appear, indeed, to have been the objects of his tender solicitude; and it seems to have been his aim to have interested the heart of the Duchess in behalf of these little innocents, as he calls them; to whose newly acquired rank, doubtless, some portion of the courted lady’s wealth would have been an agreeable addition. It must have been, indeed, no easy task to address in terms of passion the Duchess, whose shrewd mind would instantly dispel the colouring which was so coarsely dashed over the real purpose of the valiant lord. The Duchess, be it remembered, was now in her sixty-second year, at which age women may be venerable, but never attractive. It would be well if our sex would learn discrimination, and remember the difference.
In November, the Earl gained courage to write a still more explicit letter to his beloved friend; and his letter contains something like an intimation that the subject of a more intimate union than that of friendship had already been broached between himself and the Duchess. The reader may judge for himself, from the following extracts, since it is difficult and dangerous to take the interpretation of love-letters entirely into one’s own hands. The letter is so extremely characteristic and absurd, that since it has never before been published, we are disposed to give it almost ungarbled to the reader.
After premising that he found the innocent glee of his children his great and only solace, when returning tired, and more heartless than ever, on account of the dismal state of the country, from the House of Lords, his lordship observes—[[307]]
“Albemarle-street, Nov. 20, 1722.
“And these little innocents have been my only comforters and counsellors, and, under God, my support, from the most dismal day I was so unfortunate to be deprived of the most delightful conversation of my dearest, dearest Lady Marlborough, to whom alone I could open the innermost thoughts of my loaded heart; and by whose exalted wisdom, and by a friendship more sincere than is now to be met in any other breast among all the men and women in the world, I found relief from all my then prevailing apprehensions, and was sometimes put in hope that the great and Almighty Disposer of all things would, out of his infinite goodness to me, at his own time and in his own way, establish those blessings (which he then showed me but a glimpse of, and suffered me to enjoy but a moment,) to me for the term of my happy life.
“How these pleasing expectations were frightfully lessened by the ill state of health I found you in at Blenheim, I need not tell you, because you could not but see the confusion the melancholy sight put me into. And it was no small addition to my concern to see (as I imagined at least) so much indifference in the preservation of a life so precious amongst those entrusted with it; and had I not been deluded to believe that I should soon have the honour to see your grace here, I had, before I left Woodstock, sent to you to know by what safe method I might communicate to you any matter necessary for you to be informed of, relative to my dear country, or your still dearer self.
“But I was not only disappointed of these intentions by the long progress you have made, and during which time, by inquiring every day at your door, I learnt from your porter that he knew not how to send a letter to you till you returned to St. Albans, and where, the moment I knew you were arrived, I presumed to send you the letter to which you honoured me with an answer by the post, but likewise by your letter coming in that way; and now I am altogether at a loss to tell my dear Lady Marlborough whether the pleasure that dear letter brought me, or the terrors it gave me, had the ascendant in me, and of this doubt you, and you alone, must judge.