Most dutiful and most obedient
Humble Servant,
Coningsby.
“There is no such cattle or sheep as your grace desires, to be had till July next.”
Such were the terms in which the devoted Lord, devoted certainly to some fascinating object personified in her form as its representative, addressed the venerable Duchess. Her reply, most unfortunately, is not preserved; and with this remarkable letter the correspondence, as far as we can glean, closes. Dr. Coxe, whilst with tantalising brevity he has described Lord Coningsby’s letters as “the rapturous effusions of a love-sick swain,” has not deemed it important, nor perhaps correct, to leave us any further details of these singular addresses, which so grave an historian, as he who has commemorated the fortunes of John Duke of Marlborough, has considered as impertinent in so serious a narrative.
Lord Coningsby did not long survive his disappointment. He died in 1729; and his daughter, Lady Coningsby, leaving no issue, the title, in 1761, became extinct.
The Duchess was, at the time of the Duke’s death, sixty-two years of age. Her health appears to have been still unbroken; her beauty far less impaired than that of many much younger women. Her income was more than ample, since she found means, even when maintaining a princely establishment, to accumulate sums, and to purchase lands, which she left to her grandchildren. Her wit, her experience, her consequence in society as the widow of Marlborough, all contributed to give her a proud distinction in that gay world to which she was devoted.
After the Duke’s decease she resided principally at Windsor Lodge, employing herself chiefly in the management of the affairs which had devolved upon her, and in the superintendence of those cares which she had bound herself to bestow upon her grandchildren. But there were those who thought that Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, her wealth, or her former influence, might add dignity even to those already exalted in their own estimation above the majority of their fellow creatures.[[308]]
Charles, sixth Duke of Somerset, at this time a widower, proposed, within a year or little more after the death of the Duke of Marlborough, to the Duchess to unite herself to him. He pleaded even a long and respectful passion, and addressed her grace with a humility which only the fashion of those times could have extracted from one who bore the appellation of the “proud Duke.”
This nobleman had long been acquainted with the widowed Duchess of Marlborough. In former days, before the Duchess of Somerset had supplanted the proud Sarah in the affections of Queen Anne, the Duchess of Marlborough appears to have occasionally employed her talents and address in soothing the offended pride of the Duke of Somerset, whom it was necessary for the Whig party to conciliate.[[309]] Lord Godolphin, however, could not be brought to enter into the Duke’s scheme “of being a great man at court.”[[310]] For the “proud Duke” did no injustice to the quality of his intellect by the absurd state, and wearisome self-importance which he affected, even to the annihilation of natural feelings. He was a man of no talent, but of unbounded pretensions. Mr. Maynwaring justly observes, in writing to the Duchess, speaking of the Duke’s desire to exalt his importance as a party-man, “For a man that has no talents to do any one thing in the world, to think that he is to do everything, and to have all preferments pass through his hands, is something so much out of the way, that it is hard to find a name for it.”