The Duchess of Marlborough had, in former days, thoroughly understood, and as thoroughly despised, the shallowness of his grace of Somerset’s understanding, and the unbounded arrogance of his pretensions. The Duke was one of those beings, of whom a simple delineation in works of fiction would be called exaggeration. Holding his exalted station by a disputed right,[[311]] he took precedence in his degree, in consequence of the first Duke of the nation being a Catholic. This pre-eminence, hazardous to one of limited capacity, was maintained by the Duke almost in a regal style. He intimated his commands to his servants by signs, not vouchsafing to speak to them. When he travelled, the roads were cleared of all obstruction, and of idle bystanders. His children never sat down in his presence; it was even his custom, when he slept in the afternoon, to insist upon one of his daughters standing on each side of him during his slumber. On one occasion, Lady Charlotte Seymour, being tired, ventured to sit down, and he left her, in consequence, twenty thousand pounds less than her sister. He gave precedence to no one but the Duke of Norfolk.
Notwithstanding these absurdities, the Duke possessed some fine qualities. His pride was accompanied by a sense of honour, and his conversation graced by a nobleness of sentiment, which, in spite of a hesitation in his speech, must have well become a man who aimed at so much. He was a firm and generous friend; patronised the fine arts, and, what was perhaps of some importance to a widower disposed to marry again, possessed a fine exterior. At the time when he made proposals to the Duchess of Marlborough, he had, however, passed his prime, and was sixty-five years of age. Already had he linked himself to one of the noblest families in the land by his marriage with his first Duchess, the Lady Elizabeth Percy, the heiress of the Percys, and the widow successively of two husbands, Lord Ogle, and Thomas Thynne, Esq., the last of whom was shot in his coach by Count Coningsmark, in hopes of carrying off the heiress of the Percys. This Duchess of Somerset had been on apparently friendly, but actually, scarcely on good terms with the Duchess of Marlborough, who perceived, through the veil of courtesy and submissive sweetness, the ambitious designs of the “great lady,” as Swift termed her. She fixed her eyes, as the Duchess discovered, upon the place of groom of the stole, an office which proved a temptation to many; “but covered the impertinence of her ambition and expectation within, with the outward guise of lowliness and good humour.”[[312]] Such was the Duchess of Marlborough’s opinion of the Duke’s first wife; and when she further discovered that the Duchess of Somerset was secretly undermining her at the very time that she pretended to lament the misunderstandings between her and the Queen, it is not to be supposed that the pretended good-will which was still maintained, was anything but a very hollow alliance.
To the Duke, however, the Duchess of Marlborough’s conduct had been friendly. She gave him timely notice, through the Duchess, of a resolution of a “certain great man,” probably Harley, to dismiss the Duke from the post of master of the horse, for telling cabinet council secrets. Eventually the Duke was dissatisfied with the conduct of the Queen, and retired from court, but his Duchess remained, to gain unbounded ascendency over the weak Queen’s mind, and to continue her attendance on her, until her demise.
Notwithstanding the difference of their political career, the Duke of Somerset never forgot that his first Duchess was a Percy, and, as such, entitled to devotion and respect. Possibly he thought that he could alone pay her a suitable compliment in soliciting the Duchess of Marlborough to succeed her, and to console him for the loss of his first Duchess.[[313]] But she to whom he addressed himself answered his proposal in a manner worthy of her superior understanding, becoming her years, and admirable as addressed to the “proud Duke.” She declined a second marriage as unsuitable to her age; but added, that were she addressed by the emperor of the world, she would not permit him to succeed in that heart which had been devoted to John Duke of Marlborough.[[314]]
The Duke received this refusal with submission, and even consulted the Duchess respecting the choice of a wife. At her grace’s recommendation, he married the Lady Charlotte Finch, second daughter of Daniel Earl of Nottingham and Winchilsea.[[315]] The Duke, it is said, never forgot the distinction between a Percy and a Finch. “The Duchess,” says Granger, “once tapped him familiarly on the shoulder with her fan;” he turned round, and with an indignant countenance said, “My first Duchess was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty.” Whatever had been the early opinion entertained of the Duke by the Duchess of Marlborough, she became, in the latter part of her life, extremely friendly towards this absurd nobleman of the old school, and consulted him frequently on the management of her affairs.[[316]]
The Duchess, notwithstanding such temptations to her resolution, formed no second marriage. The Duke of Somerset survived her grace, and lived to attend the funeral of George the Second, as he had done that of Charles the Second, James the Second, Queen Mary and William the Third, of Anne, and of George the First. The long period of twenty-two years, during which the Duchess of Marlborough survived her husband, if they proved less eventful than her youth and middle age, are not wholly devoid of interest, when considered in conjunction with the eminent characters who figured at the same era.
CHAPTER XIV.
Anecdotes of the Duchess of Marlborough and the Duchess of Buckingham—Pope’s “Atossa”—Sir Robert Walpole—The Duchess’s enmity towards that minister—Singular scene between them—The Duchess’s causes of complaint enumerated.
Extraordinary as the displays of violent passion in the Duchess of Marlborough may appear in modern days, when every exhibition of natural feeling, whether good or bad, is carefully suppressed by the customs of society, there were not wanting, in her own sphere, ladies of high rank, equally arrogant though less gifted, between whom common report hesitated on which to bestow the distinction of being the most absurd, outrageous, and repulsive.
Among those ladies who, in the reigns of George the First and George the Second, formed a link with the times of the Stuarts, was the Duchess of Buckingham, natural daughter of James the Second by Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester—a parentage of which the Duchess was shamelessly proud. Possessing the arrogance of her contemporary Duchess, without her masculine sense, and exhibiting equally a love of display, pertinacity, and violence of temper, the Duchess of Buckingham laboured with unceasing pains to procure the restoration of her half-brother, the Pretender. She frequently travelled to the Continent in hopes of furthering that end; she stopped ever with filial devotion at the tomb of James, shedding tears over the threadbare pall which covered his remains; but her filial duty extended not to replace it by a newer and more sumptuous decoration.