To an extraordinary capacity for business, the Duchess of Marlborough united great facility in expressing, and in making others comprehend, all that she desired them to understand. From her earliest years, her mind soared above the pursuits of her young companions. The puerile recreations of a court could not shackle the vigorous intellect which disdained the captivity of etiquette. Compelled by circumstances to endure the society of a Princess whom she despised, her mind never sank to the level of that of the placid and unaspiring Anne. Even amidst the irksome duties of perpetual attendance on one who had little to recommend her except good nature, the grasping intellect of the youthful favourite was gaining opinions on topics generally connected with politics, and with such themes as affected her interest and that of her future husband. The capacity of Anne remained stationary; and that of her companion, amid similar occupations to those of her young mistress, and enjoying only the same opportunities, like a plant entangled amongst others of slower growth, although shackled, yet acquired vigour.
With few opportunities of mental culture, except such as society offered her, with scarcely the rudiments of education, Sarah Duchess of Marlborough became, at an early age, the affianced wife of a man who was, like herself, practical, not erudite, the scholar of the world, the pupil of fortune. At the time of this early engagement, she probably possessed, along with the vivacity, the sweetness and attractions natural to her sex. The world, and a love of politics, that bane to delicacy and grace in woman, had not then hardened her nature, and increased the acrimony of her temper. She became the wife of Marlborough, the associate of his associates, the companion, the friend of the eloquent, of the lettered, and the brave. Her capacity grew in the congenial sphere now formed around her. Her observation, by nature accurate, was exercised upon subjects worthy of her inspection. She learned, by conversation, by experience, to think and to reason. For many years she took but a trivial share in the public events which agitated the nation; but she viewed from “the loophole of retreat” all that was important, with a mind enlightened by the sound and moderate opinions of Godolphin, from whom she was, in fact, much more rarely separated than from her husband. The Lord Treasurer could never, indeed, teach her to love William the Third, who had graciously overlooked his defection; but he restrained her vehemence, he regulated her expressions; and it was not until Godolphin had sunk under the cruel disease which consumed him, that the Duchess became intractably violent. Thus, formed by circumstances into a reflecting, shrewd, and energetic being, the Duchess of Marlborough, when her mind attained, along with her frame, its full growth, and that lasting vigour for which both were remarkable, began to turn with disgust from the irksome duties which her offices at court imposed upon her unwilling mind. The daily round of ceremonials which she was compelled to witness became revolting to her; the monotony of Anne’s mind inspired her with contempt. It was with difficulty, as she confessed years afterwards, that she brought herself to endure the society of one whose conversation consisted, like that of James her father, in a constant repetition of one favourite idea; a species of discourse far more dispiriting than absolute silence.
The imperious temper of Sarah was fostered by the meek disposition and mean understanding of her royal mistress. As she grew into political importance, she probably ceased to be the engaging and attractive woman whose loveliness gained universal admiration. Henceforth, her empire, excepting with regard to her husband, appears to have been over the intellect alone; and whilst she was at once the pupil and the adviser of Godolphin, she was no longer beloved as a parent; her influence over the affections of those with whom she was connected melted away when politics absorbed her thoughts.
There can be no doubt but that, whilst the virtues of the Duchess were not many, her faults were egregiously exaggerated by contemporary writers. The principal accusations against her relate to avarice, ingratitude towards Anne, arrogance of demeanour, and a spirit of intrigue. The grounds upon which this formidable array of demerits rests, have been fully discussed in the foregoing portion of this work. That the Duchess was of a most grasping disposition, that she coveted money, thirsted for power, place, honour, everything that could raise her to a pinnacle in that world which she loved too well, cannot be denied. The attempts at peculation, and the corrupt and dishonest practices with which she has been charged, are, however, succinctly and satisfactorily disproved by her. Though greedy to an excess of wealth, she was not dishonest. Queen Anne truly said that cheating was not the Duchess’s crime; and no individual could be a more exact or competent judge than the Princess who uttered that sentence. It appears, indeed, that the Duchess endeavoured very diligently to reform the royal household; that she caused an order to be passed, prohibiting the sale of places; that she never exceeded, and, in some instances, refused the usual perquisites of her office; that, far from encroaching on royal bounty, she refused frequently large sums from the Queen when Princess; and that, after Anne’s accession, the value of her presents to the Duchess was so contemptible that the latter, in her letter to Mr. Hutchinson, has given a list of them, which borders, from its meanness, on the absurd.
The conduct of the Duchess towards her sovereign has been, by party writers, severely stigmatised, and not without justice. There was, on both sides of this memorable quarrel, much to blame. A long course of arrogance, imprudence, and negligence, on the part of the Duchess, led to the alienation of Anne. Yet even the Queen specifically declared, and reiterated, that she had no fault to allege against the haughty Sarah, except “inveteracy to poor Masham.” It was not in the Duchess’s nature to check that inveteracy. A generous, high-minded line of conduct was beyond her power. Yet, at any rate, the alleged cause of her disfavour was not a crime of heinous character. It was the mode in which she revenged the injuries which she received, that constitutes her delinquency. Her character of her royal mistress was written in the spirit of revenge; her pen was fledged with satire as it traced the lines in which the follies and defects of Anne are described. Years failed to soften the bitterness of her vindictive spirit. Death had not the power to disarm her rancour. The publication of certain letters, an act with which she frequently threatened the Queen;[[410]] the careful insertion in her narrative of every circumstance that can throw ridicule upon a mistress once her benefactress, one who descended from her high rank to claim the privileges of friendship: these are acts which must be heavily charged upon the Duchess. Age and affliction ought to have taught the relentless writer a better lesson. The Queen was no more—the Duchess tottering towards the tomb. Their mutual animosities should not by the survivor have been dragged forth to gratify revenge.
Such a breach of confidence, such an outrage upon the sacred name of friendship, society ought not to pardon. Such an offence, of too frequent occurrence, where disgust has superseded confidence, renders affection a snare to be dreaded by the unsophisticated mind, and must entirely preclude those who hold offices of responsibility from the necessary relief of confidence; and, were such acts of treachery excused, monarchs might indeed tremble, before they indulged the amiable inclinations of minds not corrupted by the intoxicating possession of power.
The office which the Duchess held about the person of the Queen rendered silence an imperative claim of honour; but, with an unrelenting coarseness, the Duchess laid bare the very privacies of the closet, the foibles, the vacillations, the manœuvres, the weaknesses, the peculiarities of her sovereign. No self-justification could be worth such a price—revenge upon the memory of one silent in the grave.
As a wife and as a mother, the Duchess stands not pre-eminently high. She was born for the public, and to the public she was devoted. Her sentiments of patriotism, however commendable, would have been well exchanged for duty to her husband, and patient affection for her children. Her gross partiality to some of her grandchildren, in preference to others, revealed the source of her misfortunes as a mother. Wherever such a noxious fungus as injustice grows within the domestic sphere, peace and affection take their leave. Hence those divisions which the possession of a large fortune in the hands of a family entails upon the junior branches, among whom there is not the foundation of a happy confidence. The precise sources of those irritating bickerings does not appear in the published correspondence relating to the domestic concerns of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough; but it is too probable that the miserable dissensions between his wife and daughters, which embittered the Duke’s life, originated in jealousies on pecuniary matters.
In what is commonly termed purity of morals, the character of the Duchess of Marlborough has descended to posterity without a stain. Whatever direction the calumnies of the day may have taken in that respect, their influence was ephemeral. No historian of respectability has dared to attach a blemish to the purity of her lofty deportment. She esteemed the probity, and she was powerfully influenced by the sterling sense, of Lord Godolphin; but her attachment was in no degree greater than that of the Lord Treasurer’s affectionate friend, her husband. No similar aspersion with respect to any other individual appears in the lampoons of the day. In a moral sense, in so far as it comprises the purity of a woman’s conduct, the Duchess is therefore unimpeached. She was in that respect worthy of being the wife of the great hero who worshipped her image in absence, with the romantic devotion of love, unabated even by indifference. But when we speak of female excellence, to that one all-important ingredient must be added others, without which a mother, a wife, and a friend, cannot be said to fulfil her vocation. Sweetness, forbearance, humanity, must grace that deportment, in the absence of which virtue extorts with difficulty her need of praise. The lofty temper which could scarcely be restrained in the presence of the staid and decorous Queen Mary, expanded into acts of fury, when time and unlimited dominion over her sovereign and her husband had soured that impetuous spirit into arrogance.
In reviewing the long life whose annals we have written, it is not easy to point out the benefits which the Duchess conferred upon society. Endowed with natural abilities of a very uncommon order; with a person so remarkably beautiful, that it would have bestowed a species of distinction upon a female in a humble station; possessing a most vigorous constitution, which seemed destined to wear out, with impatience, her heirs and her enemies; raised to rank, her coffers overflowing with wealth; she appeared marked out by destiny to effect some signal good for a country in whose concerns she took an active part. What distress might she not, with her enormous wealth, have relieved; what indigent genius might she not have brought forth to light; what aids to learning by endowments might she not have bestowed; what colleges might she not have assisted; what asylums for the miserable might she not have provided! Of these laudable undertakings, of intentions so beneficent, we find, compared with her enormous means, but few instances. There are some laudable endowments, some impulses of benevolence recorded, which make one hope that there may have been more, unseen, unknown. But a truly amiable mind would not have been solely occupied by what she deemed her claims and her wrongs; it would, when the fervour of the noon-day was over, have delighted in those kind acts which cheer the evening of life. To the last she was grasping, accumulating, arranging. To the world, in its worst sense, she gave up the powers of a mind destined for higher things. The immense accumulation of her wealth spoke volumes against the extension of her charity. To each of her heirs, Charles Duke of Marlborough, and to his brother, Lord John Spencer, she bequeathed a property of thirty thousand a year, besides bequests to others, particularly enumerated in her singular will.[[411]]