The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume I Part 9

CHAPTER IX.

Anecdotes of Sarah, d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough-and of Catherine d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham.

I have done with royal personages: shall I add a codicil on some remarkable characters that I remember? As I am writing for young ladies, I have chiefly dwelt on heroines of your own s.e.x; they, too, shall compose my last chapter: enter the d.u.c.h.esses of Marlborough and Buckingham.

Those two women were considerable personages in their day. The first, her own beauty, the superior talents of her husband in war, and the caprice of a feeble princess, raised to the highest pitch of power; and the prodigious wealth bequeathed to her by her lord, and acc.u.mulated in concert with her, gave her weight in a free country. The other, proud of royal, though illegitimate birth, was, from the vanity of that birth, so zealously attached to her expelled brother, the Pretender, that she never ceased labouring to effect his restoration; and, as the opposition to the House of Brunswick was composed partly of principled Jacobites-of Tories, who either knew not what their own principles were, or dissembled them to themselves, and of Whigs, who, from hatred of the minister, both acted in concert with the Jacobites and rejoiced in their a.s.sistance-two women of such wealth, rank, and enmity to the court, were sure of great attention from all the discontented.

The beauty of the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough had always been of the scornful and imperious kind, and her features and air announced nothing that her temper did not confirm; both together, her beauty and temper, enslaved her heroic lord. One of her princ.i.p.al charms was a prodigious abundance of fine fair hair.

One day at her toilet, in anger to him, she cut off those commanding tresses, and flung them in his face. Nor did her insolence stop there, nor stop till it had totally estranged and worn out the patience of the poor Queen, her mistress. The d.u.c.h.ess was often seen to give her Majesty her fan and gloves, and turn away her own head, as if the Queen had offensive smells.

Incapable of due respect to superiors, it was no wonder she treated her children and inferiors with supercilious contempt.

Her eldest daughter (121) and she were long at variance, and never reconciled. When the young d.u.c.h.ess exposed herself by placing a monument and silly epitaph, of her own composition and bad spelling, to Congreve, in Westminster Abbey, her mother, quoting the words, said, "I know not what pleasure she might have in his company, but I am sure it was no honour."(122) With her youngest daughter, the d.u.c.h.ess of Montagu, old Sarah agreed as ill. "I wonder," said the Duke of Marlborough to them, "that you cannot agree, you are so alike!" Of her granddaughter, the d.u.c.h.ess of Manchester, daughter of the d.u.c.h.ess of Montagu, she affected to be fond. One day she said to her, "d.u.c.h.ess of Manchester, you are a good creature, and I love you mightily-but you have a mother!"-"And she has a mother!" answered the d.u.c.h.ess of Manchester, who was all spirit, justice, and honour, and could not suppress sudden truth.

One of old Marlborough's capital mortifications sprang from a granddaughter. The most beautiful of her four charming daughters, Lady Sunderland,(123) left two sons,(124) the second Duke of Marlborough, and John Spencer, who became her heir, and Anne Lady Bateman, and Lady Diana Spencer, whom I have mentioned, and who became d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford. The Duke and his brother, to humour their grandmother, were in opposition, though the eldest she never loved. He had good sense, infinite generosity, and not more economy than was to be expected from a young man of warm pa.s.sions and such vast expectations. He was modest and diffident too, but could not digest total dependence on a capricious and avaricious grandmother. HIS sister, Lady Bateman, had the intriguing spirit of her father and grandfather, Earls of Sunderland. She was connected with Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, and both had great influence over the Duke of Marlborough. What an object would it be to Fox to convert to the court so great a subject as the Duke! Nor was it much less important to his sister to give him a wife, who, with no reasons for expectation of such shining fortune, should owe the obligation to her. Lady Bateman struck the first stroke, and persuaded her brother to marry a handsome young lady, who, unluckily, was daughter of Lord Trevor, who had been a bitter enemy to his grandfather, the victorious Duke. The grandam's rage exceeded all bounds. Having a portrait of Lady Bateman, she blackened the face, and wrote on it, "Now her outside is as black as her inside." The duke she turned out of the little lodge in Windsor Park; and then pretending that the new d.u.c.h.ess and her female cousins (eight Trevors) had stripped the house and gardens, she had a puppet-show made with waxen figures, representing the Trevors tearing up the shrubs, and the d.u.c.h.ess carrying off the chicken-coop under her arm.

Her fury did but increase when Mr. Fox prevailed on the Duke to go over to the court. With her coa.r.s.e intemperate humour, she said, "that was the Fox that had stolen her goose." Repeated injuries at last drove the Duke to go to law with her. Fearing that even no lawyer would come up to the Billingsgate with which she was animated herself, she appeared in the court of justice, and with some wit and infinite abuse, treated the laughing public with the spectacle of a woman who had held the reigns of empire, metamorphosed into the widow Black-acre. Her grandson, in his suit, demanded a sword set with diamonds, given to his grandsire by the Emperor. "I retained it," said the beldam, " lest he should pick out the diamonds and p.a.w.n them."

I will repeat but one more instance of her insolent asperity, which produced an admirable reply of the famous Lady Mary -Wortley Montague. Lady Sundon had received a pair of diamond ear-rings as a bribe for procuring a considerable post in Queen Caroline's family for a certain peer; and, decked with those jewels, paid a visit to the old d.u.c.h.ess; who, as soon as she was gone, said, "What an impudent creature, to come hither with her bribe in her ear!" "Madam," replied Lady Mary Wortley, who was present, "how should people know where wine' is sold, unless a bush is hung out?"

The d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham was as much elated by owing her birth to James II.(125) as the Marlborough was by the favour of his daughter. Lady Dorchester,(126) the mother of the former, endeavoured to curb that pride, and, one should have thought, took an effectual method, though one few mothers would have practised. "You need not be so vain," said the old profligate, "for you are not the King's daughter, but Colonel Graham's."

Graham was a fashionable man of those days and noted for dry humour. His legitimate daughter, the Countess of Berkshire, was extremely like to the d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham: "Well! well!" said Graham, "Kings are all powerful, and one must not complain; but certainly the same man begot those two women." To discredit the wit of both parents, the d.u.c.h.ess never ceased labouring to restore the House of Stuart, and to mark her filial devotion to it. Frequent were her journeys to the Continent for that purpose. She always stopped at Paris, visited the church where lay the unburied body of James, and wept over it. A poor Benedictine of the convent, observing her filial piety, took notice to her grace that the velvet pall that covered the coffin was become threadbare-and so it remained.

Finding all her efforts fruitless, and perhaps aware that her plots were not undiscovered by Sir Robert Walpole, who was remarkable for his intelligence, she made an artful double, and resolved to try what might be done through him himself. I forget how she contracted an acquaintance with him: I do remember that more than once he received letters from the Pretender himself, which probably were transmitted through her. Sir Robert always carried them to George II. who endorsed and returned them. That negotiation not succeeding. the d.u.c.h.ess made a more home push.

Learning his extreme fondness for his daughter, (afterwards Lady Mary Churchill,) she sent for Sir Robert, and asked him if he recollected what had not been thought too great a reward to Lord Clarendon for restoring the royal family? He affected not to understand her. "Was not he allowed," urged the zealous d.u.c.h.ess, "to match his daughter to the Duke of York?" Sir Robert smiled, and left her.

Sir Robert being forced from court, the d.u.c.h.ess thought the moment (127) favourable, and took a new journey to Rome; but conscious of the danger she might run of discovery, she made over her estate to the famous Mr. Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Bath), and left the deed in his custody. What was her astonishment, when on her return she redemanded the instrument!-It was mislaid-he could not find it-he never could find it! The d.u.c.h.ess grew clamorous. At last his friend Lord Mansfield told him plainly,- he could never show his face unless he satisfied the d.u.c.h.ess. Lord Bath did then sign a release to her of her estate.

The transaction was recorded in print by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in a pamphlet that had great vogue, called a Congratulatory Letter, with many other anecdotes of the same personage, and was not less acute than Sir Charles's Odes on the same here. The d.u.c.h.ess dying not long after Sir Robert's entrance into the House of Lords, Lord Oxford, one of her executors, told him there, that the d.u.c.h.ess had struck Lord Bath out of her will, and made him, Sir Robert, one of her trustees in his room. "Then," said Sir Robert, laughing, @ I see, my lord, that I have got Lord Bath's place before he has got mine." Sir Robert had artfully prevented the last. Before he quitted the King, he persuaded his Majesty to insist, as a preliminary to the change, that Mr. Pulteney should go into the House of Peers, his great credit lying in the other house; and I remember my father's action when he returned from court and told me what he had done-,, I have turned the key of the closet on him,"-making that motion with his hand. Pulteney had jumped at the proffered earldom, but saw his error when too late; and was so enraged at his own oversight, that, when he went to take the oaths in the House of Lords, he dashed his patent on the floor, and vowed he would never take it up-but he had kissed the King's hand for it, and it was too late to recede.

But though Madam of Buckingham could not effect a coronation to her will, she indulged her pompous mind with such puppet-shows as were appropriate to her rank. She had made a funeral for her husband as splendid as that of the great Marlborough: she renewed that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age; and for herself; and prepared and decorated -waxen dolls of him and of herself to be exhibited in gla.s.s-cases in Westminster Abbey. It was for the procession at her son's burial that she wrote to old Sarah of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the corpse of the Duke. "It carried my Lord Marlborough," replied the other, and shall never be used for any body else." "I have consulted the undertaker," replied the Buckingham, and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds."

One of the last acts of Buckingham's life was marrying a grandson she had to a daughter of Lord Hervey. That intriguing man, sore, as I have said, at his disgrace, cast his eyes every where to revenge or exalt himself. Professions or recantations of any principles cost him nothing: at least the consecrated day which was appointed for his first interview with the d.u.c.h.ess made it presumed, that to obtain her wealth, with her grandson for his daughter, he must have sworn fealty to the House of Stuart. It was on the martyrdom of her grandfather: she received him in the great drawing-room of Buckingham House, seated in a chair of state, in deep mourning, attended by her women in like weeds, in memory of the royal martyr.

It will be a proper close to the history of those curious ladies to mention the anecdote of Pope relative to them. Having drawn his famous character of Atossa, he communicated it to each d.u.c.h.ess, pretending it was levelled at the other. The Buckingham believed him: the Marlborough had more sense, and knew herself, and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress it;-and yet he left the copy behind him!(128)

Bishop Burnet, from absence of mind, had drawn as strong a picture of herself to the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, as Pope did under covert of another lady. Dining with the d.u.c.h.ess after the Duke's disgrace, Burnet was comparing him to Belisarius: "But how," said she, "could so great a general be so abandoned?" "Oh!

Madam," said the Bishop, "do not you know what a brimstone of a wife he had'!"

Perhaps you know this anecdote, and perhaps several others that I have been relating. No matter; they will go under the article of my dotage-and very properly-I began with tales of my nursery, and prove that I have been writing in my second childhood.

H. W. January 13th, 1789.

(121) The Lady Henrietta, married to Lord G.o.dolphin, who, by act of Parliament, succeeded as d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough. She died in 1738, childless; and the issue of her next sister, Lady Sunderland, succeeded to the duchy of Marlborough.-E.

(122) "For reasons," says Dr. Johnson, "either not known, or not mentioned, Congreve bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand pounds to the d.u.c.h.ess; the acc.u.mulation of attentive parsimony, which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great a.s.sistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress."-E.

(123) Lady Sunderland was a great politician; and having, like her mother, a most beautiful head of hair, used, while combing it at her toilet, to receive men whose votes or interests she wished to influence.

(124) She had an elder son, who died young, while only Earl of Sunderland. He had parts, and all the ambition of his parents and of his family (which his younger brother had not); but George II. had conceived such an aversion to his father, that he would not employ him. The young Earl at last asked Sir Robert Walpole for an ensigncy in the Guards. The minister, astonished at so humble a request from a man of such consequence, expressed his surprise. "I ask it," said the young lord, "to ascertain whether it is determined that I shall never have any thing." He died soon after at Paris.

(125) By Catherine Sedley, created by her royal lover Countess of Dorchester for life.-E.

(126) Lady Dorchester is well known for her wit, and for saying that she wondered for what James chose his mistresses: "We are none of us handsome," said she; "and if we have wit, he has not enough to find it out." But I do not know whether it is as public, that her style was gross and shameless. Meeting the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth and Lady Orkney, the favourite of King William, at the drawing-room of George the First, "G.o.d!" said she, "who would have thought that we three wh.o.r.es should have met here?" Having, after the King's abdication, married Sir David Collyer, by whom she had two sons, she said to them, " If any body should call you sons of a wh.o.r.e, you must bear it; for you are so: but if they call you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, fight till you die; for you are an honest man's sons." Susan, Lady Bellasis, another of King James's mistresses, had wit too, and no beauty. Mrs.

G.o.dfrey had neither. Grammont has recorded why she was chosen.

(127) I am not quite certain that, writing by memory at the distance of fifty years, I place that journey exactly at the right period, nor whether it did not take place before Sir Robert's fall. Nothing material depends on the precise period.

(128) The story is thus told by Dr. Warton:-" These lines were shown to her grace, as if they were intended for the portrait of the d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham; but she soon stopped the person who was reading them to her, as the d.u.c.h.ess of Portland informed me, and called out aloud, "I cannot be so imposed upon; I see plainly enough for whom they are designed;" and abused Pope most plentifully on the subject: though she was afterwards reconciled to him, and courted him, and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress this portrait, which he a accepted, it is said, by the persuasion of Mrs. M. Blount; and, after the d.u.c.h.ess's death, it was printed in a folio sheet, 1746, and afterwards inserted in his Moral Essays. This is the greatest blemish on our poet's moral character."-E.

The following extracts from Letters of Sarah, d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, were copied by me from the original letters addressed to the Earl of Stair, left by him to Sir David Dalrymple, his near relative, and lent to me by Sir David's brother, Mr. Alexander Dalrymple, long employed as Geographer in the service of the East India company. They formed part of a large volume of ms. letters, chiefly from the same person.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough's virulence, her prejudices, her style of writing, are already well known, and every line of these extracts will only serve to confirm the same opinion of all three. But it will, probably, be thought curious thus to be able to compare the notes of the opposite political parties, and their different account of the same trifling facts, magnified by the prejudices of both into affairs of importance.

January, 1840

EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF SARAH, d.u.c.h.eSS OF MARLBOROUGH, TO THE EARL OF STAIR, ILl.u.s.tRATIVE OF "THE REMINISCENCES."

(NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.)

(See Reminiscences, p. 97.)

London, Feb. 24th, 1738.

. . . . As to Norfolk House, (129) I have heard there is a great deal of company, and that the Princess of Wales, tho' so very young, behaves so as to please every body; and I think her conversation is much more proper and decent for a drawing-room than the wise queen Caroline's was, who never was half an hour without saying something shocking to some body or other, even when she intended to oblige, and generally very improper discourse for a public room.

[See p. 98. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii]

London, December 24th, 1737.

My Lord, I received the favour of yours of the 17th December yesterday. I have nothing material to say to you since my last. His Majesty saw the Queen's women servants first, which was a very mournful sight, for they all cried extremely; and his Majesty was so affected that he began to speak, but went out of the room to recover himself. And yesterday he saw the foreign ministers and his horses, which I remember Dean Swift gives a great character of; and was very sorry to leave them for the conversation of his countrymen in England.; and I think he was much in the right.

[See P. 98. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii)

Marlborough House, Nov. 15, 1737.

It is not many days since I wrote to your lordship by post, but one can't be sure those letters are sent. However, I have a mind to give you an account of what, perhaps, you may not have so particularly from any other hand. This day, se'nnight the Queen was taken extremely ill; the physicians were sent for, and from the account that was given, they treated her as if she had the gout in her stomach: but, upon a thorough investigation of the matter, a surgeon desired that she would put her hand where the pain was that she complained of, which she did; and the surgeon, following her hand with his, found it was a very large rupture, which had been long Concealed. Upon this, immediately they cut it, and some little part of the gut, which was discoloured. Few of the knowing people have had any hopes for many days; for they still apprehend a mortification, and she can't escape it unless the physicians can make something pa.s.s thro' her, which they have not yet been able to do in so many days. The King and the Royal Family have taken leave of her more than once; and his Majesty has given her leave to make her will, which she has done; but I fancy it will be in such a manner that few, if any, will know what her money amounts to. Sir Robert Walpole was in Norfolk, and came to -London but last night. I can't but think he must be extremely uneasy at this misfortune; for I have a notion that many of his troops will slacken very much, if not quite leave him, when they see he has lost his sure support. But there is so much folly, and mean corruption, etc.

London, December 1st, 1737.

. . . . As to what has pa.s.sed in the Queen's illness, and since her death, one can't depend on much one hears; and they are things that it is no great matter whether they are true or false.

But one thing was odd: whether out of folly, or any thing else, I can't say, but the Duke of Newcastle did not send Sir Robert Walpole news of her illness, nor of her danger, as soon as he might have done; and after he came to town, which was but a few days before she died, and when she could no more live than she can now come out of her coffin, the physicians, and all that attended her, were ordered to say she was better, and that they had some hopes. What the use of that was I cannot conceive. And the occasion of her death is still pretended to be a secret: yet it is known that she had a rupture, and had it for many years; that she had imposthumes that broke, and that some of the guts were mortified. This is another mystery which I don't comprehend; for what does it signify what one dies of, except the pain it gives more than common dissolutions? etc.

[See p. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii)