Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (67 page)

At least he did not yet feel as bitter towards the Queen as his wife, whose virulent comments about Anne sometimes made him uneasy. He wrote to Sarah that while he was well aware that the Queen was being stubborn and unreasonable, ‘I own to you I have a tenderness for [her],
being persuaded that it is the faults of those whom she loves and not her own when she does what is wrong’. Soon afterwards he declared, ‘I must never do anything that looks like flying in her face’ and a few weeks later he reiterated that he would always remain ‘personally respectful’ towards Anne. Meanwhile, he held Mrs Masham accountable for every flawed action of the Queen, telling his wife darkly, ‘Sooner or later we must have [the Queen] out of the hands of [Abigail], or everything will be labour in vain’.
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The Queen had hoped that Marlborough would show some understanding for her point of view, but he disappointed her by writing on 12/23 July that, although he was prepared to go on serving her as a soldier, she left him with no alternative but to withdraw from all involvement in politics. He added that it seemed to him ‘you are obliged … as a good Christian to forgive and to have no more resentments to any particular person or party’, as the national interest made it imperative she accept the services of the Whigs. He had inserted this passage at the request of Godolphin and Sarah, but it was unwise of him to do so, for the Queen never took kindly to being lectured on her Christian duty. Even before she read these words, she felt that Marlborough owed her an apology for having written to his wife, immediately after Oudenarde, that Anne could derive great benefit from his victory, ‘if she will please to make use of it’. Sarah had shown the Queen this letter, hoping to make her ashamed, but Anne had merely been affronted.
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She had at once written to Marlborough, demanding an explanation, and complaining she had heard nothing from him on the subject of Sunderland’s dismissal. Receiving another reproving letter from her commander at this juncture simply riled her further.

On 22 July she rejected the Duke’s offer to serve her as a general but not a minister, telling him peremptorily, ‘I shall always look upon you as both and … ask your advice in both capacities on all occasions’. Regarding his admonitions to be more magnanimous towards individuals who had offended her, she declared loftily, ‘I thank God I do forgive all my enemies with all my heart, but it is wholly impossible for human nature to forget people’s behaviour in things so fresh in one’s memory … especially when one sees, for all their professions, they are still pursuing the same measures, and you may depend upon it they will always do so, for there is no washing a blackamoor white’. She roundly denied that this constituted a lack of charity on her part, for ‘I can never be convinced that Christianity requires me … to put myself entirely into the hands of any one party’. Her implacable response left Marlborough utterly
downcast, confirming him in the view that the Tories ‘have got the heart and entire possession of [the Queen], which they will be able to maintain as long as [Abigail] has credit’.
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The Queen’s letter to Marlborough had crossed with one from him to her, attributing the disparaging comment that had escaped him after Oudenarde to his distress at learning she intended to dismiss Sunderland. ‘I did flatter myself … nobody could have prevailed with you … to give me so great a mortification in the face of all Europe at a time when I was so zealously endeavouring to serve you at the hazard both of my reputation and of my blood’, he reproached her. Yet again he urged her to conform to Godolphin’s wishes, observing that ‘something very extraordinary’ must be at work to make her resist ‘the advice of those that have served you so long, faithfully and with success’.
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Responding to this on 6 August, the Queen vehemently repudiated the accusation of being governed by external influence. Marlborough’s only consolation was that she did at least agree that Sunderland could retain his place.

By this time the Queen believed she had new grounds for displeasure with the Whigs. On 21 July she had granted an audience to the maverick Tory peer Lord Haversham, a confirmed troublemaker who over the years had caused Marlborough and Godolphin many difficulties in Parliament. He had played a prominent part in the Tories’ 1705 attempt to bring the Electress Sophia to England, but now he saw nothing incongruous about denouncing his political adversaries for wanting to do something similar. Well aware of the inflammatory effect, Haversham revealed to Anne that the Whigs were talking of inviting Sophia’s grandson, the Electoral Prince of Hanover, to take up residence in the country.

Earlier in the year false rumours had swirled about, suggesting that Marlborough wanted a member of the Electoral family to settle in England. Godolphin had urged the Queen to pay no attention to this ‘ridiculous and preposterous story’, which he was sure originated in lies spread by Harley. Unfortunately the Whigs believed the reports and, since they did not want Marlborough to ‘run away with the credit of so popular a thing’, they tried to pre-empt him by making approaches of their own to Hanover. The Queen was appalled when Haversham alerted her to these intrigues, and decided that it was up to Marlborough to sort out the problem. The day after Haversham’s audience, she wrote to remind Marlborough that she would regard any attempt to invite one of her successors to England as an act of unforgivable malice. While stressing that she knew Marlborough was in no way to blame, she warned fiercely ‘If this matter should be brought into Parliament, whoever
proposed it, whether Whig or Tory, I should look on neither of them as my friends’. She asked him to convey to his contacts in Hanover that they must shut their ears to overtures from England, as she would never grant permission for the Prince to visit. If the young man was so rash as to arrive unsanctioned, she would have no hesitation in turning him away, ‘it being a thing I cannot bear to have any successor here, though it were but for a week’.
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The Duchess of Marlborough was maddened to learn that Anne had given Haversham a hearing, and her temper grew wilder still when she discovered that, after seeing the Queen, he had had a discussion with Abigail. Her fury clouded her judgement and led her to commit an irreparable error. Back in April, Arthur Maynwaring had remarked to her that it should be easy to undermine the Queen’s affection for Abigail, as ‘an inclination that is shameful’ soon ‘wears itself away … A good ridicule has often gone a good way in doing a business’. In the intervening weeks Maynwaring had busied himself producing material that could be used for this purpose, and which he had printed and put in circulation. One of these works was a ballad set to the tune of ‘Lilliburlero’, a song that had stirred up feeling against James II at the time of the Glorious Revolution. Comprising more than thirty verses, Maynwaring’s ballad vilified that ‘proud, ungrateful bitch’ Abigail, and condemned her intrigues with Harley, here termed ‘Machiavel’. More damagingly it also suggested that there was something unnatural about the Queen’s infatuation with her ‘slut of state’. The opening verses are as follows:

When as Queen Anne of great renown

Great Britain’s sceptre swayed

Beside the Church she dearly loved

A dirty chambermaid

Oh! Abigail that was her name

She starched and stitched full well

But how she pierced this royal heart

No mortal man can tell

However, for sweet service done

And causes of great weight

Her royal mistress made her, Oh!

A minister of state.

Her Secretary she was not

Because she could not write

But had the conduct and the care

Of some dark deeds at night.
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Sarah would later accurately describe this as ‘an odious ballad’, claiming that when she saw it, ‘it troubled me very much … because it was very disagreeable and what I know to be a lie’. This was disgraceful hypocrisy, for in reality she had been delighted by this and another ditty, probably also penned by Maynwaring, entitled
Masham Display’d
. Far from being upset by their content, Sarah did all she could to bring them to the attention of friends. On 18 July she had written to the Lord Chancellor’s mother, a neighbour of hers in Hertfordshire, saying that she looked forward to performing for her benefit ‘two ballads of the Battle of Abigail. I can sing them most rarely’.
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After hearing of Haversham’s visit, the Duchess decided to take things a stage further and show them to the Queen. She maintained that she felt this to be her duty as ‘the town and country are full of them’,
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but her real aim was to shame Anne into cutting ties with Abigail. As she had hoped, the Queen was devastated when she read these coarse lampoons, and muttered something about her reputation being of paramount importance. Pleased at this, the Duchess soon afterwards sent her a prose tract, again thought to be the work of Maynwaring, called
The Rival Dutchess
. This took the form of an imaginary conversation between Abigail and Louis XIV’s morganatic wife, Madame de Maintenon. From the dialogue it emerges that Abigail is in the service of France, and it is also insinuated that she has lesbian inclinations.

Delighted that Anne was so badly shaken, Sarah wrote to her on 27 July, observing that her affinity with Abigail made it inevitable that the Queen would receive ‘many affronts’ of this kind. She prophesied that the attacks would become more savage, for though at the moment ‘people only laugh at a queen’s forsaking her old servants for such a favourite’, once Marlborough and Godolphin were forced to quit on Abigail’s account, Mrs Masham’s ‘charming person’ would be ‘pulled in pieces’. Relentlessly the Duchess persisted that if Abigail ‘had no influence upon your affairs … there is no doubt but you might … quietly enjoy that inestimable blessing till you were tired of it’, but, since she encouraged the Queen to resist her ministers’ advice, ‘’tis certain your people will not bear patiently the ills that arise from such a passion’.
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As for the concern the Queen had expressed for her reputation, Sarah professed herself puzzled, for it ‘surprised me very much that your Majesty should so soon mention that word after having discovered so great a passion for such a woman. I’m sure there can be no great reputation in a thing so strange and unaccountable, to say no more of it, nor can I think the having no inclination for any but of one’s own sex is enough to maintain such a character as I wish may still be yours’.
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When asked to explain why she had definitively turned against the Duchess of Marlborough, the Queen would describe her principal transgression as ‘saying shocking things’ to her and about her. There can be no doubt that Sarah’s implying that Anne and Abigail had a lesbian relationship constituted the worst of her offences in the Queen’s eyes. Indeed, Sarah herself would later remind the Queen that when she had pressed her to tell her what faults she had committed, the ‘only crime’ Anne cited against her was her belief that the Queen ‘had such an intimacy with Masham’.
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Could there have been any truth in Sarah’s allegations? Maynwaring’s tract,
The Rival Dutchess
, portrayed lesbianism, or ‘that female vice … which is the most detestable in nature’ as being on the rise in Britain. It was popularly supposed to be rampant in France ‘where … young ladies are that way debauched in their nunnery education’, but in this piece Abigail assures Madame de Maintenon, ‘We are arrived to as great perfection in sinking that way as you can pretend to’. Sarah suggested to the Queen that such passages proved that she was not alone in thinking there was something amiss with Anne’s relationship with Abigail, but rather showed ‘that notion is universally spread among all sorts of people’. In fact, printed aspersions of this kind were only made in works ascribed to Maynwaring, and reflected his and Sarah’s particular fixations.
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The Duchess’s allegations might carry more weight if she had been content to let it be thought that Anne’s earlier feelings towards her had a sexual component, but she did not acknowledge the possibility. To her, lesbianism was a disgusting vice, with which she had never been tainted. Far from allowing that Anne had ever physically desired her, she represented Anne’s affection for herself as being inspired purely by an admiration for her intellect and forthright character. Since Abigail lacked such attributes, it followed that Anne had been attracted to her for different reasons, and that Mrs Masham had established her hold over the Queen by indulging her baser appetites.

If Sarah’s beliefs had been founded on personal observation of the way Anne treated Abigail, one might perhaps accept that she had
interpreted the situation correctly. It must be borne in mind, however, that the Duchess very rarely saw Anne and Abigail together. She seems to have progressed with remarkable speed from being unaware that Abigail and the Queen were friends, to being convinced that the two women were bound together by an abnormal passion. Yet there is nothing to suggest that the Queen’s affection for Abigail came close to the besotted love she had evinced for Sarah in earlier years. Clearly Anne enjoyed Abigail’s company, and valued the way she cared for her, but she was not emotionally dependent on her in the way she had been with Sarah. Far from wanting to inaugurate a system whereby Abigail could converse with her as an equal, the Queen was happy to preserve the gap in rank between them, and to the end of her life addressed Abigail by her surname, in the gruff manner of a lady talking to a female servant.