The Duchess of Marlborough was certainly not deficient in either conversational humour or impertinent repartee. Horace Walpole observes:66 She did not want that sort of wit which illtemper, long knowledge of the world, and insolence, can sharpen." Of her peculiar humour, more than one instance has been recorded. When her grandson, the Duke of Marlborough, was prevailed upon by Henry Fox, afterwards the first Lord Holland, to join the court party, the Duchess one day, alluding to the tempter, observed:-"That was the fox that stole my goose."

Some time afterwards, the young Duke, wearied of his dependence on a capricious grandmother, and disgusted at her detaining from him a large sum of money which was unquestionably his rightful inheritance, was induced to sue her in a court of law for the recovery of his birthright. It was on this occasion that the Duchess presented the extraordinary sight of a female advocating her own cause before a tribunal of justice; thus," says Walpole, " treating the public with the spectacle of a woman who had held the reins of empire, metamorphosed into the widow Blackacre." Her grandson, it may be observed, among other demands, had claimed a sword set with diamonds-a gift of the Emperor to his illustrious grandfather. "I retained it," said the Duchess in her defence, " lest he should pick out the diamonds and pawn them."

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CHAPTER II.

The Duke of Marlborough's affectionate letters to the Duchess. -Singular instance of his uxoriousness.-Anecdotes illustrative of the Duchess's violent temper.-Her regard for the Duke's memory.-Lord Coningsby and the Duke of Somerset become suitors for her hand. Her noble reply to the former. Her daughters the reigning toasts of the day. Her dislike of the eldest, Lady Henrietta Churchill.— Lady Henrietta's family.-Account of her sister, Lady Anne Churchill, and of her family.-Elizabeth, Duchess of Bridgwater, Marlborough's third daughter.- Granger's description of her.-Marlborough's fourth daughter, Lady Mary Churchill, Duchess of Montagu and her family.— Pope's poetical portrait of the Duchess of Marlborough.—Anecdote of Pope.Letter from Lord Bolingbroke to the Earl of Marchmont. Pope's remark to Spence on the Duchess's liberality.-Letter from the Duchess to the Earl of Marchmont, and from Pitt to the same.-The Duchess publishes her Memoirs in her eighty-third year.- Horace Walpole's opinion of them.-Lady Bute's reminiscences of the Duchess. -Quotation from Dryden by the Duchess.-Her disbelief in religion. Her letter to Lord Marchmont.-Her death in 1744.

THE letters which the Duke of Marlborough addressed to his Duchess, during his foreign campaigns, exhibit, in a very striking manner, his regard for her person, and his respect for her capacity. "I do assure you, upon my soul," he protests, in one of his letters, "that I had much rather the whole world should go wrong than that you should be uneasy."

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*

After a union of nearly a quarter of a century, he speaks of her "dear letters," and adds, that she is dearer to him ten thousand times than ever she was before." He usually addresses her as my dearest soul," and his letters not unfrequently contain almost romantic professions of attachment. On the 16th of April, 1706, he writes to her:-"I am sure my dearest soul will be so just and kind to me as to believe that the greatest support I have in these troubles are, that at last I shall be relieved, with the blessing of living quietly with her which my heart longs for." Again he writes, on the 23rd of the month in the same affectionate style: "My dearest soul, my desire of being with you is so great, that I am not able to express the impatience I am in to have this campaign over. I pray God it may be so happy that there may be no more occasion of my coming, but that I may ever stay with you, my dearest soul."† His messages to his children are scarcely less affectionate: he writes, on one occasion,-"God knows when I shall have time to write to the children, but kiss them kindly from me ;" and, in a letter written some years previous, he draws the following very pleasing picture of his domestic happiness and parental affection :

"Tonbridge.

"You cannot imagine how I am pleased with the children; for, having nobody but their

*Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, i. p. 2. + Ibid, vol. i. pp. 17, 18. Ibid, vol. i. p. 73.

maid, they are so fond of me, that, when I am at home, they will be always with me, kissing and hugging me. Their heats are quite gone; so that against you come home they will be quite in beauty. If there be room, I will come on Monday, so that you need not write on Sunday. Miss is pulling me by the arm, that she may write to her dear mamma; so that I shall say no more, only beg that you will love me always as well as I love you, and then we cannot but be happy." And he adds, apparently to gratify the child, "I kiss your hands, my dear mamma.”

"HARRIET." *

The Duke, however, there is every reason to believe, was not unfrequently subjected to her disagreeable paroxysms of rage, and, moreover, seems to have stood not a little in awe of his

imperious wife. "Both together," says Walpole, "her beauty and temper enslaved her heroic lord." According to that writer, the Duchess was one day employed at her toilet, when, in a violent fit of rage, consequent on an altercation with her husband, she suddenly cut off her beautiful and luxuriant ringlets, and flung them in the Duke's face. We have the evidence of another person, that at the moment when this incident occurred the Duke apparently took little notice of it, and allowed the tresses to lie undisturbed on the spot where they fell. Shortly afterwards, however, they were missed from the floor of her dressing-room, and for many years the

* Coxe's Life of the Duke of Marlborough, vol. i. p. 19.

Duchess was left in ignorance as to their fate. Nothing further, indeed, transpired on the subject till after the Duke's death, when, in a cabinet, where he preserved his most valuable effects, the Duchess, to her astonishment, discovered her beautiful ringlets. According to Lady Bute, her Grace, in her old age, took great pleasure in relating this singular story, and invariably commenced weeping at its conclusion.*

There is something not a little amusing in the manner in which the great Duke of Marlborough occasionally deprecates the intolerable ill-humour of his wife. In a letter to her, dated the 4th of June, 1708, he writes:-" Your desire of my following Lord Treasurer's advice is very kind, and you may be sure as long as I think you so, I shall be very desirous of living. I do not say this to flatter you, nor am I at an age of making fond expressions; but upon my word, when you are out of humour and are dissatisfied with me, I had rather die than live: so, on the contrary, when you are kind, I court of all things a quiet life with you."+ Even the Duke's apologist, Coxe, admits that the temper of this imperious harridan embittered the last years of her hen-pecked but uxorious lord.

The subserviency of the great hero to his Duchess was a circumstance well known to the

*

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters, edited by Lord Wharncliffe, vol. i. p. 78.

+ Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, vol. i. p. 126.