Historical Characters in the Reign of Queen Anne. Маргарет Олифант
Sarah Jennings and her great general, who were to have so great a hand in keeping that poor lady’s son from his kingdom, but Mary Blogge and her statesman, who was to rule England so wisely in the interest of the opposing side, were both secretly married under the young duchess’s wing, she helping, planning, and sanctioning the secret. How many additional bitternesses must this have put into her cup when she was sitting, a shadow queen, at St.-Germain, and all those people whom she had loved and caressed were swaying the fortunes of England! And who can tell what tender recollections of his secret wedding and the sweet and saintly prude whom King James’s young wife gave him, may have touched the soul of Godolphin in those hankerings after his old master—if it were not, as scandal said, to his old mistress—which moved him from time to time, great minister as he was, almost to the verge of treachery! The Churchills, it must be owned, showed little gratitude to their royal patrons.
When the Princess Mary married and went to Holland with her husband, the position of her sister at home became a more important one. Anne was not without some experience of travel and those educational advantages which the sight of foreign countries are said to bring. She went to The Hague to visit her sister. She accompanied her father, sturdy little Protestant as she was, when he was in disgrace for his religious views, and spent some time in Brussels, from which place she wrote to one of the ladies about the court a letter which has been preserved,—with just as much and as little reason as any other letter of a fifteen-year-old girl with her eyes about her, at a distance of two hundred years,—in which the young lady describes a ball she had seen, herself incognita, at which some gentlemen “danced extremely well—as well if not better than the Duke of Monmouth or Sir E. Villiers, which I think is very extraordinary,” says the girl, no doubt sincerely believing that the best of all things was to be found at home. She had little difficulties about her spelling, but that was common enough. “As for the town,” says the Princess Anne, “methinks tho’ the streets are not so clean as in Holland, yet they are not so dirty as ours; they are very well paved and very easy—they only have od smells.” This is a peculiarity which has outlived her day, and it would seem to imply that England, even before the invention of sanitary science, was superior in this respect at least to the towns of the Continent.
After these unusual dissipations Anne remained in the shade until she married, in 1683, George, Prince of Denmark, a perfectly inoffensive and insignificant person, to whom she gave, during the rest of her life, a faithful, humdrum, but unbroken attachment, such as shows to little advantage in print, but makes the happiness of many a home. This marriage was another sacrifice to the Protestantism of England, and in that point of view pleased the people much. King Charles, glad to satisfy the country by any act which cost him nothing, thought it “very convenient and suitable.” James, unwilling, but powerless, grumbled to himself that “he had little encouragement in the conduct of the Prince of Orange to marry another daughter in the same interest,” but made no effort against it. The prince himself produced no very great impression, one way or another, as indeed he was little fitted to do. “He has the Danish countenance, blonde,” says Evelyn, in his diary; “of few words; spoke French but ill; seemed somewhat heavy, but is reported to be valiant.” He had never any occasion to show his valor during his long residence in England, but many to prove the former quality,—the heaviness,—which was only too evident; but Anne herself was not brilliant, and she was made for friendship, not for passion in the ordinary sense of the word. She never seems to have been in the smallest way dissatisfied with her heavy, honest goodman. He was fond of eating and
drinking, but of no more dangerous pleasures. Her peace of mind was fluttered by no rival, nor her feminine pride touched. Her attendants might be as seductive as they pleased, this steady, stolid husband was immovable, and there is no doubt that the princess appreciated the advantages of this immunity from one of the thorns which were planted in every other royal pillow.
Her marriage had another advantage of giving her a household and court of her own, and enabled her at once to secure for herself the companionship of her always beloved friend. “So desirous was she,” says Duchess Sarah, “of having me always near her, that upon her marriage with the Prince of Denmark, in 1683, it was at her own earnest request to her father I was made one of the ladies of her bedchamber. What conduced to make me the more agreeable to her in this station was, doubtless,” she adds with candor, “the dislike she conceived to most of the other persons about her, and particularly for her first lady of the bedchamber—the Countess of Clarendon, a lady whose discourse and manner could not possibly recommend her to so young a mistress; for she looked like a mad-woman and talked like a scholar. Indeed, her highness’s court was so oddly composed that I think it would be making myself no great compliment if I should say her choosing to spend more of her time with me than with any of her other servants did no discredit to her taste.”
Lady Clarendon was the wife of the great chancellor’s son, and was thus the aunt, by marriage, of the princess—not always a very endearing relationship. She was not a great lady by birth, and though a friend of Evelyn’s and a highly educated woman, might easily be supposed to be a little oppressive in a young household where her relationship gave her a certain authority.
The prince was dull, the princess had not many resources. They settled down in homely virtue, close to the court with all its scandals and gaieties, but not quite of it; and nothing could be more natural than that Anne should eagerly avail herself of the always amusing, always lively companion who had been the friend of her youth. The Cockpit, which was Anne’s residence, had been built as a royal playhouse, first for the sport indicated by its name, then for the more refined amusements of the theater, but had been afterward turned into a private residence, and bought by Charles II. for his niece on her marriage. It formed part of the old palace of Whitehall, and must have been within sight and sound of the constant gaieties going on in that lawless household, in the best of which the princess and her attendant would have their natural share. No doubt to hear Lady Churchill’s lively satirical remarks upon all this, and the flow of her brilliant malice, must have kept the household lively, and brightened the dull days and tedious waitings of maternity, into which Anne was immediately plunged, drawing a laugh even from stupid George in the chimney-corner. And there was this peculiarity to make the whole more piquant; that it was virtue, irreproachable, and no doubt pleasantly self-conscious of its superiority, which thus got its fun out of vice. The two young couples on the other side of the way were immaculate, devoted exclusively to each other, thinking of neither man nor woman save their lawful mates. Probably neither the princess nor her lady in waiting were disgusted by gossip about the Portsmouths and Castlemaines, but took these ladies to pieces with indignant zest and spared no jibe. And though the remarks might be too broad for modern liking, and the fun somewhat unsavory, we cannot but think that amidst the noisy and picturesque life of that wild Restoration era, full of corruption, yet so gay and sparkling to the spectator, this little household of the Cockpit is not without its claims upon our attention. There was not in all Charles’s court so splendid a couple as the young Churchills: he already one of the most distinguished soldiers of the age, she a beautiful young woman overflowing with wit and energy. And Princess Anne was very young; in full possession of that beauté de diable which, so long as it lasts, has its own charm, the beauty of color and freshness and youthful contour. She had a beautiful voice, the prettiest hands, and the most affectionate heart. If she were not clever, that matters but little to a girl of twenty, taught by love to be receptive, and called upon for no effort of genius. Honest George behind backs was not much more than a piece of still life, but an inoffensive and amiable one, taking nothing upon him. If there was calculation in the steadfastness with which the abler pair possessed themselves of the confidence, and held fast to the service of their royal friends, it would be hard to assert that there was not some affection too, at least on the part of Sarah, who had known every thought of her little princess’s heart since she was a child, and could not but be flattered and pleased by the love showered upon her. At all events, in Anne there was no unworthy sentiment; everything about her appeals to our tenderness. When she attained what seems to have been the summit of her desires and secured her type of excellence, the admired and adored paragon of her childhood, for her daily companion, the formal titles and addresses which her rank made necessary became irksome beyond measure to the simple-hearted young woman whose hard fate it was to have been born a princess. The impetuosity of her affection, her rush, so to speak, into the arms of her friend, her pretty youthful sentiment,