Exit Lady Masham Read online

  “Masham, look at these!” she exclaimed petulantly. “Look at what the Duchess expects me to wear! Three diamond bracelets! Four ruby clasps! The emerald and sapphire earrings! And the pearl choker! Why, I shan’t be able to move!”

  It was true that the stones were enormous. Lying placid on black velvet, they seemed fatuously confident of their great worth. They emitted a dull, possessing gleam. The Queen continued:

  “I feel as if I were going to be pulled along behind the Duchess’s chariot, as in a Roman triumph! Like some great gilded idol captured from the Barbarians! It is all her day, her victory. Well, let her go to the cathedral alone, then. Why should I be there?”

  “Why may Your Majesty not select her own jewels? Why need she wear any, if she does not choose?”

  “Because the Duchess will say I am snubbing the Captain-General!”

  “Is it a snub to show respect for our dead and wounded? Are they not to be remembered?”

  “They should be, indeed. Heaven knows there are enough of the poor lads. Crushed under the Marlboroughs’ wheels!”

  My eye traveled rapidly over the objects on the table. I picked up a small crucified Christ, Byzantine, of cracked yellow marble, a beautiful thing and the only one without a single gem to adorn it. A plain necklace of gold wire was attached to it.

  “May I place this around Your Majesty’s neck?”

  I had barely accomplished this when the Duchess swept in, seething in scarlet, alight with diamonds. She stared through me as if I had been a void.

  “Has Your Majesty made her selection? The procession is ready to start.” She paused as she took in the cross. “Surely, ma’am, you’re not going to wear that ugly figure?”

  “If Our Lord made an ugly figure on the cross, Duchess, it was to redeem us.”

  “Well, of course, I meant no irreverence. I suppose it won’t be noticed under the necklaces. May I assist Your Majesty? There is very little time.”

  “I am wearing no other ornaments.”

  “You mean you’re going to the cathedral like that?”

  “I am wearing no other ornaments.”

  “But Your Majesty will spoil the day if you go so plain. What will people think? It will be a scandal!”

  “I am wearing no other ornaments.”

  The Duchess shot a quick glance at me. Then she changed her tack. “My dear Mrs. Morley, you have allowed yourself to be poorly advised. Believe your trusted Mrs. Freeman. A glorious victory requires a glorious presence! You should not let down the men who have defeated your foes.”

  “I am not letting down the men who have died to defeat them. Let us go, Duchess.”

  My kinswoman at this seemed to lose the last vestige of her self-possession. She stamped her foot.

  “You have been listening to that low creature! You have been taking her advice as to what you should wear to my husband’s service! How can any woman, let alone a sovereign, be so blind, ma’am? Don’t you see that Masham’s only object is to demean me and Lord Marlborough so that she can wrap the crown of England in her chambermaid’s apron? Oh, that I could only make you see what she is! But no, you are too besotted with that plain brown thing; you are too enchanted with your hussy…”

  “Duchess!” The Queen interrupted her with a gasp of horror. “You forget Masham’s condition!”

  “Forget it? How could I, with her big stomach stuck in my face? Can’t you at least send her to her chamber? Or do you want her to ride with you to the cathedral so that all your kingdom can see for what base company you abandon their hero’s wife!”

  The doors burst open, and we saw the red uniforms of the household guard lined up along the corridor. The court chamberlain, in a gold uniform, approached, to bow low to the Queen. Through the open windows on the stairwell below we could hear the cheering of the crowd outside.

  “I must ask you, Duchess, not to make any further reference to Masham. It is hardly her fault that…”

  “Be quiet, ma’am!”

  It was the Duchess who said that! And in a voice that carried to the corridor! The Queen, half-dazed, moved forward as the guards presented arms, and the Duchess followed her to the stairwell. The procession to the cathedral had begun.

  I learned later that Sarah continued her angry protestations in the royal carriage and did not cease until the Queen had actually started down the aisle at St. Paul’s. But I had staggered back to my chamber in a fainting condition. That night I gave birth to my second daughter.

  10

  Masham had not attempted to conceal his disappointment that our second child was also a girl. It did not seem to me a matter of very grave consequence that we should still lack an heir for a baronetcy that he had still not inherited. I was always to love my children equally, even after I had sons. What concerned me principally was avoiding another pregnancy, and I exaggerated to my too-amorous spouse the ailments that had followed my delivery. It did not improve his temper.

  “Harley thinks you’re indulging yourself,” he reproved me. I was sitting up in bed in the handsome bedchamber of the apartments at Kensington that the Queen had provided for us and which were now the permanent home for our babes. Masham had spent the night with his father in Kent and had just arrived back in town. “He says you are leaving the Queen to the mercy of the Duchess while you loll in bed and drink chocolate I”

  “I wish Harley had had to bear two children in under a year!”

  “Well, I’ve got a bit of news that should get you up, my girl. The Duke of Marlborough himself is demanding that the Queen dismiss you.”

  “What are you saying?” I cried.

  Masham, delighted to have made such an effect, handed me a letter from Harley. As I read it I seemed to feel my heart contract; my shoulders twitched, as with a sudden chill. Harley had written that the Earl of Sunderland was telling everyone that his father-in-law, the Duke, had suggested to the Queen that he could not continue his burdensome duties abroad if she persisted in keeping as her intimate advisor a creature of Harley’s who was known to be inimical to his conduct of the war!

  “I shall send the Queen my resignation today!” I cried, throwing my head back on the pillow. When Masham tried to console me, alarmed at the violence of my reaction, I waved him away. Only when I screamed at him did he finally abandon the chamber.

  How could I fight the whole world? While only the Duchess and her clique pursued me, I could find the courage to resist, exhausted and harassed as I was. There was enough spite in her to pump spirit into the most abject opponent. Sarah would kick her toppled victim until in sheer agony and despair he rose to fight back. But the Duke, the glorious Duke? He who, with the coolness of Hannibal and the courage of Alexander, risked his life daily to lead his battalions against the mightiest army of Europe! And who had proved that a mightier existed, forged, trained and commanded by his own genius! How could I live with the hideous idea, even if it were false as hell, that a bedchamberwoman with a red nose was impeding the greatest soldier in English history from marching to Versailles itself to dictate peace to old Louis, cowering in his gilded saloon!

  No, I had to find a way out, to beg my poor mistress to try to live without me, to take my babes and fly to my father-in-law, if he would take me in. I should have to placate Masham somehow, give him a son if possible, or, if he were implacable, throw myself on the Duchess’s mercy and plead for a pittance in return for my promised absence from court!

  I do not know how long I twisted and turned in my bed, but it seemed to me it was dark when the door opened again and my husband’s head reappeared.

  “Go away!” I cried. “I’m sick!”

  “I’ve brought a friend.”

  “I don’t want to see anyone!”

  “Oh, I think you’ll want to see this one.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Well, it’s not the Duchess!” This, to a silly laugh.

  “I suppose it’s Harley.”

  And in came my old friend, all smiles, both hands outstretched. Th
ere was no resisting him. He called for little Abigail and was shrill in his exclamations that never had there been a more beautiful baby. Only when he had finished his rhapsodies did he turn to business.

  “What’s this I hear about you deserting the cause, Abigail? Will you give up to the Marlboroughs? Will you abandon your poor mistress to that harpy? Have you no feelings, lass?”

  “My poor mistress is a good deal tougher than people think. It was you yourself, Harley, who first told me that. Royalties are different from the rest of us. She will survive.”

  “Then all the things I have worked for must go for nothing? And poor old England will be left to the tender mercies of that marauding couple? You’ll let Marlborough wade on through oceans of blood to become the military dictator of Europe?”

  “But I’m tired, Harley. I’m tired! I can’t stand the constant battle. How do I know what’s best for England? How do I even know what’s best for the Queen? She loved her Mrs. Freeman once. Maybe she can love her again!”

  Masham now pushed himself into the argument. “You might consider someone besides yourself, Abigail. How do you think I stand in all this? It was because of you that I put all of my eggs in the Queen’s basket. Do you think I could not have married a woman of property? Do you think Prince George would have done nothing for a favorite groom? Why, I could have been a colonel by now, or higher. But, no, I took you —without a penny. Your only fortune was the Queen’s favor. How can you go back on me now? Why, it’s as if you were to take the coins of a dowry and fling them in the Thames before my very eyes!”

  “I can’t help it! I can’t stand in the way of the Captain-General! How can you ask me to, you, his officer?”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m not his officer. But I see how it is. You were always in love with him, and now you want to ruin me out of spite that you can’t have him!”

  But the vision of the Duke was too firmly in my mind for me to bother with such trashy talk. My husband and even Harley seemed small, petty, ranting men in contrast. I felt that I did not care what happened to me anymore, if I could only remove myself as an impediment to England’s hero. To my hero! For he was that again, all of a sudden, and the lines of Cassius throbbed in my mind:

  Why, man, he does bestride the narrow world

  Like a Colossus, and we petty men

  Walk under his huge legs and peep about

  To find ourselves dishonorable graves.

  Harley rambled on about the rights of Englishmen and the horrors of war, and Masham threatened me with poverty and disgrace, warning me that his father, who despised my low birth and fortune, would never take us in. I do not know what we all might have ended saying to each other had there not suddenly been a loud knock at the door.

  It was an usher from the Prince. My husband was sent for. All the Prince’s household were sent for. The poor man was gravely ill.

  11

  It was soon known that George of Denmark was dying. The Queen would hardly leave his bedchamber. The dear, unfortunate man, as patient in agony as he had been complacent in health, lay motionless and speechless, emitting no sound but his stertorous breathing, surrounded by doctors who, I very much fear, only tortured him. The Queen, her eyes misty with sorrow, sat in an armchair by the window, her hands playing with her bandages. In the intervals when the doctors spared their patient, she moved to the bedside so that she could hold the Prince’s hand.

  When I went in to sit by her side, her first thought was of my condition.

  “Are you well enough, my dear, to be up?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am, quite well enough. Pray don’t think of me at such a time.”

  “But of course I do. How is your little daughter?”

  “Oh, she has her wet nurse. She is content.”

  “Would it were so with my poor husband! Oh, Masham, do you know I never had an unkind word from him?”

  “Not even the lowest of his servants had.”

  “That’s true, isn’t it? He was so good to all. A kind of saint, in his way. People don’t know that, Masham. Oh, people close to him do, like you and Mr. Masham, yes. But not people generally. Not my subjects. They thought he was dull and colorless because he wasn’t always showing off. You know that terrible remark of my uncle’s about trying him drunk and trying him sober?”

  “I am surprised that anyone would have repeated that to Your Majesty.”

  “Well, the Duchess, you know, had a theory that royalty should be told everything. And do you know something else, Masham? The Prince knew how they felt about him. He knew that King William was being intentionally rude to him when he went to Ireland to serve under him in the Battle of the Boyne. But the Prince always pretended not to notice. Do you know why? Because he wanted to protect me And when I succeeded to the crown, all that he cared about was to keep out of the public attention and to avoid arousing the jealousy of my people. He believed that he could help me, not to rule, but to survive. By just being there. By just loving me. And he sustained me, Masham. How shall I live without him?”

  Perhaps I should have said something about the Prince’s spirit being always present to give her sustenance, but it would have been artificial, and I had never been artificial with the Queen. I was like Sarah in this one respect: I was always truthful. The difference was that I didn’t feel I had to say everything: disagreeable truths I could keep to myself. “Mrs. Still” had never been a hypocrite. What the Queen, I believe, valued in me above aught else was my sentient silence. She loved to ramble on, almost as if talking to herself. But it would have given her no solace had she really been talking to herself.

  “People think the Prince was indifferent to politics, that he cared for nothing but hunting. But it was not true. He took a great interest in everything that went on. It was only to avoid embarrassing me that he professed political neutrality. But he cared, Masham! Oh, he cared! And he had noble standards, nobler than mine, and certainly far nobler than my sister’s. His heart ached over my father. You know the old story, how he kept repeating ‘I can’t believe it!’ to King James, as the word came in of each new desertion from the crown. And how, when he himself at last deserted to join me and Mary, my father retorted: ‘What, has old “I can’t believe it” gone, too?’ Well, that story almost killed the poor Prince. He would have gladly stayed with the King to the end; he would have willingly laid down his life for him; but because he knew I had gone with the Marlboroughs to declare for William, he believed that his place was at my side!”

  The Queen and I both looked up now as three doctors silently approached her chair. It was not necessary for them to speak. The gravity of their long countenances told their message. My poor mistress, with a loud cry, arose and staggered across the room to throw herself on her husband’s body.

  ***

  Two days later I stood with the Queen’s ladies in the corridor outside the chamber where the Prince’s body lay, listening to the loud colloquy, loud at least on the Duchess’s side, between the Queen and her Mistress of the Robes.

  “But Your Majesty must not remain another night in a palace where a royal demise has occurred!”

  “Was it not the great Elizabeth, Duchess, who said: ‘The word “must” is never used to princes’?”

  “But it’s the custom, ma’am, to remove from a palace under these circumstances!”

  “Do we not make the customs?”

  “Hardly, in a case like this. It’s not seemly! You should not shock your subjects, who are grieving for you.”

  “Are they grieving for me?”

  “Indeed they are. I certainly am. But even if Your Majesty does not care what we think, she should consider how the Prince would have felt. Surely no man breathed who had a greater deference for good manners and established usage!”

  My heart ached for my poor mistress. Yet there was something awe-inspiring in the relentlessness of the Duchess. Perhaps in her own odd way she had some real feeling for the Queen, but her lack of imagination where other persons were concerned was
profound, abysmal, bottomless. There was no humanity in her—except, perhaps, for Marlborough.

  Her last point, at any rate, hit the Queen.

  “That is true,” the feebler voice came to us. “The Prince always did the right thing.”

  “Then, I beg you, ma’am, to consider what I am asking.”

  “Very well, then. We shall consider it. But we must rest now.” There was a pause, and then her next words formed a cold, clear command. “Send Masham to me, Duchess!”

  How I still hear the sweet, silvery tone of those words! I remember how my eyes filled with instant tears and how my knees shook. That was the end of my resolution to leave the court. I knew that I should never leave it now, so long as my mistress lived and needed me. She had lost her husband; she had lost all her babes; she should certainly not lose any love or care or consolation that I could offer her. She was alone; I was alone. Even if she was a great monarch and I a nobody, we could share, perhaps even a bit dissolve, our common loneliness.

  I looked up proudly now as the Duchess faced me. I met her stare of hatred with defiance.

  “I suppose you heard what she said, Masham. You always do!”

  I curtsied deeply and followed her to the Queen. I could afford that last reverence to the Mistress of the Robes and Groom of the Stole. I knew that she had lost her war.

  PART TWO

  12

  There now occurred a lull in my life, lasting from the Prince’s death to the middle of the year 1710, during which I enjoyed something resembling content. The magnificent Duchess, although retaining her positions as Mistress of the Robes and Groom of the Stole, with all their emoluments, virtually gave up coming to court. The Queen was perfectly willing to allow her to retain her privileges so long as she did not insist on her duties. Sarah’s absence was peace at a price! Of course, at court we were never unaware of what she was up to. Whether she was reviling her poor architect at Blenheim, or bludgeoning the Whig leaders, or carrying on her private feuds with other great peeresses, the reverberations were bound to echo down the quiet corridors of Windsor or Kensington. But she was like a storm in another county; we heard the rumble and saw the flashes of lightning; we were never soaked.