Exit Lady Masham Read online

  I had begun to feel a new confidence in my relationship with the Queen. I was constantly in her company now, and frequently alone with her, and I loved to listen to her memories of bygone monarchs: her charming uncle Charles, with his ugly Portuguese Queen and beautiful mistresses; her somber father, with his beautiful Italian Queen and ugly mistresses; her imperious sister, Mary, and her surly brother-in-law, Dutch William. The Queen never forgot either a kindness or an injury; those of her relatives who had found her dull and phlegmatic would have been astonished to learn how vividly their words and actions, nay, their very tones and gestures, had been recorded in the memory of this silent, watching woman. But where Anne Stuart was not like other royalties—or like other Stuarts—was in her concern for those around her. I existed not only as an audience. She wanted to be told all about my life and my small but rapidly expanding family.

  I should make it clear that I was not the only person to enjoy the Queen’s confidence. She also saw a good deal of the lively and beautiful Duchess of Somerset. The Queen, like many quiet persons, had an occasional need for chatter and noise, and the heiress of the Percys fulfilled some of Sarah’s old functions. I know that she discussed politics with the Queen, while I, at least at that time, never did. I could have done so, of course, for Harley and St. John kept me abreast of matters of state, but I fancied—and I believe now correctly—that my chief value in my mistress’s eyes was precisely that I offered her a haven from the cares of her great position and that she and I enjoyed a friendship where human values replaced those of the court. I even had a kind of vanity that I was a different sort of “favorite,” unique in English history, and perhaps the only person, except for the late Prince, who had loved Her Majesty for herself.

  Harley, who penetrated into everyone’s secrets, divined mine and joked about it.

  “You don’t seek, Abbie, like the late Father Joseph in Paris, to be a gray eminence. You are content to be merely gray! You see yourself as eminent in that you seek no eminence, influential in that you scorn influence. Ah, but it takes your keen old kinsman to see that you are the most ambitious of all!”

  Harley did not care that I would not speak to the Queen of his matters, so long as I was willing to speak to her of him. Access to the royal ear was all that he needed from me; the rest he could take care of himself. And, indeed, my mistress continued to find him the most adroit and sympathetic of her counsellors, and was always willing to give him audience when I whispered to her that he was waiting in the next chamber. He had by now mended all the bridges that had been wrecked by his treacherous secretary, Greg, and it was during this period of the “lull” in my life, that he climbed at last to the top rung of the slippery ladder of power. The Queen had dismissed Earl Godolphin as Lord Treasurer, and it was generally believed that she would soon appoint Harley as First Minister.

  Sarah liked to tell the world that Harley and I “controlled” the Queen, and it is true that he exerted considerable influence, but no more, in my opinion, than a minister should. As for myself, my sway was largely confined to giving my opinion to Her Majesty as to whether it would be damper in Greenwich or Hampton Court in June, what potted plants best suited the morning rooms, and which poems or comedies were most amusing to read aloud. But Harley’s promotion did make one significant change in my life. It gave him the opportunity to perform frequent small favors for my husband, and when Masham was distracted with his own affairs, my domestic life was much easier.

  Masham was not then as greedy and importunate as he later became. I had to do at least as much for him as I did for my brother Jack, whose army career was the one thing I cared about. My husband was understandably anxious to increase his own fortune, and Harley was able to offer him some channels of investment through tradesmen in the city, who always kept agents close to the Lord Treasurer to protect their monopolies. As it turned out, neither Harley nor my husband had any great aptitude for business; they tended to remain invested in these enterprises either too long or not long enough. But at this time they were both hopeful, and when Masham was hopeful he could be quite good company. After the birth of our third child and first son he waxed almost affectionate.

  The great change in our lives was that we now became fashionable. Needless to say, this was Masham’s idea. He had pushed me into obtaining larger apartments at Kensington Palace to form a permanent abode for our babes and their nurses, although we, of course, still had to travel from seasonal palace to seasonal palace. He proceeded to decorate our new chambers with all the knick-knacks that he bore back from his exhaustive shopping tours.

  I was surprised at the good taste that he manifested. Far from proving a bull in a china shop, he seemed eminently at home amid the jade goddesses, Venetian armchairs, painted panels of monkeys, red lacquer cabinets and copper incense bowls that he accumulated. It was curious to me that a man with such a tin ear for poetry and with a mind so full of pornography should have so keen an eye for color blends and objets d’art. Yet so it proved. Masham made a little jewel case out of the clutter of his bargains and had a thoroughly good time in doing so. He topped it off with a set of Lely beauties, picked up at an auction of the master’s estate, which gave a gay “restoration” note to the whole. I sometimes wondered what the Queen would have thought of it all, but she never visited any parts of her abodes that she did not personally occupy.

  Having adorned our rooms, the next thing he had to do was to fill them, and Masham proposed that we give a series of little supper parties.

  “You and I may not be a dream of love,” he told me frankly, “but that’s no reason not to make the best of things. Who knows how long Great Anna will last? Don’t look at me that way, Abbie! No one can hear us. Wasn’t it Leo X who said: ‘God gave us the papacy—let us enjoy it’? Well, I propose that we be leonine. There’s nobody in this court who will dare turn down a bid from Mistress Masham. So we may be as choosy as we please! I suggest that invitations to our little gatherings of eight will become the most sought after in England. But we’ll have to get you properly dressed first, my gal. I shall have Mademoiselle Rose in for some fittings.”

  “Rose? How will we pay for it all?”

  “We shan’t, silly!”

  When I talked to my sister Alice about this, I was already attired in a new gown of robin’s egg blue, which I confess I found attractive, although it was much too elaborately laced.

  “But what’s wrong, Abbie? I think Masham’s perfectly right. Why shouldn’t you be decently dressed?”

  “It’s not a question of decency, Alice. I’ve always been decent, I hope, even when I was a laundress. But this dress isn’t me. You know it isn’t!”

  “You mean ‘me’ can’t be improved? ‘Me’ can’t be touched up?”

  “It’s not that. It’s what the dress stands for. Masham’s whole view of our situation is false. He wants me to be alluring and insinuating and all kinds of things I’m not so that he can push himself forward in court!”

  “And that’s a crime? Listen, Abigail. It’s time I offered you something in return for all you’ve done for me. Of course, I haven’t anything to give but advice, but perhaps advice at this point is just what you need. Masham is not a bad husband—as husbands go. He’s out for himself—they all are. But the hopeful thing about him is that he’s pleasant when things are going his way, and that’s rarer than you may think. Keep him happy, and he should be easy enough to live with. Don’t think there aren’t plenty of females who wouldn’t be glad to have him!”

  “Some of them already have.”

  “What do you expect? Fidelity? In this court? I tell you frankly, dear, I’d rather have Masham than nobody.”

  “Be careful,” I warned her. “He has a brother.”

  “Oh, but a younger brother,” Alice said, laughing. “The sister of the favorite should do better than that!”

  I decided to take Alice’s advice and to meet my husband at least halfway. I began to creep out of my shell. We gave little dinners and supper
parties in our handsome suite of rooms, with the best food and wines ordered by Masham, who proved as much of a connoisseur at the table as in bibelots. I gave more time and attention to my clothes and was soon almost stylishly attired. In brief, Mr. and Mrs. Masham became the “thing.”

  Of course, I was always aware that the deference and kindness that even the greatest people at court showed me was owing to my now conceded position as favorite. But just as a tradesman who has been knighted begins to conceive that his lineage must be more ancient than he has supposed, and the heir to a fortune to imagine in time that it has been garnered by his own exertions, so did I find that I had to battle—and not always successfully—with the idea that the Queen had selected me as a companion, not simply because I was there, but because I was possessed of a rare intelligence and an unusual gift for human sympathy. And I found also that it was a subtle flattery to my vanity to be simply “Mrs. Masham” among the great names at court, possessed of no estate or wealth or dignity, yet known to all, deferred to by all, so that I stood out more in my bareness and simplicity than had I been as splendidly bejeweled and as gloriously titled as Cousin Sarah. Oh, yes, I was like that barefooted Capuchin friar, Father Joseph, whom Harley had cited to me, in the glittering court of Louis XIII! No humble heart beat beneath those plain robes!

  My high-water mark in my husband’s esteem came when I persuaded Harley to take Masham into an exclusive club called The Society, made up of statesmen, nobles and writers with a taste for literary and political discussion. To ensure conversational ease, the members checked their titles, so to speak, in the cloakroom, and addressed each other simply as “Brother.” I had had to confess to Harley that my husband’s only qualification was his passionate desire to join.

  “And quite enough, too, my dear,” he had replied with a benign wave of his hand. “He will do very well. Any group of men will welcome a handsome young buck who can laugh at the wit of his betters and offer a tale of bawdry. We’re easier than you women, you know.”

  He was right. Masham, by all reports, was a success in The Society, even with the great Jonathan Swift, who had recently come to court under Harley’s auspices. I was learning not to underestimate my husband’s capabilities.

  Our greatest social triumph was a dinner of twelve that included not only Harley and St. John, but the Sunderlands and the Duchess of Somerset. Unhappily, I recall it chiefly because it was there that I noted the first signs of discord between the first two mentioned. St. John had spoken to me before of Harley’s increasing bibulousness, but that night was the beginning of my own apprehensions about it.

  The beautiful, red-haired Duchess was at her loveliest and most beguiling. Unlike her absent and arrogant husband, who would not have condescended to sit at so plebeian a table (even for a favorite!), she professed a horror of “titled bores” and a preference for the company of those who perceived the “folly of life” and had the wit not to be heavy about it. She leaned forward now, her elbows informally on the table, her alabaster arms charmingly exposed, and cast those shining green eyes from one to the other of our privileged guests.

  “This is what I really adore!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it fun? I feel like the ‘good’ Duke in As You Like It. Didn’t he prefer a picnic to ‘painted pomp’? And what was it he said about the woods? You, my dear hostess, who know everything, can tell us that. What did he say the woods were free from?”

  It was like the Duchess to give someone else the chance to shine. I flushed with pleasure as I quoted: “‘More free from peril than the envious court.’”

  “Precisely! Oh, good for you! Isn’t it so, Mr. Harley? We are all honest at the Mashams’. Honest, that is, so long as honesty may entertain.”

  Harley, whose usually pasty cheeks were now flushed, raised his glass to me. “It is most true that Mrs. Masham abhors flattery. We must salt our tongues before we enter here.”

  St. John’s jeering laugh greeted this. “Do you remember, Abigail, what Decius Brutus said of Caesar? This Shakespeare game can be a two-edged sword.”

  “What is the verse, Mr. St. John?” the Duchess demanded. “Tell me the verse.”

  “‘But when I tell him he hates flatterers,

  He says he does; being then most flattered.’”

  The Duchess clapped her hands. “Ah, that wins! But, seriously, don’t you all agree we’re more relaxed here than anywhere else in court? I can’t understand people who must always be playing their born roles. My husband, for example: he is always being a duke. Oh, but he is! Don’t shake your head politely. I should know. He looks in his mirror and sees a duke. And Sarah Marlborough is always being a duchess. And even our revered sovereign spends most of her hours being a queen. Though perhaps it’s not fair to cite her. Perhaps in her case one really can’t help it. But I couldn’t live if I had to be a Somerset all day.”

  “Not everyone, Duchess, has such beauty and wit to fall back upon. Some of us must make do with our labels.”

  I thought this a bit heavy of Harley, but the Duchess seemed to take it in good part.

  “But you, Mr. Harley, would be perfectly happy with your books if you were no one at all!” she continued spiritedly. “No, I cannot conceive the satisfaction that some people get out of mere birth. To cite my poor husband again—don’t frown, anybody; he should have come if he wanted to control my tongue—I don’t believe a single hour goes by that he does not think: ‘I’m a Seymour. I’m a Seymour. My so-many-times-great-aunt married Henry VIII!’” We all laughed. “And do you know that he smiles if you mention a family he doesn’t know? He finds it actually comical to exist in a sphere outside the Seymours!”

  “I wonder if our Duchess isn’t being the superior consort,” Harley observed, with a wink down the table. “Can a lady born a Percy be in awe of any other English name?”

  “But Henry VIII, my dear Harley—Henry VIII!” The Duchess threw up her hands. “Imagine owing one’s entire genealogical distinction to the fact that one’s aunt had been sold to that monster! Talk about the sacrifice of the Cretan maidens to the Minotaur!”

  “I seem to recall an even prouder boast of the Seymours,” the irrepressible Harley continued. “Does not the Duke descend from Catharine Grey, sister of the unfortunate Lady Jane? Surely they were granddaughters of Mary Tudor, your Minotaur’s sister?”

  “As if my dear spouse would ever let me forget that!” the Duchess exclaimed. “He sees not only a duke in that mirror. He sees a king! Oops!” She raised a finger in mock horror to her lips. “Have I been guilty of treason? Will I share the fate of Great-great Aunt Jane?”

  “But what is treasonable about being in line to the throne?” Harley demanded. “Parliament has fixed the succession on the House of Hanover, but if that noble house should fail, surely the Duke is next?”

  “That is what the Queen told me!” I exclaimed in sudden recollection. “She said that so long as Parliament had excluded so many foreign princes, why not go one step further and bring the succession back to England?”

  “An excellent suggestion!” cried Harley. “Why go to Germany for our masters when we have good English dukes at home?” He bowed to the Duchess and again raised his glass to her. “And a duke with so dazzling a consort!”

  I think it was the glare in St. John’s eyes that made me realize that we were getting out of line. But the Duchess was perfect. She professed to make light of it all.

  “Oh, I think we can safely leave the business of being royal to our Teutonic friends. They take it all with such splendid seriousness! The only kingdom I want is one of hearts.”

  “And that you already have!” Harley assured her.

  After our party broke up, and while Masham was below, escorting the Duchess to her chambers, Harley and St. John sat on with me for a last glass of wine. The former decidedly did not need it, but he drank it nonetheless, and St. John made no effort to conceal his impatience.

  “You’re either going to have to drink less or choose your drinking companions with
more care, my friend!”

  “Oh, Henry, you’re always fussing at me these days.”

  “Do you call it fussing to warn a man about antagonizing the Elector of Hanover?”

  “But you hate him yourself. You told me so!”

  “Did I tell the Duchess of Somerset?”

  “Surely she’d like him out of the way. Did you believe that bit about her not caring for the crown?”

  “Not for a minute. But you’re dealing with one of the cleverest women in England and a violent Whig, to boot. Every word you uttered tonight will be known to the war party tomorrow and will be used to topple you. Harley is against the Act of Settlement! Harley challenges the power of Parliament to regulate the succession! You prate about wanting to bring peace to Europe, but you’ll find there’s mighty little you can do in the Tower for the cause of peace!”

  “You exaggerate so, Henry. Abbie here will make everything right with the Queen, won’t you, Abbie?”

  “Abbie’s too busy these days being a great hostess,” St. John observed sourly.

  “Oh, why don’t you both go to bed?” I was tired of the argument and nervous about what had been said at table. I sent for Harley’s servant, who assisted his wobbly master to the door, but St. John lingered a moment for a last word.

  “We will need you with the Queen, Abbie,” he said gravely. “You can see what’s happening to Harley.”

  “Why does he drink more when he’s getting ahead?” I asked fretfully. “One would think it would be just the reverse.”

  “Because he thinks he sees his goal in sight. Being First Minister! But to him the end of the road is simply ennui. His whole life has been scheming and maneuvering. He’s a climber who climbs for the sake of climbing. The peak is a kind of death.”