Courting Her Highness_ The Story of Queen Anne - Jean Plaidy [142]
Sarah came back and found them together.
The Prince lay in state at Kensington for fifteen days before his body was conveyed to the Painted Chamber of Westminster. During this time Anne kept Abigail with her, although Sarah refused to leave the Court. Her posts demanded that she stay, she declared.
The Queen spent her days planning the funeral and drawing comfort from Abigail. Sarah looked on with distaste. It was most unseemly, she told Danvers. Did the Queen care nothing for the Prince, and all for ceremonies!
As the Queen was clearly heartbroken this statement seemed strange, but no one dared disagree with the Duchess of Marlborough.
Anne, wanting the whole country to understand that this was indeed a period of mourning, ordered the closing of all theatres. She herself remained in the green closet, seeing only her ministers and a few of her servants. Abigail was in constant attendance and the Duchess remained at St. James’s.
It was a shock to Sarah to see the change in Abigail, who, she told Godolphin, had become arrogant and completely forgetful that she was merely a chambermaid.
The funeral took place as Anne had wished with the utmost pomp—an impressive ceremony by torchlight attended by all the important ministers and officials.
But the main preoccupation of the Queen’s ministers—Whig and Tory—was not the death of the Queen’s husband but the shifting of the Queen’s favour from the Duchess of Marlborough to Mrs. Masham.
MARLBOROUGH’S REQUEST
he Duke was in England and Sarah had gone to St. Albans to be with him. As usual there was great joy in being together, but they were both apprehensive for the future.
Marlborough was the great hero, but a war hero, and the people were tired of war. While Marlborough was abroad his enemies were undermining his position at home. He knew; but Sarah refused to accept it.
But the biggest disaster of all was the fact that Sarah had lost her place in the Queen’s affections.
In spite of the evidence she could not believe that she had been put aside in favour of her insignificant poor relation.
“Abigail Hill!” she would murmur even in her sleep. The woman was becoming an obsession.
“To think that I took her from a broom!” she would say apropos of nothing. There was no rest from the subject.
Marlborough, more philosophical than his wife, tried to soothe her and at the same time warn her. He might have said that it was her overbearing behaviour which had brought about the rift, which would have been true, but he refrained. He knew his Sarah and he loved her for what she was; and in any case had always known it was useless to try and change her.
Therein lay the success of their relationship, although some said that Marlborough was so devoted to his Sarah because he was forced to spend so much time away from her.
“Do not distress yourself so,” he begged her. “Give up struggling against the wind and the tide.”
“Give up everything to that chambermaid.”
“You are only distressing yourself and not making the Queen more fond of you. You’ll never get her friendship back by railing against Masham.”
“I’ll force her to be friends again!”
Dear Sarah. Such energy, and so little knowledge of human nature!
He was tired, feeling his age. There had been moments of grandeur in his life but to what were they leading? Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde … and others—and what was the result? Loss of favour at home; his enemies working to oust him from politics if not from the Army; the peace he had hoped to make had not been achieved. He had wanted to take the war right to the gates of Paris and then he would have been able to make demands which Louis would have had to accept. But the Dutch were uneasy allies. As soon as he had made their frontiers safe for them, they wanted to have done with war.
And he himself? One could not be young for ever. Strangely enough he cared more for Sarah’s disappointments than for his own; but she would take no advice. She had listened to him more than to most, but she believed that she alone was capable