Courting Her Highness (72 page)

She shut herself in her bedroom and looked at her angry reflection. He would rather stroke her hair than command an army, would he? In a sudden fury she picked up a pair of scissors and cut off strands of her hair so that instead of falling to her waist it scarcely reached her shoulders. Then gathering it up she went with it to his study and threw it all on to his desk.

Back in her room she looked at her reflection. She seemed different—older.

Grimly she smirked. “We shall see how my lord Marlborough likes that!” she cried.

But when they next met he made no comment; and when she went into his study she could find no trace of the hair.

He told her the next day that, as she so wished it, he had decided to accept the King’s offer.

Marlborough was once more Captain-General of the Army.

It soon became
clear that the new King, although he had decided to make use of Marlborough’s services, had no great liking for him; and although some court posts were allotted to the family, none came the way of Sarah.

Mary, now Duchess of Montague, became a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales, and her husband was given a regiment. The Earl of Bridgewater, husband of Elizabeth who had died recently, was made Chamberlain to the Prince of Wales, while Henrietta’s husband, Lord Godolphin, was given the offices he had possessed before the fall of his father and the Churchill faction, and Lord Sunderland, Anne’s husband, was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

An indication, commented Sarah, that the
family
was back in favour; and although Sunderland might be furious to be sent to Ireland, at least he had a little more recognition than herself.

But, she declared, they would soon find they could not do without the Marlboroughs.

Bolingbroke, realizing the danger of his position on the accession of George, had fled to France and there went into the service of James whom he had tried so hard to bring to the throne. As a result, James made an attempt to gain it in 1715; and then Marlborough as Captain-General, was called in to serve the King.

Alas, he was showing his age and it was clear even to him that he was no longer fit for the field. Although he directed operations he took no active part, and this more than anything brought home to him the fact that his days of glory were over.

When the rebellion was at an end, Sarah took him to St. Albans there to nurse him back to health.

It was at this time that a further blow struck the household. A letter came to the house addressed to the Duke and the Duchess from the Earl of Sunderland to tell them that his wife, their daughter Anne, had been taken ill with pleuritic fever and he thought it advisable if they would come to her bedside without delay.

When John read the letter he sank down on to a chair and trembled violently so that Sarah, desperately anxious for her daughter, was equally so for her husband. He was in his sixty-sixth year and his had been a life of stress and tension. The death of her daughter, Elizabeth, had shaken him severely, and had put years on him; and now it seemed that Anne, the favourite of all her children, was in danger.

“I will go to her,” she said, “and you will remain here, you are unfit to travel.”

John protested. He would go to his daughter and nothing would keep him away.

While they were arguing, there was a further letter. Anne, Lady Sunderland, was dead.

Sarah had wept
until those about her thought she would lose her reason, and when Sarah wept the whole household knew it; hers was no secret grief.

“Why has this ill fortune come to us!” she demanded. “What have we done to deserve it? I thought I had endured all the ill fortune in the world when I lost my only son. And now … two daughters … my best loved daughters …”

She stormed through the house, one moment harrying her servants for incompetence, the next shutting herself into her room to throw herself on to her bed and give way to her grief.

Anne had been the sweetest member of the household; she had been the peacemaker—and in that family they had needed one. Sarah had loved her dearly because she never argued as her eldest Henrietta and her youngest Mary did; Anne would smile when she disagreed and bow her head, while she kept firmly to her opinions. She had been lovely—a daughter to be proud of. Marl had been against her marriage with Charles Spencer. Dear Marl, the most ambitious man alive and the most sentimental. He had feared that Charles Spencer, who had become Lord Sunderland on his father’s death, was not good enough for their Anne although he was one of the richest men in the country. But she, Sarah, had had her way and the marriage had taken place. Not that she had ever liked Sunderland. Dearest Anne! She had been one of the beauties of the Court—for she surpassed her sisters, and Marl used to say that she and Elizabeth were the ones who rivalled their mother for beauty, although even they could not quite equal her. The Little Whig they called her and the Whigs had toasted her in their coffee houses. And now she was dead.

“My only son, my two daughters!” moaned Sarah. “Why should I have to suffer like this.”

Marl had tried to comfort her. “We still have Henrietta and Mary.”

A hollow comfort! Henrietta and Mary had always gone their own way. Their wills were almost as strong as Sarah’s and they could not be together for long without quarrelling. Those two left out of her family of five! It was heartbreaking.

There seemed nothing to live for. Even the days when they were wandering about the Continent were better than this.

Sarah stormed into the bedroom she shared with John and found him sitting in his chair. He did not look up when she entered and she cried: “We’ll have to go to Court. We can’t stay here grieving for the rest of our lives. German George will have to be made to understand what he owes to you. What’s the matter. Are you struck dumb. Marl.
Marl!
”

She went to him and the thought came to her in that moment: Why did I think I had reached the ultimate suffering. Then I had Marl, and while I have him I still have what I need to make life worth living.

“John,” she cried. “Dearest …”

But he did not answer; he could only look at her with dull, bewildered eyes.

She ran screaming from the room, summoning the servants. “Send for doctors. At once! At once! My lord Marlborough is taken ill.”

It was said
that the shock of Lady Sunderland’s death, following so close on that of Lady Bridgewater, had brought on the Duke of Marlborough’s stroke.

When she realized that although he had lost the power of speech and it was obvious that he could not clearly grasp what was going on about him, he could still recover, Sarah threw off her grief for her daughters and set about nursing him, giving to the task all that energy which she had previously squandered on quarrels.

Nothing in that household was allowed to interfere with the Duke’s recovery. Sarah was supreme in the sickroom. She insisted that Dr. Garth—a local doctor—take up residence in the house that he might be called to attend the Duke at any time of the night and day.

The Duke must be kept alive, and it seemed that none dared disobey Sarah—not even the Duke, for he clung to life with a tenacity which surprised everyone, including the doctors.

“You will recover, John,” Sarah told her husband. “My dearest, you must recover. We have been together so long. How could we be separated now?”

That was one thing he seemed to understand and each day there was
an improvement. His powers of speech began to return and Dr. Garth said his recovery was a near-miracle.

While Sarah was nursing John she received a letter from the Earl of Sunderland in which he said his wife had written to him when she knew she was dying and he enclosed the letter, for it concerned Sarah.

When Sarah read this letter she took it to her private sitting room and wept over it.

Then she took it to John and sitting by his chair told him what it contained. He understood and nodded his head.

“It will be good for you, Sarah,” he said in his slow and painful way.

And she wept afresh—quiet tears unlike those she usually shed.

“I shall write at once to Sunderland,” she said. “We will have the children here as soon as it can be arranged. There is Elizabeth’s girl, too. Perhaps I should bring her here. As my poor darling Anne has said: It is not good for children to be left to the care of servants.”

John understood. He seemed happier than he had for a long time.

This was Sarah’s new life—far from Court intrigues; a sick husband to nurse; a houseful of grandchildren to care for.

n the Manor of Langley Marsh Lady Masham
had become the gracious chatelaine. Samuel was an ideal lord of the manor; gentle, kindly, he quickly became popular with his tenants, who knew in the neighbourhood that they must not be deceived by the quiet manner of Lady Masham; she it was who ruled the household.

She entertained frequently, yet she appeared to enjoy the simpler pursuits of the country. Her still room occupied some part of her time, and there was also the governing of the servants, the planning of dinner parties and of course, the bringing up of her children. When her son George died she was stricken with grief but she still had her Samuel, named after his father, and there was another son Francis to replace the one she had lost. She had her daughter Anne and looked forward to having more children.

She was avidly interested in the news from Court but she saw it all from a long distance and with each passing month her nostalgia grew less, and there were days when she never thought for a moment of the intimacies of the green closet; she sometimes poured the bohea tea without hearing the echo of a beautiful voice murmuring: “Dear Hill … or dear Masham … you always make it just as I like it.”