Exit Lady Masham (11 page)

"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.

T
here 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.

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."