Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (10 page)

Initially George hoped to prove himself by occupying an important post. When the marriage terms were being negotiated the Danish envoy had suggested to Barrillon, the French ambassador, that the Prince should be made Lord High Admiral. Barrillon had made it clear this was out of the question, but said that in time George would surely be given a prestigious job. This never materialised. Although George was made a Knight of the Garter in 1684, he was not given a place on the Privy Council. When he proposed sending a personal emissary to see Louis XIV, the idea was quashed on the grounds ‘he should not think of becoming a figure in his own right’.
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During William and Mary’s reign George became resentful when his merits were overlooked and, in the Duchess of Marlborough’s sarcastic words, ‘took it exceedingly to heart that his great accomplishments had never yet raised him above pity or contempt’.
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In his early years in England, however, he accepted his nondescript status without protest.

The Princess Anne of Denmark, as she was officially styled, was now in a position to perform a favour to Frances Apsley, her old friend. Frances had married a former financier (rudely described by a critic as an ‘old city sponger’) named Sir Benjamin Bathurst, and had written to the Princess begging that her husband might be given a post in her establishment. Anne wrote back to assure Frances that she could still rely on ‘your Ziphares, for though he changes his condition yet nothing shall ever alter him from being the same to his dear Semandra that he ever was’.
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She applied to her father and was granted permission to appoint Bathurst as Treasurer of her Household.

Anne had to accept ‘a person very disagreeable to her’ as her First Lady of the Bedchamber. This was her aunt the Countess of Clarendon, who was imposed upon her by another of her Hyde relations, the Earl of Rochester. He insisted that his sister-in-law was given this prestigious position, even though ‘she was not a likely woman to please a young princess’. The Countess was ‘very learned but … she had such an awkward stiffness it greatly disgusted the Princess’. However, Anne was permitted to exercise some choice over the appointment of her Second Lady of the Bedchamber. Initially her father and Rochester had wanted the post to be awarded to Lady Thanet but the Princess ‘begged she might not have her’, having conceived a desperate longing to appoint the woman who had now become her greatest friend.
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Anne had known Sarah Jennings since 1673 when she had come to court to be one of the Duchess of York’s maids of honour. After she had been at court a couple of years Sarah began to be courted by an army officer who was ten years older than her, named John Churchill. Prior to this he had been garrisoned in Tangier, had fought in the war against Holland, and served for some months in the French army after England made peace with the Dutch. As the brother of the Duke of York’s mistress, Arabella Churchill, he had opportunities, being ‘a very smooth man, made for a court’, to ingratiate himself with James. After being appointed one of James’s Gentlemen of the Bedchamber in 1673, Churchill became his Master of the Robes four years later, and by 1680 was described as ‘ye only favourite of his master’.
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With the patronage of the Duke of York, he went from being a Lieutenant Colonel of the Duke of York’s regiment in 1675 to senior brigadier three years later. He was not, however, a wealthy man, and his hopes of marrying Sarah Jennings had initially seemed slight as his parents had been determined to match him with an heiress. It was only when Sarah’s brother died, improving her own financial expectations, that this difficulty was resolved. With the
encouragement of the Duchess of York the couple were able to marry, probably in late 1677. It was a love match on both sides, and though in subsequent years Sarah would test his patience to an extraordinary degree, her husband’s devotion to her never wavered.

John Churchill accompanied the Duke of York on many of his travels, and when possible his wife went with him, so she and Anne saw a lot of one another over the years. Sarah was in Brussels when Anne visited her father in 1679, and they were also together in Scotland in late 1681. However it does not seem to have been until after the Mulgrave affair and the sacking of Mary Cornwallis that Anne became really attached to Sarah. When Sarah had a second daughter in February 1683 Anne accepted an invitation to become godmother to the child, who was named after her. The following month John Churchill (who had been created Lord Churchill in December 1682) informed his wife ‘Lady Anne asks for you very often, so that I think you would do well if you writ to her to thank her for her kindness in enquiring after your health’.
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Sarah was truly an extraordinary woman. As a boy the actor Colley Cibber was transfixed when he caught sight of her in 1688, becoming utterly enraptured by ‘so clear an emanation of beauty, such a commanding grace of aspect’. With her red-gold hair, she was physically dazzling, and she also radiated vitality. She was not well educated, and said herself that throughout her youth she ‘never read, nor employed my time in anything but playing at cards’ but, even so, her mind was her most singular feature. She had an alert intelligence and a lacerating wit, and though her humour was always abrasive, it was undeniably entertaining to those who were not objects of her scorn. Endowed with what she called ‘a very great sprightliness and cheerfulness of nature, joined with a true taste for conversation’,
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she had a gift for memorable expressions, coupled with utter confidence in her opinions. In time her outspokenness and her inability to see things from other people’s point of view would become destructive, but to Anne at this point Sarah’s vibrancy and exuberance seemed supremely attractive qualities. Despite the fact that their personalities could hardly have been more different, Anne found herself irresistibly drawn to this self-assured and dynamic woman.

It appears that it was Sarah herself who suggested to a delighted Anne that she should become her lady-in-waiting. The Princess was already so slavishly devoted to Sarah that she wrote humbly thanking her ‘for your kindness in offering it’ and assuring her ‘’tis no trouble to me to obey
your commands’. Knowing that she had to secure her father’s consent to the appointment, she urged Sarah to ‘pray for success and assure your self that whatever lies in my power shall not be wanting’. Since Lord Churchill was in such favour with the Duke of York, one might have thought that the Duke would have had no objection to Sarah’s advancement, but unfortunately James was taking advice from the Earl of Rochester about who should have the place. Sarah said that Rochester wanted ‘one … that would be entirely obedient to him’ in the household, ‘which he had experienced I would not be’ and therefore he and his wife ‘did all they could to hinder’ her appointment.
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When it appeared that she would not be able to give Sarah the position, Anne grew distraught. She sent Sarah a letter that was almost incoherent with emotion, imploring her not to blame her for the setback. ‘Oh dear Lady Churchill’, she wrote frantically, ‘let me beg you once more not to believe that I am in fault, though I must confess you may have some reason to believe it because I gave you my word so often that I would never give my consent to any, no more I have not, but have said all that was possible for one to say’. Anne explained that she had delayed telling Sarah how gloomy the outlook appeared because

I was yet in hopes that I might prevail with the Duke, and I will try once more, be he never so angry; but oh, do not let this take away your kindness from me, for I assure you ’tis the greatest trouble in the world to me and I am sure you have not a faithfuller friend on earth nor that loves you better than I do; my eyes are full, I cannot say a word more.

She became even more agitated when she heard that Sarah was about to go to Windsor, leaving her behind, and protested ‘this cruel disappointment is too much to be borne without the loss of your company’. Anne’s next letter, however, brought better news, for, as she had promised, she had raised the matter again with her father, and this time won him over. Jubilantly Anne reported, ‘The Duke came just as you were gone and made no difficulties but has promised me that I shall have you, which I assure you is a great joy to me’.
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As Anne’s Second Lady of the Bedchamber Sarah received a modest salary of £200 a year, but the real value of the position lay in Anne’s assurance to her that she would be ‘ready at any time to do you all the service that lies in my power’. Sarah admitted that she cultivated the relationship with great care, and ‘now began to employ all her wit, all her
vivacity and almost all her time to divert and entertain and serve the Princess’. She succeeded triumphantly, for Anne’s liking for her ‘quickly became a passion, and a passion which possessed the heart of the Princess too much to be hid’. Being with Sarah afforded her such intense delight that Anne begrudged letting her out of her sight. One account of their relationship based on Sarah’s own reminiscences described how ‘They were shut up together for many hours daily. Every moment of absence was counted a sort of a tedious, lifeless state … This worked even to the jealousy of a lover. [The Princess] used to say
She desired to possess her wholly
and could hardly bear that [Sarah] should ever escape … into any other company’.
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In retrospect Sarah claimed that the hours she spent closeted with Anne were ‘a confinement indeed for her’ and even stated that Anne’s ‘extremely tedious’ company ensured that she would ‘rather have been in a dungeon’ than with her mistress. Since Anne was not naturally talkative, Sarah had to work hard to keep the conversation flowing, but Sarah also complained that anything the Princess did have to say was characterised by ‘an insipid heaviness’. Sarah was nevertheless careful to hide from the Princess that she found her a bore. Anne was led to believe that even if her passion for Sarah was not reciprocated in full, neither was it completely unrequited. One of Anne’s earliest letters to her friend refers to ‘poor me (who you say you love)’. In 1706, four years after Anne’s accession to the throne, Sarah wrote to her, reminding her of the ‘passion and tenderness’ she had ‘once had’ for Anne.
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Anne once protested ‘’tis impossible for you ever to believe how much I love you except you saw my heart’; on another occasion she declared ‘If I writ whole volumes I could never express how well I love you’. She insisted that ‘Nothing can ever alter me’, and that her ‘kindness’ for Sarah could ‘never end but with my life’. Years later, once it had emerged that Anne had overstated the immutability of her love, Sarah noted bitterly, ‘Such vows … strike one with a sort of horror at what happened afterwards’.
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The Princess submitted to frequent separations to enable Sarah to spend time at her own house at St Albans and to be with her husband when he was waiting on the Duke of York. ‘This absence … though be it never so short, it will appear a great while to me’, Anne declared when Sarah was away. She consoled herself by keeping in touch by letter, saying it constituted her ‘greatest pleasure’. Sarah later complained that Anne’s letters were never interesting, even if ‘enlivened with a few passionate expressions, sometimes pretty enough’. At the time, however,
Sarah was more appreciative, delighting Anne by being ‘so kind [as] to be satisfied with my dull letters’. Anne herself conceded ‘I am the worst in the world at invention’, but since Sarah encouraged her to write to her at length the Princess was able to convince herself that her letters were welcome.
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Anne admitted that there was something compulsive about the way she wrote so frequently to her friend, sometimes more than once a day. ‘You will think me mad, I believe, for troubling you so often’, she told Sarah apologetically, but despite acknowledging that her behaviour was slightly odd, she expected prompt replies to every letter, notwithstanding the burden it placed on her friend. The Princess explained, ‘If I could tell how to hinder myself from writing to you every day I would, that you need not be at the trouble of writing so often to me, because you say it does you hurt, but really I cannot … for when I am from you I cannot be at ease without enquiring after you’. She would declare petulantly that unless she received a letter the next morning ‘I shall conclude with reason that I am quite forgot and ne’er trouble you any more with my dull letters’.
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Anne asked Sarah to show her letters to nobody else, but Sarah insisted that hers to Anne were destroyed. As a result we do not know the tenor of her replies. Sarah later encouraged the assumption that they were more restrained in tone than Anne’s effusions, but this is open to question. Towards the end of her life Anne told a third party that Sarah ‘wrote to me as [I] used to do to her’.
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The Princess accepted that Sarah’s strongest feelings were reserved for her husband, and she let it be understood that the same applied to her and George. When telling Sarah that she had ‘no greater satisfaction’ than being in her company she qualified this by saying that this was ‘next [to] being with the Prince’. However her love for George hardly had the same needy intensity that characterised her relationship with Sarah. Although she missed him when they were apart, she bore his absence with an equanimity that was lacking during separations from Sarah.
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If Anne did not contest that Churchill took priority over her in Sarah’s eyes, she nevertheless claimed ‘the little corner of your heart that my Lord Churchill has left empty’. Believing herself entitled to ‘possession of the second place’, she was reluctant to share it with other women, but to her distress found herself contending with ‘a great many rivals’ who vied with her for Sarah’s attention. Anne’s jealousy and resentment of these ladies who were ‘more entertaining than I can ever pretend to be’
made her ‘sometimes fear losing what I so much value’, and would cause tension in years to come.
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