A Want of Kindness

by Joanne Limburg

  But still, give the King his due: he is not entirely neglectful of his duty to his sister: he will host the celebrations for her thirty-second birthday, in Whitehall. She is with child again, so no-one will persuade her out of a manteau this time, but Gloucester is to come with her, and she means to make a splendid figure of him. He is seven and a half, and his looks have improved considerably. He is tall for his age, with his father’s Danish colouring and a long, handsome face, which everyone says is so reminiscent of the late Queen’s; fair as he is, it looks even more like his grandfather’s, but nobody will say that aloud.

  On the day of her birthday, she has him dressed in a new suit of white satin, which she has had made on purpose to set off the pale blue of his Star and Garter. She has also had some of the late Queen’s jewels reset for him to wear: his suit is buttoned, clasped and sewn all over with diamonds; there are gems in his sword-hilt, and the George he wears around his neck is made of rubies, emeralds and yet more diamonds. The whole assemblage is topped off with a white periwig large enough to fit a grown man – for though his head is a handsome one, it is still noticeably large.

  Someone – who knows who? – has given the King sound advice, for he has chosen to have Anne’s favourite play put on at Whitehall. It is Mr Congreve’s Love for Love, surely the wittiest comedy that was ever written by anyone: all the characters – except the boobies – speak like the Ladies Fitzharding and Marlborough on their most sparkling form, as Anne would wish to speak herself, but never could; the one called Scandal, that is the friend of the hero, reminds her of Lady Marlborough most of all, because of all the truth in him.

  After the play is finished, the King comes over, in his stiff way, to exchange compliments with them. He says what he must to Anne and George, and then takes a long, thoughtful look at Gloucester.

  ‘You are very fine,’ he says.

  Anne waits for her boy to make one of his charming, courtly replies, but he only stares at his uncle, opening his mouth and shutting it again.

  ‘All the finer for you, Sir,’ says Anne at last, before her face can flush any more. Gloucester bows, silently.

  ‘It is all right,’ she whispers to him, ‘you may speak. Say something to the King, William.’ But he only bows again; the King nods, and moves away. Anne is disappointed, as much with herself as with her son: she ought not to have forgotten what it is like at Court when one is only young, and small, and burdened with too many jewels.

  25th March 1697

  Another stillborn daughter. It comes to Anne, in the sad days afterwards, that grief and gout might well be cousins of a kind: both wax and wane, both have that way of leaving one alone for a space only to come back again more viciously, seeking out new places to attack, and though it is quite true that either one alone might render life unbearable, neither of itself can end it.

  The Peace of Ryswick

  It is a late afternoon in autumn. The Windsor stable hands are picking the year’s first yellowing leaves out of Anne’s caleche. Anne has a dish of fresh plums next to her chair; she has chosen them over apples today, even though she knows that apples are better for strengthening a baby – for as she said to Danvers only this morning, there can surely be no harm in indulging such an innocent fancy, and she can always eat more apples tomorrow.

  ‘These are delicious,’ she says to George. ‘I think indeed they may be the finest that I ever ate. Do try one!’ ‘Thank you, my dear, but I do not think it will go at all well with this wine.’ ‘Oh I pray you, just one – it would so increase my pleasure to know it was shared.’ ‘Oh very well, then.’ He takes one, eats it in two bites. ‘That was good – very sweet, not too soft – but so remarkably fine? I’m not so sure – I think your sense is sharpened by your condition, dear.’ ‘I think you ate it too quickly to judge of it. Never mind. I’ll not force another on you – but I wonder should I have some sent to Holywell?’ ‘They have their own orchard at Holywell.’

  ‘But not like this – and the gift might prompt Mrs Freeman to write – I have not heard from her these last five days.’ ‘She will not have forgotten you.’ ‘But if there is something amiss? If she is ill?’ ‘Why should she be? She seemed in excellent health all the time we were in Tunbridge.’

  ‘My Lord Godolphin not so much. It is a blessing in disguise, really, that he should be kept away from business for a space – working for Mr Caliban would shake the strongest constitution, and his is not.’

  ‘Our Mrs Freeman will enjoy having him at Holywell – they are very fond of one another, are they not? Do you suppose—?’

  ‘No, I do not suppose! Mrs Freeman would be quite incapable of such a thing!’

  ‘But he is quite certainly in love with her.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Anne to George, and to herself, ‘Could anyone not be?’

  Anne has been agitated for a little while, chewing over the dearth of letters from Holywell, but talking about Lady Marlborough is the next best thing to hearing from her, and has lifted her spirits again. She selects another plum, and there is a scratch on the door. There are still no letters from Holywell, but a courier has arrived from Holland, to tell them that France has signed a treaty with the Allies. Louis has recognised William as King: there will be no more attempts to force the old King back up on them. It is surely the most welcome news imaginable: they give the courier a handsome present to take away, and several dozen plums.

  2nd December 1697

  It was surely a mistake, to rejoice so much in her father’s discomfiture. Anne’s gout returns: by mid-October, she is a perfect cripple. In December she miscarries of two more sons. The King has persisted in his resolve to give her father’s Irish lands to Squinting Betty. He will not change his mind, and now he has taken 35,000 of the 50,000 pounds Parliament granted for setting up a household for her boy – her only boy. Anne is like Foresight in Love for Love, for all her affairs go backwards.

  Whitehall Burns

  Of course it was a Dutch maidservant who started the fire, for as Anne has often had cause to observe, the people of that country have no regard for what they have neither thought up nor made themselves. This particular lass, being no exception, left sheets drying unattended over a brazier in Colonel Stanley’s lodgings – a piece of neglect which she must surely have known was forbidden – so that in the natural course of things the unwatched sheets caught fire, and then the hangings that were in the room, and then the Colonel’s bed, and soon after that the rest of his lodgings, and the timbers in his roof, and then those of his neighbour’s roof, and so and so on through the old, wooden Palace until the whole southern side was ablaze.

  It being early January, the Thames was frozen, and there was precious little water for the pumps; nor were buckets much use, for nobody could get near enough to the flames to throw the water on them. Soon the fire had made so great a havoc that they were forced to blow some buildings up to try to confine it, but all they were able to accomplish by this means was to send great pieces of burning timber flying in all directions, thus spreading the fire into parts of the Palace it might otherwise have spared. All this while, the Palace residents were running back and forth into the fire and out again, desperate to save their belongings, while the servants were doing the same with hangings, paintings, archives – any number of treasures. Despite their efforts, any number were lost, some to looters. It was a scene of destruction and confusion as had not been seen in London since the great conflagration that happened when Anne was but an infant.

  She has spent two days in her rooms at St James’s, watching the flames rise and fall, and worrying about the effect of the smoke on George’s lungs. Now the fire is over, and nothing has been spared but the Banqueting House, which the King has taken great care to protect, and a few other smaller buildings. One of them is the Cockpit, but she will not now be able to return to it, as it will be needed for government offices. There will be no more Whitehall drawing-rooms, no more Whitehall ba
lls; the State Rooms where she was introduced to foreign princes, the bedchambers where she was at one time wont to avoid her step-mother’s gaze and at a later time her sister’s, the Chapel where she almost sat in her father’s place and felt such dangerous pride, the Hall where she and Mary once stepped so carefully onto the stage and said their lines – all gone. So much gone.

  Gloucester Is Taken Out of the Hands of Women

  The Duke is eight years old and it is time, the King says, that he was given his own household, and put into men’s hands. No more governess, no more nurseries with clucking nannies in them, no more paper hats or wooden horses, no more pasteboard forts – and no place for Jenkin Lewis, for even though he is a man, he is not a gentleman, and only gentlemen are fit to wait on heirs presumptive. Gloucester seems no more moved by this loss than his mother was by the loss, so many years ago, of her Mrs Cornwallis; perhaps his heart has grown to be like hers, with its hidden backstairs and dusty chambers out of sight.

  He is moved out of Campden House and into his own set of rooms in St James’s Palace. The King appoints Lord Marlborough as his Governor, which pleases Anne very much, but then chooses Bishop Burnet to be his Preceptor, which does not. Burnet professes an austere kind of religion, which was always more to Mary’s taste than hers; moreover, she finds his discourse hard to follow. But she must bear with the appointment, as once her own father was forced to accept Bishop Compton’s. He is the King’s choice, and that is that. She tells Gloucester that he must be good for the Bishop.

  The King’s high-handedness in this matter is no more than she expected: it seems to Anne that he humiliates her as a matter of course. She is given almost no say in the choice of servants for her son’s new household, yet she is compelled to pay for the plate and furniture for his rooms out of her own funds. It is a fortunate thing indeed that Marlborough has contrived to make a friend of Albermarle, who may sometimes choose to speak for her to the King – if it were not for this, who would take care of her interests now?

  Her other consolation is her son, and all the good reports she has of him. She wonders if perhaps she was wrong to have trusted Burnet so little, for Gloucester thrives under his tutelage. Every quarter, five of the King’s ministers come to St James’s or Windsor to examine him on his progress, and every quarter they pronounce themselves amazed.

  Sometimes Gloucester tries to explain what he has learned to her, but she finds she cannot even pretend to follow him. On one of her visits, he chides her for it.

  ‘It saddens me to say so, Madam, but I fear you are not a very apt pupil. It concerns me that you should be so unlearned, when you are to have the Crown. Do you think I should ask the King to appoint you a tutor as well?’

  ‘Well, it saddens me to say this,’ she says to George later, ‘but I fear that the King would not think it worth the effort.’

  Coin

  The war just ended has cost the Kingdom every penny that it has – and then more than that. Vast sums, so vast that a Bank of England had to be established in order to raise them – a very Dutch notion, and surely such a thing as was never thought of in the country before. Now that the war is over, Parliament is trying to send the Dutch Guard home, but the Dutch King remains, with every year growing sicker and sourer, and no more generous to Anne after the Peace of Ryswick than he was before.

  But it is not only the King’s unkindness that has been making a beggar of Anne. Lady Marlborough, always so quick to sniff out incompetence or dishonesty in others, has been looking over her mistress’s accounts, and has discovered Sir Benjamin to be quite certainly guilty of the first fault, and possibly of the second too. He has failed entirely to make those investments which would have protected the Princess from the effects of the devaluation two years’ since; he has lost her a good deal of money through these errors. This by itself would be reason enough, Lady Marlborough says, to sack him, even if he had then not shown himself to be a knave as well as a fool, by claiming to have lost more. She shows Anne what she has found, and alas, it is all as she says it is, but, for dear Semandra’s sake, Anne keeps Sir Benjamin on. Lady Marlborough sees to it that the accounts are undone and redone correctly, and Anne hopes that this will be the end of it.

  Of course it is not. The summer after the Whitehall fire, Sir Benjamin brings Anne some bills to look over. Mindful of what Lady Marlborough has said to her on the subject of carelessness and being too easy, Anne puts on her least disappointing spectacles and takes a seat by a window, where she examines the bills closely and discovers, among other faults, that the expenses of oil and vinegar are somewhat extravagant. She is sure that there must be some cheat, and tells Sir Benjamin that she will speak to Hapgood, her Yeoman of the Wine Cellar.

  The next day, she has the Prince sit with her, for support, and calls Hapgood in. He arrives promptly and makes his compliment, seeming a little bewildered but not at all afraid.

  ‘I have called you here—’Anne begins, and then hesitates – she wishes Lady Marlborough were with her, and could do this in her place. She tries to imagine how that lady would conduct herself, then clears her throat, and starts again. ‘I have summoned you to explain something to me – that is, why it should be that these expenses, of oil and vinegar, should be so great. I do not understand why you have not taken more care with the management of my cellar.’

  ‘Your Highness,’ he says, ‘I am sorry that you have had reason to find fault with me – I thought I was taking all the care I could, but I shall try to do better. I hope you can forgive me.’

  Anne’s first impulse is to assure him that of course she forgives him, then offer him a comfit and send him away, but she knows it will not do – she summons her absent friend’s spirit again.

  ‘I might well forgive you, as long as you can give me a full account of the matter. I must point out to you, that as you did not buy your place, you can have no manner of pretence for cheating me.’

  ‘Your Highness, no man could be more grateful than I for the place you have given me, and I have never cheated you in anything.’ ‘I should hope not. I say again: your place was my gift; you can have no reason to cheat me.’

  ‘Your Highness, once more, I am sincerely grateful and I never would cheat you in anything, and will from now on be more careful in all that I do in your service . . . But perhaps I should say . . .’

  ‘What, Hapgood?’

  ‘Though I was put in by Your Highness, I did give Sir Benjamin a hundred pound when I came.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ The Prince is moved to speak. ‘Why were you such a fool?’

  ‘It was only – it was only that I was desirous of living a quiet life, and Sir Benjamin told me himself of the Dutch cook, who was raised to be Master Cook here, and the new cook who came in were to give him money, because he had been obliged to return a handsome present to Mr Pasmore when he was turned out, and so between the two cooks and myself, he expected something towards the making up of the sum he had lost.’

  The Dutch cook, when he is called, tells her that he has paid all of two hundred pounds for his quiet life – and others have had to pay too. When she summons Sir Benjamin and tells him what she knows, he claims never to have asked for the money – it was only offered to him, so that he might give it to Mr Pasmore – he never would tell Anne a lie. On this occasion it is not difficult to put on a stern voice. She tells him that his story sounds unlikely, rejects his offer to question the servants on the matter himself, and insists that he return their money to them. Sir Benjamin gives her assurances of his sincerity and fair dealing that she thinks must sound false even to his own ears, and then she lets him go. She can barely stand to look at him, but she does not turn him out. Poor Frances has done nothing to deserve this trouble, to be married to a dishonest man, who oppresses poor people.

  It has been a most grubby and distressing business. Thank heaven for Lady Marlborough: she may say that she has done no more than her duty, but Anne knows t
hat such a great service as she has done can only come out of great kindness, true friendship, real love. The Marlboroughs’ oldest daughter, Lady Harriet, has this spring been married to Lord Godolphin’s son – poor, pious Margaret’s child – and Anne, to express her own love, her own kindness, her own friendship for all parties, was moved to offer something towards Lady Harriet’s portion – just her poor mite, just 10,000 pounds. Lady Marlborough – always so good – tried to refuse half of it at first, but has been persuaded instead to accept the disputed half as a present for Lady Anne when she marries. Lady Marlborough is fortunate in having so many healthy, beautiful daughters. Anne has taken to giving balls on Mondays and it has been both a pain and a pleasure, watching other women’s daughters dance. Perhaps the child Anne is carrying now will be a daughter. It would not be too much, would it, to ask for two living children? Even Mary Beatrice has two now.

  15th September 1698

  Lord, God – my Father in Heaven, for what reason has it pleased you to empty me of another life? No lady I’m sure could have taken more care of herself or her child than I did – all those months I kept to my chamber, I took the powders the Swedish ambassadress commended to me, and the spa waters that I know have wrought so well for other ladies. You must know that I prayed – but for all that I have come to expect calamities, so that when my son grew still in my womb it was as if I were watching a tragedy that I had seen put on before: always there is that tiny hope that it might end differently this time, yet one is none too surprised when it comes to the same bad end.

  I have had Dr Pratt and Bishop Burnet at my bedside, telling me that I should not seek to know why, that this is all part of your design, but I must confess I cannot help but question: what is your purpose in this? What is it that I have done or said or thought, that you should chastise me so much and so harshly? And sometimes I even wonder why it is that I should remain in this world, when so many I have loved have left it. I remember every one of my children – the particular time they were with me, the different ways they had of quickening – and I cannot think it a sin that I should hold them in my heart in this way. I cannot believe you would judge me for that.