Death of the Marquis of Blandford—His character. 1702–3.
How often does it occur, that in the hurry of life some event interposes
to show us the fruitlessness of our cares—to prove to us our position,
as powerless instruments in the hand of Providence—to mark the weakness
of our wills, and the transient nature of all that we prize, and of all
that we have sought to gain, by rising early, and late taking rest, and
eating the bread of carefulness!
Whilst the Duchess of Marlborough, by the workings of her powerful mind,
swayed the destinies of party, and governed her sovereign, it was
decreed that a chastising hand should humble and restrain her; that the
blow should be aimed in the tenderest part, calculated, to lower her
proudest aspirations, and to touch with poignancy those maternal
affections of which even the most worldly are never destitute, but which
the worldly taste only in bitterness; for interest and pleasure deaden
the daily emotions and gentle pleasures of domestic life, whilst they
cannot wholly avert the sting which the dormant affections receive.
The Duchess had borne her husband two sons. Of these, Charles, the
younger, died at an early age. John, the elder, survived until the age
of seventeen, when, in all the promise of future celebrity and
excellence, he was taken from his parents, just as their hopes of him,
their pride of him, and their love of him, had raised their expectations
to the utmost height.
Commanding in person, and strong in intellect,[475] this noble youth
united with the high spirit of his mother, the gentleness, and
graciousness, and strong principles of his father. His religious habits,
his frequent attendance on the holy sacrament, his assiduity in his
studies, and the regularity of his conduct, proved that, how much soever
his parents had been absorbed in the concerns of the world, and in the
pursuit of greatness, they had neither neglected the formation of his
intellect, nor the far more important yet corresponding culture of his
sense of duty, and his best affections.
Well might the bereaved parents afterwards exclaim with Congreve, when
death had robbed them of this star which shed a ray of brightness on
their path of life,
To mourn thy fall, I’ll fly the hated light,
And hide my head in shades of endless night;
For thou were light, and life, and wealth to me;
The sun but thankless shines that shows not thee;
Wert thou not lovely, graceful, good, and young,
The joy of sight, the talk of every tongue?
Did ever branch so sweet a blossom bear,
Or ever early fruit appear so fair?[476]
The original intention of the Duke and Duchess was, that their son
should, by the favour of the Queen, fill the place of master of the
horse to the young Duke of Gloucester. Upon the death of that young
Prince, Lord Blandford was sent to King’s College, Cambridge, having
been prepared for that seminary of knowledge by his previous education
at Eton. At Cambridge he was placed under the tuition of Mr. Hare,
afterwards Bishop of Chichester, the chaplain subsequently, and the
friend and correspondent, of the Duke and Duchess. Under his guidance,
and enjoying the friendship of Horace, afterwards Lord Walpole, the
young nobleman added credit to his name, by a regularity which would
have become the lowliest as well as the most exalted member of the
university. His classical attainments were considerable; the courtesy of
his manners accorded with an affectionate and modest nature; and his
good sense appreciated the important benefits of that college
discipline, from which a feebler or more presuming mind would have
revolted.
With all these excellencies—the excellencies which would have adorned
him in private life, had he been spared—Lord Blandford cherished the
ambition to resemble and to emulate his father, in the brilliant course
of a military career.
When scarcely sixteen, he entreated permission to join the campaign in
the Netherlands. His request was not gratified; for although Marlborough
could not repel a thirst for distinction which so well accorded with his
own nature, the mother of the high-spirited youth dreaded for her child
the dangers which appear not to have overwhelmed her at any time with
apprehensions for his father. Lord Blandford, nevertheless, ardent and
resolute, persisted in his desires, and sought to obtain for himself and
Horace Walpole commissions in the cavalry, that they might serve at the
same time, and in the same regiment.
The parent, who dreaded for her son perils by land, and perils by sea,
was doomed to lose him by that fatal complaint, which then, in most
instances, baffled medical skill, and proved the scourge of society. The
small-pox raged in Cambridge. Lord Godolphin, who was at Newmarket,
wrote to the inquiring mother accounts of her son’s health, which were
calculated to satisfy her maternal anxieties, whilst yet the disease had
not attacked the delicate, and, as it seems, prematurely gifted youth.
Lord Churchill, the lord treasurer acknowledged, was thin almost to
emaciation; but he dwelt more minutely upon the displays of his mental
and moral qualities than on his health.
“I repeat to you that I find Lord Churchill very lean. He is very
tractable and good-humoured, and without any one ill inclination that I
can perceive. And I think he is grown more solid than he was, and has
lost that impatience of diverting himself all manner of ways, which he
used to have. This is truly just as I find him, and I thought it might
not be improper to give you this account, that you might be the better
judge whether you would desire to see him now, according to the proposal
I made in my letter of yesterday, or stay for that satisfaction until my
Lord Marlborough comes over.”[477]
This was in August, 1703. In October, Lord Godolphin received the young
nobleman as a guest in his house at Newmarket, where, unhappily, the
small-pox then raged. But it was vainly hoped, by precautions, to avert
the risk of infection.
“What you write,” thus Lord Godolphin addressed the anxious mother, “is
extremely just and reasonable; and though the small-pox has been in this
town, yet he, going into no house but mine, will, I hope, be more
defended from it by air or riding, without any violent exercise, than he
could probably be anywhere else.”
In a few days afterwards, more particular accounts reached the Duchess,
and her maternal pride must have been highly gratified by the encomiums
which so consummate a judge of character as Lord Godolphin passed upon
her son.
“Your pretty son,” as the lord treasurer terms him, “whom I have just
now parted from; and I assure you, without flattery or partiality, that
he is not only the best natured and most agreeable, but the most
free-thinking and reasonable creature that one can imagine for his age.
He had twenty pretty questions and requests, but I will not trouble you
with the particulars till I have the honour to see you.”
The foregoing opinion was the last expressed by this well-judging and
warm friend, concerning him upon whom the fondest hopes were placed. How
gratifying, yet how mournful! Yet the noble youth was prepared for that
better sphere to which he was thus early called, to spare him, in mercy,
from the snares and troubles of the world, in which he might otherwise
have acted a conspicuous, but probably not a happy part.
The letter was followed by alarming intelligence. The small-pox, in its
most malignant form, had attacked the darling of these distinguished
parents. The Duchess hastened to Cambridge, and found her son in great
danger. She sent to London for additional medical assistance, and the
Queen, feeling as a mother bereaved, and acting with her usual
consideration, despatched two of her own physicians in one of the royal
carriages. The medicines were also sent by express from London. But the
cares, the fears, the hopes, the efforts of all those who were
interested in the young man, were unavailing. The fatal disorder ran
rapidly its devastating course. Dr. Haines and Dr. Coladon, the court
physicians, hastened in vain to aid the expiring youth. The grief of the
highest, and the sympathy of the lowest, individuals in her Majesty’s
realms, availed not: for his hour was come. How far we are, in such
instances, to look to secondary causes, it is difficult to say; but it
is easy to suppose that the imperfect knowledge of disease in those
unscientific days, the unnatural and irritating mode of treating it
which prevailed, even within the memory of man, may have aided that
consciousness of the importance of his recovery to his parents, and the
painful observance of their grief, in increasing the danger of the
amiable and lamented youth.
The Queen took his illness to heart, as if it had been the scene of her
own sad deprivation acted over again.
“I writ two words to my dear Mrs. Freeman,” she says, addressing the
Duchess, “and could not help telling her again that I am truly afflicted
for the melancholy account that is come this morning of poor Lord
Blandford. I pray God he may do well, and support you. And give me leave
once more to beg you, for Christ Jesus’ sake, to have a care of your
dear precious self; and believe me, with all the passion imaginable,
your poor, unfortunate, faithful Morley.”
Lord Godolphin, in a calmer, but equally kind, equally friendly strain,
thus proffers the valuable consolations of a sympathetic heart. “The
best use of one’s best friends is, to assist and support one another
under the most grievous afflictions. This is the greatest trial of your
submission and resignation to the Divine Providence that God Almighty
could possibly send you, and consequently the greatest opportunity of
pleasing Him, by that respect and submission which is always due to his
severest trials; and, at the same time, the greatest occasion of letting
the whole world see that God Almighty has blessed you with a Christian
patience and fortitude, as eminent as the reason and understanding by
which you are justly distinguished from the rest of your sex.”
The concern of a friend is expressed in the foregoing fragment; the
anguish of a father in those passages which follow.
The character of Marlborough, the great, the affectionate, the good, the
pious, shines forth in these extracts.
“I am so troubled at the sad condition this poor child seems to be in,
that I know not what I do. I pray God to give you some comfort in this
great affliction. If you think anything under heaven can be done, pray
let me know it, or if you think my coming can be of the least use, let
me know it. I beg I may hear as soon as possible, for I have no thought
but what is at Cambridge.
“I writ to you this morning,” he adds, “and was in hopes I should have
heard again before this time, for I hope the doctors were with you early
this morning. If we must be so unhappy as to lose this poor child, I
pray God to enable us both to behave ourselves with that resignation
which we ought to do. If this uneasiness which I now lie under should
last long, I think I could not live. For God’s sake, if there be any
hope of recovery, let me know it.”[478]
These mournful anticipations were followed by the too probable result.
Within a few hours after the unhappy father had written this letter, he
set off for Cambridge, where he arrived only in time to see his son
expire, on the morning of Saturday, the twentieth of February,
1704.[479]
The condolence of friends and relations, and the sympathy even of foes,
followed this event. To the chosen place of Lord Blandford’s interment,
in King’s College Chapel, whose sacred walls had witnessed his early and
late piety, beneath whose roof he had been a constant attendant at
morning and evening prayers,—the disconsolate parents followed the
earthly remains of their lost treasure. An inscription, in elegant
Latin, on a monument erected to his memory, perpetuates the recollection
of his early promise. Not only of the highest rank by descent, but of
the most exalted virtues, the external qualities of one so favoured by
fortune, and endowed by nature, corresponded, as the inscription states,
with his mental attributes. He possessed, it is said, the stately and
manly form, and the surpassing symmetry, which constitute the perfection
of manly beauty.[480] In the quickness of his faculties alone did he
resemble his mother. His admirable humility, and sweetness of manners,
in the midst of all that rank and affluence could effect to spoil him,
were the bright reflection of his glorious father. In purity of conduct,
though introduced early to a court life, between the period of his
leaving Eton and entering on an academic life at Cambridge, he was more
happy than that parent; for men are to be judged by circumstances. A
sense of religious duty (the only effectual safeguard) led to a “strict
observance of decorum, that rather,” says an historian, “seemed innate,
than acquired.”[481] He retained of the court nothing but its
politeness, and desired, in the bright prospects which apparently
awaited him, nothing but true honour and distinction, not from his
position alone, but from his own strenuous exertions.
His parents were deeply, but differently affected by their calamity. The
high spirit of the Duchess was subdued, and the best dispositions of her
heart were touched, by this bereavement: but ambition soon regained its
ascendency over her soul, and the chastening hand was forgotten in the
busy interests of the day, the hour. Marlborough, on the contrary,
though quickly summoned to a fresh campaign, carried about with him the
yearning tenderness, the mournful, though no longer poignant regrets,
which a sensitive mind retains for a beloved and lost object. After the
first bitter pangs had been assuaged, he set off for the seat of war;
but in the heart of enterprize, amid the busiest scenes in which he was
engaged, the father recalled all that he had hoped and planned for his
lost son. In a letter to Lord Godolphin, written from Cologne, he says:
“I have this day seen a very great procession; and the thoughts how
pleased poor Lord Churchill would have been with such a sight, have
added very much to my uneasiness. Since it has pleased God to take him,
I do wish from my soul I could think less of him.”[482]
Alas! how many parents may utter the same natural but fruitless wish!
The Duchess, unfortunately for those who feel an interest in probing the
long since tranquillized emotions of her turbulent spirit, imposed upon
the Duke a condition, with which, in the true spirit of honour, he
complied, (though, as he states himself, with regret,) of burning the
letters which she wrote to him. She seems, however, to have written in a
kind and consolatory manner, and we may infer from the lively gratitude
of her husband, that such was not always her custom. What a picture of
real attachment is presented in the following passage of the Duke’s
answer!
“If you had not positively desired that I would always burn your
letters, I should have been very glad to have kept your dear letter of
the 9th, it was so very kind, and particularly so upon the subject of
our living quietly together, till which happy time comes, I am sure I
cannot be contented; and then I do flatter myself I should live with as
much satisfaction as I am capable of. I wish I could recal twenty years
past, I do assure you, for no other reason but that I might in
probability have longer time, and be the better able to convince you how
truly sensible I am at this time of your kindness, which is the only
real comfort of my life; and whilst you are kind, besides the many
blessings it brings me, I cannot but hope we shall yet have a son, which
are my daily prayers.”[483]
His earnest solicitude on the subject of her health seems to have been
fully shared by the Duchess with respect to him. Marlborough, like many
men whose minds are tasked to the utmost of their bodily strength to
bear, suffered severely from the headache. How that over-wrought frame
and intellect at last broke down, it is melancholy to reflect.
“I have yours of the eighteenth, by which I find you were uneasy at my
having the headache. It was your earnest desire obliges me to let you
know when I have those little inconveniences of the headache, which are
but too natural to me; but if you will promise to look upon my
sicknesses as you used to do, by knowing I am sick one day and well
another, I must not be punctual in acquainting you when I am uneasy. I
think you are very happy in having dear Lady Mary with you; I should
esteem myself so, if she could be sometimes for an hour with me; for the
greatest ease I now have is sometimes sitting for an hour in my chair
alone, and thinking of the happiness I may yet have, of living quietly
with you, which is the greatest I propose to myself in the world.”
At the very time of his investing the fortress of Huy, after being
distracted by opposing councils, compelled to adopt plans which he
disapproved, and harassed by fatigues, being often fourteen hours of the
day on horseback, and marching sometimes five days together,[484]—it was
in the midst of these trials of strength and patience that his heart
turned towards home, and he found leisure, in the midst of a camp, to
write those beautiful letters, unequalled for simplicity, and in the
true expression of a tender and noble nature.
Lord Godolphin had written to his friend the painful intelligence that
he thought the Duchess to be much out of health. This information roused
all the tenderness and apprehensions of the hero’s sensitive mind.
“For God’s sake,” he writes, “let me know exactly how you are; and if
you think my being with you can do you any good, you shall quickly see
you are much dearer to me than fame, or whatever the world can say; for
should you do otherwise than well, I were the unhappiest man living.”
Notwithstanding the offer of this noble sacrifice—noble in one who was
not merely carried on by impulse, but who had laid plans of the greatest
extent for the aggrandizement of his country—the Duchess, who appears to
have been a domestic tyrant, could never be wholly satisfied without
incessant expressions of regard and devotion. She could not forbear,
even at this distance, adding to his many troubles by her exacting
spirit. She scrutinized even the language of affection, with the
fastidiousness of a spoiled child, loath to be contented.
From the following and other passages, we are led to conclude that the
hopes of having a child to supply the loss of him from whom he had been
severed, were, at one time, revived in the Duke’s mind. On a former
occasion he wrote to his wife thus:—
“What troubles me in all this time is your telling me that you do not
look well. Pray let me have, in one of your letters, an account how you
do. If it should prove such a sickness as that I might pity you, yet not
be sorry for it, it might make me yet have more ambition. But if your
sickness be really want of health, it would render me the unhappiest man
living.”
These hopes were further raised, only, unfortunately, to be frustrated.
In all other respects the Duchess of Marlborough, pre-eminently blessed,
was destined to that one cankering disappointment—that the children of
the son-in-law whom she least loved, became the heirs of those honours
so dearly purchased by Marlborough.
“I have just now,” says the Duke, in one of his letters, “received yours
of the sixth. What you say to me of yourself gave me so much joy, that
if any company had been by when I read the letter, they must have
observed a great alteration in me.”[485]
Yet, with his usual delicacy and consideration, he writes in a
consolatory strain, when it appeared to the Duchess that he thought more
of his disappointed hopes, than of the ill health which caused them. He
urged upon her the tranquillizing of her busy mind, by quiet, and
cessation from business, and by looking to higher sources of comfort
than the adulation of society, or the favours of a monarch. The
chastening hand was not extended to Marlborough in vain, when he could
think and write in terms such as these. After entreating his wife to
think as little as possible of worldly business, and to be very regular
in her diet, which he trusts, by the aid of a good constitution, may set
her right in time, he addresses her in the following beautiful strain:—
“Op-heeren, Aug. 2.
“I have received yours of the twenty-third, which has given me, as you
may easily believe, a good deal of trouble. I beg you will be so kind
and just to me, as to believe the truth of my heart, that my greatest
concern is for that of your own dear health. It was a great pleasure to
me, when I thought we should be blessed with more children; but as all
my happiness centres in living quietly with you, I do conjure you, by
all the kindness which I have for you, which is as much as man ever had
for woman, that you will take the best advice you can for your health,
and then follow exactly what shall be prescribed for you; and I do hope
that you will be so good as to let me have an exact account of it, and
what the physicians’ opinions are. If I were with you, I would endeavour
to persuade you to think as little as possible of worldly business, and
to be very regular in your diet, which I should hope would set you right
in a very little time, for you have naturally a very good constitution.
You and I have great reason to bless God for all we have, so that we
must not repine at his taking our poor child from us, but bless and
praise him for what his goodness leaves us; and I do beseech him, with
all my heart and soul, that he would comfort and strengthen both you and
me, not only to bear this, but any correction that he should think fit
to lay on us. The use, I think, we should make of his correction is,
that our chiefest time should be spent in reconciling ourselves to him,
and having in our minds always that we may not have long to live in this
world. I do not mean by this that we should live retired from the world,
for I am persuaded that by living in the world, one may do much more
good than by being out of it; but, at the same time, to live so as that
one should cheerfully die when it shall be his pleasure to call for us.
I am very sensible of my own frailties; but if I can ever be so happy as
to live with you always, and that you comfort me and assist me in these
my thoughts, I am then persuaded I should be as happy and contented as
it is possible to be in this world; for I know we should both agree,
next to our duty to God, to do what we ought for the Queen’s service.”
Happy would it have been for the Duchess, had these higher principles of
conduct guided her future path through life. But while the afflictions
which bore down the spirit of her husband sank into a good soil, in the
mind of this ambitious and restless woman, schemes for the
aggrandizement of her family soon succeeded to the gloom of her son’s
deathbed, and effaced all the solemn lessons which she had there
learned.