Exit Lady Masham (12 page)

Of course, I was always aware that the deference and kindness that even the greatest people at court showed me was owing to my now conceded position as favorite. But just as a tradesman who has been knighted begins to conceive that his lineage must be more ancient than he has supposed, and the heir to a fortune to imagine in time that it has been garnered by his own exertions, so did I find that I had to battle—and not always successfully—with the idea that the Queen had selected me as a companion, not simply because I was
there,
but because I was possessed of a rare intelligence and an unusual gift for human sympathy. And I found also that it was a subtle flattery to my vanity to be simply "Mrs. Masham" among the great names at court, possessed of no estate or wealth or dignity, yet known to all, deferred to by all, so that I stood out more in my bareness and simplicity than had I been as splendidly bejeweled and as gloriously titled as Cousin Sarah. Oh, yes, I
was
like that barefooted Capuchin friar, Father Joseph, whom Harley had cited to me, in the glittering court of Louis XIII! No humble heart beat beneath those plain robes!

My high-water mark in my husband's esteem came when I persuaded Harley to take Masham into an exclusive club called The Society, made up of statesmen, nobles and writers with a taste for literary and political discussion. To ensure conversational ease, the members checked their titles, so to speak, in the cloakroom, and addressed each other simply as "Brother." I had had to confess to Harley that my husband's only qualification was his passionate desire to join.

"And quite enough, too, my dear," he had replied with a benign wave of his hand. "He will do very well. Any group of men will welcome a handsome young buck who can laugh at the wit of his betters and offer a tale of bawdry. We're easier than you women, you know."

He was right. Masham, by all reports, was a success in The Society, even with the great Jonathan Swift, who had recently come to court under Harley's auspices. I was learning not to underestimate my husband's capabilities.

Our greatest social triumph was a dinner of twelve that included not only Harley and St. John, but the Sunderlands and the Duchess of Somerset. Unhappily, I recall it chiefly because it was there that I noted the first signs of discord between the first two mentioned. St. John had spoken to me before of Harley's increasing bibulousness, but that night was the beginning of my own apprehensions about it.

The beautiful, red-haired Duchess was at her loveliest and most beguiling. Unlike her absent and arrogant husband, who would not have condescended to sit at so plebeian a table (even for a favorite!), she professed a horror of "titled bores" and a preference for the company of those who perceived the "folly of life" and had the wit not to be heavy about it. She leaned forward now, her elbows informally on the table, her alabaster arms charmingly exposed, and cast those shining green eyes from one to the other of our privileged guests.

"This is what I really adore!" she exclaimed. "Isn't it
fun?
I feel like the 'good' Duke in
As You Like It.
Didn't he prefer a picnic to 'painted pomp'? And what was it he said about the woods? You, my dear hostess, who know everything, can tell us that. What did he say the woods were free from?"

It was like the Duchess to give someone else the chance to shine. I flushed with pleasure as I quoted: "'More free from peril than the envious court.'"

"Precisely! Oh, good for you! Isn't it so, Mr. Harley? We are all honest at the Mashams'. Honest, that is, so long as honesty may entertain."

Harley, whose usually pasty cheeks were now flushed, raised his glass to me. "It is most true that Mrs. Masham abhors flattery. We must salt our tongues before we enter here."

St. John's jeering laugh greeted this. "Do you remember, Abigail, what Decius Brutus said of Caesar? This Shakespeare game can be a two-edged sword."

"What is the verse, Mr. St. John?" the Duchess demanded. "Tell me the verse."

"'But when I tell him he hates flatterers,
He says he does; being then most flattered.'"

The Duchess clapped her hands. "Ah, that wins! But, seriously, don't you all agree we're more relaxed here than anywhere else in court? I can't understand people who must always be playing their born roles. My husband, for example: he is always being a duke. Oh, but he is! Don't shake your head politely. I should know. He looks in his mirror and sees a duke. And Sarah Marlborough is always being a duchess. And even our revered sovereign spends most of her hours being a queen. Though perhaps it's not fair to cite her. Perhaps in her case one really can't help it. But I couldn't
live
if I had to be a Somerset all day."

"Not everyone, Duchess, has such beauty and wit to fall back upon. Some of us must make do with our labels."

I thought this a bit heavy of Harley, but the Duchess seemed to take it in good part.

"But you, Mr. Harley, would be perfectly happy with your books if you were no one at all!" she continued spiritedly. "No, I cannot conceive the satisfaction that some people get out of mere birth. To cite my poor husband again—don't frown, anybody; he should have come if he wanted to control my tongue—I don't believe a single hour goes by that he does not think: 'I'm a Seymour. I'm a Seymour. My so-many-times-great-aunt married Henry VIII!'" We all laughed. "And do you know that he smiles if you mention a family he doesn't know? He finds it actually comical to exist in a sphere outside the Seymours!"

"I wonder if our Duchess isn't being the superior consort," Harley observed, with a wink down the table. "Can a lady born a Percy be in awe of any other English name?"

"But Henry VIII, my dear Harley—Henry VIII!" The Duchess threw up her hands. "Imagine owing one's entire genealogical distinction to the fact that one's aunt had been sold to that monster! Talk about the sacrifice of the Cretan maidens to the Minotaur!"

"I seem to recall an even prouder boast of the Seymours," the irrepressible Harley continued. "Does not the Duke descend from Catharine Grey, sister of the unfortunate Lady Jane? Surely they were granddaughters of Mary Tudor, your Minotaur's sister?"

"As if my dear spouse would ever let me forget
that
!" the Duchess exclaimed. "He sees not only a duke in that mirror. He sees a king! Oops!" She raised a finger in mock horror to her lips. "Have I been guilty of treason? Will I share the fate of Great-great Aunt Jane?"

"But what is treasonable about being in line to the throne?" Harley demanded. "Parliament has fixed the succession on the House of Hanover, but if that noble house should fail, surely the Duke is next?"

"That is what the Queen told me!" I exclaimed in sudden recollection. "She said that so long as Parliament had excluded so many foreign princes, why not go one step further and bring the succession back to England?"

"An excellent suggestion!" cried Harley. "Why go to Germany for our masters when we have good English dukes at home?" He bowed to the Duchess and again raised his glass to her. "And a duke with so dazzling a consort!"

I think it was the glare in St. John's eyes that made me realize that we were getting out of line. But the Duchess was perfect. She professed to make light of it all.

"Oh, I think we can safely leave the business of being royal to our Teutonic friends. They take it all with such splendid seriousness! The only kingdom I want is one of hearts."

"And that you already have!" Harley assured her.

After our party broke up, and while Masham was below, escorting the Duchess to her chambers, Harley and St. John sat on with me for a last glass of wine. The former decidedly did not need it, but he drank it nonetheless, and St. John made no effort to conceal his impatience.

"You're either going to have to drink less or choose your drinking companions with more care, my friend!"

"Oh, Henry, you're always fussing at me these days."

"Do you call it fussing to warn a man about antagonizing the Elector of Hanover?"

"But you hate him yourself. You told me so!"

"Did I tell the Duchess of Somerset?"

"Surely
she'd
like him out of the way. Did you believe that bit about her not caring for the crown?"

"Not for a minute. But you're dealing with one of the cleverest women in England and a violent Whig, to boot. Every word you uttered tonight will be known to the war party tomorrow and will be used to topple you. Harley is against the Act of Settlement! Harley challenges the power of Parliament to regulate the succession! You prate about wanting to bring peace to Europe, but you'll find there's mighty little you can do in the Tower for the cause of peace!"

"You exaggerate so, Henry. Abbie here will make everything right with the Queen, won't you, Abbie?"

"Abbie's too busy these days being a great hostess," St. John observed sourly.

"Oh, why don't you both go to bed?" I was tired of the argument and nervous about what had been said at table. I sent for Harley's servant, who assisted his wobbly master to the door, but St. John lingered a moment for a last word.

"We
will
need you with the Queen, Abbie," he said gravely. "You can see what's happening to Harley."

"Why does he drink more when he's getting ahead?" I asked fretfully. "One would think it would be just the reverse."

"Because he thinks he sees his goal in sight. Being First Minister! But to him the end of the road is simply ennui. His whole life has been scheming and maneuvering. He's a climber who climbs for the sake of climbing. The peak is a kind of death."

"How extraordinary! But leave me out of it. The Queen doesn't want to talk politics with me."

"We can't afford to leave you out of it, Abbie."

"I'm sorry, Henry. You'll have to find someone else."

"Don't you care about the peace? Don't you care about men getting killed for nothing?"

I looked at him, half in curiosity. I had always assumed that this brilliant disciple of Harley's was out for himself and for himself alone. But no doubt it was possible for a statesman to care for himself as well as for humanity. St. John may have looked forward to a benign Europe with himself as the prince of peace.

"I care about staying in the slot where I belong," I insisted "I care about doing the job God gave me to do."

"And how can you be sure what that is?" He paused, for Masham had reappeared in the doorway. "Well, do this for me, will you? Listen to Jonathan Swift. You like him, don't you?"

"Everyone likes him. Except the Queen."

"Exactly. He can't talk to her. But he can talk to you."

"He can
talk
to me, certainly."

"That's all I ask."

He turned to go as Masham called out jovially: "If I car help Master Swift, inform me! She's a stubborn baggage, but I know how to move her!"

J
onathan Swift had appeared at court early in 1710, as a protégé of Harley, and had begun a career for which I can find no parallel in any history book. He was Irish-born, a bachelor of middle years, a lazy man, but of prodigious energy and a one-time secretary of the late Sir William Temple, who had long represented our government in Holland. Following Sir William's death he had returned to Dublin and had now been sent over by the Church of Ireland to petition the crown for the grant of certain tithes. I do not even know whether or not he was ultimately successful in his embassy, for this mission seemed to be engulfed in the larger one of his becoming, for three years, the close advisor and spokesman to the press of the Tory leaders.

How did he manage it? Even now it is difficult to say. He had neither money nor birth, nor any great connections, at least until he had conquered the total admiration of two men as different as Harley and St. John. He was neither soft of speech nor gently persuasive; indeed, he could be harsh and dogmatic, and he was plainly outspoken in an age of the crudest flattery. He was always voicing opinions that were near heresy, in both ecclesiastical and political matters, and although women exercised great influence over our statesmen, he was never credited with—or accused of—a love affair at court. No, so far as I could make it out, Swift conquered the Tories by his intellect alone, by the massive reach of his imagination and by the inexorable logic with which he deduced the conclusions from the phenomena that this imagination encompassed. Men agreed with Swift because they had to agree with him, or seem fools, not only to others but to themselves. Only the Queen held out. She had discovered, unfortunately, that he was the author of
A Tale of a Tub
and could never forgive his sarcasms at the expense of the church.

When, years later, he published his famous
Gulliver's Travels,
which all the world has read, I thought back on him as having come to Windsor somehow as his hero came to Lilliput, except that he towered over us, not by the giant size of his body, but of his brain. He viewed us all with an easy and sometimes amiable familiarity, impressed by nobody and by nothing. I was enormously flattered that, from the very beginning of our acquaintance, made at Harley's evening gatherings, he seemed to find my intelligence large enough to embrace his judgments.

Although his physique was not commanding—he was rather short than tall—Swift's countenance inspired respect. His eyes were sky blue, with a flash of sapphire, and he had a disconcerting way of fixing them on you in a prolonged stare, almost a glare. He had thick dark eyebrows, a large, finely chiseled aquiline nose and a firm, oval chin with a dimple. Although, as I have said, he was not given to gallantry at court (I did not know at the time of his lifelong enigmatic relationship with a certain lady in Dublin), his attentions to a woman were highly flattering, for he seemed just the type of man that would be apt to despise the intellect of our sex.

Swift had made a point of becoming friendly both with Masham and myself. I sometimes observed him and my husband laughing heartily together in a corner or window embrasure, away from the rest of the company, and I suspected that they had a common taste for ribaldry. But Swift, unlike Masham, never showed any disposition to try such stories on me. He was inclined, on the contrary, to be almost too serious. He would come to our apartments of an evening, and if we were playing cards, he would stalk about the chamber until a table had broken up and was ready to talk. He would never pick up a hand himself.