If Sarah Churchill had not come to them, if she had not given them a helping hand, where would they all be now? No one had had a greater effect upon her life than Sarah—or perhaps than she on Sarah’s.
She saw her coming into the shabby house—resplendent in her power and beauty.
“The beginning …” she whispered.
And those about the bed looked at each other significantly.
Abigail had left them forever.
Sarah lived on for another ten years. Eighty and as vigorous as ever in mind if not in body, she continued to harry those about her.
Lady Dye had died when she was only twenty-five after only four years of marriage; next to the death of Marlborough that was the greatest blow of Sarah’s life.
It occurred to her then that she was living too long; that too many of those she loved were going on before her.
She thought little of the past; she did however write her memoirs which was an account of how she had first governed the Queen and then been ousted from her favour by Abigail Hill.
Momentarily she recalled all the venom she had felt for that whey-faced creature whom she had taken from a broom.
If I had never taken pity on her, if I had never found a place for her in the Queen’s bedchamber … everything might have been so different. She was the true enemy. She with her quiet ways, her respectful curtsies and her “Yes, Your Grace!”
“No, Your Grace!” Who would have thought that one so plain, so insignificant … such a nothing … such an insect … could have made so much mischief in the life of people such as herself and the great Duke of Marlborough!
That gave her pause for thought … for a while. But she was never one to brood on the past.
Occasionally she took out John’s letters to her and read them through and wept over them.
“I should destroy them,” she said. “They can give me nothing but pain now.”
But she could not destroy them. She took out the coil of golden hair which he had kept and which she had discovered in his cabinet and she wept into it.
Then resolutely she put away these souvenirs of the past which so bitterly recalled his love for her; and went once more into battle.
But she was old; and even she could not live for ever.
She was in her bed and the doctors were there, whispering … waiting for her to die.
“She must be blistered or she will die,” they murmured.
But she lifted herself from her pillows and shouted: “I won’t be blistered and I won’t die.”
Nor did she … just then.
But even she could not stave off death for ever; nor did she wish to.
There was nothing in her life now to make her cling to it even if she was the richest woman in England.
Deliberately she made plans for her burial. She would be buried in Blenheim chapel where she had had John’s body brought from Westminster Abbey.
“It is meet and fitting that we should lie together,” she said.
“Old Marlborough is dying.” The news spread through the Court. No one cared. She was a tiresome old woman who was amusing because she was continually making trouble, nothing more.
And on an October day in the year 1744, twenty-two years after the death of the Duke, Sarah died.
She was buried as she had wished; and although the members of her family attended her funeral, there was no one to mourn her.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough with his original correspondence. 3 vols. William Coxe
An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough Sarah Jennings Churchill Marlborough
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough Kathleen Campbell
Duchess Sarah: The Social History of the Times of Sarah Jennings Mrs. Arthur Colville
John and Sarah: Duke and Duchess of Marlborough Stuart J. Reid with introduction by the Duke of Marlborough
Sarah Churchill Frank Chancellor
Marlborough’s Duchess Louis Kronenberger
Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford: A Study of Politics and Letters in the Reign of Queen Anne E. S. Roscoe
Lives of the Queens of England Agnes Strickland
Anne of England M. R. Hopkinson
That Enchantress Doris Leslie
Notes on British History William Edwards
Journal to Stella Jonathan Swift, edited by Harold Williams
Three Eighteenth Century Figures Bonamy Dobrée
Letters of Two Queens Lt.-Col. The Hon. Benjamin Bathurst
British History John Wade
Dictionary of National Biography Edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee
The National and Domestic History of England William Hickman Smith Aubrey
Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time Gilbert Burnet
England Under the Stuarts G. M. Trevelyan
History of England G. M. Trevelyan
English Social History G. M. Trevelyan
England Under Queen Anne G. M. Trevelyan
Marlborough, His Life and Times Winston S. Churchill