A Want of Kindness

by Joanne Limburg

  ‘That I must be always so watchful, Jamie, and everyone else so watchful about me. Dammit, it is as if I am seeing the world through your eyes, and I must say, it is a perfect Hell.’

  The Duke and Duchess are elsewhere, praying after their own unfortunate fashion. Nobody told them about Anne’s disgraceful first Communion, and nobody will tell them that, on this occasion, she acquits herself beautifully, and this even though one sip and one wafer are only enough to give her hunger a keener edge. She spends the rest of the day in perfect misery.

  She breaks the fast at sunset, in the Presence Chamber at Whitehall, sitting under the royal canopy with the King, the Duke and their wives – it only wants Mary to remind their audience precisely who is supposed to be succeeding whom – with a full complement of carvers, sewers and cupbearers hovering behind them, and a row of decorative jellies and fruit cones on the table in front of her, to give her at least a little protection from the Court and the people, and their hungry, calculating stares.

  It is at just this moment, in just this place, as old Master Erskine leans forward to fill her cup, and her eyes come to rest on the green crown of a pineapple, that a thought creeps out of some shadowy privy chamber in her heart, where it has been living and growing, all unseen, for some indeterminate time, and whispers itself to her.

  ‘If you are ever Queen,’ it says, ‘you will not care to dine in public.’

  She knocks the full cup back in one gulp, an act which the King notices, and applauds.

  ‘This is what I so commend in your daughter, James,’ he says, ‘no gingerliness about her, no finicality – it is always a pleasure to watch her at my table – look at all those broken meats there, on her plate – I swear she has fallen to it as if she thought never to see food again!’

  The Queen and the Duchess laugh. The Duke drives a forkful of veal into his mouth and says nothing. The King has come out of the fast ready to drink and laugh at his family and forget his current troubles for a spell, but the Duke has emerged from his day sullen and abstracted. He breaks his silence only to talk to the King, and then only to complain about his intolerable situation, the impudence of Parliament, the infernal busyness of Shaftesbury and his party. When he has done with his furious veal-chewing, he returns, just as furiously, to the same miserable subject.

  ‘Enough, Jamie!’ says the King. ‘This – all this –’ he waves his knife through the air, as if he were reaping a field of parliamentarians – ‘mess will be cleared up and out of our way before too long, and then, Jamie, and then –’ and now he points to Anne – ‘we can set about finding a husband for your promising daughter.’

  What a Good English Princess Knows about the Business of Government

  Almost nothing.

  Only that any English King who wishes to retain his head had best rule with the consent and goodwill of his people – that is to say, with the consent and goodwill of Parliament. He might hold off ruin without its assistance, if he applies to the King of France (this being one of those things a princess knows while also knowing that she should not), but this will not serve indefinitely. He might choose to prorogue or dissolve Parliament if it vexes him too much, but even then, he cannot hope to stop up the mouths of its individual members, especially not the mouths of such as Shaftesbury, who takes his infernal busyness from the Privy Council to the Court then to Parliament and back again, and hates a Catholic like he hates the Devil, and would suffer anything before he sees one take the Crown.

  Anne and Isabella

  ‘Oh dear ladies, if you do not stop your crying, I think I must have no recourse but to find whichever quack it was said the Greenwich air was physic for melancholy and have him whipped!’

  The King has his usual pack of gentlemen with him, and they laugh heartily at this; so do Sarah Churchill and Barbara Berkeley (nee Villiers), but then they were neither of them crying in the first place. Lady Harriet, ever the good courtier, says ‘Huh!’, and obliges the King with a glimpse of her still-lovely throat. But Anne, who is standing next to her governess, and little Isabella, who squirms in her arms, go on weeping without the slightest interruption.

  Anne cannot see how she is supposed to hinder herself from shedding tears – no, not even at the King’s command – on such an evil day as this; when only moments earlier, she has watched the Duke hand the Duchess into a tender, which is now conveying them to the King’s best yacht, which vessel will take them first to visit the Princess of Orange and then on to Flanders, where they are to make an indefinite stay. Until three days ago, Anne was supposed to be travelling with them, but at the last minute, the King, as he so often does, has exercised his infinite prerogative and changed his mind: the princesses must be kept safely in the bosom of the English Court and the English Church.

  The King sees at once that his wit has failed, and tries reason.

  ‘Anne, child, you are fourteen – you are so nearly a woman, and surely your understanding is not so mean that you cannot perceive the wisdom of this? How am I to bring my more . . . tendentious subjects round when every time they get a sniff of your father they bark and snarl like hounds at a covert?’

  Reason also fails. The King sticks his bottom lip forward and sighs into his moustache. Then he gives orders for the Ladies Anne and Isabella to be taken back to London in the barge. Immediately, lest they flood his Park and drown his observatory.

  Anne is settled into the seat nearest the stern, but firmly facing the prow, so there is no possibility of any last wistful glance backwards, that could goad her into further tears; to make quite sure, Mrs Berkeley sits on her left side, and Mrs Churchill on her right, and the two of them begin talking as soon as the barge has pulled away.

  ‘What a poppet the Lady Isabella is become,’ says Mrs Berkeley, cooing at the pretty dark child, who has fallen asleep on Lady Harriet’s lap, the tears still drying on her cheeks. ‘She has such a look of the Princess of Orange about her, I think, when she was this age – Lady Harriet, do you not remember?’

  ‘Indeed I do: Her Highness was from the first a most ravishing child.’

  ‘I did not know their Highnesses then,’ says Mrs Churchill, ‘but I would agree that Lady Isabella might well grow to be a beauty, and after the Princess’s style.’

  ‘Oh, look how she smiles in her sleep!’ cries Mrs Berkeley. ‘I do think, Your Highness, that she will be quite happy again once we reach London – and you must take some comfort from that, yes?’

  ‘Certainly,’ says Anne, dabbing at her eyes with her last dry handkerchief, ‘it is always a delight to me to see her happy and smiling, and I shall be glad of her dear company, but if the King only knew what trouble this was to both of us—’

  Lady Harriet interrupts her. ‘Your Highness, he can hardly fail to, but he must weigh your distress against many other concerns – and so must you.’

  Nobody has anything to say to this, and for a few long moments there is nothing to be heard but the slapping of the oars on the water and Isabella’s subdued, babyish snuffling. Then, just as it seems that Anne is about to succumb to tears again, a waterman on a nearby wherry misses a stroke, falls backwards, and lets forth a burst of profanity so ripe and so colourful that there is nothing to do but laugh instead.

  ‘The invention of the man!’ cries Mrs Berkeley. ‘I do not think Rochester himself could have afforded better.’

  ‘For all we know, he did,’ says Mrs Churchill. ‘Perhaps his debts are such that he must pen wit by the line, and sell it to wherrymen to pay his physician.’

  The other ladies scream with laughter again, so Mrs Churchill continues on her tale of the pox-ridden Earl who must bring his verse to market, while Mrs Berkeley assists her, all the way to Whitehall.

  The English Tongue, Already so Rich in Insults, Acquires Two More

  Whig{from ‘Whiggamore’, being an intemperate, zealous Presbyterian Scottish rebel}: one who is opposed to the succession of t
he Duke of York.

  Tory {from ‘Tory’, being a lawless Papist bandit, who runs amok in the Irish bogs}: one who is opposed to the Whigs.

  Anne in her Closet, Windsor, July, 1679

  O Righteous Lord,

  who hateth iniquity, I thy sinful creature cast myself at thy feet, acknowledging that I most justly deserve to be utterly abhorred and forsaken by thee; for I have drunk iniquity like water, gone on in a continual course of sin and rebellion against thee, daily committing those things thou forbiddest, and leaving undone those things thou commandest: my heart, which should be an habitation for thy Spirit, is become a cage of unclean birds, of foul and disordered affections: and out of this abundance of the heart my mouth speaketh, my hands act: so that in thought, word and deed I continually transgress against . . . o how this print hurts my eyes . . .

  . . . I have first of all to beg your forgiveness for my neglect of what is due to you, that is to say my prayers and devotions – that this closet in my lodgings is so wretchedly hot in daylight is I know no proper excuse but you must know that although I go not into my closet I keep you always in my heart and if I dance or play cards or stroll or ride or hunt ever so much . . . yes, I have done all these things and some to excess, my losses at cards and dice this sennight I confess have been great, but I have doubled my gifts to the poor and hope this may serve as some recompense . . . and I must confess also that when I do contrive to be alone in my closet I have used the time to write letters, not to pray or meditate on my sins or to give thanks

  —speaking of which, I must thank you for providing me with a friend with such superior understanding as Mrs Churchill has: she says that the acquittal of the Queen’s physician of treason and then the way Mr Oates conducted himself during this latest trial is such as to make any person of sense wonder if they have not given far too much credence to a dishonest and venal man and taken for Gospel what was never more than hearsay and gossip – so she says – although I cannot think but that what he said of the Papists and their intentions was true in general. What I sincerely hope and pray for is that if Mrs Churchill is correct then maybe the tide of opinion and rumour against my father might turn again and we might once more be reunited.

  And then I might see my dear Mrs Cornwallis again, who languishes with him in Flanders. As it is, the distance and sea between us does I confess break my heart almost daily – but you who know everything know this. You know what trials you have sent to me and I beg too that you might send the grace and patience to bear them – I hope that they might be a sign of your love as well as a correction to me – and I thank you for sending me such a loyal and beautiful and generous friend as Mrs Cornwallis is – I confess I sometimes do wonder if perhaps I trespass in some way in thinking on her so much, but truly her beauty is a virtue and one that you have created and in honouring it I could say I honour one of the most perfect parts of your creation . . .?

  While I am thus examining my heart and confessing my sins, I must also confess that I have spoken pertly to Lady Harriet often these past weeks, but since my uncle Hyde is made Treasury Commissioner they are both of them so puffed up, worse even than they were before – did any maid ever have such insufferable relations? . . . but I know I should bear them with patience and with gratitude for what they do for me . . .

  One occasion of my speaking thus to her weighs most heavily on my heart and that is last week when we were in the Queen’s apartments here. I was looking at Mr Gibbons’ carvings of fruit and flowers about the door and my Lord – a certain nobleman did bow to me and ask if I did not think them miraculously lifelike. I agreed that I did and told him what I considered a droll story, about when I was very much smaller and hungry and did one morning lick a pear to see if it tasted as lifelike as it looked and was most sadly disappointed. He said he should like to repeat the experiment and then made a great show of licking it himself. It is true that I laughed very much indeed at this, but surely it was but an innocent jest so I do not see that Lady Harriet had any reason to rebuke me for being ‘forward’ . . .

  . . . but you who know the secrets of my heart know I do not intend any forwardness by my conduct or by my conversation with the men at Court: I cannot help but laugh when they are droll and I can never hinder myself from blushing and if it is becoming or forward in me to do so, then . . . I can only pray again that my father may come home and the present trouble cease so that a husband might be found for me and then, please Lord, all this sinning that I do without designing and cannot help will be at an end . . .

  . . . speaking of which, I find I must say again that if I do not spend more time on meditation and prayer today or on other days it is because of the time it takes writing to my close kin overseas with whom I would otherwise have no discourse. I admit the sorrow of my father’s leaving was hard to bear at first but with time I found the burden is lighter, lighter than I ever supposed it could be – and I thank you for this mercy.

  At The Inn for Exiled Princes

  When it becomes clear that the Duke’s sojourn in Brussels – that inn for exiled princes – will not be a brief one, he sends for his carriages, his hunters and his hounds. A few months later, he requests a visit from his younger daughters, and the King agrees, on the strict condition that neither girl is at any time during her stay to enter any of the various cathedrals, churches, abbeys, convents, monasteries, oratories or shrines which have peppered the country since the Spanish laid claim.

  ‘It is a great pity in a way,’ Anne says to Mrs Berkeley one afternoon, ‘for I am told they are many of them very fine indeed – and now Mrs Apsley has written and asked for an account of them, and I am sorry not to be able to oblige.’

  ‘But she shouldn’t have too much cause to complain,’ says Mrs Berkeley, ‘not when you are writing her such a good, long letter.’ ‘Oh there is enough to tell her – I have told her already about the ball – Prince Vodemont’s dancing especially and of course those chocolate sweetmeats – and the park – the people here, of their manners and so forth – and although I cannot tell about the churches, I have said . . .’ Anne brings the sheet she has been scrawling over up to her nose and reads:

  ‘“. . . all the fine churches and monasteries you know I must not see so can give you no good account of them, but those things which I must needs see as their images which are in every shop and corner of the street the more I see of those fooleries and the more I hear of that religion the more I dislike it, there is a walk a little way of which if it were well kept it would be very pretty, and here’s a place which they call the coure where they go round the streets and there is all the company every night like Hyde Park I can give you account of nothing else because I have seen no more . . .”’

  ‘Well, as you say, if that is all you have seen, then that is all you can tell her of,’ says Mrs Berkeley. ‘But what opinion did you give her of the people, their manners and so forth?’

  ‘Oh, only that they are very civil and won’t be otherwise except one is otherwise to them.’

  ‘A fair assessment.’

  ‘And I have told her that the streets here are clean – that is to say, cleaner than the streets in London, but not so clean as those in The Hague.’

  ‘Yes, they are quite superlatively clean there, are they not?’

  ‘They are, and the way my sister Orange writes about them one would think she had cleaned them all herself.’

  ‘Your sister Orange is such a very conscientious lady. Maybe she has.’

  The picture this brings to Anne’s mind, of Mary sweeping a frantic path through the streets of her adoptive capital, while her husband follows with a critical look and white-gloved hand, to check her work, is enough to put her in fits of laughter; she cannot find the words to tell Mrs Berkeley why this particular jest has been so successful, but it is no matter, because the lady seems pleased enough with its effect.

  It is so sweet to be alone with Mrs Berkeley, and to laugh. An
ne has spent too much of her visit on show, at balls or in the places where the company reminds her of Hyde Park, and if she had not pretended to a headache today she would have had to go out with the Duchess, and Isabella, and Lady Harriet, for stiff talk in French with the stiffer Spanish nobility. She is grateful – for once – to Lady Harriet for asking her no questions and leaving her be – but then, Lady Harriet has altered her manner a little in the last few days where Anne is concerned, so that she is somewhat less like a governess and somewhat more like a courtier. Anne does not need Mrs Berkeley or Churchill to tell her why: the King is gravely ill, and until the Duke has sent back word from his incognito visit, nobody knows who might live, who might be King, and who else might be the King’s daughter.

  The difference in Lady Harriet is a good thing, for sure, but Anne is sorry that the Duke is not there: he had promised her at the very least one day’s hunting outside the City, but this looks less likely by the day. Also he has taken Captain Churchill with him, and Captain Churchill has taken his wife Sarah, and as Sarah hopes to be confined in London, she will not be coming back to Brussels. At least Anne still has Mrs Berkeley here to make her laugh, and Mrs Cornwallis, sometimes, to gaze upon.

  ‘It is a pity that Mrs Cornwallis has gone with the Duchess today,’ Anne says, as she folds the letter, ready for posting. ‘We could have spent a most pleasant afternoon here, the three of us together.’

  ‘Can we not have almost as pleasant a time with two, Your Highness?’ Mrs Berkeley reaches into her pocket, where she causes its contents to rattle enticingly.