Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/317

Rh long-lost locks treasured up by him in his cabinet among the things he had prized most highly. When she had done her share toward worrying out his life, and his will came to be read, it was found that the Duke had left her ten thousand pounds, with which to spoil Blenheim in her own way, and an additional twelve thousand a year "to keep herself clean with and go to law." Blenheim was a well-picked bone of contention, costing three hundred thousand pounds, and constantly keeping the Duchess, and Vanbrugh, its architect, in a turmoil of bad temper. She would never allow him to enter the house when finished, and he always called her "that wicked woman of Marlborough." When the Duke was lying palsied, beyond the reach of recovery, the Duchess one day followed Dr. Garth down stairs, swearing at him like the veriest trooper, until he effected his retreat. We may well believe that, although never unnerved by a battle, the great Captain succumbed and wilted when the tongue-artillery of this ill-tempered woman made him its target. She was sharp enough to detect her own portrait when Pope's "Queen Sarah" was read to her (as though it were intended for the Duchess of Buckingham). "You can't impose upon me," she said, and hastened to buy its suppression by sending the Twickenham poet a thousand pounds. Pope pocketed the money, and ungratefully gave her immortal infamy as "Atossa," i. e., the Insatiable, in his "Characters of Women." One of her granddaughters, who had displeased her, was pilloried by having her portrait hung in the old hag's reception-room, blackened and labelled "She's blacker far within." In compiling her Memoirs and fighting Vanbrugh's lawyers she passed her declining years, and though she gave Nat. Hooke four thousand pounds for his literary labor on that production, her liberality was diluted by the squabbles she all the time kept up with him about religion. At last she met her match. Death summoned her; but instead of coming down gracefully, which, of course, was not to be looked for, she fought fiercely to the end and then died game. When the physicians said "she must be blistered or she will die," her high mightiness retorted "I won't be blistered, and I won't die." Notwithstanding this, the grim monster wore her out, until, finally, with affected insouciance, she muttered that she "cared not how soon the stroke of death came." Life left her, at length, snarling and growling; and, sinking into compulsory silence, at eighty-four, she lets fly this Parthian arrow and goes down with all sail set: "I think one can't leave the world at a better time than now, when there is no such thing as real friendship, truth, justice, honor, or, indeed, anything that is agreeable in life."

A poor husband persecuted by the vixenish "cussedness" of a companion, such as has been above described, might well wish that a certain English custom of selling wives could be introduced again