Queen Anne by Anne Somerset

Author:Anne Somerset
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

For the past fifteen years or so, the entire Hill family had benefited from Sarah’s kindness. When the Duke of Gloucester’s death had led to Alice Hill losing her job as his laundress, Sarah had tried to persuade Anne to take her on as an extra Woman of the Bedchamber, arguing that those currently in office, who nursed Anne when she was incapacitated, would welcome an addition to their number, ‘the duty being too hard … upon account of the Princess being often ill’. Anne had rejected the suggestion at that time, but after further urging from Sarah in 1705, she awarded Alice a pension of £200.11

Sarah had also forwarded the prospects of Abigail and Alice’s younger brother, Jack Hill. After he had left St Albans Grammar School (where Sarah had paid for his education) she had arranged for him to become page to Prince George of Denmark. When the Duke of Gloucester was given his own household, Jack Hill was made one of his Grooms of the Bedchamber, and on Gloucester’s death he transferred to being a Groom of the Bedchamber to Prince George. By her own account, Sarah then got Jack Hill started on an army career, for in November 1702 the young man (whom she later described as an ‘idle, drinking, mimicking creature’) secured a commission in the Coldstream Guards. Sarah noted that her husband sanctioned this ‘all at my request’ despite the fact he ‘always said that Jack Hill was good for nothing’.12

Abigail Hill, meanwhile, made the most of her position as one of the Queen’s Women of the Bedchamber, although it is not easy to chart her progress from relatively lowly servant to trusted confidante. Despite her later prominence, she remains a somewhat shadowy figure. In her writings, the Duchess of Marlborough would demonise her to such an extent that it has the paradoxical effect of making the reader think that Abigail cannot have been so bad as Sarah suggests. As for her appearance, Sarah and her crony Arthur Maynwaring revelled in portraying Abigail as physically hideous. They nicknamed her ‘Carbuncles’, and on different occasions Maynwaring described her as an ‘ugly hag’ with a ‘frightful face’ and ‘stinking breath’. Clearly their comments owed a great deal to malice, but the supposed portrait of Abigail in the National Portrait Gallery does indeed depict a fairly plain woman. Jonathan Swift, who liked her, noted at one point that she was ‘not very handsome’, but provided no details other than remarking that she was ‘extremely like one Mrs Malolly that was once my landlady in Trim’.13

A diplomat employed by the States General informed the Grand Pensionary of Holland that it was above all her skill as a servant that marked Abigail out in Anne’s eyes. He reported that the Queen had declared that none of her other waiting women were ‘so handy as her, and that not one of them handled her with so much delicacy when she was unwell, or combed and dressed her Majesty’s hair so skilfully’.

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