Passions Between Women by Donoghue Emma

Author:Donoghue, Emma [Donoghue, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2014-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman

The stormy friendship of Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, has received plenty of attention in biographies and histories. It has often been read in terms of Whig/Tory political influence, or as the exploitation of an infatuated, well-meaning queen by a cold, unscrupulous duchess. Rather than arguing over the rights and wrongs of each detail of this twenty-year partnership, I will focus on just one version of the story, Sarah Churchill’s An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (written between 1702 and 1710, published in 1742), because it was a widely read, controversial publication that concentrated on the women’s friendship.

The story begins in childhood, when as miniature ladies-in-waiting Sarah and Anne play together and grow close, mostly because Anne dislikes everyone else around her. With no false modesty, Sarah remembers what a high place she reached in Anne’s favour – and all without the help of flattery, ‘a Charm, which in Truth her Inclination for me, together with my unwearied Application to serve and amuse her, rendered needless’. Serving and amusing Anne, however, are not always the same thing; Sarah’s carefully developed ethic of friendship involves dangerous frankness. For the first few years, we are told, Anne appreciates it, ‘promising never to be offended at it, but to love me the better for my Frankness’. As Sarah reports it, the friendship is based on an unwritten code of honour: her unselfish devotion to Anne’s true good is to be rewarded by lifelong gratitude and the central place in the princess’ heart.

This code of honour reinforces their longing for equality, for some way of evading the barriers of court protocol. Sarah explains that the princess ‘grew uneasy to be treated by me with the Form and Ceremony due to her Rank; nor could she bear from me the Sound of Words which implied in them Distance and Superiority’. To counteract the popular assumption that she lured Anne into a position of emotional dependence, Sarah’s Account presents Anne as the initiator in all moves towards equality. It is Anne who proposes that they write to each other ‘as Equals’ under ‘feigned Names, such as would impart nothing of Distinction of Rank between us’ – Anne becoming ‘Mrs Morley’ and Sarah (because of her frank character) choosing ‘Mrs Freeman’. As duchess and princess, their relationship is always under the critical eyes of courtiers; to be most themselves, they have to adopt aliases.

The difference in the friends’ personalities becomes clear during the conflict with Mary which begins in 1692. Queen Mary orders her sister to drop Sarah for political reasons, telling her that she knows such a sacrifice is ‘hard’, but it is one often demanded of royalty. Anne keeps refusing – ‘there is no misery that I cannot readily resolve to suffer, rather than the Thoughts of parting with her’ – but she makes endless attempts to earn Mary’s forgiveness, even when she is being subjected to daily insult and isolation. Sarah, by

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