Anne has never got much credit for her forbearance and self-effacement at the critical moments of her career. But it is certain that she might have given William a great deal of trouble had she asserted her rights as Mary’s successor, as she might also have done at the time of the first settlement. No doubt he would on both occasions have carried the day, and with this certainty the historians have been satisfied, without considering that a woman who was not of a lofty character, and who was a Stuart, must have felt it doubly bitter to find herself the subject of a gloomy brother-in-law who slighted her, and who, her rasher partizans did not hesitate to say, ought to have been her subject so long as he remained in England after her sister’s death, and not she his. The absence of any attempt on her part to disturb or molest, nay, her little advances, her letters of condolence, and of congratulation the first time that a victory gave occasion for it, showed no inconsiderable magnanimity on the part of the prosaic princess--all the more that she had not been in the habit, as is usual among women, of putting the scorns she had suffered to another woman’s account, and holding Mary responsible, but had uniformly attributed to the “Dutch monster,” the Caliban of her correspondence, all the slights that were put on her--all the more that William did very little to encourage any overtures of friendship. He received her after his wife’s death, and they are said by one of her attendants to have wept together when the unwieldy princess, then unable to walk, was carried in her chair into the very presence-chamber. But if a common emotion drew them together at this moment, it did not last; and in the diminished
ENGRAVED BY R. G. TIETZE, FROM MEZZOTINT BY JOHN SMITH, AFTER THE PAINTING BY SIR GODFREY KNELLER.]
ceremonial of the bereaved court, Anne had but scant respect and no welcome. But she made no further complaint, and did what she could to keep on terms of civility at least with her brother-in-law, writing to him little letters of politeness, notwithstanding the disapproval of Lady Marlborough, who was of no such gentle temper, and the absence of all response from William. He, with all his foreign wars and home troubles, solitary, sad, broken in health and in life, had little heart, we may suppose, for those commonplace advances from a woman he had never been able to tolerate. But though Anne’s relations with the king were scarcely improved, her position in respect to the courtiers who had abandoned her in her sister’s lifetime was different indeed. Lady Marlborough describes this with her usual force.