“Mistress” indeed she was, and what a virago to boot! Witness the incident when Anne was entering St. Paul’s, the Duchess at her side, to render thanks for the great victory achieved at Oudenarde. The Duchess of Marlborough had had the royal jewels newly set for that especial day; and sublime was her horror, as the royal carriage ascended Ludgate-hill, at observing that the Queen had no jewels at all about her. The vicinity to Billingsgate lent power to the vituperative eloquence of the offended wife of the General whose valour had won the victory. The Queen, for once, was not an iota less vituperatively eloquent than her Mistress of the Robes. As they mounted the steps, and entered the cathedral, they flew at one another with winged words, that fly swiftly, and wound where’er they fall. Anne’s voice was by far the louder; and for every thrust of the Duchess’s tongue, she fired a volley of asseverations that made the lieges long to tear the “Mistress’s” robes from her own back. That lady saw as much herself, and became alarmed; but, like a skilful general, she had the last shot, and fairly battered the Queen into silence, as she attempted to renew the contest in the royal pew, by the imperative order to “hold your tongue!”—“don’t answer me!”—and poor Anne obeyed. But if Anne claimed the privilege of dressing as she pleased, she was angry if the necessary etiquette was disregarded by others. When Eugene of Savoy came over here in 1712, to uphold, as well as he could with his one hand, the war-faction against the Queen, he marvellously offended her by appearing in her august presence in a tie-wig. Mr. Secretary St. John, who presented him, wore a periwig so huge that he perfectly extinguished therewith the illustrious stranger whom he held by the hand. Eugene had been forewarned that the Queen could not bear to look upon a man unless he were covered with a full-bottomed periwig. Eugene carelessly, and not truthfully, answered, as he stood in the royal antechamber, “I don’t know what to do; I never had a long periwig in my life; and I have sent to all my valets and footmen to know if any of them have one, that I might borrow it; but no one has such a thing.” And so the Prince was conducted to the Queen, who thought more of the tie-wig on his head than she did of the gallant heart that beat within his “plaguy yellow and literally ugly” person.