Historical Characters in the Reign of Queen AnneOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
History
Historical Characters in the Reign of Queen Anne
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Addison, Joseph, 1672-1719; Anne, Queen of Great Britain, 1665-1714; Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731; Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745
I really long to know how my dear Mrs. Freeman got home, and now I
have this opportunity of writing she must give me leave to tell her
if she should ever be so cruel as to leave her faithful Mrs. Morley
she will rob her of all the joy and quiet of her life; for if that
day should come, I could never enjoy a happy minute, and I swear to
you I would shut myself up and never see a creature. If you do but
remember what the queen said to me the night before your lord was
turned out of all; then she began to pick quarrels; and if they
should take off twenty or thirty thousand pounds, have I not lived
upon as little before? When I was first married we had but twenty
(it is true indeed the king was so kind to pay my debts) and if it
should come to that again what retrenchment is there in my family I
would not willingly make and be glad of that pretence to do it?
Never fancy, my dear Mrs. Freeman, if what you fear should happen,
that you are the occasion; no, I am very well satisfied, and so is
the prince, too, that it would have been so however, for Caliban is
capable of doing nothing but injustice; therefore rest satisfied
you are noways the cause, and let me beg once more for God’s sake
that you would not mention parting more, no, not so much as think
of it, and if you should ever leave me, be assured it would break
your faithful Mrs. Morley’s heart.
A still stronger expression of the same sentiment, with a little gleam
of self-assertion and sense of injured dignity, follows, after the
princess had, as would seem, taken counsel with her George. That heavy
prince fully acquiesced at least, if nothing more, in his wife’s
devotion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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