Thus, in the exalted stations which her children attained, the ambition of Lady Marlborough, as a mother, may be supposed to have been fully gratified. But whilst she accomplished for them, aided by their personal advantages, connexions all advantageous, though not equally splendid, she omitted to sow the good seed of filial subjection, which is ever best secured by cultivating the affections. In her family she may be said to have been peculiarly unhappy. Not many years elapsed after Lord Marlborough was raised to a dukedom, before his son, the Marquis of Blandford, the sole male representative of his father’s honours, was summoned to an early grave. The title eventually descended in the female line, and Lady Godolphin became Duchess of Marlborough. With this daughter Lady Marlborough was many years embroiled in endless contentions, and the latter period of the illustrious Marlborough’s life was employed in the vain attempt to mediate between two fierce and grasping combatants. Money, as usual, was the cause of the combustion, and a total alienation the result. Lady Sunderland died young, but her sons became at once the delight and the torment of their grandmother in the decline of her long-lived importance, and, as it almost appeared, of her judgment and sense of decorum. Lady Bridgwater also died too early for _her_ contentions with her mother to be signalised; but she left a daughter, the Duchess of Bedford, afterwards married to Lord Jersey, between whom and the Duchess of Marlborough a running warfare was long maintained. With her youngest daughter, the Duchess of Montagu, the irritable Duchess was on terms equally unhappy. The Duke of Marlborough was heard to observe, speaking to his wife of this daughter, “I wonder you cannot agree, you are so alike!”—a speech which augurs ill for the Duchess of Montagu’s temper. The lively and amiable Duchess of Manchester, granddaughter of the aged and morose Sarah, and described by one who knew her as “all spirit, justice, honour,” possessed that influence over her grandmother which gay and open characters often seem to acquire, by the unpremeditated frankness which charms whilst it half offends. “Duchess of Manchester,” said her old grandmother to her one day, “you are a good creature, but you _have_ a mother.”—“And _she_ has a mother,” was the arch and fearless reply.[335] Such were the anecdotes in circulation at a later period. In her own youth Lady Marlborough rendered the beauty and accomplishments of her daughters serviceable in her own elevation to power. She afterwards obtained for so many of them posts about the Queen, that Anne was said to have her court composed of one family.[336] Yet the Duchess lived to prove, in the joyless isolation of her old age, how completely all our wishes may be realised without producing happiness. CHAPTER X.