That anecdote, so generally in circulation, which describes Marlborough creeping out of a public room at Bath, with sixpence that he had gained at cards, and walking home to save the expense of a chair, we would willingly, with Lord Bolingbroke, forget. His taste, and the good sense which characterised his mind, led him, in an age of extravagance, to avoid ostentation. His table was in the old English style, which by many persons was considered too plain for his rank.[296] His attendants were few; and his dread of increasing the necessary evils of a numerous retinue appears, from some portion of the correspondence between him and Sir John Vanburgh, to have been very great. His dress was habitually simple, except on state occasions, when its magnificence is referred to by his contemporary, Evelyn. With those habits of care, not to say penuriousness, which have been universally ascribed to the Duke, he joined a willingness to relieve the destitute, for whose sake he forgot, when occasion required it, the objects which would have been dearest to a selfish man.[297] “This great man,” John Duke of Marlborough, say the newspapers of the day, “was completely under the management of his wife, as the following story, well known in the family, evinces. The Duke had noticed the behaviour of a young officer in some engagement in Flanders, and sent him over to England with some despatches, and with a letter to the Duchess, commending him to her to procure some superior commission in the army for him. The Duchess read the letter and approved of it, but asked him where the thousand pounds were, for his increase of rank. The young man blushed and said, that really he was master of no such sum. ‘Well, then,’ said she, ‘you may return to the Duke.’ This he did very soon afterwards, and told him how he had been received by the Duchess. The Duke laughingly said, he thought it would be so; but he should, however, do better another time; and presenting him with a thousand pounds, sent him over to England. This last expedition proved successful.”