There is no doubt that the Duchess was extremely fond of, and ambitious for, her husband; and that the love was mutual may readily be gathered from the Duke’s letters to his wife years after their marriage. He writes after Ramillies: ‘I did not tell my dearest soul in my last my design of engaging the enemy if possible to a battle, fearing the concern she has for me might make her uneasy.... If I could begin life over again, I would devote every hour of it to you, but as God has been pleased to bless me, I do not doubt but he will reward me with some years to end my days with you.’ This was twenty-eight years after their marriage, and is eloquent of Churchill’s rare constancy and faithful heart. But though he appears from his letters so uxorious a husband, he exercised a judicious restraint upon his feelings on occasion, and his naturally equable, calm, and reserved temper stood him in good stead when the Duchess was more than usually unreasonable and furious. Thus there is a story told of her, that once, in order to vex him who admired her beautiful hair so greatly, she cut off those shining tresses which Kneller has painted so well and laid them on the Duke’s dressing-table. But, however much he was pained by this act of singular spite, he showed nothing of it by his manner. He scarcely seemed to notice them, and when she came again to look for them they were gone, and no word said. She had failed that time, and did not dare to mention the circumstance. But, after the Duke’s death, in collecting his papers, she found her hair which she had cut off years before treasured up in a secret place among his most cherished possessions. She was used to tell the tale herself, and when she came to this part, she invariably broke down and ‘fell a-crying’ for shame and grief. ‘The beauty of the Duchess of Marlborough,’ says Horace Walpole, ‘had always been of the scornful and imperious kind, and her features and air announced nothing that her temper did not confirm; both together, her beauty and temper, enslaved her heroic lord.’ She was pugnacious beyond all bounds, and commanded fear and respect, even when she was not loved, by her undoubted abilities. She had a son and four daughters. The son died in early youth; her daughters all became peeresses, and they and their daughters were harried by her continually. She affected to be fond of her granddaughter, the Duchess of Manchester, daughter of the Duchess of Montagu, her youngest child. She said to her one day, ‘Duchess of Manchester, you are a good creature, and I love you mightily--but you _have_ a mother!’ ‘And _she_ has a mother,’ replied the Duchess of Manchester. And she had, indeed, in a superlative degree.