Stuarts

212 THE STUARTS
very singular." At St. Germains we may well believe the removal of
the obstacle in the way of succession was viewed with very different
feelings.
This question of the succession must have been an agitating one to Anne.
She clung to the power she was unfitted to wield, and did not like the idea
of a successor at all. She told Marlborough that she could not endure a
visit from the Elector, no, not for a week. Then at times her brother's
name, the Chevalier St. George, would come to her mind, and she would
feel she had wronged him. Faction raged around her closing years, and
she died worn out before her time, for she was but fifty.
The passage quoted at the head of this chapter Thackeray no doubt
borrowed from Swift, who says " Anne drove like a Jehu," and has left us
some glimpses of Court life at Windsor in his day. " The Queen was hunt-
ing the stag till four this afternoon, and drove in her chaise about forty miles,
and it was five before she went to dinner." Again "there was a drawing-
room to-day, but so few company that the Queen sent for us into her
chamber where we made our bows and stood, about twenty of us, round the
room while she looked at us round with her fan in her mouth, and once a
minute said about three words to some that were nearest her, and then she
was told dinner was ready and went out."