The Life and Death of Queen Anne.

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17837, 9 October 1929, Page 15

The Life and Death of Queen Anne.

Queen Anne is dead. For the last two centuries and more she has been allowed to enjoy profound repose. That repose has now been disturbed by two studies— Miss Beatrice Curtis Brown’s “Anne Stuart. Queen of England,, and Mr Lewis Melville’s “In the Days of Queen Anne.”

Miss Curtis Brown's is the sort of book that has been immensely popular in this country since tho day when Mr Lytton Strachey discovered a new method of writing biography—neither history nor fiction but a cunning blend of both. She has not only been able to present her readers with a number of hitherto unrecorded conversations, but has even succeeded in penetrating into the innermost recesses of her subject. She tells us, for instance, that when Anne heard that tho Queen of James 11. bad given birth to a son, “her mind was filled with dark thoughts which almost surprised her by their malice”— a statement that is probably true but is certainly conjectural. Ungainly and Fond of Food. Still, a very clear and definite portrait does emerge from these pages. It must be, admitted that Anne is a figure that inspires neither our admiration nor respect, though it is impossible to withhold a certain measure of sympathy from a woman who brought seventeen children into the world, and reared none of them. She had all the obstinacy of the Stuarts, but none of their finer qualities: she lacked the force of character of her father and the charm of her uncle. She was fickle 1 in and

New Light on a Fickle Monarch and Her (( Dark Thoughts, ”

self-assertive by turns, devoid of dignity, ungainly in appearance, one who made “eating the main activity of the day.” She seems, however, to have been genuinely fond of her ridiculous husband. And that should be set down to her credit

Abo it everything she did there hangs an atmosphere of futility and frustation. She lived long enough to survive both her husband and her family, and her influence on the affairs of her time were practically nil. Her ill-considered interventions in matters of State are ably summarised by Miss Brown: “She understood only that her friends were in power or her enemies; tho distinctions she made were between those who supported the Church and the Crown and the others who did not seem to revere anything which to her was important.” Memoirs of a Boy. Mr Melville’s book is a biography not only of Anne, but also of several of her contemporaries—the Duchess of Marlborough, Mrs Centlivre, Abigail Lady Masham, and others. To him history is one long romance, and in this dull and sober Queen surrounded by profligate courtiers he finds ample material for a spicy and entertaining narrative. An interesting feature of the book is the reprinted memoirs of the Duke of Gloucester, the Queen’s son, who died at the of eleven. The memoirs are taken from a long-for-gotten phamphlet, and are probably unique in being the only biography of a royal child who died so young.