Lxx: Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough

Among the shadowy figures that make up the circle of Congreve's most intimate friends, Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, seems to have suffered most from the gossip of her own age and from the more detached but still biassed estimates of later critics. Not one of her contemporaries spoke a really decisive word in her favor; and the biographers of Congreve have preferred to dismiss her as an amusing eccentric. But one critic, Leigh Hunt, has cared to linger over this minor portrait, commenting on “the slow yet sensitive mind” of the Duchess and concluding that she loved Congreve “with all the heart she had, and a great deal of obstinacy.”