A Want of Kindness
Joanne Limburg considers that Queen Anne has been neglected by novelists in comparison with other English and British monarchs (Anne was the first English monarch to become British), and A Want of Kindness is her bid to remedy this. She calls her work a ‘collage’. It intersperses short pieces of narrative in modern English in modern typeface with pieces of 17th-century text in an approximation to 17th-century type. Most of the latter are actual letters written by Anne or texts she would have read.
The story follows the life of Anne from the age of ten until her late forties, just before she became queen in 1702. I think Limburg wants us to sympathise with Anne; she certainly suffered a great deal. By 1702 she had had 18 pregnancies, but only three children survived more than a few days, and none were still alive when she became queen. For all her efforts she was the last monarch of her dynasty.
None the less, I found Anne difficult to like. She complains constantly of the ‘lack of kindness’ of her father (James II), her sister (Mary), and her brother-in-law (William III), while showing a great lack of kindness herself. Even her prayers are full of complaints about her family. Her main activities, except when indisposed, are playing cards and intriguing to get an increase in her personal allowance.
Fortunately for Britain, she was totally dependent on her confidante, Sarah Churchill, who effectively became queen in 1702 and went on to appoint her husband as Britain’s greatest military commander.
