MARLBOROUGH HOUSE 
power, she became practically head of the opposition, yet there 
seems to have been no love lost between her and Sir Robert Walpole, 
notwithstanding that like herself, he was a Whig. 
In a letter to the Duchess dated October, 1710, relating to 
the construction of the house, Sir Christopher Wren says—“ the 
rooms will take about 12,000 tiles, and the chimneys about 2,200 ; ” 
and in one of her own letters preserved at Blenheim, Her Grace 
says that Marlborough House had cost herself and the Duke close 
on £50,000. In plan it is almost a square: it contains 106 rooms, 
inclusive of the domestic offices, and a noble saloon occupies the 
centre. The conservatory now covering the steps leading to the 
garden did not exist in 1710. 
Sarah survived the Duke twenty-two years, dying in 1744. 
Although sixty-two at the time of his death, she had many offers 
of marriage, for besides being a woman of wit, with the remains 
of great beauty, she was immensely rich; but she refused them 
all, saying “that the widow of Marlborough shall never become 
the wife of another man.’ Her devotion to and pride in her 
husband were indeed the best traits in her character. 
After the death of the Duchess certain alterations were made in 
the house. Charles, the third Duke, removed the balustrade with 
which Wren had crowned the first story—and added a second 
story, insignificant in design; and George, the fourth Duke, 
built a large riding-school where now stand the royal stables. 
After this the structure remained practically unaltered until Albert 
Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII., took 
possession on his marriage in 1863. A print of *‘ Prior Court ”’— 
as Marlborough House was formerly called—taken in 1710, shows 
that except in altitude, the garden front of the house has been 
but little altered. The building in its original form had perhaps 
more of symmetry and lightness—and from its low elevation 
might almost have been designed for a country, rather than a town 
residence ; but though it may have lost something in elegance, it 
has gained in dignity. As it stands—as may be seen in the frontis- 
piece to this book—it is a stately, red-brick edifice, its proportions 
massive yet not inharmonious, its colour enriched and softened by 
time ; a fitting residence either for the eldest son of the sovereign, 
or for a beloved, and venerated, and admired Queen-Mother. 
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