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Title: A lady of the last century

Author: Dr. Doran

Release date: August 23, 2024 [eBook #74300]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: Francis A. Niccolls & Co

Credits: Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LADY OF THE LAST CENTURY ***






A Lady of the Last Century

[Illustration: Garrick and His Wife

_Photogravure from the painting by Wm. Hogarth_]




[Illustration]

                            A Lady of the Last
                                 Century

                                    BY
                            JOHN DORAN, LL. D.

                               PUBLISHED BY
                        FRANCIS A. NICCOLLS & CO.
                                  BOSTON

                            _ÉDITION DE LUXE._

                    _Limited to One Thousand Copies._

                                 No. ....




                                    TO
                        Andreas J. G. Holtz, Esq.
                             (TWYFORD ABBEY)
            THIS “BIT OF MOSAIC” IS DEDICATED, WITH SENTIMENTS
                      OF THE MOST SINCERE ESTEEM AND
                             CORDIAL REGARD.




Preface


In the year 1809, Mr. Matthew Montagu published the first two of four
volumes of letters of his aunt, Elizabeth Montagu. He was not only her
nephew, he was also her adopted son and her executor. On the 5th of
December in that year, the celebrated statesman, William Windham, was
reading those volumes, “in the evening, up-stairs;” and he subsequently
recorded the following judgment of them in his diary: “I think very
highly of them. One of their chief merits is _series juncturaque_.
Nothing can be more easy and natural than the manner in which the
thoughts rise one out of the other, even where the thoughts may appear
rather forced, nor is the expression ever hard or laboured. I see but
little to object to in the thoughts themselves, but nothing can be more
natural or graceful than the manner in which they are put together. The
flow of her style is not less natural, because it is fully charged with
shining particles, and sparkles as it flows.”

In 1813, Mr. Matthew Montagu published two more volumes of his aunt’s
correspondence. The press generally received them with pleasant testimony
of approval. It not only endorsed the judgment of the eminent statesman
quoted above, but it especially pointed out that the letters were genuine
and authentic, which could not be said of a similar collection of
letters then challenging the censure of the town. Mrs. Montagu’s letters
were read with great avidity, and readers for the most part came to the
same conclusion as the statesman and the critics.

The last letter in the series is addressed to Mrs. Elizabeth Carter.
The date is September, 1761. The writer lived nearly forty years after
that date. During that time, she maintained a lively correspondence;
her letters were copied and circulated. After her death, a few,
with fragments of others, found their way into various periodicals.
The correspondence which Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu kept up with her
sister-in-law, Mrs. Robinson, wife of the Rev. William Robinson, and a
few other friends, between 1761 and the close of the last century, was
long in the possession of the late Mr. Richard Bentley, who purchased
them at a sale of autographs. These form the chief portion of the present
volume.

In a note to the letters published by Mr. Montagu, the editor states that
they are “intended to convey in them the biography of the writer, which
the editor thinks he could not so well exemplify by any remarks of his
own as by the letters themselves.” Mr. Montagu gave to his aunt’s readers
every word of every epistle, from the salutation to the signature.

From the letters now printed for the first time there have only been
omitted vain repetitions, formal compliments, and the nothings that may
have once been somethings, but which are now mere dust and ashes, from
which little of value is to be sifted. There have been retained all that
could further “convey the biography of the writer,” with addition of such
anecdotal illustration from the printed letters and from contemporary
records as might serve to show more completely the character and
surroundings of a Lady of the Last Century.




Contents


                                                                      PAGE

                               CHAPTER I.

    Birth and Parentage of Mrs. Montagu—Long Tom Robinson—Dr.
    Conyers Middleton—Early Training of Mrs. Montagu—Funeral
    at York Cathedral—Mrs. Makin—Her System of Female
    Education—School at Tottenham High Cross—Early Habits of Mrs.
    Montagu—The Duchess of Portland—Mary-le-Bone Gardens—“La
    Petite Fidget” at Bath, at Tunbridge Wells—Lord Noel
    Somerset—Bath Life in 1740—Lord Lyttelton—Scarlet Beaux and
    Country Polyphemuses—Modern Marriages—Garrick’s Richard the
    Third—Offers of Marriage to Miss Robinson                            1

                               CHAPTER II.

    Edward Montagu—Wedding Tour—Allerthorpe—Pursuits There—Lord
    Dupplin—Character of Mrs. Montagu’s Neighbours—Unwelcome
    Visitor—Habits of Mind—Lite in London—Birth of a Son—Little
    “Punch”—Death of Her Son—Visits Tunbridge Wells—Doctor
    Young and Colley Cibber There—The Vicar of Tunbridge—The
    Rebellion of 1745—Death of Mrs. Montagu’s Mother—Wilton—Death
    of Her Brother—Mode of Life at Bath—Mrs. Gilbert West—Mrs.
    Montagu’s Tastes—Love of Books—Her Analysis of Clarissa
    Harlowe—Mrs. Pilkington—Lady Sandwich—Miss Chudleigh at the
    Masquerade—Letter to Mr. Montagu                                    23

                              CHAPTER III.

    Visits London—George Lewis Scott—Marries Mrs. Montagu’s
    Sister—Their Separation—Death a Friend—Lady Hester
    Pitt—The Refugee, Bower—Lady Townshend’s Ball—Lady
    Essex—“Bluestockings”—Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet—Rumours of
    War—Life in the Country—Mrs. Elizabeth Carter—Mr. Montagu
    Succeeds to a Rich Inheritance—Dangerous Mistake—Doctor
    Monsey—Doctor Johnson—Mrs. Ogle’s Benefit—Mrs. Montagu’s
    Character of Burke—Writes a Criticism and Misses a
    Ball—Dissipations and Diversions—Two Old Lovers—Mrs.
    Montagu as an Authoress—“Dialogues of the Dead”—French in
    the Shades—Female Education—Longing after Rest—Accession
    of George the Third—House in Hill Street—Furniture in
    Fashion—Mrs. Montagu a Political Economist—Anecdote of an
    Old Scotch Woman—“The Penitents”—Warburton—His Treatment of
    Shakespeare—William Robinson—His Life of Inaction—Sir Charles
    Williams—Hammond’s “Elegies”                                        42

                               CHAPTER IV.

    Anecdote of the Young King—Lord Anson—Retirement of Mr.
    Speaker Onslow—Death of Beau Nash—Mr. Pitt—His Character—Lord
    Bute—Marriage of the King—Portrait of Queen Charlotte—Lord
    Hardwicke Reads an Account of Her in Public—Preparations
    for the Coronation—Arrival of the Queen—Doctor Young’s
    New Poem—London on the Night of the Coronation—Duke of
    Ancaster—Lady Hardwicke—Regret at Mr. Pitt’s Resignation—His
    Reception in the City—Speech in the Commons—George
    Grenville—_Bon Mot_ of Lady Townshend—“Millennium Hall”—Kitty
    Hunter—“The School for Lovers”—Change of Costume—Lord Clive at
    Bath                                                                64

                               CHAPTER V.

    Retirement of the Duke of Newcastle—The King’s Purchase of
    Buckingham House—Violent Distemper in London—Death of the
    Duke of Portland and Mrs. Donellan—Lord Halifax—Death of Sir
    Edward Dering—Mr. Harrison’s Watch—_Bon Mot_ of the Duke of
    Newcastle—His Character—Declines a Pension—Pension to Doctor
    Johnson—Birth of “The First Gentleman in Europe”—The Duke
    of Bedford—Englishmen Naturally Politicians—Instalment of
    the Knights of the Garter—Return to England of Lady Mary
    Wortley Montagu—Her Death—Her Character—Her Reception of Mrs.
    Montagu—Lady Mary Leaves Her Son One Guinea—His Singular
    Character—Gathering at Hagley—The New Cold, “L’Influenza”—Mrs.
    Montagu Visits Oxford, Blenheim, Kenilworth, Warwick
    Castle—Mrs. Montagu at Sandleford—Lord Bath Proposed To—His
    Death—His Great Wealth—Mrs. Montagu Visits Alnwick, Edinburgh,
    Glasgow, the Trossachs—The Vale of Glencoe—Visit to Lord
    Kames—Literary Evenings in Edinburgh—The Poet Gray—His
    Reserve—The Art of Conversation—Lady Cornewall Abroad               83

                               CHAPTER VI.

    Critical State of Public Affairs—Voltaire’s Attack on
    Shakespeare—Mrs. Montagu’s Defence—Reception of Her
    Essay—Countess Gower’s Criticism—Doctor Johnson’s Opinion of
    It—Garrick—Cowper’s Opinion—Mrs. Montagu Falls Ill—Visits
    Edinburgh—Mrs. Chapone—Lord Buchan—Lord Kinnoul—Lord
    Breadalbane—Lord Kames—Scotch Hospitality—Death of
    George Grenville—Rumours of War—The King’s Speech—Lord
    Chatham—Conversations of Lord Kames and Mrs. Montagu—Voltaire’s
    Abuse of Lord Kames—William Emerson—Cheated by His
    Father-in-law—Burke—George Grenville—Death of the
    Duke of Bedford—His Character, Wealth, and Political
    Influence—Legacies—Foreign Politics—Ladies’ Schools                106

                              CHAPTER VII.

    The Duchess of Portland—Fineness of the Weather—Visit
    to Winchester—Smuggling—Visit to Mr. Burke at
    Beaconsfield—Character of Mr. Burke—Lord Temple—Lord
    Nuneham—Mrs. Montagu’s Relations—Gray the Poet—Compared
    to Pindar—Changes in Newspapers—Extinction of
    Letter-Writing—Failure of Sir George C——e—Bad State of the
    Country—Good Luck in Smuggling—Requirements of a Young
    Lady in 1773—Christmas Festivities—Character of Mrs.
    Montagu’s Niece—Lord Stanhope—Lord Mahon—Observations on
    the Bringing-up of Children—Miss Gregory—The Price of a
    Dull Man—Doctor Johnson—Mrs. Montagu Settles an Annuity on
    Mrs. Williams—Serious Illness of Mr. Montagu—His Love of
    Mathematics—His Death—Prospects of His Widow—Horace Walpole to
    Mason                                                              122

                              CHAPTER VIII.

    Mrs. Montagu’s Attention to Her Affairs—Visits Sandleford
    and Denton—Visits Her Estate at Burniston—Entertains Her
    Tenants—Drought in 1775—Charitable Institutions—Visits Her
    Collieries—Difference between Her Northumbrian and Yorkshire
    Tenantry—Anecdote of Walter Scott—Lord Villiers Acts Lord
    Townley—The French Ambassador—Lord Granby—Mrs. Montagu
    in Paris—Voltaire Sends a Paper to the Academy against
    Shakespeare—Mrs. Montagu Is Present at the Reading—Her Ready
    Reply to M. Suard—A Judicious Idleness—Quantity of Rouge Used
    in Paris—The Emperor of Austria—“The School for Scandal”—The
    Duchess of Devonshire—Run of Bad Weather—Sir William
    Temple—Doctor Robinson’s History of America—Lord Shelburne—Abbé
    Raynal—Prevalence of Influenza—Engagement of Lady Mary
    Somerset—Death of Morris Robinson—Jack the Painter—Doctor
    Dodd—Lord Chesterfield—Lady Strathmore’s Conduct at the
    Elections—Stoney Bowes                                             139

                               CHAPTER IX.

    Nuneham—Society There—The French Ambassador—The Taking of
    Ticonderoga—Morris Robinson’s Widow—Building of the Haymarket
    Theatre—Mrs. Montagu’s Heir—The Minuet—Family Affairs—Kindness
    to Mrs. Morris Robinson—Accident to Mrs. Scott—Lord Percy’s
    Divorce—The Duke of Hamilton—Miss Burrell—False Report of the
    Death of Mrs. Montagu’s Father—Accident to Lord Chatham—His
    Appearance in the House of Lords—Speech There in Reply to
    the Duke of Richmond—Sinks Speechless in a Fit—Mothers and
    Daughters in 1778                                                  161

                               CHAPTER X.

    Character of Miss Coke—The New Singer at the Pantheon—Society
    at Tunbridge Wells—The Minuet Goes Out of Fashion—Decay of
    Mrs. Montagu’s Father—The Camp at Coxheath—Prosperity of the
    North of England—Lord Kames—Victory of Lord Rodney—Completion
    of the Circus at Bath—Commencement of the Crescent There—Life
    in Bath—Cards the Chief Business There—Mr. Anstey—Four by
    Honours—Riots in England—The Nabobs—Marriage of Mrs. Montagu’s
    Niece—Mrs. Montagu’s New House—Corruption of London Society
    in 1779—Three Divorces in One Session—Lord Percy—Lord
    Carmarthen—Lord Derby—The Duke of Dorset—Mrs. Macaulay             174

                               CHAPTER XI.

    The Bluestockings—Mrs. Chapone as Lady Racket in the
    _Rambler_—The _Rambler_ Attacks Card-Playing—Sunday Night
    Parties—Madame Du Bocage—Card-Parties at the Duke of
    Richmond’s—A Breakfast at Mrs. Montagu’s—Frederick, Prince of
    Wales—His Accomplishments—Breakfast Parties Yield to Evening
    Coteries—Origin of “Bluestocking”—Mr. Stillingfleet—Eminent
    Persons Who Met at the Assemblies of Mrs. Montagu, Mrs.
    Vesey, and Mrs. Ord—The Club—Sir Joshua Reynolds—Doctor
    Johnson—Hawkins—Beautiful Ceiling and Chimney-piece at Mrs.
    Montagu’s—Lord Chesterfield’s New House—Dangers Surrounding
    It in 1748—Doctor Johnson at Montagu House—Soame Jenyns’
    Epitaph on Johnson—Mrs. Garrick—Manner of Her First Appearance
    on the Stage—Lady Clermont’s Al Fresco Gatherings—Syllabubs
    in Berkeley Square—Footpads on Hay Hill—Garrick Recites
    from “Macbeth” at Lady Montagu’s—Lady Spencer’s Eyes—Doctor
    Johnson at Mrs. Vesey’s—Contest of Gallantry with Mrs.
    Buller—Miss Monkton, Afterward Lady Cork—Conversation
    of Mrs. Montagu—Walpole on Bluestockings—Hannah More’s
    Description of the _Bas-Bleu_ Meetings—The People Who
    Attended the Bluestocking Assemblies—Johnson’s Quarrel
    with Mrs. Montagu—His Life of Lyttelton—Horace Walpole—His
    Criticism on Mrs. Montagu—“Château Portman”—The Parnassus
    at Batheaston—Introduction of _Bouts-rimés_—Walpole’s
    Satirical Account of the Parnassus Fair—Mrs. Montagu in
    Montagu House—Mrs. Montagu as Vanessa, in _The Observer_—Miss
    Siddons—Miss Mitford on the Batheaston Meetings                    190

                              CHAPTER XII.

    Queen Charlotte—Miss Burney—The New House in Portman
    Square—Improvements in Her Property—Character of the French,
    Dutch, and English—Lord Edward Bentinck—Miss Cumberland—Lord
    Bristol—Mr. Brown’s Improvements at Sandleford—Bishop of
    Durham—Madame de Genlis—Mrs. Montagu’s “New Palace”—The
    Harcourts—Mrs. Montagu’s Advice to a Niece—Johnson’s “Lives of
    the Poets”—Sir Richard Jebb—Mrs. Montagu Sets Up a New Sort of
    Carriage by the Advice of Sir Richard Jebb—Miss Gregory—Letter
    to Morris Robinson’s Widow—Air-Balloons—The Prince of Wales—Is
    Hissed at the Theatre—The French Ambassador—French Bribery in
    England—Doctor Johnson’s Testimony to Mrs. Montagu                 218

                              CHAPTER XIII.

    Air-Balloons—Fire at Sandleford—Feather-Work—Mrs. Montagu
    at the Drawing-Rooms—Mr. Jerningham’s Lines on the Occasion
    of Her Fall There—Engagement of Her Heir and Nephew to
    Miss Charlton—Character of Her Nephew—Of Miss Charlton—Mr.
    Pitt—Marriage of Mrs. Montagu’s Heir—Breakfast at Salt
    Hill—Lord Lansdowne—Lady Sutherland—Lord Trentham—Declining
    Health of Mrs. Vesey—Lady Spencer—Lord Grimston—Mrs. Montagu
    Visits Her Newcastle Property—Lord Mount-Stewart—Lord
    Carlisle—Lord Ravensworth—Sir Henry Liddell—Cowper’s Verses
    on Mrs. Montagu—Employments of Young Mr. Montagu—His
    Maiden Speech Answered by Mr. Fox—Wraxall’s Allusion to
    It—General Montagu Matthew—His Disclaimer of Connection
    with Matthew Montagu—Southampton—London in Winter—The
    Commencement of Troubles in France—The Duke of Dorset
    Introduces a “Thé”—Described by Hannah More—The King’s
    Illness—Mr. Fox’s Illness—Lord Mount Edgcumbe—Bath—Mr.
    Montagu—Lord Harrowby—Party at Mrs. Montagu’s, at
    Which Burke Is Present—Mackenzie, Author of “The Man of
    Feeling”—Wilberforce—Great Dinners to Great People—Mrs.
    Montagu’s Failing Health—Mrs. Carter—Education of Girls—Mrs.
    Montagu’s Interest in the Subject—Summary of Her Life and
    Character                                                          232




List of Illustrations


                                                                      PAGE

    GARRICK AND HIS WIFE (_See page 162_)                    _Frontispiece_

    LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU                                           62

    “I ALLOWED MY FRIZEUSE TO PUT ON WHATEVER ROUGE WAS USUALLY WORN”  150

    THE MINUET                                                         186

    ON THE SEA-WALL AT SOUTHAMPTON                                     245




A Lady of the Last Century




CHAPTER I.


Elizabeth Robinson, who became so well known, subsequently, as Mrs.
Montagu, belongs altogether to the eighteenth century. She was born at
York, in October, 1720. She died in the last year of that century, 1800.
Miss Robinson was of a family, the founder of which, William Robinson, a
London merchant, but a descendant of a line of Scottish barons, bought,
in 1610, the estate of Rokeby, in Yorkshire, from Sir Thomas Rokeby,
whose ancestors had held it from the time of the Conquest. Her father,
Matthew Robinson, was an only son of a cadet branch of the Robinsons. He
was a member of the University of Cambridge, where he wooed the Muses
less ardently than he did Miss Elizabeth Drake, a beautiful heiress, whom
he married when he was only eighteen years of age. The very young couple
settled at Edgeley, in Yorkshire; but the husband (owner, through his
wife, of more than one estate in the country) preferred the shady side of
Pall Mall to fields of waving corn or groves vocal with nightingales.

Of the twelve children of this marriage, seven sons and two daughters
survived their youth. The daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah, were endowed
with the same literary tastes. Sarah wrote the more books, but Elizabeth
is the better remembered. The church, the law, politics, and commerce
attracted one or other of the sons.

In 1730, the head of the elder branch of the Robinsons, Thomas, was
created a baronet. He was that famous Long Tom Robinson of whom so many
well-known stories are told. Chesterfield slightly touched him in an
epigram, and Walpole seldom referred to him without a sarcasm. At the
coronation of George the Third, Sir Thomas was mock Duke of Normandy,
who, with an equally English and mock Duke of Aquitaine, was supposed
to indicate that the King of England was as much King of France, by
the grace of God, as he pretended to be. Long Sir Thomas was so truly
an Englishman that he went to France, and into French society, in his
hunting-suit. A satirical French abbé, hearing his name and looking at
his marvellous attire, gravely asked him if he were Robinson Crusoe.

Long Sir Thomas Robinson sold Rokeby to the Morritts in 1769. When he
died, in 1777, his title went to his next surviving brother, Richard.
This Richard was an English clergyman, who, in 1731, had commenced a
successful career in Ireland, as chaplain to two viceroys, and he was
successively Bishop of Killala, of Leighlin and Ferns, and of Kildare.
Finally, he was raised to the dignity of Archbishop of Armagh, primate of
Ireland. In the year that Sir Thomas died, Richard was created an Irish
peer, Baron Rokeby of Armagh, with remainder to Mrs. Montagu’s father,
Matthew Robinson. The father did not live to succeed to the title, but
his son Matthew did. The present Lord Rokeby is Mrs. Montagu’s great
grandnephew, and was born when she was yet living, A. D. 1798. The first
lord figures largely in this lady’s letters. His good works made him
popular in Ireland, which his Grace found to be a fine country to live
out of, as much as was, more or less, consistent with duty. He was one
of the best-known characters at Bath during successive seasons; he also
suffered much from the gout; but he endured with alacrity all the port
and claret that were necessary to keep it out of his archiepiscopal
stomach.

Thus much for Mrs. Montagu’s family. She derived from it a certain
distinction; but she enjoyed greater advantage, for a time at least, from
the marriage of her maternal grandmother, who took for her second husband
the learned and celebrated Dr. Conyers Middleton. Doctor Middleton’s home
was at Cambridge, where a few of Miss Robinson’s youthful years were
profitably and curiously spent.

Curiously—from the method which the biographer of Cicero took with the
bright and intelligent girl. Among the divines, scholars, philosophers,
travellers, men of the world who were, together or in turn, to be met
with at Doctor Middleton’s house, the figure of the silent, listening,
and observant little maid was always to be seen. Her presence there was
a part of her education. Doctor Middleton trained her to give perfect
attention to the conversation, and to repeat to him all that she could
retain of it, after the company had dispersed. When she had to speak of
what she did not well understand, Doctor Middleton enlightened his little
pupil. This process not only filled her young mind with knowledge, but
made her eager in the pursuit of more.

How readily she received impressions at an early age, and how indelibly
they were stamped on her memory, she has herself recorded. “One of the
strongest pictures in my mind,” she wrote to Lord Lyttelton, in 1759, “is
the funeral of a Dean of York, which I saw performed with great solemnity
in the cathedral, when I was about four years old. Whether the memory
of it, added to the present objects, may not have made the place appear
the more awful to me, I do not know; but I was never so affected by any
edifice.” She loved York, and in her early Yorkshire home the plan of
education went far in advance of the views, and perhaps of the powers, of
family governesses. Masters, as well as mistresses, were there for the
instruction of both sons and daughters; but Elizabeth’s father sharpened
and stimulated her intellect by encouraging her to make smart repartees
to his own witty or severe judgments. In this cudgelling of brains
Matthew had great delight till he found that his daughter was too much
for him at his most favourite weapons. Matthew then bit his lips, and
ceased to offer challenge or give provocation.

Matthew Robinson’s wife seems to have been educated according to the
traditions of a school founded in 1673 for the purpose of raising women
to the dignity and usefulness which distinguished their ancestresses.
The lady, Mrs. Makin, who originated this school for English maidens,
stated her object in an essay, of which a few words may be said, as
illustrative of a system of female education in England which, founded
nearly half a century before Elizabeth Robinson was born, had not lost
all its influence till after she herself was to be reckoned among learned
young ladies. The work in question was called “An Essay to revive the
Ancient Education of Gentlewomen in Religion, Manners, Arts, and Tongues:
With an Answer to the Objections against this way of Education.” In the
dedication to the Lady Mary, daughter of James, Duke of York, the author
says: “The barbarous custom to breed women low is grown general amongst
us, and hath prevailed so far, that it is verily believed that women are
not endowed with such reason as man.” Of old, Mrs. Makin says, women
were highly educated; but now, “not only learning, but virtue itself,
is scorned and neglected as pedantic things, fit only for the vulgar.”
The remedy enjoined for this matter is thus stated: “Were a competent
number of schools erected to educate Ladies ingeniously, methinks I see
how ashamed men would be of their ignorance, and how industrious the next
generation would be to wipe off the reproach!” The author adds: “Let not
your Ladyship be offended that I do not, as some have wittily done, plead
for female preëminence. To ask too much, is the way to be denied all.”

To prove that women were formerly educated in arts and tongues, the
author names a score and more of Greek, Roman, and other ladies
celebrated for their proficiency in those respects.

“How,” asks the author, “could the Sibyls have invented heroic, or Sappho
‘sapphick,’ or Corinna have thrice beaten Pindar at lyric verses, if they
had not been highly educated?” And to prove that the young ladies of
both Greece and Rome were instructed in all kinds of good literature, the
writer refers to a learned duel between twenty ladies a side, from each
nation, in which the Grecian women came off the better in philosophy, and
the Roman superior in oratory.

As instances of admirably educated English women, the following persons
are named, with much eulogistic comment:

The Lady Jane Gray. The “present Duchess of Newcastle, who, by her
own genius, rather than any timely instruction, overtops many grave
Gown-men.” The Countess Dowager of Huntingdon, a pupil of Mrs. Makin’s;
“well she understands Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Spanish,” and
“what a proficient she is in arts subservient to Divinity, in which (if I
durst, I would tell you) she excels.” The Princess Elizabeth, daughter to
King Charles the First, to whom Mrs. Makin was tutoress, “at nine years
old, could write, read, and in some measure understand Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, French, and Italian: had she lived, what a miracle she would have
been of her sex. Mrs. Thorold, daughter of the Lady Car, in Lincolnshire,
was excellent in philosophy, and all sorts of learning. I cannot, without
injury, forget the Lady Mildmay and Doctor Love’s daughters: their worth
and excellency in learning is yet fresh in the memory of many men.”
Finally, as the greatest sample of all, the author describes Queen
Elizabeth at some length, who, “according to Ascham, read more Greek in a
day than many of the doctors of her time did Latin in a week.”

In the Postscript to the above essay, the following passages occur:

“If any enquire where this education may be performed, such may be
informed that a school is lately erected for Gentlewomen, at Tottenham
High Cross, within four miles of London, on the road to Ware, where Mrs.
Makin is governess, who was formerly tutoress to the Princess Elizabeth,
daughter to King Charles the First. Where, by the blessing of God,
Gentlewomen may be instructed in the Principles of religion, and in all
manner of sober and virtuous Education: more particularly in all things
ordinarily taught in other schools.

    “As Works of all sorts }
    Dancing                }
    Musick                 } Half the time to
    Singing                } be spent in these
    Writing                } things.
    Keeping accompts       }

“The other half to be employed in gaining the Latin and French tongues;
and those that please may learn Greek and Hebrew, the Italian and
Spanish: in all which this Gentlewoman hath a competent knowledge.

“Gentlewomen of eight or nine years old, that can read well, may be
instructed in a year or two (according to their parts) in the Latin and
French tongues; by such plain and simple Rules, accommodated to the
Grammar of the English tongue, that they may easily keep what they have
learned, and recover what they shall lose; as those that learn Musick by
Notes.

“Those that will bestow longer time may learn the other languages
aforementioned, as they please.

“Repositories also for Visibles shall be prepared; by which, from
beholding the things, Gentlewomen may learn the Names, Natures, Values,
and Use of Herbs, Shrubs, Trees, Mineral-pieces, Metals, and Stones.

“Those that please may learn Limning, Preserving, Pastry, and Cookery.

“Those that will allow longer time may attain some general knowledge in
Astronomy, Geography, but especially in Arithmetick and History.

“Those that think one language enough for a Woman, may forbear the
Languages, and learn only Experimental Philosophy, and more or fewer of
the other things aforementioned, as they incline.

“The Rate certain shall be £20 per annum: But if a competent improvement
be made in the Tongues, and the other things aforementioned, as shall be
agreed upon, then something more will be expected. But the parents shall
judge what shall be deserved by the Undertaker.

“Those that think these Things Improbable, or Impracticable, may have
further account every Tuesday, at Mr. Mason’s Coffee-house, in Cornhill,
near the Royal Exchange; and Thursdays, at the ‘Bolt and Tun,’ in Fleet
Street, between the hours of three and six in the afternoon, by some
person whom Mrs. Makin shall appoint.”

Mrs. Makin’s school, under herself and her successors, and her system,
adopted by imitators, had good influences in their “little day.” Those
influences continued beyond that period in families like that of Mrs.
Robinson, where every variety of knowledge was accounted valuable. It was
a period when grace of carriage was held by others to be as necessary as
a well-stored mind; and very popular in some English households was a
little volume from the French, called “The Art of being Easy at all Times
and in all Places, written chiefly for the use of a Lady of Quality.”

In the Robinson family, personal grace came naturally; but the mind was
cultivated. Indeed, in that household, the wits were not allowed to rust.
It was the delight of those bright girls and boys to maintain or to
denounce, for the sport’s sake, some particular argument set up for the
purpose. Occasionally the pleasant skirmish would develop into something
like serious battle. The triumphant laugh of the victor would now and
then bring tears to the eyes of the vanquished. At such times there was
a moderator of the excited little assembly. The mother of the young
disputants sat at a table close at hand. She read or worked; sometimes
she listened smilingly, sometimes was not without apprehension. But she
was equal to the emergency. Her children recognised her on such occasions
as “Mrs. Speaker;” and that much-loved dignitary always adjourned the
house when victory was too hotly contested, or when triumph seemed likely
to be abused.

It is hard to believe that Elizabeth Robinson, who was the liveliest
of these disputants, assumed or submitted to the drudgery of copying
the whole of the _Spectator_, when she was only eight years of age. Her
courage and perseverance, however, were equal to such a task; but her
energies were often turned in another direction. She was as unreservedly
given to dancing, she tells us, as if she had been bitten by a tarantula.
She as ardently loved fun—“within the limits of becoming mirth”—as she
devotedly pursued learning.

“My mind used to sleep,” she writes to Lord Lyttelton, “eight or ten
hours without even the visitation of a dream, and rose in the morning,
like Aurora, throwing freshness and joy on every object, tricked itself
out in sunbeams, and set in gay and glowing colours.” With a head
furnished with knowledge beyond that possessed by most girls of her age;
with feet restless and impatient to join any dance anywhere; she had
a heart most sisterly and tenderly attuned to love for, and sympathy
with, her brothers. “I have seven of them,” she wrote, while she was yet
in her teens, “and would not part with one for a kingdom. If I had but
one, I should be distracted about him. Surely, no one has so many or so
good brothers.” This is only one out of a score of such testimonies of
sisterly affection.

There are some significant traces of the effects of this lady’s early
training in the letters which she wrote from the time she was twelve
years of age till she had reached her twenty-second year, when she
married. These letters were addressed to a friend older than herself,
Lady Margaret Cavendish Harley, who, in 1734, became Duchess of Portland.
They are sprightly and forcible, but they are not “girlish.” In one of
the earliest, written at Horton, near Hythe, Kent (one of the estates
which Matthew gained by his marriage), she says: “My papa is a little
vapoured, and last night, after two hours’ silence, he broke out into
a great exclamation against the country, and concluded by saying, that
living in the country was sleeping with one’s eyes open. He has ordered
me to put a double quantity of saffron in his tea.” For what purpose this
remedy was ordered, may be guessed from a passage in a comedy of Charles
the Second’s time, by Howard. “Saffron-posset-drink is very good against
the heaviness of the spirits,” says Mrs. Arbella, in “The Committee.”

Young Miss Robinson was fond of illustrating her early letters by images
taken from life, and set up after the fashion of popular novelists. One
of these figures occurs in a letter addressed to the Duchess of Portland,
in May, 1734, when the lively writer had not yet completed her fourteenth
year: “I am surprised that my answer to your Grace’s letter has never
reached your hands. I sent it immediately to Canterbury, by the servant
of a gentleman who dined here; and I suppose he forgot to put it in the
post.... If my letter were sensible, what would be its mortification,
that, instead of having the honour to kiss your Grace’s hands, it must
live confined in the footman’s pocket, with greasy gloves, rotten apples,
mouldy nuts, a pack of dirty cards, and the only companion of its sort—a
tender epistle from his sweetheart, ‘tru till Deth;’ perhaps, by its
situation, subject to be kicked by his master every morning, till at
last, by ill-usage and rude company, worn too thin for any other use, it
may make its exit by lighting a tobacco-pipe.”

The young writer of the above was not only remarkably observant of all
that passed around her, but generally showed her reading by a quotation
that should give force to the description of what she observed. Thus,
in writing to her dear duchess, who had been suffering from fever (A. D.
1734), Miss Robinson remarks: “I shall put on as musty a face at your
Grace’s fever as Miss W—— could make at the face of Doctor Sandys, to
describe the horror of which would require at least as tragic a bard
as Lee; for then she would look, good gods! how she would look!” This
may smack of priggishness; but there was nothing of that, nor of false
prudery, in Elizabeth Robinson’s character. Before she was fifteen, she
had some experiences not likely to fall to the lot of young ladies of
the present day. “I have in winter,” she writes to Mrs. Anstey, “gone
eight miles to dance to the music of a blind fiddler, and returned
at two o’clock in the morning, mightily pleased that I had been so
well entertained.” Indeed, young ladies seem to have been thoroughly
emancipated, and to have been abroad in the “wee sma’ hours ’ayont the
twal,” enjoying all the perils consequent on such rather wild doings.
In 1738, when our young lady was not quite eighteen, she went, with
two of her brothers and her sister, eight miles to the play, from her
Kentish home; and she tells the Duchess of Portland, “After the play,
the gentlemen invited all the women to a supper at the inn, where we
stayed till two o’clock in the morning, and then all set out for our
respective homes.” The frolicsome damsel adds, “Before I had gone two
miles, I had the pleasure of being overturned, at which I squalled for
joy.” It was, perhaps, this indulgence in fun and late hours, joined to
much solid reading, that made this youthful reveller and student hate
early morning hours as she hated cards. But her “quality” was favourably
shown in her ready observance of the law and custom of the house in which
she happened to be a sojourner. There is no better proof than this of
what is understood by “good breeding.” She would rather have gone down
to breakfast at noon than at nine; but if the breakfast-hour of her
entertainers was at eight, there was the young guest at table, fresh
as the rose and brighter than the dawn. She amusingly illustrated this
matter once, by writing from a house where she was tarrying, “Six o’clock
in the morning; New Style.”

In fact, few things came amiss to her. No doubt she preferred
Mary-le-bone Gardens to those at Edgeley or at Horton. She was happy
in both, but happier in the fashionable gardens nearer London; for
Mary-le-bone was still out of town. Elizabeth Robinson’s day is
described, on one of these occasions, as breakfasting in Mary-le-bone
Gardens at ten; giving a sitting to Zincke after midday, for her
well-known miniature portrait as Anne Boleyn; and spending the evening
at Vauxhall. At the nobility’s private balls given in the first-named
suburban paradise, Elizabeth Robinson was amongst the gayest and fairest
of the revellers. Before the dance began in those days the ladies’ fans
were thrown upon a table, and the men then drew them for partners, each
taking for his own the lady to whom the fan which he had drawn, and which
he presented to her, belonged. It was not all breakfasting and dancing
in those gardens. There was a large plunging-bath there, much used by
fashionable Naiads, who rose from silken couches, donned a bathing-dress,
took headers into the waters, gambolled in and under them till they were
breathless, and then went home to dress for other enjoyments. When the
Duchess of Portland heard of her young friend’s plunging delights, she
expressed herself “frightened out of her wits.” But, on the other hand,
Lord Dupplin wrote a couple of verses on this particular Naiad, and in
honour of the poet, the laughing nymph again and again took headers into
the glad waters of Mary-le-bone.

The home scenes of her life in the country come out strong in contrast
with those of her life in London. In a lively sketch of one of these
scenes, drawn for the duchess’s amusement, the youthful artist thus
joyously describes herself and her doings:

“One common objection to the country is, one sees no faces but those of
one’s own family; but my papa thinks he has found a remedy for that,
by teaching me to draw; but then he husbands these faces in so cruel
a manner, that he brings me sometimes a nose, sometimes an eye, at a
time; but on the king’s birthday, as it was a festival, he brought me
out a whole face, with its mouth wide open.” In another letter, she
says: “I would advise you not to draw old men’s heads. It was the rueful
countenance of Socrates or Seneca that first put me out of conceit with
it. Had my papa given me the blooming faces of Adonis and Narcissus, I
might have been a very apt scholar; and when I told him I found their
great beards difficult to draw, he gave me St. John’s head in a charger.
So, to avoid the speculation of dismal faces, which, by my art, I
dismalised ten times more than they were before, I threw away my pencil.
If I drew a group of little figures, I made their countenances so sad
and their limbs so distorted, that from a set of laughing Cupids, they
looked like the tormented infants in Herod’s cruelty, and smiling, became
like Rachel weeping for her children.” After more in this strain, she
calls herself the best hospital painter; “for I never drew a figure that
was not lame or blind, and they had all something of the horrible in
their countenances ... you would have thought they had seen their own
faces in the glass.”

Her failure in the above respect at home found ample compensation in
success at Tunbridge Wells, at Bath, and at country races, at all of
which Elizabeth Robinson’s beauty attracted all eyes; her vivacious wit
charmed or stung all ears. At these places, she studied life quite as
much as she enjoyed its pleasures; and she could not go down a dance at
the Wells or at “The Bath,” without making little mental epigrams on the
looks of newly married people, the manners of lovers, and the doings of
eccentric folk. These found their way, in writing, to her ducal friend,
who had already bestowed on the restless maiden the nickname of “La
Petite Fidget.”

At Bath, she was as restless, as observant, and as epigrammatic as at
Tunbridge Wells. She describes Bath life, in 1740, as consisting all the
morning of “How d’ye does?” and all night of “What’s Trumps?” The women,
in the “Ladies’ Coffee House,” talk only of diseases. The men, “except
Lord Noel Somerset, are altogether abominable. There is not one good; no,
not one.” Among the lady eccentrics, was a certain dowager duchess, who,
said Miss Robinson, “bathes, and, being very tall, had nearly drowned a
few women in the Cross Bath; for she had ordered it to be filled till it
reached her chin; and so all those who were below her stature, as well as
her rank, were obliged to come out or drown.”

The glance thus obtained into the Bath itself only gives, as it were, a
momentary view of the fashionable people in those fashionable waters.
They who compare old accounts with what is now to be seen will agree that
he who looks, at the present day, into the dull, dark, and simmering
waters can have no conception of the jollity, frolic, riot, dissipation,
and indecorum which once reigned there. There was a regular promenade
in the waters, and the promenaders were of both sexes. They were in
bathing-costumes, and walked with the water nearly up to their necks. The
heads of the shorter people appeared to be floating. At the same time,
they were frolicking, or flirting, or otherwise amusing themselves. Those
who came for sanitary purposes were hanging on by the rings in the wall,
and were sedulously parboiling themselves. The Cross Bath was the famous
quality bath. Handsome japanned bowls floated before the ladies, laden
with confectionery, or with oils, essences, and perfumery for their use.
Now and then one of these bowls would float away from its owner, and her
swain would float after it, bring it again before her, and, if he were in
the humour, would turn on his back and affect to sink to the bottom, out
of mere rapture at the opportunity of serving her. The spectators in the
gallery looked on, laughed, or applauded till the hour for closing came.
Therewith came half-tub chairs, lined with blankets, whose owners plied
for fares, and carried home the steaming freight at a sharp trot and a
shilling for the job.

Elizabeth Robinson’s friendship with Lord Lyttelton is well known. At a
court assembly, at St. James’s, in 1740, the gentleman in question was
present. He was then plain Mr. Lyttelton, son and heir of Sir Thomas, and
about a year over thirty. The young lady observed him in the brilliant
scene more closely and more approvingly than she did others. “The men
were not fine,” she writes to her Grace; but she makes exception. “Mr.
Lyttelton was, according to Polonius’ instruction, rich, not gaudy;
costly, but not exprest in fancy.” In her eyes and to her mind, he was
a perfect gentleman and scholar. “Mr. Lyttelton has something of an
elegance in all his compositions, let the subject be ever so trifling....
Happy is the genius that can drink inspiration at every stream and gather
similes with every nosegay.” Alas! the elegance of the last century
embraced much that was otherwise. The present Lord Lyttelton would not
dare to read aloud to a company of ladies and gentlemen the once popular
and elegant poem which his ancestor addressed to Belinda!

In the days here referred to, there were two circumstances to which
all maidens looked forward as their probable but not equally desirable
lot, namely, marriage and the smallpox. The latter fell on Elizabeth
Robinson’s sister Sarah, when the family were resident at Horton, near
Hythe. The elder sister was sent to a neighbouring gentleman farmer’s,
so called solely because he tilled a few acres of his own. Here, the
Iphigenia aroused unwonted sympathies in the breast of the Squire Cymons.
She would have nothing to do with furthering the humanising process of
those dull and thirsty clods. Their scarlet waistcoats did not impress
her like Mr. Lyttelton’s birthday suit at court. One heaving swain, she
thought, would make an admirable Polyphemus! He stared at her just as
the calves did; but the calves had instinct enough not to say anything
to her. They were preferable to the squire, to whom the young girl, with
her bright intellect, could not be persuaded “to lend out her liking on
land security.” There is a world of meaning in what she wrote on that
occasion to her correspondent: “I liked neither him nor myself any better
for all the fine things he said.” She was a creature not to be wooed or
won by a tippling, foxhunting clown, rich in the possession of dirt. She
had finely strung sensibilities, which would not attune themselves to
“the loud laugh which speaks the vacant mind.” Mrs. Pendarves, who saw
much of her in the town and country mansions of the Duchess of Portland,
recognised the above fact. “Fidget,” she wrote, in the year last named,
“is a most interesting creature; but I shall not attempt to draw a
likeness.... There are some delicate touches that would foil the skill of
a much abler artist than I pretend to be.”

Just then her fears for her sister were even stronger than her
antipathies for her Kentish lovers. In order to satisfy her eagerness
to be assured that the sister she loved was out of danger, the latter
was allowed to walk veiled into the fields, within speaking distance of
the other. Veiled, because she had cruelly suffered, and it was thought
better not to shock the elder sister by a sight of the devastation which
the foul disease had worked temporarily on the beauty of the younger.
Thus, the sisters stood, for a brief time, speaking all that love and
hope suggested, and the sound of the convalescent sister’s voice fell
like delicious music on the heart of the listener.

With renewed health came uninterrupted happiness, and gay mingling in
gay society, and audacity of expression when describing it. Elizabeth
Robinson had felt almost as much contempt for the fops among the soldiers
of her day, as disgust for the country Polyphemuses who made her wrathful
with their wooing. Very severe was she on “the scarlet beaux,” who were
ordered to Flanders. “I think,” she says, “they will die of a panic and
save their enemies’ powder. Well! they are proper gentlemen. Heaven
defend the nunneries! I will venture a wager Flanders increases in the
christenings more than in the burials of the week.”

In describing changes in fashion, she makes singular application of her
historical knowledge. In 1741, she wrote to her sister, from town: “I do
not know what will become of your fine shape, for there is a fashionable
make which is very strange. I believe they look in London as they did in
Rome after the Rape of the Sabines!”

As this fair young Elizabeth remembered her history on one occasion, so
did she show on another that she had not forgotten her church catechism.
“As for modern marriages,” wrote the lady, just then going out of her
teens, “they are great infringers of the baptismal vow; for it is
commonly the pomps and vanities of this wicked world on one side, and the
sinful lusts of the flesh on the other.”

There are traces throughout Miss Robinson’s early letters of how it went
with her own heart and its sympathies. In her eighteenth year, she wrote
to the Duchess of Portland: “I never saw one man that I loved.” She added
to this assertion such an endless list of virtues, merits, qualities,
etc., which she expected to find in that happy individual, as to lead to
the conclusion that a monster so faultless would never be created. She
even half-acknowledged as much; for she wrote, “I am like Pygmalion, in
love with a picture of my own drawing; but I never saw an original like
it in my life. I hope when I do, I shall, as some poet says, find the
‘statue warm.’” In her nineteenth year, she gave utterance to a pretty
petulance in these words: “I wish some of our neighbours had married two
and twenty years ago; we should have had a gallant young neighbourhood;
but they have lost time, and we have lost lovers by that delay.” To a
remark of her sister’s, that, if she were not heedful, some handsome fool
would win her in spite of herself, she replied, that, to win her heart,
“it must be rather fair-spoken than fair-faced.” She was not much moved
when rivals in beauty passed into the married state before her. In 1741,
there are the following autobiographical details in letters to the wife
of the Reverend Mr. Freind, of Canterbury: “I saw some fine jewels that
are to adorn my fair enemy, Mrs. S——. I beheld them without envy, and
was proud to think that a woman who is thought worthy to wear jewels to
adorn her person, should do me the honour to envy and hate me.... Surely,
of all vanities, that of jewels is the most ridiculous; they do not even
tend to the order of dress, beauty, and cleanliness; for a woman is
not a jot the handsomer or cleaner for them.” And again: “I am confined
again by a little feverishness. I thought, as it was a London fever, it
might be polite, so I carried it to the Ridotto, court, and opera, but
it grew perverse and stubborn, so I put it into a white hood and double
handkerchief, and kept it by the fireside these three days, and it is
better; indeed, I hope it is worn out. On Saturday, I intend to go to
Goodman’s Fields, to see Garrick act ‘Richard the Third’ that I may get
one cold from a regard to sense. I have sacrificed enough to folly, in
catching colds at the great puppet-shows in town.”

Subsequently, she would have her friend’s husband believe that she was
another fair vestal of the west, who meant to pass through the world
in maiden meditation, fancy-free. She writes to the Reverend Dean of
Canterbury: “I have lately studied my own foibles, and have found that
I should make a very silly wife and an extremely foolish mother, and
so have as far resolved as is consistent with deference to reason and
advice, never to trouble any man or to spoil any children.” This was
but banter. Only the year before, her sister having made a jest of her
love for heroes of antiquity, Elizabeth Robinson oracularly answered, “I
believe I shall do my errand before many people think; but prudence shall
be my guide. A living man,” exclaims the wise virgin, “is better than a
dead hero!”

In 1741, this decided young lady was wooed by a fashionable lover, and
also by a noble lover who was her senior by a good many years. The former
was dismissed, and the young lady wrote to her sister in the above year:
“Poor M. B. takes his misfortune so to heart, that I really pity him;
but I have no balsam of heartsease for him. If he should die, I will have
him buried in Westminster Abbey, next to the woman who died with the
prick of a finger, for it is quite as extraordinary; and he shall have
his figure languishing in wax, with ‘Miss Robinson fecit,’ written over
his head. I really compassionate his sufferings and pity him; but though
I am as compassionate, I am as cold as charity. He pours out his soul in
lamentations to his friends, and all—

    ‘But the nymph that should redress his wrong,
    Attend his passion, and approve his song!’

... I am glad he has such a stock of flesh to waste upon.... I am really
quite fat; and if there were not some hope that I might get lean again,
by raking in town, I should be uneasy at it. I am now the figure of
‘Laugh-and-be-fat,’ and begin to think myself a comely personage. Adieu!
Supper is on table.”

And the saucy nymph “really did her errand” before many thought. She
declined the offer of the man of fashion, and said “Yes” to the suit of
the older scholar and gentleman.

The practical conclusion came in due time. In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_
for August, A. D. 1742, there is the record of eleven marriages. Four of
them saucily chronicle the fortunes of the brides. Among the other seven
may be read this brief announcement: “August 5, Edward Montagu, Esq.,
member for Huntingdon, to the eldest daughter of Matthew Robinson, of
Horton, in Kent, Esq.”




CHAPTER II.


Edward Montagu was the son of Charles, who was the fifth son of the first
Earl of Sandwich. He was a well-endowed gentleman, both intellectually
and materially, and he adopted the Socratic maxim, that a wise man keeps
out of public business. He is described as being “of a different turn
from his wife, fond of the severer studies, particularly mathematics.”
Under his influence, the bounding Iambe from Horton gradually grew into
the “Minerva,” as she was called by friends as well as epigrammatists.
Mr. Montagu was a mathematician of great eminence; and a coal-owner of
great wealth. He was a man of very retired habits and great amiability.
He loved to puzzle fellow mathematicians with problems, and he did not
dislike coals to be high in price; but he urged other owners to incur the
odium of “making the advance.”

Mr. and Mrs. Montagu were married in London, and did not immediately
leave it. Mr. Freind officiated at the marriage ceremony. The bride, in a
note to Mrs. Freind, expressed her infinite obligation to him, “for not
letting the knot be tied by the hands of an ordinary bungler.” On Friday,
August 6th, the day after her marriage, the bride wrote to the Duchess
of Portland: “If you will be at home to-morrow, at two o’clock, I will
pass an hour with you; but pray send me word to Jermyn Street at eleven,
whether I can come to you without meeting any person at Whitehall but the
duke; to every one else pray deny your dressing-room. Mr. Freind will
tell your Grace I really behaved magnanimously; not one cowardly tear, I
assure you, did I shed at the solemn altar; my mind was in no mirthful
mood indeed. I have a great hope of happiness. The world, as you say,
speaks well of Mr. Montagu, and I have many obligations to him which must
gain my particular esteem; but such a change of life must furnish one
with a thousand anxious thoughts.”

Shortly after, the newly wedded pair travelled to one of Mr. Montagu’s
estates in the north; but not alone. They were accompanied by the bride’s
sister. The custom of sending a chaperon with a young married couple
prevailed. Indeed, down to a comparatively recent period, some husbands
and wives, who were married in Yorkshire, may remember that to have
started on their wedding trip, or their journey home, without a third
person, would have been considered lamentable indecorum.

The bride thus speaks of the journey and the new home. To Mrs. Freind,
she writes:

“We arrived at this place (Allerthorpe, Yorkshire), after a journey of
six days through fine countries. Mr. Montagu has the pleasure of calling
many hundred pounds a year about his house his own, without any person’s
property interfering with it. I think it is the prettiest estate and in
the best order I ever saw: large and beautiful meadows for riding or
walking in, and all as neat as a garden, with a pretty river (the Swale)
winding about them, on which we shall sometimes go in boats. I propose
to visit the almshouse very soon. I saw the old women, with the bucks
upon their sleeves, at church, and the sight gave me pleasure. Heraldry
does not always descend with such honour as when charity leads her by the
hand.” A little later, Mrs. Montagu writes thus to the duchess:

“The sun gilds every object, but I assure you, it is the only fine
thing we have had; for the house is old and not handsome: it is very
convenient, and the situation extremely pleasant. We found the finest
peaches, nectarines, and apricots that I have ever eat.” Then comes a
dash of the old sauciness. She rejoices at the news the duchess had
communicated to her, that Lord Dupplin, who once wrote verses on her
taking a header into the Mary-le-bone plunging-baths, was the father of
an heir to his title and estate. “I think no man better deserves a child.
The end justifies the means; else, what should one say for his extreme,
surprising, amazing fondness for the lady?... I am glad Lord Dupp enjoys
his liberty and leisure. The repose a gentleman takes after the honour of
sending a son into the world, may be called ease with dignity.”

Further evidences of the course of her married life are thus afforded by
herself. On the 24th of August, Mrs. Montagu tells the duchess:

“It must be irksome to submit to a fool. The service of a man of sense is
perfect freedom. Where the will is reasonable, obedience is a pleasure;
but to run of a fool’s errand all one’s life is terrible.” And three days
later, she writes to Mrs. Freind: “I think we increase in esteem, without
decaying in complaisance; and I hope we shall always remember Mr. Freind
and the 5th with thankfulness.”

Early in October, Mr. Montagu left his wife, parliamentary business
calling him to town. She dreaded the invasion of condoling neighbours,
and not without reason. “We have not been troubled with any visitors
since Mr. Montagu went away; and could you see how ignorant, how
awkward, how absurd, and how uncouth the generality of people are
in this country, you would look upon this as no small piece of good
fortune. For the most part, they are drunken and vicious, and worse than
hypocrites—profligates. I am very happy that drinking is not within our
walls. We have not had one person disordered by liquor since we came
down, though most of the poor ladies in the neighbourhood have had more
hogs in their drawing-room than ever they had in their hog-sty.” One
visitor was unwelcomely assiduous. She thus hits him off to the duchess,
as a portrait of a country beau and wit: “Had you seen the pains this
animal has been taking to imitate the cringe of a beau, you would have
pitied him. He walks like a tortoise and chatters like a magpie.... He
was first a clown, then he was sent to the Inns of Court, where first
he fell into a red waistcoat and velvet breeches, then into vanity.
His light companions led him to the playhouse, where he ostentatiously
coquetted with the orange wenches, who cured him of the bad air of taking
snuff.... He then fell into the company of the jovial, till want of money
and want of taste led this prodigal son, if not to eat, to drink with
swine.... At last ... he returned to the country, where ... people treat
him civilly ... and one gentleman in the neighbourhood is so fond of him
as, I believe, to spend a great deal of money and most of his time upon
him.”

There are parts in the letter, from which the above is an extract, which
show a knowledge of London life, and of the consequences of leading it,
which is marvellous. In more lively strain, this Lady of the Last Century
moralised on marriage, under all its aspects, to the duchess; and she
joked upon and handled the same subject, in her letters to Mrs. Donellan,
with an astounding audacity, which was, however, not unnatural, in the
days when mothers read Aphra Behn aloud, and sons and daughters listened
to that arch-hussy’s highly flavoured comedies. Mrs. Montagu alludes
to similar reading when drawing an “interior” for the duchess’s good
pleasure, while Mr. Montagu was away. “I cannot boast of the numbers that
adorn our fireside. My sister and I are the principal figures; besides,
there is a round table, a square skreen, some books, and a work-basket,
with a smelling-bottle, when morality grows musty, or a maxim smells too
strong, as sometimes they will in ancient books.” She loved such books,
nevertheless, much better than she did the neighbours that would be
friendly.

“I do hourly thank my stars,” she says, “that I am not married to a
country squire or a beau; for in the country, all my pleasure is in my
own fireside, and that only when it is not littered with queer creatures.
One must receive visits and return them ... and if you are not more
happy in it in Nottinghamshire than I am in Yorkshire, I pity you most
feelingly.... Could you but see all the good folks that visit my poor
tabernacle, oh, your Grace would pity and admire!”

There was neither “squire” nor “beau” in the quiet, refined gentleman
she had married. The wife might well be sorry for the absence of such a
companion. He had left her, as she expressed it, to her mortification,
but with her approbation. She desired him to go, yet half-wished him to
stay; but at last “got out honour’s boots, and helped him to draw them
on.” “Since I married,” she writes to Mrs. Freind, “I have never heard
him say an ill word to any one; nor have I received one matrimonial
frown.” For a matrimonial life begun in August, clouds and showers in
October would have been an early prodigy indeed. To the duchess, who
asked more as to her characteristic doings than her feelings, Mrs.
Montagu replied:

_December 1742_—“Your Grace asks me if I have left off footing and
tumbling down-stairs. As to the first, my fidgetations are much spoiled;
sometimes I have cut a thoughtless caper, which has gone to the heart of
an old steward of Mr. Montagu’s, who is as honest as Trusty in the play
of ‘Grief à la Mode.’ I am told that he has never heard a hop that he has
not echoed with a groan.”

At another of Mr. Montagu’s houses, Sandleford, near Newbury, Berks,
his wife found more genial neighbours than in the north. She especially
disliked the rough Yorkshire folk, and she did not conceal the little
sympathy she had with “agreeable company.” She felt it a misfortune that
she found in few people the qualities that pleased her. Like him who
thanked God that he had not a heart that had room for many, she was
thankful that she could love only the chosen few; but she could bear with
twenty disagreeable people at once, while a tête-à-tête with a single one
she disliked made her sick. At Sandleford, she played the farmer’s wife’s
part without laying aside that of the lady, or, indeed, of the student.
She could rattle off the gayest description of a country fair, losing no
one of its characteristic features, and next write a long and thoughtful
dissertation over Gastrell, Bishop of Chester’s “Moral Proof of the
Certainty of a Future State.” The spirit of this dissertation, contained
in a long letter to her friend the duchess, is that of what would now be
called a Free Inquirer. She will not bow her intellect to any authority
of mortal man. She has hope, but lacks knowledge,—except that God is the
loving father of all,—and beyond that she evidently thinks the bishop
knows no more than she does.

The ladies around her, at Sandleford, were neither so well endowed
intellectually as herself, nor seemingly cared to be. Grottos and
shellwork showed the bias of their tastes. Mrs. Montagu speaks of
visiting one in Berkshire, which was the work of nine sisters (Leah),
who in disposition, as well as number, bore “some resemblance to the
Muses.” Lord Fane’s grotto at Basildon was one of the mild wonders of the
county. When she goes thence to London, depreciation of the latter shows
a growing love for rural life. She describes life in London as being—all
the morning at the senate, all the night at play. Party politics were
her aversion. They were “pursued for the benefit of individuals, not for
the good of the country.” The factious heads in London she described as
being very full of powder and very empty of thought. Happy in her own
home, she could mingle jesting with sympathy when referring to sorrows
which other people had to bear. “I pity Miss Anstey,” she wrote, “for
the loss of her agreeable cousin and incomparable lover. For my part, I
would rather have a merry sinner for a lover than so serious a saint!”
Her own husband, however, was not mirthful. He stuck to his mathematics,
understood his business as a coal-owner, loved his wife, and found life a
pleasant thing, particularly where his lines had fallen.

With the birth of a boy came new occupations, fresh delights, and
hitherto unknown anxieties. The nursing mother, remembering her old gay
time, declared that “for amusement there is no puppet-show like the
pleasant humour of my own Punch at Sandleford.” She fancied a bright
futurity for the boy; but her passing ecstasy was damped by the thought
of the perils and temptations by which life is beset. “Pity,” she wrote,
“that a man thinks it no more necessary to be as innocent as woman than
to be as fair.”

In March, 1744, when Mrs. Montagu and her sister thought it a remarkable
fear to travel from Sandleford, near Newbury, to Dover Street, London,
in one day, with only two breakdowns, Mrs. Montagu left her boy in the
Berkshire house. “It was no such easy matter,” she said, “to part with
little Punch, with whom we played and pleased ourselves as long as we
could afford time.” On her return to Sandleford, in July, the natural
beauty of the place seemed centred in little Punch’s person. “He is
now an admirable tumbler. I lay him down on a blanket on the ground
every morning, before he is dressed, and at night when he is stripped,
and there he rolls and tumbles about, to his great delight. If my
goddaughter,” adds the Last Century Lady to Doctor Freind, referring to
his daughter, “be not a prude, I should recommend the same practice to
her.”

The mother’s dreams and duties were soon brought to a melancholy close.
In September, 1744, the little heir had his first severe experience
of life, and, perhaps happily, it was too much for him. He died of
convulsions while cutting his teeth. A few joyous tumbles on the blanket,
a few kisses, a few honeyed words, and much pain at last, made up all
that he knew of life. Mrs. Montagu tempered her heavy grief with much
active occupation and study. She meekly attributed the loss of her son to
God’s visitation on her confidence in her own care and watchfulness. She
may be said to have lost with him her hopes, her joys, and her health for
a considerable period. In September, 1744, she wrote to the duchess:

“Poor Mr. Montagu shows me an example of patience and fortitude, and
endeavours to comfort me, though undoubtedly he feels as much sorrow
as I can do; for he loved his child as much as ever parent could do.”
She discovered all the virtues in Mr. Montagu that adversity needs, and
adversity only can show. “I never saw such resignation and fortitude
in any one; and in the midst of affliction there is comfort in having
such a friend and assistant. It was once my greatest happiness to see
him in possession of the dearest of blessings. It is now my greatest
comfort to see he knows how to resign it, and yet preserve the virtue and
dignity of his temper.” They never had another child; and, if they were
not altogether as happy as before, they were, at least, as cheerfully
resigned as heirless rich people could persuade themselves to be.
Occasionally, however, she envied happier mothers. Referring to one of
these, nearly twenty years later, who was then stricken by a profounder
grief, Mrs. Montagu wrote to Lord Lyttelon: “Poor Mrs. Stone, between
illness and affliction, is a melancholy object. I remember that after my
son was dead, I used to envy her her fine boy; but not being of a wicked
disposition, did earnestly wish she might not lose him. Poor woman! her
felicity lasted longer than mine, and so her grief must be greater: but
time is a sure comforter.”

Mrs. Montagu found relief for her sorrows, as well as for indisposition,
from which she suffered greatly at intervals, at Tunbridge Wells and in
small country gaieties. Thus, in 1745, at a country fair (ladies went to
such sports in those days), Mrs. Montagu was not more surprised to see
a gingerbread Admiral Vernon lying undisturbed on a basket of Spanish
nuts, than she was at Tunbridge Wells to behold grave Doctor Young and
old Colley Cibber on the most intimate terms. Mrs. Montagu, on the
Pantiles, asked the doctor how long he intended to stay, and his answer
was, “As long as your rival stays.” When this riddle was explained, the
“rival” proved to be the sun. People from all ends of the world then
congregated at the Wells, and Mrs. Montagu sketched them smartly, and
grouped them cleverly, in pen and ink. One of the best of these outline
sketches is that of a country parson, the vicar of Tunbridge, to whom
she paid a visit in company with Doctor Young and Mrs. Rolt. “The good
parson offered to show us the inside of his church, but made some
apology for his undress, which was a true canonical dishabille. He had
on a gray striped calamanco nightgown; a wig that once was white, but,
by the influence of an uncertain climate, turned to a pale orange; a
brown hat encompassed by a black hatband; a band somewhat dirty, that
decently retired under the shadow of his chin; a pair of gray stockings,
well mended with blue worsted, strong symptoms of the conjugal care and
affection of his wife, who had mended his hose with the very worsted she
had bought for her own.” The lively lady and her companions declined to
take refreshment at the parsonage, where, she made no doubt, they would
have been “welcomed by madam, in her muslin pinners and sarsnet hood;
who would have given us some mead and a piece of cake that she had made
in the Whitsun holidays, to treat her cousins.” After dinner at the
inn, the vicar joined them, “in hopes of smoking a pipe, but our doctor
hinted to him, that it would not be proper to offer any incense but sweet
praise to such goddesses as Mrs. Rolt and your humble servant. I saw a
large horn tobacco-box, with Queen Anne’s head upon it, peeping out of
his pocket.” Wherever Mrs. Montagu wended during this autumn of 1745,
she filled her letters with these pen-and-ink sketches of what she saw.
But that eventful year brought more serious duties. In 1745, when the
Jacobites were about to invade England, Mr. Montagu went from London to
York, to aid in raising and arming the people. The Yorkshire gentlemen
acted with great spirit, and stood by their homesteads instead of flying
to London. “Though it gives me uneasiness and anxiety,” wrote the young
wife, “I cannot wish those I love to act otherwise than consistently with
those principles of honour that have always directed their actions.” The
rebellion spoiled the London gaieties. Drums and routs had no longer a
fashionable meaning. “I have not heard of any assemblies since I came to
town; and, indeed, I think people frighten each other so much when they
meet, that there is little pleasure arising from society.... There is
not a woman in England, except Lady Brown, that has a song or tune in
her head, but, indeed, her ladyship is very unhappy at the suspension of
operas.”

The death of Mrs. Montagu’s mother, in the following year, drew from her
a tender and well-deserved tribute of affection in a touching and simple
letter to Mrs. Freind. In 1747, her friend, Mr. Lyttelton, lost his first
wife, and wrote a monody on her, for the public ear. The monody walks on
very high stilts, and occasionally falls and struggles on the ground.
Mrs. Montagu thought it had great merit, and that her friend would be
inconsolable; but Lyttelton brought out, the same year, his “Observations
on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul,” of which Mrs. Montagu was
a diligent reader and a constant eulogist. In less than two years, the
widower left unfinished a prettily begun epitaph to his Lucy, with whom
he had enjoyed six years of conjugal felicity, and married a daughter of
Sir Robert Rich. With her came a life of warfare, followed by a treaty
by which each party agreed to live at peace with, and wide apart from,
the other.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Montagu made friendly progresses to princely mansions in
various parts of the country. She had hearty welcome at all, from lay and
ecclesiastical nobles alike. This did not influence her critical eye. At
Wilton, then and now one of the best examples of an English nobleman’s
residence, she writes: “As to the statues and bustos, they certainly
are very fine, but I think too many. Heroes should not have so many
competitors, nor philosophers so much company; a respectable society may
be increased into a mob. I should, if they were mine, sell half of their
figures to purchase their works, which are, indeed, the images of wise
men.”

A cloud now came, and long rested, between her and the sun of her
happiness. The death, in 1748, of her brother “Tom,” a man of wit, taste,
and judgment, after her own heart; “the man in England for a point of
law,” as Chief Justice Lee remarked; a man who had accomplished much, and
who might have reasonably looked to the highest position, which could be
attained in his branch of the profession, as his own,—the death of such
a man, good, bright, aspiring, and qualified for success, was a loss to
his brilliant sister for which she never found compensation. “As for
this good young man,” she wrote, “I hoped it would rather have been his
business to have grieved for me. Mr. Montagu is most careful of us, and
I cannot, amidst my sorrow, help thanking Heaven for such a friend.” A
letter from her husband in London confirms this statement: “I long to
leave this place, and to be with you now, rather than at a time when you
have less occasion for a friend. Be sure that you are constantly in my
thoughts, and that no accidents of sickness or any other matter can work
any change in me, or make me be with less affection than I have been, my
dearest life, your most obliged and affectionate E. M.”

Compelled, subsequently, to repair to Bath for her health, she despised
no innocent amusement. “I want mechanic helps,” she said, “for my real
happiness, God knows, is lessened; and, though I have many relations
left, I reflect that even this circumstance makes me more liable to
have the same affliction repeated.” Then, after a week or two of
omnivorous reading and friendly intercourse, she writes to the duchess:
“Mrs. Trevanion, Lord Berkley of Stratton’s sister, goes away from us
to-morrow, which I am sorry for; she seems very agreeable and well-bred,
and has a thousand other good qualities that do not abound at our
morning coffee-house, where I meet her. Whist and the noble game of E.
O. employ the evening; three glasses of water, a toasted roll, a Bath
cake, and a cold walk, the mornings.... My physician says three months
will be necessary for me to drink the waters.... I am forced to dine by
myself, not yet being able to bear the smell of what common mortals call
a dinner. As yet I live with the fairies.... But here is another Mrs.
Montagu, who is like me, hath a long nose, pale face, thin cheeks, and
also, I believe, diets with fairies, and she is much better than when she
came, and many people give me the honour of her recovery.”

After returning to Sandleford, she began again to need, or to fancy she
needed, the restoring waters of Tunbridge. To Mrs. Anstey she wrote:

“I may, perhaps, trouble you to seek me some house about Mount
Elphinstone; for, to tell you the truth, I get as far from the busy
haunts of the place as I can; for it agrees neither with my inclination
nor health to be in the midst of what are called the diversions of the
place. An evening assembly in July is rather too warm; and, tell it not
in the regions of politeness, I had rather see a few glowworms on a green
in a warm summer’s evening than belles adorned with brilliants or beaux
bright with clinquant. I cannot be at Tunbridge before the beginning of
July. I am engaged to the nightingale and cuckoo for this month.”

Although continued ill-health kept Mrs. Montagu much in retirement after
she first went to Tunbridge, the Wells had their usual effect. She was
the centre of a circle of admiring friends; and when established for
months together at Tunbridge Wells, her coterie was a thing apart from
those of the Jews, Christians, and Heathens of all classes who crowded
the Pantiles or the assembly-rooms. Her letters sparkle with the figures
that flit through them. Some contemporary ladies of the last century
are thus sharply crayoned: “I think the Miss Allens sensible, and I
believe them good; but I do not think the Graces assisted Lucina at
their birth.... Lady Parker and her two daughters make a very remarkable
figure, and will ruin the poor mad woman of Tunbridge by outdoing her in
dress. Such hats, capuchins, and short sacks as were never seen! One of
the ladies looks like a state bed running upon castors. She has robbed
the valance and tester of a bed for a trimming. They have each of them a
lover. Indeed, as to the dowager, she seems to have no greater joys than
E. O. and a toad-eater can give her.” That word “toad-eater” was still in
its novelty as a slang term. In 1742, Walpole calls Harry Vane, afterward
Earl of Darlington, “Pulteney’s toad-eater.” In 1744, Sarah Fielding, in
“David Simple,” speaks of it as “a new word.” To Mr. Montagu, his wife
thus wrote:

    “MY DEAREST:—I had, this morning, the pleasure of your letter,
    which was in every respect agreeable, and in none more so than
    your having fixed your time for going to Sandleford, as I shall
    the sooner hope to see my best and dearest friend here.... I
    shall wish I could procure wings to bring me to you on the
    terrace at Sandleford, where I have passed so many happy hours
    in the conversation of the best of companions and kindest of
    friends; and I hope you will there recollect one who followed
    your steps as constantly as your shadow. I am still following
    them, for there are few moments in which my thoughts are not
    employed in you, and ever in the best and tenderest manner....
    The charms of Sandleford are strongly in my remembrance, but
    still I would have you find that they want your little friend.”

From the gaieties of Tunbridge Mrs. Montagu went to the residence of a
sage, Mr. Gilbert West. She found less pleasure among the sculpture and
paintings of Wilton than under Gilbert West’s modest roof at Wickham,
in whose master she saw “that miracle of the moral world, a Christian
poet;” and in Mrs. West, something more than a tenth Muse or a fourth
Grace. To conversations with West are attributed the deeper convictions
of the truth of revealed religion which Mrs. Montagu entertained
henceforward. She did not cease to be cheerful because on one point she
was more serious. In a cottage which she hired near West’s house, she
playfully offered to her lady visitors wholesome brown bread, sincerity,
and red cow’s milk. With tastes that could find gratification wherever
she might be, Mrs. Montagu was one of the happiest of women. Most happy,
not when she was queen, or one of the queens, of society, but when she
was among her books. She was an indefatigable reader. She reflected as
deeply as she read carefully. The literature of the world was known to
her, in the original text, or in translations, of which she would read
three or four of the same work; and, if she had a preference, she would
give an excellent reason for it. Her criticisms on the works she read are
always admirable, whether she treats of a Thucydides in a French dress,
of Cowley’s imperfections as an amatory poet, of Melmoth’s “Pliny’s
Letters,” or of writers like Richardson, whose “Clarissa Harlowe” is
analysed in one of the printed letters with a skill and insight that
might be envied by the best writers of the times that have succeeded to
her own. Fictitious and real personages, she dissects both with the hand
of an operator who loves the work in which he excels. She is equally
great when treating of the heroes of antiquity, or of the notorious Mrs.
Pilkington, whose fie! fie! ways seem to warrant her slapping her with
her fan; but whose talent, pleasant audacity, and suffering, soften Mrs.
Montagu’s heart and lead her to gently kiss both cheeks of the erring
Lætitia.

At the close of 1750, her brother Robert went in search of fortune to
China, where, however, he found a grave. In the following year, she
writes to her husband, who was on private business in the north: “I have
sat so constantly in Lady Sandwich’s chimney-corner, I can give you
little account of the world.” She playfully says to her absent lord:
“I am glad you are so far tired of your monastic life as to think of
returning to the secular state of a husband and member of Parliament.”
She adds: “You have too many virtues for the contracted life of a monk,
and, I thank my stars, are bound in another vow, one more fit for you, as
it is social, and not selfish.” From Lady Sandwich’s chimney-corner, and
from much study, mixed with every-day duties, it is pleasant to see her
surrounded by the Ladies Stanhope and Mrs. Trevor, who were adjusting her
dress when she went as the “queen-mother” to the subscription masquerade.
The dress was “white satin, with fine new point for tuckers, kerchief
and ruffles; pearl necklace and earrings, and pearls and diamonds on the
head, and my hair curled after the Vandyke picture.” Mr. Montagu was so
pleased with her appearance that, said the lady, “he has made me lay by
my dress, to be painted in when I see Mr. Hoare again.” Better than her
own presentment is her picture of the too famous Miss Chudleigh at this
masquerade: “Miss Chudleigh’s dress, or rather undress, was remarkable.
She was Iphigenia for the sacrifice; but so naked, the high priest might
easily inspect the entrails of the victim. The maids of honour (not of
maids the strictest) were so offended, they would not speak to her.”

It was with happy facility Mrs. Montagu turned from the studies she
loved and the duties which she came to consider as her privilege, to
the gayest scenes of life. “Though,” say she, “the education of women
is always too frivolous, I am glad mine had such a qualification of the
serious as to fit me for the relish of the _belles bagatelles_.” No one
better understood the uses of money. When her husband was in the north
furthering his coal interests, she wrote to him: “Though the coldness
of our climate may set coals in a favourable light, I shall be glad to
see as many of them turned to the precious metal as possible.... I have
a very good opinion of Mr. Montagu and his wife. I like the prospect of
these golden showers, and so I congratulate you upon them; but, most
of all, I congratulate you upon the disposition of mind which made you
put the account of them in a postscript.” The last words of her own
letters to her husband were invariably affectionate, with a sentiment of
submission that has a very old-fashioned air about it. For example:

“Every tender wish and grateful thought wait on you, and may you ever as
kindly accept the only gift in my power, the faithful love and sincere
affection of your most grateful and obedient wife, E. M.” Again, in
September, 1751, from Tunbridge Wells: “To your prayer that we may never
be so long separated, I can, with much zealous fervour, say Amen!”




CHAPTER III.


In October, Mrs. Montagu was in her town house, in Hill Street, receiving
company. Guests of the present day will read, perhaps with a smile of
wonder, the following illustration of the times: “The Duke and Duchess of
Portland and Lord Titchfield dined with me to-day, and stayed till eight
o’clock.”

In the year 1752, there was a subpreceptor to the Prince of Wales, named
George Lewis Scott. His baptismal names were those of the King George
I., at whose court in Hanover Scott’s father had held some respectable
office. The son was recommended for the preceptorship by Bolingbroke to
Bathurst, who spoke in the candidate’s favour to the prince’s mother, and
the king’s sanction followed. Walpole describes Scott as well-meaning,
but inefficient, through undue interference, and as a man of no “orthodox
odour, as might be expected of a protégé of Bolingbroke.” Mr. Scott had
literary tastes, and occasionally exercised them with credit. Such a man
seemed a fitting wooer for Sarah Robinson, Mrs. Montagu’s clever sister.
The wooing sped, marriage followed, and separation, from incompatibility
of temper, came swiftly on the heels of it. The correspondence throws
no light on a dark episode; but in April, 1752, Mrs. Delany wrote to
Mrs. Dewes, in reference to Mrs. Scott’s marriage and the separation
of herself and husband, the following words: “What a foolish match
Mrs. Scott has made for herself. Mrs. Montagu wrote Mrs. Donellan word
that she and the rest of her friends had rescued her out of the hands
of a very bad man; but, for reasons of interest, they should conceal
his misbehaviour as much as possible, but entreated Mrs. Donellan would
vindicate her sister’s character whenever she heard it attacked, for she
was very innocent.” Perhaps it was the misery that came of this marriage
that made Mrs. Montagu conclude a letter from Heys to her husband,
during this year, with these words: “Adieu, my dearest, may you find
amusement everywhere, but the most perfect happiness with her who is by
every grateful and tender sentiment your most affectionate and faithful
wife, E. M.” The writer herself could find amusement everywhere. A
country-house, well-furnished with books, made Sandleford more agreeable
to her than the glories within and the dust without her house in Hill
Street. She speaks deliciously of having her writing-table beneath
the shade of the Sandleford elms, and she thus pleasantly contrasts
country-house employments with the pleasures of reading ancient history,
which lightened the burthen of those employments: “To go from the toilet
to the senate-house; from the head of a table to the head of an army;
or, after making tea for a country justice, to attend the exploits,
counsels, and harangues of a Roman consul, gives all the variety the
busy find in the bustle of the world, and variety and change (except
in a garden) make the happiness of our lives.” She read Hooke’s “Roman
History” as an agreeable variety. Her mind was stronger than her body.
She was now only thirty-two years of age; and she writes to Gilbert
West, that ex-lieutenant of horse, and honest inquirer into theological
questions: “You will imagine I am in extraordinary health, when I talk
of walking two miles in a morning.” If she could not walk far, she could
read and stand anything. In December, she was again at home in Hill
Street. On Christmas Eve, 1752, she writes: “I proposed answering my dear
Mrs. Boscawen’s letter yesterday, but the Chinese-room was filled by a
succession of people from eleven in the morning till eleven at night.”

Early in January, 1753, close upon the anniversary of the death of the
brother whom she dearly loved,—her brother “Tom,”—who died a bachelor,
in 1748, an event occurred, the bearing of which is only partially told
in a letter from Mrs. Montagu to Gilbert West: “My mind was so shocked
at my arrival here, that for some days I was insupportably low. I am now
better able to attend to the voice of reason and duty. A friendship,
begun in infancy, and reunited by our common loss and misfortune, had
many tender ties. By tender care I had raised her from despair almost
to tranquillity. I had hourly the greatest of pleasures, that of
obliging a most grateful person. She made every employment undertaken
for me, and every expression of my satisfaction in her execution of
those employments, a pleasure. I received from her kind offices, which,
however considerable, fell short of the zeal that prompted them. Of this,
I do not know that there is a pattern left in the world. She was much
endeared, and her loss embittered to me by another consideration, which
you may reasonably blame, as it shows too fond an attachment to those
things which we ought to resign to the Great Giver; but while she was
under my care, I thought a kind of intercourse subsisted between me and a
most dear and valuable friend whom I lost this time five years. Whatever
I did for her I thought done for that friend on whom my affections,
hopes, and pride were placed.”

This little romance having come to a sad conclusion, Mrs. Montagu was
soon afterward in town, running, as she said, “from house to house,
getting the cold scraps of visiting conversation, served up with the
indelicacy and indifference of an ordinary, at which no power of the mind
does the honours; the particular taste of each guest is not consulted,
the solid part of the entertainment is too gross for a delicate taste,
and the lighter fare insipid. Indeed, I do not love fine ladies, but I
am to dine with ... to-morrow, notwithstanding.” Again, in November,
1754, she writes from Hill Street, the day after her arrival: “In my town
character, I made fifteen visits last night. I should not so suddenly
have assumed my great hoop, if I had not desired to pay the earliest
respects to Lady Hester Pitt, who is something far beyond a merely fine
lady.”

Mrs. Montagu did not seek for friends exclusively among the great. With
her and with Lyttelton, intellect was the chief attraction. They both
received into their friendship the refugee Bower, who made so much noise
in his day. Mrs. Montagu and Lyttelton refused to abandon him when he
was assailed by his enemies. When she was told, in a letter from a Roman
Catholic, that Bower, the ex-Jesuit whom she had received in her house,
was a knave, that his wife was a hussy, and that Mrs. Montagu herself
was an obstinate idoliser and a perverse baby for believing in them, she
continued her trust, despised report, and asked for facts.

In 1755, Mrs. Montagu affected to detect the first sign of her
superannuation in her sudden resolution not to go to Lady Townshend’s
ball, though a new pink silver negligée lay ready for the donning. Once,
she said, her dear friend, Vanity, could lure her over the Alps or the
ocean to a ball like Lady Townshend’s. The day was past since she would
have gone eight miles, in winter, to dance to a fiddle, and would have
squalled with joy at being upset on her way home. She and Vanity, she
thought, had now parted. “I really believe she has left me as lovers do
their mistresses, because I was too fond, denied her nothing, and was
too compliant to give a piquancy to our commerce.” She was as “sharp” in
judging others as herself. Of Lady Essex (the daughter of Sir Charles
Hanbury Williams, who married the Earl of Essex in 1754, and died in
1759), Mrs. Montagu, in the intervening year, 1756, says: “Lady Essex
coquettes extremely with her own husband, which is very lawful.... She
wants to have the _bon ton_, and we know the _bon ton_ of 1756 is _un peu
equivoque_.”

And now, in the year 1757, the celebrated word “bluestockings” first
occurs in Mrs. Montagu’s correspondence. Boswell, under the date 1781,
tells us in his “Life of Johnson,” that “about this time, it was much
the fashion for several ladies to have evening assemblies, where the
fair sex might participate in conversation with literary and ingenious
men, animated by a desire to please. These societies were denominated
Blue Stocking Clubs. One of the most eminent members of these societies,
when they first commenced, was Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, whose dress
was remarkably grave, and, in particular, it was observed that he wore
blue stockings. Such was the excellence of his conversation, that his
absence was felt as so great a loss that it used to be said, ‘We can do
nothing without the blue stockings,’ and thus, by degrees, the title
was established.” Boswell was greatly mistaken, for, in 1781, Benjamin
Stillingfleet, the highly accomplished gentleman, philosopher, and
barrack-master of Kensington, had been dead ten years, and he had left
off wearing blue stockings at least fourteen years before he died.
This subject will be referred to in a subsequent page. Meanwhile, in
March, 1757, when rumours of war were afloat, Mrs. Montagu gaily wrote
to her husband; “If we were in as great danger of being conquered by
the Spaniards as by the French, I should not be very anxious about my
continuance in the world; but the French are polite to the ladies, and
they admire ladies a little in years, so that I expect to be treated
with great politeness, and as all laws are suspended during violence, I
suppose that you and the rest of the married men will not take anything
amiss that happens on the occasion: nor, indeed, should it be a much
greater fault than keeping a monkey if one should live with a French
marquis for a quarter of a year!” A little later, Walpole told George
Montagu a story which illustrates the scandal-power of the period. “I was
diverted,” he wrote, “with the story of a lady of your name and a lord
whose initial is no further from hers than he himself is supposed to be.
Her postilion, a lad of fifteen, said, ‘I’m not such a child but I can
guess something! Whenever my Lord Lyttelton comes to my lady, she orders
the porter to let in nobody else, and then they call for pen and ink,
and say they are going to write history!’ I am persuaded, now that he is
parted, that he will forget he is married, and propose himself in form to
some woman or other!”

Such scandal as this could not affect either of the parties against whom
it was pointed. In the next following years of the reign of George the
Second, Mrs. Montagu led her usual life. In London, gay; in the country,
busy and thoughtful. “In London,” she asks, “who can think? Perhaps,
indeed, they may who are lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken
pane, but it cannot happen to ladies in Chinese-rooms!” In those rooms
she received all, native and foreign, whose brains or other desirable
possessions entitled them to a welcome. At Sandleford, she was sometimes
reading a translation of Sophocles, dear to her almost as Shakespeare
himself, but as often she was amid accounts relative to firkins of
butter, tubs of soap, and chaldrons of coal. When she left the country,
it was in the odour of civility; for Mr. and Mrs. Montagu invited a
cargo of good folks to dinner, and, like Sir Peter Teazle, left their
characters among them to be discussed till the next season. In 1758, Mrs.
Montagu became acquainted with Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, the translator of
Epictetus; and Mr. Montagu, by the death of a relative, succeeded to
the inheritance of rich possessions in the north. Mrs. Montagu thought
she had got the richer estate, in the learned lady who had become her
friend. Nevertheless, she bore the accession of fortune with hilarious
philosophy. “As the gentleman from whom Mr. Montagu inherits had been mad
about forty years, and almost bedridden for the last ten, I had always
designed to be rather pleased and happy when he resigned his unhappy
being and his good estate.” She only fancied there was neither pleasure
nor happiness in it, because the “business” appertaining to succession
was wearisome.

When she found herself among the great coal-owners, she was neither
happy nor pleased. They could only talk of coal, and of those who had
been made or ruined by it. “As my mind is not naturally set to this
tune,” she wrote to Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, “I should often be glad
to change it for a song from one of your Welsh bards.” She, however,
intended to turn the occasion to intellectual profit by exploring the
country, and studying its beauties and natural productions, but a little
fainting fit put an end to this design. An overzealous maid went to her
aid, when fainting, with a bottle of eau-de-luce, but as she emptied the
contents into Mrs. Montagu’s throat, instead of applying it outwardly
for refreshment, the lady was nigh upon being then and there deprived
of upwards of forty years of life. She happily recovered, and by and by
she speaks of herself, in London, as “going wherever two or three fools
were gathered together, to assemblies, visiting-days etc. Twenty-four
idle hours, without a leisure one among them!” So she said; but an order
to Mrs. Denoyer, at the Golden Bible, Lisle Street, for a hundred of
the best pens and half a ream of the finest and thinnest quarto paper,
indicates how many hours of the twenty-four were employed. She thought,
or she affected to think, that she grew idler as she grew older. In one
of her letters to old Doctor Monsey,—a grotesque savage and scholar,
who, in lugubrious jokery, wrote love-letters (which she pretended to
take seriously) at fourscore,—she said, in September, 1757, just before
her thirty-seventh birthday: “I shall write to you again when I am
thirty-seven; but I am now engaged in a sort of death-bed repentance for
the idleness of the thirty-sixth year of my age!” She certainly took a
wrong view of her case when she further said: “Having spent the first
part of my life in female vanities, the rest in domestic employments,
I seem as if I had been measuring ribbons in a milliner’s, or counting
pennyworths of figs and weighing sugar-candy in a grocer’s shop all my
life.” This was no affectation. “If you envy me,” she added, “or know any
one who does, pray tell them this sad truth. Nothing can be more sad.
Nothing can be more true.”

It would have been sad, if it had been true; but she was severe in her
own censure. If she cheerfully plunged into the vortex of fashionable
duties, she persistently proclaimed her higher enjoyment of home
privileges. She sneered at her own presence wherever two or three
fools were gathered together, but her honest ambition was to establish
friendships with the wise and the virtuous. Johnson assured her of her
“goodness so conspicuous,” and was proud of being asked to use his
influence to obtain her support of poor Mrs. Ogle’s benefit concert,
as it gratified his vanity that he should be “supposed to be of any
importance to Mrs. Montagu.” With respect, at this time, for Johnson,
she had a deeper feeling of regard for Burke. “Mr. Burke, a friend of
mine.” There is reasonable pride in the assertion, and how tenderly and
cleverly she paints her “friend!”—“He is, in conversation and writing,
an ingenious and ingenuous man, modest and delicate, and on great and
serious subjects full of that respect and veneration which a good mind,
and a great one, is sure to feel; he is as good and worthy as he is
ingenious.” Her love of books was like her love of friends. Dressed for
a ball, she sat down, read through the “Ajax” and the “Philoctetes” of
Sophocles, wrote a long critical letter on the two dramas, and, losing
her ball, earned her bed and the deep sleep she enjoyed in it. At
Tunbridge, she describes the occupation of a single morning as consisting
of going to chapel, then to a philosophical lecture, next to hear a
gentleman play the viol d’amore, and finally to hold controversy with a
Jew and a Quaker. In 1760, she was equally vivacious, in “sad Newcastle.”
In September of that year, she writes to Lord Lyttelton, that she was
taking up her freedom, by entering into all the diversions of the place.
“I was at a musical entertainment yesterday morning, at a concert last
night, at a musical entertainment this morning; I have bespoken a play
for to-morrow night, and shall go to a ball, on choosing a mayor, on
Monday night.” But in the hours of leisure, between these dissipations,
she fulfilled all her duties as a woman of business in connection with
her steward’s accounts and the coal interests, and devoted the remainder
to the study of works in the loftiest walks of literature. “More leisure
and fewer hours,” she says, “had possibly made me happier, but my
business is to make the best of things as they are.” She ever made the
best of two old and wise men who professed, in mirth, to make love to
her in all seriousness. The two wise men look, in their correspondence,
like two fools. Lord Bath, the wiser of the two, looks more of a fool
than Doctor Monsey, and there is something nauseous in the affected
playfulness of the aged lovers, and also in the equally affected virginal
coyness with which Mrs. Montagu received, encouraged, or put aside their
rather audacious gallantry. Her part in these pseudo love-passages was
born of her charity. It gave the two old friends pleasure (Lord Lyttelton
himself styled her Ma Donna), and it did no harm to the good-natured
lady. Lord Bath, however, is not to be compared with such a buffoon as
Monsey. His honest opinion of Mrs. Montagu was, that there never was and
never would be a more perfect being created than that lady. And Burke
said that the praise was not too highly piled.

It was at this period that Mrs. Montagu first appeared as an authoress,
but anonymously. Of the “Dialogues of the Dead,” published under Lord
Lyttelton’s name, she supplied three. They are creditable to her, and are
not inferior to those by my lord, which have been sharply criticised,
under the name of “Dead Dialogues,” by Walpole. In “Cadmus and Mercury,”
the lady shows that strength of mind, properly applied, is better than
strength of body. There is great display of learning; Hercules, however,
talks like gentle Gilbert West; and Cadmus, when he says that “actions
should be valued by their utility rather than their _éclat_,” shows a
knowledge of French which was hardly to be expected in him.

If we are surprised at the cleverness of Cadmus, in speaking French, we
cannot but wonder at the ignorance of Mercury, in the next dialogue, with
a modern fine lady, in not knowing the meaning of _bon ton_. But the
lady’s description of it is as good as anything in the comedy of the day.
As for the manners of the period, as far as they regard husbands, wives,
and children, their shortcomings are described with a hand that is highly
effective, if not quite masterly.

Mrs. Montagu seems to think that _Ici on parle Français_ might be posted
upon the banks of the Styx; for, in the dialogue between Plutarch,
Charon, and a modern bookseller, the first alludes to _finesse_, and
the second refers to the _friseur_ of Tisiphone. But Plutarch had met
M. Scuderi in the Shades! On the other hand, he had never heard of
Richardson or Fielding! Nevertheless, the criticisms on modern fiction
and modern vices are, if not ringing with wit, full of good sense and
fine satire. They could only have come from one who had not merely read
much, but who had thought more: one who had not only studied the life
and society of which she was a part, but who could put a finger on the
disease and also point out the remedy.

The first and last dialogues are enriched by remarks which are the result
of very extensive reading. That between Mercury and the modern fine
lady abounds in proofs of the writer’s observation, and consequently of
illustrations of contemporary social life. The lady pleads her many
engagements, in bar to the summons of Mercury to cross the Styx. These
are not engagements to husband and children, but to the play on Mondays,
balls on Tuesdays, the opera on Saturdays, and to card assemblies the
rest of the week, for two months to come. She had indeed found pleasure
weary her when the novelty had worn off; but “my friends,” she says,
“always told me diversions were necessary, and my doctor assured me
dissipation was good for my spirits. My husband insisted that it was
not; and you know that one loves to oblige one’s friends, comply
with one’s doctor, and contradict one’s husband.” She will, however,
willingly accompany Mercury, if he will only wait for her till the end
of the season. “Perhaps the Elysian fields may be less detestable than
the country in our world. Pray have you a fine Vauxhall and Ranelagh?
I think I should not dislike drinking the Lethe waters when you have
a full season.” This fine lady has not been destitute of good works.
“As to the education of my daughters, I spared no expense. They had
a dancing-master, a music-master, and a drawing-master, and a French
governess to teach them behaviour and the French language.” No wonder
that Mercury sneered at the fact that the religion, sentiment, and
manners of those young ladies were to be learnt “from a dancing-master,
music-master, and a chambermaid.” As to the last, there soon came in
less likely teachers of French to young ladies than French chambermaids.
General Burgoyne makes his Miss Allscrip (in “The Heiress,” a comedy
first played in 1786) remark: “We have young ladies, you know, Blandish,
boarded and educated, upon blue boards in gold letters, in every village;
with a strolling player for a dancing-master, and a deserter from Dunkirk
to teach the French grammar.”

The dialogues had a great success. The three avowedly “by another hand”
interested the public, as the circumstance gave them a riddle to be
solved in their leisure hours. They were attributed to men of such fine
intellect that Mrs. Montagu had every reason to be delighted at such an
indirect compliment.

If her own account is to be taken literally, she had now, at forty,
assumed gravity as a grace and an adornment. In 1761, she wrote to Mrs.
Elizabeth Carter that, whether in London or in the country, “I am become
one of the most reasonable, quiet, good kind of country gentlewoman that
ever was.” And she closes another letter to the same lady, in September
of the same year, with the observation,—made when she was only forty-one,
and had but just accomplished half of a career of which she was already
tired,—“I will own I often feel myself so weary of my journey through
this world, as to wish for more rest, a quiet Sabbath after my working
days; but when such time shall come, perhaps some painful infirmity may
find my virtue employment; but all this I leave to Him who knows what is
best.”

While the writer was recording this wish and making this reflection, all
England was in a frenzy of exultation at the accession of the young king,
George III., and all London in feverish excitement at the coming of a
young queen. When, so to speak, the uproar of festival and congratulation
culminated at the coronation of the young royal couple, the lady who
was weary of life and sighed for a Sabboth of rest, got into a coach
at Fulham at half-past four on an October morning, and was driven to
Lambeth. With her gay company she was rowed across the river from Lambeth
to the cofferer’s office, whence she saw the procession go and return,
between Westminster Hall and the Abbey, and owned that it exceeded her
expectations. The return to the Hall was made, however, in the dark; and,
under shadow of night, the Montagu party were rowed to York Buildings,
where a carriage waited to take them to Fulham. The lady, stirred by a
new sensation, which was followed by neither fatigue nor indisposition,
seemed to have resumed the spirit of the nymph who used to take headers
into the Mary-le-bone Gardens plunging-bath, and to be complimented, on
her daring, in ballads, by Lord Dupplin!

       *       *       *       *       *

When the fashionable world flocked to Mrs. Montagu’s house in Hill
Street, in the middle of last century, the street was not paved, and the
road was very much at the mercy of the weather. To get to the house was
not always an easy matter. When entered, the visitor found it furnished
in a style of which much was said, and at which the hostess herself
laughed. “Sick of Grecian elegance and symmetry, or Gothick grandeur
and magnificence, we must all seek the barbarious gaudy _goût_ of the
Chinese; and fat-headed pagods and shaking mandarins bear the prize from
the finest works of antiquity; and Apollo and Venus must give way to a
fat idol with a sconce on his head. You will wonder I should condemn the
taste I have complied with, but in trifles I shall always conform to the
fashion.”

There were duties connected with her position which Mrs. Montagu as
scrupulously fulfilled. Receiving and returning visits was “a great
devoir.” Resort to assemblies was a “necessary thing;” the duty of seeing
and being seen was an indispensable duty; but she had mental resources
which enabled her to pity the “polite world,” which had no way of driving
away ennui but by pleasure. If in Hill Street she was of “the quality,”
as Chesterfield called them, in the country she was not only what she
loved to call herself, a farmer’s wife, but a political economist. At
Sandleford we see a poor wretch standing at the door of the mansion. She
is hideous from dirt, poverty, and contagious disease born of both. The
lady farmer was not only charitable but something besides. “I was very
angry with her,” she says, “that she has lately introduced another heir
to wretchedness and want. She has not half Hamlet’s delicacies on the
question. To be or not to be! The law’s delays are very puny evils to
those her offspring must endure. The world affords no law to make her
rich, and yet she will increase and multiply over the face of the earth.”

Throughout the printed letters, continual examples occur of Mrs.
Montagu’s acute observation of character, and of her happy expression
when she described it. She not only watched closely, but spoke boldly of
the ladies around her, and of their more or less pretty ways. Thus, Mrs.
Montagu saw that all the ladies courted Doctor Young, the poet, but she
was sure it was only because they had heard he was a genius, and not
that they knew he was one. When some misses expressed their delight at a
particular ball, she remarked that their delight was probably increased
by the absence of Miss Bladen, who became Lord Essex’s second countess,
and who was not there to outshine them! “So strong in women,” she said,
“was the desire of pleasing, each would have that happy power confined
to her own person.” It did not escape her eye that Lady Abercorn and
Lady Townshend, “each determining to have the most wit of any person in
the company, always chose different parties and different ends of the
room.” How gracefully serene is the portrait of the Duchess of Somerset,
who did what was civil without intending to be gracious, and who so
surprised Mrs. Montagu, in 1749, because the princely state and pride
the duchess had so long been used to, had “left her such an easiness
of manners.” One of her exceptional touches was when she described the
pious Countess of Huntingdon as a “well-meaning fanatic.” That must have
been after Gilbert West and Lord Lyttelton had brought her out of the
field of Free Inquirers, and the Primate of Ireland had made her of the
religion of the Established Church. At that period she would have placed
the church above the law, resembling the old Scottish woman of the kirk,
who, on pronouncing that to take a walk on the Sabbath was a deadly sin,
was reminded that Jesus himself had walked in the corn-fields on the
Sabbath-day, to which she replied, “Ah weel, it is as ye say; but I think
none the better o’ him for it!”

Adverting to a wicked saying, that few women have the virtues of an
honest man, Mrs. Montagu maintained that a little of the blame thereof
falls on the men, “who are more easily deluded than persuaded into
compliance. This makes the women have recourse to artifice to gain
power, which, as they have gained by the weakness or caprice of those
they govern, they are afraid to lose by the same kind of arts addressed
to the same kind of qualities; and the flattery bestowed by the men on
all the fair from fifteen, makes them so greedy of praise that they most
excessively hate, detest, and revile every quality in another woman
which they think can obtain it.” This is the censure, or judgment, be it
remembered, on Last Century Ladies!

When Mrs. Fielding, to benefit those ladies, wrote a novel called “The
Penitents,” supposed to be the history of the unhappy fair ones in the
Magdalen House, Mrs. Montagu remarked, hesitatingly, “As all the girls in
England are reading novels, it may be useful to put them on their guard;”
but she adds, decisively, “If I had a daughter, I should rather trust her
to ignorance and innocence than to the effect of these cautions!”

Of course, Mrs. Montagu studied the gentlemen as profoundly as the
ladies. As one result, she gently laughed at Doctor Young’s philosophy,
which brought him to believe that one vice corrects another, till an
animal made up of ten thousand bad qualities grows to be a social
creature tolerable to live with. Sir William Brown could hardly claim
this toleration, for he had not discovered (said Mrs. Montagu) that the
wisest man in the company is not always the most welcome, and that people
are not at all times disposed to be informed. Fancy may easily bring
before the reader the sort of conversation which Mrs. Montagu was able
to hold with Mr. Plunket. She says of it: “Some people reduce their wit
to an impalpable powder, and mix it up in a rebus; others wrap up theirs
in a riddle: but mine and Mr. Plunket’s certainly went off by insensible
perspiration in small talk.” She was so satisfied that there was a right
place for a wise man to play the fool in, that she expressed a hope to
Gilbert West (who was turning much of her thought from this world to the
next) and to his wife, that “you will, both of you, leave so much of your
wisdom at Wickham as would be inconvenient in town.” West feared that, at
Sandleford, she sent invitations to beaux and belles to fill the vacant
apartments of her mind. She merrily answered, that there was empty space
enough there for French hoops and echoes of French sentiments; but she
also seriously replied, “There are few of the fine world whom I should
invite into my mind, and fewer still who are familiar enough there to
come unasked.”

Mrs. Montagu hated no man, but she thoroughly despised Warburton. The way
he mauled Shakespeare by explaining him, excited her scornful laughter;
the way in which he marred Christianity by defending it, excited much
more than angry contempt. “The levity shocks me, the indecency displeases
me, the _grossièreté_ disgusts me. I love to see the doctrine of
Christianity defended by the spirit of Christianity.” Bishop Warburton
and some country parsons were equally silly in her mind. Of a poor
riddle, she says, “A country parson could not puzzle his parish with it,
even if he should endeavour to explain it in his next Sunday’s sermon.
Though I have known some of them explain a thing till all men doubted it.”

From the rule by which she measured all men, she did not except any one
of her brothers: and never did sister love her brothers more tenderly
and reasonably. Her brother William, the clergyman, was restless in
temper from excess of love of ease. “My brother Robinson,” she wrote to
her sister, Mrs. Scott, in 1755, “is emulating the great Diogenes ...
he flies the delights of London, and leads a life of such privacy and
seriousness, as looks to the beholders like wisdom, but, for my part, no
life of inaction deserves that name.” Other characters she strikes off in
a single sentence. That referring to Sir Charles Williams is a very good
sample from an overflowing measure. “Sir Charles,” she said, “is still
so flighty, that had he not always been a wit, he would still pass for a
madman!” When she refers to Lord Hyde’s printed, but never acted comedy,
“The Mistakes, or the Happy Resentment,” and says, “I suppose you will
read the play, as it is by so great a man,” she was probably thinking of
Miss Tibbs, who, “it is well known, always showed her good breeding by
devoting all her attention to the people of highest rank in the company.”

Mrs. Montagu was as clever at generalities as when sketching individuals
and special peculiarities. The numerous Jews at Tunbridge Wells, in
1745, she describes as having “worse countenances than their friend
Pontius Pilate in a bad tapestry-hanging.” Good farmer’s wife as she
said of herself, and also very fond of refined luxury, she laughed in
her letters at those persons who built palaces in gardens of beauty, and
left, as she said, nothing rude and waste but their minds; nothing harsh
and unpolished but their tempers. To her, no knowledge came amiss. Amid
all the gaieties of the life at Bath, she took interest in the chemistry
of every-day life. During one of her visits, she was initiated into the
mysteries of making malt!

Her very affectations, as they were called, sprung from her endowments.
Her learning and reading, and intercourse with scholars and thinkers,
furnished her with extraordinary figures and illustrations that were
applied to very ordinary uses.

Neither Elizabeth Robinson nor Mrs. Montagu would be so commonplace as
to say the moon shone, but “the silver Cynthia held up her lamp in the
heavens.” She could readily detect and denounce this learned affectation,
this sacrifice of the natural to the classical in others; and she said
with truth of Hammond’s “Elegies,” “They please me much, but between you
and me, they seem to me to have something of a foreign air. Had the poet
read Scotch ballads oftener, and Ovid and Tibullus less, he had appeared
a more natural writer and a more tender lover.” These terse sayings
are well worth collecting. Here is one from a heap that will furnish a
thousand “I own the conversation of a simpleton is a grievance, but there
the disparity of a wise man and a fool often ends.”

[Illustration: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

_Photogravure after an original miniature_]

Here may be closed the illustrations of Mrs. Montagu’s life, drawn
chiefly from her published letters. The following sketches of her own
life, and of that by which she was surrounded, are taken from letters,
with one or two exceptions, now for the first time printed.




CHAPTER IV.


The unpublished letters take up the glorious theme previous to the last
incident named in the published correspondence. The earliest is from
Mrs. Montagu’s sister, Mrs. Scott, to the wife of their brother, the
Rev. W. Robinson, at Naples. The two sisters, Elizabeth and Sarah, loved
each other with intense affection. The younger went long by the nickname
of Pea, from her extraordinary likeness to her elder sister, who used,
before Sarah’s unhappy marriage, to rally her on the obesity of her
lovers and her cruelty in reducing them to consumptiveness and asses’
milk.

_March 28, 1761._ Mrs. Scott to Mrs. Robinson, Naples.—“The Tories are in
high spirits. The king has declared that, as they are possessed of the
greatest part of the property of the kingdom, they ought to have a great
share in the government, and accordingly many are taken into place. The
king was asked what orders he would have given to the dockmen against the
approaching election. His Majesty answered, ‘No orders at all.’ He would
have them left to themselves. Lord Granville said, ‘That was leaving
them to be directed by the First Lord of the Admiralty’ (Lord Anson).
The king replied, ‘That was true; he had not considered that; they must,
therefore, be told to vote for the Tories, to be sure.’ The late Speaker
and the Parliament took a most tender farewell of each other. They
thanked and he thanked, and then they re-thanked, and in short, never
were people so thankful on both sides; and then they recommended him to
the king, to do more than thank him; but he refused any reward. Only,
his son, it is said, will have a pension of £2,000 per annum—a good,
agreeable compliment, and yet what no one will disapprove.”

Walpole describes Onslow’s retirement, after holding the office of
Speaker during thirty years, in five successive Parliaments, in these
words: “The Speaker has taken leave and received the highest compliments,
and substantial ones, too. He did not overact, and it was really a
handsome scene. Onslow accepted a pension of £3,000 a year for his own
life and that of his son—afterward Lord Onslow.”

After noticing the changes in the ministry, and conferring of honours on,
and the granting of pensions to persons of no great public importance,
Mrs. Scott turns to the death of the great master of the ceremonies at
Bath, Beau Nash, and to the conduct of the great statesman, Mr. Pitt.
“Mr. Nash, I believe, died since I wrote to you, and all his effects
are to be sold for the benefit of his creditors, but will not prove
sufficient to pay his debts. Collett now officiates as his successor,
though others are talked of for that noble post; but as neither the
corporation nor the keeper of the rooms seem disposed to annex any salary
to it, I imagine Collett will continue in possession; for I think no one
else will do it without other reward than the honour and profit arising
therefrom.”

Collett, after brief possession of the post so long held by Nash, was
succeeded by Derrick, an adventurer in whom Bath was as much interested
as England was in Pitt, of whom Mrs. Scott thus writes: “Mr. Pitt still
continues in his post. Without connections of any sort, without the power
of conferring honours or places, he commands imperiously, and forces
obedience from mere superiority of parts and integrity. As a statesman he
is self-existent, and depends on none, nor has any dependent on him. He
does not see his oldest friends but when they have business to impart,
obliges none by private benefits, nor engages any by social intercourse.
His mind seems too great for any object less than a whole nation. There
is something very new and extremely surprising in his conduct. He is an
Almanzor in politicks. He is himself alone. How long he can stand thus,
only time can show. As there was scarcely ever an instance of the like,
we have no precedents by which to form conjectures. National prejudices
about Scotchmen are lulled asleep. Lord Bute is high in favour; the city
is pleased with him; the Tories much attached to him. The king is still
generally applauded. Our sex went in such numbers to the House of Lords
at the closing of the session, to see his Majesty on the throne, that
good part of the company fainted away, and not above three lords had room
to sit down....

“My brother Matt is at present prosecuting the minister of Lyminge for
non-residence, in revenge for some offence he has given him about the
tithes; and my father bids fair for being engaged in prosecuting a
clergyman at Canterbury, for saying he was in the Rebellion in the year
’16.... Report says that the Duchess of Richmond and some other ladies,
whose husbands are going or gone to Germany, are going there likewise,
and are to be at Brunswick. I much question whether their husbands will
rejoice in their company, but certainly Prince Ferdinand will not be fond
of such auxiliaries. It is the oddest party of pleasure I ever heard
of. Thomas Diaforus, who invites his mistress to the lively amusement
of making one at a dissection, would be an agreeable lover to these
ladies.... Perhaps they think Germany may afford them more of their
husbands’ company than they can obtain in England; for some among them
would think that a valuable acquisition, and possibly they may not be
mistaken, for a drum that leads to battle may not be so powerful a rival
to a wife as one that leads its followers only to coquetry.”

Mrs. Scott’s reference to Pitt, secretary of state and soul of the
ministry, of which the old imbecile Duke of Newcastle was the nominal
head, seems to have been made with Almanzor’s lines in her memory.

    “Know, that I alone am king of me!
    I am as free as Nature first made man,
    Ere the base laws of servitude began,
    When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
    I saw th’ oppress’d, and thought it did belong
    To a king’s office to redress the wrong,” etc.

The public mind, however, was not so much occupied with men of mark as
with a ceremony which had not been witnessed in England for very many
years. In a letter from Batheaston, September 14, 1761, written by Mrs.
Scott to her sister-in-law, at Naples, she describes the time as one of
general madness, and continues as follows:

“One would imagine that no king had ever married or any state ever had
a queen before. The nation has for some time been and will still longer
be absolutely frantic. The expected princess was to be all perfection,
both in person and mind, and I believe few ever took so much pleasure in
the possession of their own wives as they have in his Majesty’s having
obtained so rare a blessing. I don’t think so great a compliment has been
paid to matrimony for many years past. Miss Arnold, who is gone up to my
brother Morris, in order to be ready for the coronation, has had a sight
of her Majesty; and from her, as well as others, I understand she is very
far from handsome. Her mouth fills a great part of her face. When Miss
Arnold saw her, which was only in passing, she was talking and laughing,
which would shew it in its full dimensions, and she says she could see
no other feature; but we are assured she is extremely good-natured, very
lively, and has an extraordinary understanding. The first part, her
youth renders probable; for the last article, we may rather suppose it
affords a reasonable ground for expectation than that it has come to any
perfection. She has been learning French since she knew she was to leave
Mecklenburgh; and I suppose must have endeavoured to obtain some English,
as the more necessary thing. It is said that Lord Hardwicke wrote over an
account to his wife of her personal defects, which her ladyship read in a
large company. This was repeated to his Majesty, who is greatly offended.
Certainly, it was highly imprudent in the one, and not less foolish in
the other; and I wonder his lordship, after having been married near
thirty years, should not know his wife better than to put it in her
power to commit such a folly, as he might have known how likely she
was to use it to his disadvantage. I suppose the poor man went over in
full expectation of seeing a Venus, and was so amazed that he could not
contain his disappointment.

“As many persons as Greenwich would hold waited there for many days to
see her Majesty arrive, and at last, after having been exposed to those
storms, she landed in Suffolk, and, consequently, did not make her
appearance on the Thames. The rooms at Greenwich let for half a guinea a
day, and the poorest little casement brought in the owner a daily crown.
I hope it has enriched many poor people. Of all the taxes ever levied in
this kingdom, that which will be raised this year on folly will be by
far the highest. I hear there is scaffolding enough erected against the
coronation to hold two millions of people. Almost all the kingdom will
be in London; and many, I suppose, will be reduced to scanty meals for
a whole year to come, by the expenses on this occasion; and if the day
should prove rainy, which the season of the year renders very probable,
those who are not in Westminster Hall or the Abbey will see nothing;
for there is an awning prepared, to be carried over the heads of those
who walk in the procession, in case of rain. The finery of every one
who intends to appear at court is beyond imagination. This kingdom, or
perhaps any other, scarcely ever saw the like.

“The queen’s clothes are so heavy that, by all accounts, if she be not
very robust, she will not be able to move under the burden; but I hope
her constitution is not very delicate, for she did not arrive in London
till three o’clock; and, besides the fatigue of her journey, with the
consequences of the flutter she could not avoid being in, she was to
dress for her wedding, be married, have a Drawing-room, and undergo the
ceremony of receiving company, after she and the king were in bed, and
all the night after her journey and so long a voyage. Nothing but a
German constitution could have undergone it.” ...

Poor Queen Charlotte’s plainness was—as Northcote subsequently described
it, in speaking of her portrait by Reynolds, namely—an elegant, and not
a vulgar plainness. She had a beautifully shaped arm, and was fond of
exhibiting it. “She had a fan in her hand,” said Northcote; “Lord! how
she held that fan!” Of literary news this letter contains the following
item:

“... Doctor Young has written a poem on ‘Resignation,’ and dedicated it
to Mrs. Boscawen. I have not seen it, but have heard it much praised, and
am told he wrote it at the desire of my sister Montagu and Miss Carter,
who requested it in a visit they made him on their road to Tunbridge,
where my sister spent the summer.”

Municipal authorities, more gallant than Mrs. Scott and the female
critics, spoke of the queen, in their addresses, as “amiably eminent
for the beauties of her mind and person.” Many parties who drove into
town to witness the coronation, were made to “stand and deliver” their
valuables by highwaymen, who infested all the roads leading into London.
Those who escaped and got as far as Charing Cross, could go no further,
unless the gentlemen fought way for their ladies and themselves, which
some bold spirits ventured to do. While the great show was in progress,
press-gangs picked up youths likely, however unwilling, to serve the
king; and the city at night was in the hands of a mob, which did with
London, Londoners, and their possessions very much as they pleased. Many
lives were sacrificed, and very little was thought of them.

The night after the wedding, there was a ball at court, so grand that
nothing like it, so it was said, had ever been seen in England. The king
and queen retired at the early hour of eleven. One great feature of the
night was that the Duke of Ancaster, whose wife was mistress of the robes
to the queen, appeared in the dress which the king had worn the whole
day before at the coronation, and which his Majesty had condescendingly
given to his Grace! A pleasanter feature was to be seen in the group of
bridesmaids, who “danced in the white-boddiced coats they had worn at
the wedding.” Liquor and illuminations prevailed outside. “Ah!” said an
observant Smithfield dealer; “what with plays, fairs, pillories, and
executions, London has more holidays than there are red days in the
almanack!” In truth, London was drunk and rampant. It could be both at
small outlay; for mutton was selling at one shilling a stone (in the
carcase), and cognac could be had for nine shillings a gallon!

Lord Hardwicke, named in the above letter, was the son of an attorney,
and rose to the dignity of lord chancellor by his merits. When he was
plain Philip Yorke, he made an offer of marriage to an heiress, a young
widow, with a jointure, whose father asked him for his rent-roll! The
handsome barrister replied that he had “a perch of ground in Westminster
Hall.” The young fellow’s suit prevailed; and the happy couple began life
in a small house near Lincoln’s Inn, the ground floor of which served for
the husband’s offices. The lady was connected with the family of Gibbon
the historian; and she was a wife so good, prudent, and so wise, that
Mrs. Scott’s sneer at her seems quite gratuitous. The poor lady died
three days before the coronation; and her husband in 1764.

Doctor Young’s “Resignation” was the dying song of a man above fourscore.
Its object was to console Mrs. Boscawen for the loss of her heroic
husband, the admiral. In the last century, English heroes were singularly
respected. The Suffolk ladies, of whatever rank, voluntarily yielded
precedence to Mrs. Vernon, “great Admiral Vernon’s” wife.

Mr. Pitt resigned the foreign secretaryship on October 5, 1761. He
and his friends were for declaring war against Spain. Lord Bute and a
majority opposed it, the king agreeing with them. Pitt’s fall was made
tolerable by the pension of £3,000 a year for the lives of himself, son,
and wife. The latter was created Baroness of Chatham; and in three months
war was declared with Spain!

Mrs. Scott to her brother at Naples. _November 28, 1761._—“... Lord Bath
and Lord Lyttelton were both at Tunbridge, and Miss Carter was with my
sister; so, you may imagine, the place was agreeable, and wit flowed more
copiously than the spring. The room she has so long been fitting-up is
not yet finished, but the design of it is so much improved that I really
believe it will be the most beautiful thing ever seen, and proportionably
expensive. Taste, you know, is not the cheapest thing to purchase. Use
and convenience may be provided for at a moderate charge, but great
geniuses are above being contented with such matters.

“I suppose you have heard much of the general lamentations for Mr.
Pitt’s resignation. It is by many thought that his resuming his post
is unavoidable, and, indeed, I suppose it must be so, if affairs take
the turn which appearances give reason to expect. He is more popular
than ever in the city. The procession of the royal family on the Lord
Mayor’s Day was broke in a manner that puzzled people much, as they
could not account for it; but it has since been said it was occasioned
by a multitude of sailors, who forced their way through the crowd in
search of Mr. Pitt’s chariot, from which they intended to have taken
the horses, and to have drawn it themselves to the Mansion House. The
post of honour is not often a place of safety, but I think it was seldom
more dangerous than it would have proved in this case, had they effected
their design; but they could not find him, so he got there with whole
bones, and was received with greater acclamations than were bestowed
on any other person. He endeavoured to get away privately, but the mob
were so very kind that they very near overturned Lord Temple’s chariot,
in which he was, by crowding about it, and hanging on the doors; and a
very long time he was in getting home. I will not say it was tedious,
for the sweetest music is deserved praise. He did not attend the House
of Commons till some days after its first meeting; but when he did,
spoke, by all accounts, beyond what he or any other man ever did, with
perfect calmness and modesty, and, with few words, silenced every one who
endeavoured to oppose him. G. Grenville attempted to answer him, but a
general buz obliged him to sit down. However, the press is loaded with
his abuse. These events are happy for hireling scribblers. They get a
dinner, and can do him no essential harm. So it’s very well. It would be
cruel to grudge them their morsel. I hope it will fatten many a starving
author.

“But to mention those who do not write for bread, and those who contrive
to get both bread and fame together, Lord Lyttelton’s second volume
quarto of ‘Henry the Second,’ is in the press.... Mallett has published
a poem called ‘Truth in Rhyme,’ dedicated to Lord Bute.... I am glad he
can tell truth in either rhyme or prose.... I have heard a _bon mot_ of
Lady Townshend’s, of which no one will deny the truth. Somebody expressed
their surprise that Lady Northumberland should be made lady of the
bedchamber. ‘Surely,’ said she, ‘nothing could be more proper. The queen
does not understand English, and can anything be more necessary than that
she should learn the vulgar tongue?’”

It was at this period that Mrs. Scott became an authoress, in whole
or in part, of a successful, but now utterly forgotten, novel, called
“Millennium Hall.” This book, a single volume, went through four
editions. In the first edition, 1762, the first word of the title is
spelt throughout with one _n_, and in all the editions it is said to be
by a gentleman on his travels. Common report assigned the authorship to
Mrs. Scott, shared, as far as some small help went, by her friend and
companion for years, Lady Barbara Montagu. A copy of the second edition
(1764), which once belonged to Horace Walpole, is now in the British
Museum. On the back of the title-page, Walpole corrects the above sharing
of literary labour in the following words, written in his well-known
hand: “This book was written by Lady Bab Montagu (the sister of George
Montagu Dunk, Earl of Hallifax) and Mrs. Scott, daughter of Matthew
Robinson, Esq., and wife of George Scott, Esq.” It was continued to be
published as the work of a gentleman, in the two succeeding editions; but
Mrs. Scott is still accredited with the greatest share in the labour.
“Millennium Hall” is generally described as a novel. It is a series of
stories of the romantic lives of four or five ladies who, having been
bitterly disappointed in love, and handsomely solaced by riches, retire
from the world and establish themselves in the hall which gives its name
to the novel. It is a name which would lead one to suppose that there is
a sort of millennium peace and happiness achieved there, such as will
be found on earth generally only in the millennium period. The wealthy
and love-lorn ladies of the hall, however, have only founded a female
school and society in advance of contemporary ideas, but having nothing
wonderful, though now and then something eccentric, if weighed by our
present standards. The real interest of the volume lies in the romantic
biographies, and these are narrated with ladylike grace, elegance,
tenderness, and, occasionally, tedious prolixity.

The story represented, with some exaggeration, the lives led by Lady Bab
and Mrs. Scott in their “conventual house” at Batheaston. Both boys and
girls were well trained by those ladies at that place. Mrs. Montagu, in
reference to Mrs. Scott’s good works, so loved her sister as to render
her uncharitable to other people. “Methodist ladies,” she said, “did
out of enthusiasm what Mrs. Scott did out of a calm sense of duty, and
gratitude that the employment was a solace to one who had been cruelly
tried by affliction.” No credit was given to poor Lady Bab, but her happy
temperament could well afford to do without it. Strange as the stories
were which illustrate “Millennium Hall,” they were not nearly so strange
as one which, in March, 1762, Mrs. Scott related to her brother at Rome,
in a letter from Bath: “Those who deal in the small wares of scandal
will not want subjects. Miss Hunter, daughter to Orby Hunter, has lately
furnished a copious topic.... She and Lord Pembroke, in spite of winds,
waves, and war, left this kingdom for one where they imagined they may
love with less molestation,—where they cannot see a wife weep nor hear a
father rage. They set off in a storm better suited to travelling witches
than flying lovers, but were so impeded by the weather, that a captain
sent out a boat and took the lady prisoner; but after he had set her
on shore, he found that, as she was of age, it was difficult to assume
any lawful authority over her; and, after having spent a night in tears
and lamentation, she was restored to Lord Pembroke.... His lordship
resigned his commission and his place of lord of the bedchamber, and
wrote a letter to Lady Pembroke, acknowledging her charms and virtues
and his own baseness (an unnecessary thing, since the latter she must
long have known, and was probably not absolutely ignorant of the former),
but assuring her Miss Hunter was irresistible; that he never intended to
return into England, and had taken care that £5,000 should be paid her
yearly. As Lady Pembroke is so handsome and amiable, perhaps his conduct
will be seen by the world in a true light, without any fashionable
palliations. A report was spread, that they were taken by a privateer,
but I can hear of none but of a very different capture—the clay cold
corpses of Lord and Lady Kingstone, which were on their way to England
for interment.”

The elopement of Miss Hunter (a maid of honour, too!) from Bath with
the Earl of Pembroke formed one of the most delicious bits of scandal
ever discussed in the Rooms, on the Parade, or in the Meadows. The
excitement attendant thereon was shared by the whole country; for Kitty
Hunter was a well-known, and not at all suspected, beauty of the day.
Her father, Orby Hunter, was, at the time of the elopement, one of the
lords of the admiralty. The vessel that brought back the fugitives was
a privateer, commanded by a friend of Mr. Hunter’s. Kitty’s father
declined to receive her, and she accompanied Lord Pembroke abroad. The
earl was a married man. His wife was Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of
Marlborough. Her exemplary husband wrote to her from Italy a letter, in
which he politely informed her, that though he had lived with her so many
years, he regretted to say he had never been able to love her so well as
she deserved, so thought it best to leave her. Subsequently, he had the
assurance to invite Lady Pembroke to accompany them on the Continent.
“And she,” says Walpole, “who is all gentleness and tenderness, was with
difficulty withheld from acting as mad a part from goodness as he had
acted from guilt and folly.” He had tried to make his wife hate him,
but in vain. It is one of the illustrations of social feeling in the
last century, that neither the rascal earl nor the light-o’-love maid
of honour was thought much the worse of for their shameless conduct.
A “Peerage,” of ten years subsequent to the elopement, edited by a
clergyman, too! the Rev. Frederick Barlow, vicar of Burton, thus speaks
of my lord, who was then living: “His lordship distinguished himself in
the annals of gallantry with Miss H—— about ten years ago, and since
that time,” it, goes on to speak plainly of the earl’s gallantry, “with
several ladies of less note;” adding, “his lordship is universally
esteemed as an accomplished nobleman and a brave officer.” Mrs. Scott
happily goes on to treat of a plainer but much honester woman than Kitty
Hunter: “The queen gives daily less satisfaction, and the people who at
first found her out to be pleasing, seem now to be insensible to the
discovery they then made. Her husband, however, seems fond of her....
Report says the Prince of Mecklenburg, a very pretty sort of man, with
an agreeable person, is fallen desperately in love with Miss Bowes—a
prudent passion; and the girl has no ambition if she does not choose to
be a princess. I fancy, should she become such, he would be richer than
the duke, his elder brother.... Lady Raymond is going to be married to
Lord Robert Bertie,—an union wherein no acid will enter; for they are
both famed for good temper. Mr. Whitehead’s play has been acted and
published, and a poor performance it is. The dialogue flat and ungenteel,
and the plot poor enough.”

Whitehead’s play was a comedy, “The School for Lovers,” in which Garrick
played Sir John Dorilant. The main attraction was the ever youthful Mrs.
Cibber, who, at nearly fifty years old, acted Cælia, a girl of seventeen;
yet Victor says: “She was admitted by the nicest observers to become the
character. This was entirely owing to that uncommon symmetry and exact
proportion in her form, that happily remained with her to her death.” But
there were more extraordinary comedies being enacted in real life than on
the stage.

In a letter from Mrs. Scott to her brother, at Naples, dated April 10,
1762, there are profuse congratulations on the birth of his son, and
a wonderful amount of speculation on mothers, nurses, and on babies
generally, possible and impossible, expected and not expected, overtardy
or too hasty, and all in as plain language as the subject could admit.
The writer then refers to the report of the queen affording promise of
an heir; “but as she is no great favourite with the nation, it does
not seem to afford any great joy.” This leads to a subject that made
a stir among last century ladies who were privileged to go to court.
“A court dress (_sic_) is going to take place at St. James’s, the same
as in France, which greatly distresses the old ladies, who are quite
clamourous on the occasion, and at a loss how to cover so much neck as
the stiffened-bodied gowns are made to show, and which they are sensible
is not very _appétissante_ after a certain age; as likewise how to supply
the deficiency which churlish time has made in their once flowing
tresses. Some younger ladies, to whom nature has been rather a stepdame
than a kind mother, join in their lamentations, and London is in an
uproar. The exultation of those who, conscious of their charms, rejoice
in laying aside as much covering as possible, being as little silent at
the distress of the others. They look on this allowed display as a sort
of jail delivery to their long-imprisoned attractions; and as beauty is
nature’s boast, insist that it should be showed at courts, and feasts
and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship; and that
fashion has been hitherto unjust in concealing part of the superiority
nature has bestowed upon them. The consumption of pearl-powder will
certainly be much increased; for where there is such a resource, even
fourscore will exhibit a snowy breast, and the corpulent dowagers will
unite the lilies of the spring with all the copious abundance of a later
season.

“... Lord Pembroke, after he got to Holland, wrote to his lady, to desire
her to come to them, assuring her Miss Hunter would be assiduous in her
endeavours to oblige her, and that they should form a very happy society,
if she would bring over her guitar, two servants who play on the French
horn, and his dog Rover! This polite invitation she, Emma like, was
exceeding ready to comply with, but the Duke of Marlborough had rather
too much sense to permit it. His lordship has since written her word, he
shall never be happy till he lives with her again. Absurd as all this
is, it is certainly fact, and some add, that he has advised Miss Hunter
to turn nun! To be sure he best knows how fit she is to take a vow of
chastity! That he may by this time wish she would take any vow that might
separate her from him, is, I think, very probable.”

The general scramble for honours which usually marks a new reign had not
yet ceased. Mrs. Scott thus refers to the part which some of her own
family took in it.

Mrs. Scott to the Reverend W. Robinson. _May 26, 1762._—“I cannot forbear
wishing you could have an Irish bishopric, but your profession are too
watchful to suffer such things to be vacant. I hear our cousin Robinson
does not much like his promotion to Kildare. I suppose he does not
entirely relish rising step by step. All travelling is expensive, and
I believe none more so than the passing through the various stages of
bishoprics; but I think he may be contented to rise _à petits pas_. His
rising at all seems to proceed only from a want of anything to stop him,
according to the philosophical axiom, that put a thing in motion and it
will move for ever, if it meets with nothing to obstruct its course.
Nature went but a slow pace when she made him, and did not jump into one
perfection. Sir Septimus is tolerably contented with his fate in a world
so regardless of real merit, and therefore little likely to reward his
superlative merits. I hear that a week before he had this black rod given
him (a proper reward for a preceptor), he declared that whoever would eat
goose at court must swallow the feathers; but now they have been so well
stroked down, he finds them go down easily enough.”

In a subsequent letter to her sister-in-law at Naples, Mrs. Scott
lightly sketches a celebrated character at Bath.

“This place is by no means full, but it contains much wealth. Colonel
Clive, the Nabob maker (is not that almost as great a title as the famous
Earl of Warwick’s?), lives at Westgate House, with all the Clives about
him. He has sold his possessions in India to the East India Company for
£30,000 per annum, a trifling sum, which he dedicates to the buying of
land. In a time when property is so fluctuating, I think he may see
himself possessor of the whole kingdom, should his distempers allow him
a long life; but his health is bad, and he purposes, when peace is made,
at latest, to show at Rome the richest man in Europe. He lives in little
pomp; moderate in his table, and still more so in equipage and retinue.”

Mrs. Scott now disappears for awhile, to make way for her more celebrated
sister.




CHAPTER V.


The first letter of Mrs. Montagu’s in the hitherto unpublished series
is addressed “To Mr. Robinson,” the writer’s brother. It is dated from
“London, 28th of May, 1762.” Mr. Robinson was then residing at Naples,
where his wife had recently given birth to a son. After the usual
congratulations, Mrs. Montagu says: “I would have answered your letter
the day after I received it, but was obliged to wait for the letter
of recommendation to Mr. Pitt. Neither Lord Lyttelton or the Bishop
of Carlisle are related to or acquainted with Mr. Pitt. Their sister
married a distant cousin of Mr. George Pitt’s, and was parted from him,
I believe, long before Mr. George Pitt was a man, and they have not ever
had the least commerce with him.” After this explanation, the writer
refers to the news of the day, and to one of the leading men of the
time: “The Duke of Newcastle is about to resign his office and retire to
the joys of private life. I am afraid he will find that the mind used
to business does not find quiet in idleness. There is hardly a greater
misfortune than to have the mind much accustomed to the tracasseries
of the world. A country gentleman can amuse himself by angling in a
trout-stream, or venturing his neck in a fox-chase; a studious man can
enjoy his books in solitude, and, with tranquill pleasure, ‘woo lone
quiet in her silent walk;’ but chiefs out of war and statesmen out
of place, like all animals taken out of their proper climate, make a
miserable affair of rural life. I dare say his Grace of Newcastle will
fall to serpentizing rivers, and then wish himself again a fisher of men.
Aurora may put on her finest robe to unbar the gates of Morn; he will
still sigh that his folding doors are not open to a crowded levée. The
notes of Philomel are not sweet to ears used to flattery; and what is the
harvest home to a man used to collect the treasure of England?

“The king has purchased Buckingham House, and is going to fit it up
elegantly for his retired hours. Her majesty promises to give us an heir
very soon. Princess Amelia has purchased Gunnersbury House. The Duke of
Portland died about ten days ago, and the Duke of Manchester last week.

“There has been a cold and fever in town, as universal as a plague, but,
thank God! less fatal. Mr. Montagu had it violently, and we had ten
servants sick at the same time. This distemper is not yet over. It grows
more fatal, but I hope we shall have some rain, which will probably put
a stop to it.... My poor friend Mrs. Donellan dyed of it the day before
yesterday. She had been ill all the winter, and was unable to struggle
with a new distemper.... We propose to go to Sandleford very soon, and
I hope to have my sister Scott’s company there, which will make me very
happy. Lady Bab Montagu has lost her sister, Lady Charlotte Johnson, who
dyed in childbed.

“Lord Hallifax is returned with great glory from his Lord Lieutenancy
in Ireland. He pleased all people; he united all parties; he contented
those he was sent by and those he was sent to; and has shown it is
possible to please the government and to be popular there.... I suppose
you have heard of the death of Sir Edward Dering, which was sudden. He
has entailed everything on his grandson, and left but very small fortune
to his younger children. People seem to think that by making one person
in their family rich, they can make one very happy; but alas! human
happiness cannot be carried beyond a certain pitch. Competency will make
every one easy: great wealth cannot make any one happy. It is strange,
parents should seem to feel only for one child, or, indeed, that the
heir should be dearer than the child; for it is as heir they show their
regards to one of the family. No personal merit, no tender attachment, no
sympathy of disposition can overrule that circumstance. Sir Edward Dering
dyed very rich....

“Mr. Harrison’s watch” (the fourth and most perfect time-keeper, for
ascertaining the longitude at sea, invented by the Yorkshire carpenter’s
son, by which he ultimately received £24,000) “has succeeded beyond
expectation; navigation will be improved by it, which all who have the
spirit of travelling shall rejoice at. The wives of some of our general
officers are gone to Lisbon with their husbands, which I tell you for
the honour of the fair sex. Lord Anson is in a very bad state of health.
I am told Rome is the best place so get books at; I should be glad to
have Muratori ‘Sopra le cose delli secoli passi.’ I have his ‘Annals
of Italy.’ ... My love to my sister and dear little godson.... Pray
remember, you owe me a goddaughter still.”

Mrs. Scott’s letter in June, to Mr. W. Robinson, has two passages in it
which are like notes to her sister’s epistle.

“You will find few commoners in England. We make nobility as fast as
people make kings and queens on Twelfth Night, and almost as many....
Lady Townshend says, she dare not spit out of her window for fear of
spitting on a lord.”

“.... The Duke of Newcastle, after his resignation, had a very numerous
levée, but somebody observed to him, there were but two bishops,
present. He is said to have replied, that bishops like other men, were
too apt to forget their maker. I think this has been said for him, or
the resignation of power has much brightened his understanding; for
of whatever he may be accused, the crime of wit was never laid to his
charge.”

Walpole states, with regard to the prelates at the old duke’s levée:
“As I suppose all bishops are prophets, they foresee that he will never
come into place again; for there was but one that had the decency to
take leave of him, after crowding his rooms for forty years together:
it was Cornwallis.” The duke went out on finding he had no chance of
carrying a pecuniary aid to Prussia. If he was almost a fool, as some
kind friends said, he had the wisdom to keep in place longer than any
of his contemporaries. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by Lord Bute.
Cornwallis, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, reaped the reward of his
fidelity. He was promoted to the Archbishopric of Canterbury in 1768.
It should be added to the honour of the duke, who, however mentally
ill-endowed and eccentric, was a gentleman in practice, that he declined
a pension on his retirement. He might be incapable of serving his
country, he said, but England should certainly not find him a burthen.
Chesterfield cites, as an example of his timidity, the duke’s childish
fear at Lord Chesterfield’s bill for correcting the calendar, and, as a
proof of his integrity, the fact that “he retired from business above
four hundred thousand pounds poorer than when he engaged in it.”

The duke left “business” in a considerable amount of confusion. In a
letter dated July 27, 1762, Mrs. Scott writes to Mr. Robinson at Rome,
after much small talk on babies and jokes on prophesied lyingsin, in
these words:

“Political disputes never ran so high in print as at present. The
periodical papers are numerous and abusive to the greatest degree. By
what I hear, the lawyers find it some substitution for the decay of
business in the courts; for the minority papers regularly undergo the
inspection of council learned in the law before they are published, that
the authors who stand on the very verge of treason may not, by some
inadvertency, make a _faux pas_ that will throw them down the precipice;
and some persons of consequence are under engagements to the printer to
indemnify him should the heavy hand of authority oppress him....

“... The king has given Johnson a pension of £300 per annum,—a necessary
step for one who wishes to be thought the patron of literature, and what
every one must approve.”

_The North Briton_ was not of Mrs. Scott’s opinion with regard to
Johnson’s merits. “I hope,” says Wilkes (No. 11, August 14th), “Johnson
is a writer of reputation, because, as a writer, he has just got a
pension of £300 per annum. I hope, too, that he has become a friend to
this constitution and the family on the throne, now he is thus nobly
provided for; but I know he has much to unwrite, more to unsay, before he
will be forgiven by the true friends of the present illustrious family
for what he has been writing and saying for many years.”

In the last-named month, occurred that great event, the birth of “the
first gentleman in Europe.” Mrs. Scott thus speaks of mother and child:

_August 13, 1762._ Mrs. Scott to Mrs. Robinson, Rome.—“On Thursday, the
queen was brought to bed of a son, and both, we are told, are well. Many
rejoiced, but none more than those who have been detained during all this
hot weather in town to be present at the ceremony. Among them, no one
was more impatient than the Chancellor, who, not considering any part
of the affair as a point of law, thought his presence very unnecessary.
His lordship and the Archbishop must have had a fatiguing office; for,
as she was brought to bed at 7 in the morning, they must have attended
her labour all night, for fear they should be absent at the critical
moment of delivery. I wish they were not too much out of humour before
the prince was born, to be able to welcome it properly.... The lady’s
person is not the only thing that displeased. There is a coarseness
and vulgarity of manners that disgust much more. She does not seem to
choose to fashion herself at all.... Ned Scott’s wife is to suckle the
Prince of Wales—an employment which in all probability will prove as good
nourishment to her own family as to the royal babe; for her numerous
offspring can scarcely fail of being provided for after she has served in
such an office.

“... Peace is being much talked of, tho’ the terms are unknown. The Duke
of Bedford is spoken of as the person who is to go to Paris to transact
it. I hope much will not depend on secret articles; for I think he gave a
proof, when old Bussy was here, that his old nurse could not be a greater
blab!”

The chancellor who was present on the above occasion was “cursing Lord
Northington,”—a coarse, witty man, married to a fool, who became the
mother of the witty Lady Bridget Fox Lane. Northington, like Newcastle,
had his fling at the bishops. In serious illness, he was counselled to
send for a certain prelate. “He will never do,” said the patient. “I
should have to confess that I committed my heaviest sin when I made him
a bishop!” The primate who attended at the birth of the Prince of Wales
was Secker; and as he was originally a dissenter, and was never baptised
in the Church of England, there were anxious church-women who thought
that his christening George Prince of Wales would never make a Christian
of him. And it can’t be said that it did! Meanwhile, how things were
otherwise going in England, Mrs. Scott relates to her brother, in Rome,
in a letter dated September, 1762.

“The lowest artificer thinks now of nothing but the constitution of the
government.... The English always seemed born politicians, but were never
so universally mad on the subject as at present. If you order a mason to
build an oven, he immediately inquires about the progress of the peace,
and descants on the preliminaries. A carpenter, instead of putting up a
shelf to a cupboard, talks of the Princess Dowager, of Lord Treasarre,
and of secretaries of state. Neglected lie the trowel and the chisel; the
mortar dries and the glue hardens while the persons who should use them
are busied with dissertations on the government.

“... The Duke of Marlborough and Lady Caroline Russell were married eight
and forty hours after his grace declared himself a lover. The Duke of
Bedford was always known to be a man of business, but he never despatched
a matter quicker than this. He gave to Lady Caroline £50,000 down, and is
to give as much more at his death.”

The next letter, written at Sandleford, October the 8th, 1762, is
addressed to the writer’s sister-in-law, “Mrs. Robinson, Recommendé à
Monsieur Jenkins, Gentilhome Anglois au Caffé Anglois, sur la Place di
Espana, Rome.” It commences with “My dear Madam,” and after a very prolix
argument on the lack of interest in home news sent to travellers abroad,
Mrs. Montagu refers with pride to the English triumphs at the Havanna
and Martinico, and thus continues.... “But we are not much the nearer to
a peace; for, as ambition subsides or crouches in the House of Bourbon,
it rises in the Court of Aldermen, in London. When we shut the Temple
of Janus, we shut up the trade of Change Alley, and the city finds its
account in a war, and they clamour against any peace that will not give
us the commerce of the whole world!...

“We have lately had a very fine public ceremony, the instalment of the
new Knights of the Garter at Windsor. The king, assuming the throne of
sovereign of the order, gave great lustre to the spectacle. I should have
liked to have seen so august a ceremony; and my Lord Bath was so good as
to ask me to go to Windsor with him, from his house at Maidenhead Bridge;
but Mr. Montagu, not being fond of public shows, and apprehending his
lordship offered to go out of complaisance, I declined it, and my lord
spent three days here; so it was plain, his politeness to us was his only
inducement to go to the instalment. I must own I should have taken some
pleasure in being led back into former ages and the days of our great
Plantagenets. I have a reverence, too, for the institutions of Chivalry.
The qualities of a Knight were valour, liberality, and courtesy, and to
be _sans peur et sans reproche_. And though the change of government and
manners make this knightly character now appear a little extravagant,
the Redresser of wrongs was a respectable title before a regular police
and a good system of laws secured the rights and properties of the weak.
I hear the late instalment was extremely brilliant. The helmets of the
knights were adorned with gems; military honours, indeed, did not sit
proudly on their crests; but if they have the virtues suited to the times
we live in, we will be contented. The knights of Edward ye Third were,
indeed, very great men. The assembly of British Worthies might have
disputed personal merit with, perhaps, the greatest Heroes of antiquity,
considering them singly and independently; but to enjoy an extensive or a
lasting fame, men’s actions must be tyed to great events; then they swim
down Fate’s innavigable tyde, otherwise, they soon sink into oblivion.”...

In the February of this year, 1762, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had
returned to England, after many years of absence. In October, in the same
year, she died. Of her appearance on her return, Mrs. Montagu wrote as
follows to her sister-in-law at Naples:

_February 16, 1762._—“You have lately returned to us from Italy a very
extraordinary personage, Lady Mary Wortley. When Nature is at the trouble
of making a very singular person, Time does right in respecting it.
Medals are preserved, when common coin is worn out; and as great geniuses
are rather matters of curiosity than of art, this lady seems reserved
to be a wonder for more than our generation. She does not look older
than when she went abroad, has more than the vivacity of fifteen, and
a memory which, perhaps, is unique. Several people visited her out of
curiosity, which she did not like. I visit her because her cousin and
mine were cousin-germans. Though she has not any foolish partiality for
her husband or his relations, I was very graciously received, and you may
imagine entertained, by one who neither thinks, speaks, acts or dresses
like anybody else. Her domestick is made up of all nations, and when you
get into her drawing-room, you imagine you are in the first story of the
Tower of Babel. An Hungarian servant takes your name at the door: he
gives it to an Italian, who delivers it to a Frenchman; the Frenchman to
a Swiss, and the Swiss to a Polander; so that, by the time you get to
her ladyship’s presence, you have changed your name five times, without
the expense of an act of parliament.”

In October, the same writer thus wrote of Lady Mary’s death, and of the
son who survived his mother:

“Lady Mary Wortley Montagu returned to England, as it were, to finish
where she began. I wish she had given us an account of the events that
filled in the space between. She had a terrible distemper; the most
virulent cancer I ever heard of, which carried her off very soon. I met
her at Lady Bute’s in June, and she then looked well. In three weeks, at
my return to London, I heard she was given over. The hemlock kept her
drowsy and free from pain; and the physicians thought if it had been
given early, might possibly have saved her. She left her son one guinea.
He is too much of a sage to be concerned about money, I presume. When
I first knew him, a rake and a beau, I did not imagine he would addict
himself at one time to Rabbinical learning, and then travel all over the
East, the great Itinerant Savant of the World. One has read that the
believers in the transmigration of souls suppose a man, who has been
rapacious and cunning, does penance in the shape of a fox. Another, cruel
and bloody, enters the body of a wolf; but I believe my poor cousin, in
his pre-existent state, having broken all moral laws, has been sentenced
to suffer in all the various characters of human life. He has run through
them all unsuccessfully enough. His dispute with Mr. Needham has been
communicated to me by a gentleman of the Museum, and I think he will gain
no laurels there; but he speaks as decisively as if he had been bred in
Pharaoh’s court, in all the learning of the Egyptians. He has certainly
very uncommon parts, but too much of the rapidity of his mother’s genius.

“... I am sure my brother will be glad to hear that Mrs. Scott, of
Scottshall, is wet-nurse to our Prince of Wales, and is much liked by
our king and royal family; so that I hope she will be able to make
interest to establish all her children. A little of the royal favour and
protection will bring them forward in professions, and the girls may have
little places in the household; and I hope the scheme which I forwarded
to the utmost of my power, will save an ancient, honourable family from
ruin. She is vastly pleased and happy in her situation, and her royal
nursling is as fine and healthy a child as can be.

“... I have rambled a good deal this summer, much to my amusement and
the amendment of Mr. Montagu’s health, who was greatly out of order in
the spring. We went to Lord Lyttelton’s in Worcestershire, with a large
party consisting of my Lord Bath, Mr. and Mrs. Vesey, and Doctor Monsey.
Lord Lyttelton had his daughter, his sister, Mrs. Hood, and the Bishop of
Carlisle (his brother) with him, so we made a pretty round family. The
weather was fine, and the place is delightful beyond all description. I
should do it wrong, if I were to attempt to describe it. Its beauties are
summed up in the lines of my favourite Italian poet:

    “‘Culte pianure e delicati colli,
    Chiare acqe, ombrose ripe, e prati molli.’

These lines seem to have been written for Hagley; but, besides these soft
beauties, it has magnificent prospects of distant mountains, and hills
shaded with wood. The house is magnificent and elegant; we had several
agreeable entertainments of musick in different parts of the Park, and
adapted to the scenes. In some places, the French horns reverberated from
hill to hill. In the shady parts near the cascades, the soft musick was
concealed and seemed to come from the unseen genius of the wood. We were
all in great spirits, and enjoyed the amusements prepared for us. Mr.
Montagu grew better every day, by the air and exercise, and returned to
London quite well, though he had been much pulled down by the fashionable
cold called l’influenza.

“... He carried me to see Oxford, which, indeed, I had been at before;
but when there are so many cities built for trade and commerce, it
is always so pleasant to me to see there are places dedicated to the
improvement of the human mind and the nobler commerce with the Muses; and
tho’ it is easy to find fault in everything, yet I think these places
of education and study must have been of great service in advancing
the noblest interests of mankind, the improvement of knowledge, and
harmonizing the mind.

“We went to Blenheim, which I saw with great pleasure, as the monument
of England’s foreign glory and national gratitude. In our return to
town, we saw Warwick Castle, the seat of the great Neville, surnamed
‘the Make-King.’ We visited his tomb and the monuments of Beauchamps,
Nevilles, and Brookes. I walked an hour under some trees, on a beautiful
terrass where Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sydney used to take their
morning’s walk, blending, I dare say, as in his ‘Arcadia,’ Wisedom of
state and schemes of great enterprize with rural talk.

“In our next stage, we saw Kenilworth Castle, once the strong place
of Simon de Montfort, since the seat of the Earl of Leicester. He
entertained Queen Elizabeth there in all the pageantry of the old times
of chivalry. From the lake a lady came, who told the queen, in rude
rhime, that she had been confined there ever since the days of Merlin,
but her majesty’s power had set her free. The lake is now dry’d up. The
place no longer belongs to ambition or luxury. Laughing Ceres re-assumed
the land, and what the proud rebel and the assuming favorite left is
enjoy’d by a farmer. There are great remains of the stately castle, made
more venerable by the finest ivy I ever saw. I could wish this object
placed rather at the edge of a bleak mountain, and that it frowned on a
desert, but it unhappily overlooks a sweet pastoral scene; however, the
memory of the illustrious persons it has belonged to gives the mind that
serious solemn, disposition its situation wants.

“But you who walk on classic ground will despise my Gothick antiquities.
I will own my Nevilles and Montforts dare not stand equal with your
Gracchi, nor my Earl of Leicester with any of the favorites of Augustus;
but, perhaps, to the rough virtues and untamed valour of these potent
rebels, we owe part of our present liberty and happiness, and even our
taste for the venerable remains of ancient Rome.... I desire my most
affectionate love to my brother; and to my nephew and godson, my best
wishes; and I desire he will be a Roman, not an Italian. I beg to go
back as far as before the ruin of Carthage for his morals.” ...

In a fragment of a letter written in 1763, Mrs. Montagu says:

“Miss Hunter has come back in the character of the Fair Penitent. Her
lover was soon tired of an engagement which had not the sanctions of
virtue and honour. Shame and a fatherless babe she has brought back.
I hope her miserable fate will deter adventurous damsels from such
experiments.” Kitty Hunter’s fate was far from being miserable. She
married Captain Clarke, who became Field Marshal Sir Alured Clarke; and
the once audacious maid of honour died in the odour of fashion, A. D.
1810.

In 1764, Mrs. Montagu was an invalid—one who would fulfil the duties of
her position, but who was glad to withdraw from them to the repose of
Sandleford. Supremely admired as she was in society for the brilliancy of
her talents, Mrs. Montagu was seen to the greatest advantage when at home
with one or a very few choice friends. After Mrs. Elizabeth Carter had
spent some time with her at pleasant Sandleford, she wrote to Mrs. Vesey.
“... For most part of the time we were entirely alone.... Our friend,
you know, has talents which must distinguish her in the largest circles;
but there it is impossible for one fully to discover either the beauties
of her character or the extent and variety of her understanding, which
always improves on a more accurate examination and on a nearer view....
The charm is inexpressibly heightened when it is complicated with the
affections of the heart.” Mr. Pennington, Mrs. Carter’s nephew, and
editor of her correspondence, states that those who did not know Mrs.
Montagu in her exclusive home character were ignorant of the real charms
of her understanding, the strength of her mind, and the goodness of her
heart.

One of her great trials visited her this year—the death of her
constant and venerated friend, the Earl of Bath. There is no letter in
the unpublished collection which bears any reference to Lord Bath’s
death—Walpole’s great enemy, and Mrs. Montagu’s most devoted and admiring
friend. It would be difficult to say whether this accomplished nobleman,
or the good Lord Lyttelton, or the profound Lord Kames, or discerning
Burke had the greatest veneration for the mental endowments of Mrs.
Montagu. It may be here added, as a sample of one or two other ladies of
the last century, that after Lord Bath was a widower, and had been made
childless by the loss of his gallant son, unattached ladies made offers
of marriage to him, he being one of the wealthiest men of the day. They
proposed seriously, like Mrs. Anne Pitt, or by strong innuendo, like Lady
Bell Finch. The latter, on Lord Bath returning to her half a crown which
he had borrowed, wished he could give her a crown. Lady Bell replied,
that though he could not give her a crown, he could give her a coronet,
and that she was ready to accept it! Lyttelton celebrated the friendship
which existed between Mrs. Montagu, Lord Bath, and himself in 1762, in a
little poem called “The Vision.” The noble poet told how a bard appeared
to him, and how the minstrel sang of the superiority of the myrtle to the
oak, then—

    “... closed the bard his mystic song,—his shade
    Shrunk from my grasp and into air decay’d,
    But left imprinted on my ravish’d view,
    The forms of Pult’ney and of Montagu.”

After the earl’s death, his will was as much the subject of conversation
as his decease. Chesterfield calculated that, in money and land, he
left to the value of £2,400,000, and made his sole legatee the brother,
General Pulteney, whom he never loved. “The legacies he has left are
trifling; for, in truth, he cared for nobody. The words give and bequeath
were too shocking for him to repeat, and so he left all in one word, to
his brother.” In 1767 General Pulteney died.

The next letter is dated from Mrs. Montagu’s Northumberland residence,
Denton Castle (or Hall), December 7, 1766. It is addressed to Mrs.
Robinson, and contains long and premature congratulations on the expected
birth of her sister-in-law’s next baby, and then continues: “I am still
in the northern regions, but I hope in a fortnight to return to London.
We have had a mild season, and this house is remarkably warm, so that I
have not suffered from cold. Business has taken up much of my time, and
as we had farms to let against next May-day, and I was willing to see
the new colliery begin to trade to London before I left the country, I
had the prudence to get the better of my taste for society. I had this
day the pleasure of a letter from Billingsgate (a polite part of the
world for a lady to correspond with) that the first ships which were
then arrived were much approved. At Lynne they have also succeeded, and
these are the two great coal-markets. So now, as soon as I can get all
the ends and bottoms of our business wound up, I shall set out for Hill
Street.

“I spent a month in Scotland this summer, and made a further progress
than Mr. Gray did. An old friend of Mr. Montagu’s and mine came to us
here, and brought his daughter the end of July, and summoned me to keep a
promise I had made him, of letting him be my knight-errant and escort me
round Scotland.

“The 1st of August we set forward. I called on the Duke and Duchess of
Northumberland at Alnwick Castle, in my way. It is the most noble Gothick
building imaginable. Its antique form is preserved on the outside. Within
the apartments are also Gothick in their structure and ornaments, but
convenient and noble; so that modern elegance arranges and conducts
antique strength and grandeur, leaves its sublimity of character, but
softens what was rude and unpolished.

“My next day’s journey carried me to Edinburgh, where I staid about ten
days. I passed my time there very agreeably, receiving every polite
attention from all the people of distinction in the town. I never saw
anything equal to the hospitality of the Scotch. Every one seemed to
make it their business to attend me to all the fine places in the
neighbourhood, to invite me to dinner, to supper, etc. As I had declined
an invitation to go to Glasgow, the Lord Provost of Glasgow insisted on
my coming to his villa near the town, instead of going to a noisy inn. I
staid three days there to see the seats in the environs, and the great
cathedral, and the college and academy for painting, and then I set out
for Inverary. I should first tell you, Glasgow is the most beautiful
town in Great Brittain. The houses, according to the Scotch fashion, are
large and high, and built of freestone; the streets very broad, and built
at right angles. All dirty kinds of business are carried on in separate
districts, so that nothing appears but a noble and elegant simplicity.

“My road from Glasgow to Inverary lay by the side of the famous lake
called Loughlomon. Never did I see the sublime and beautiful so united.
The lake is in some places eight miles broad, in others less; adorned
with many islands, of which some rise in a conical figure, and are
covered with fir-trees up to the summit. Other islands are flatter. Deer
are feeding in their green meadows. In the lontananza rise the mountains,
on whose barren breast

    “‘The labouring clouds do seem to rest.’

The lake is bright as crystal, and the shore consists of alabaster
pebbles. Thus I travelled near twenty miles, till I came to the village
of Leess, where I lay at an inn, there being no gentleman’s house near
it. The next morning I began to ascend the Highland mountains. I got
out of the chaise to climb to the top of one, to take my leave of the
beautiful lake. The sun had not been long up; its beams danced on the
lake, and we saw this lovely water meandering for twenty-five miles.
Immediately after I returned to my chaise, I began to be inclosed in a
deep valley between vast mountains, down whose furrowed cheeks torrents
rushed impetuously, and united in a river in a vale below. Winter’s
rains had so washed away the soil from some of the steep mountains,
there appeared little but the rock which, like the skeleton of a giant,
appeared more terrible than the perfect form. Other mountains were
covered with a dark brown moss. The shaggy goats were browsing on their
sides. Here and there appeared a storm-struck tree or blasted shrub,
from whence no lark ever saluted the morn with joyous hymn, or Philomel
sooth’d the dull ear of night; but from thence the eagle gave the first
lessons of flight to her young, and taught them to make war on the kids.

“In the Vale of Glencoe, we stopp’d to dine amidst the rude magnificence
of nature rather than in the meanest of the works of art, so did not
enter the cottage which called itself an inn. From thence, my servant
brought me fresh herrings and bread; and my Lord Provost’s wife had
fill’d my maid’s chaise with good things; so very luxuriously we feasted.
I wish’d Ossian would have come to us, and told a tale of other times.
However, imagination and memory assisted, and we recollected many
passages in the very places that inspired them. I staid three hours
listening to the roaring stream, and hoped some ghost would come on the
blast of the mountain and show us the three grey stones erected to his
memory. After dinner, we went on about fourteen miles, still in the
valley; mountain rising above mountain till we ascended to Inverary.
There we at once entered the vale where lies the vast lake called Lough
Fine, of whose dignity I cannot give you a better notion than by telling
you the great leviathan had taken his pastime therein the night before
I was there. Tho’ it is forty miles from the sea, whales come up there
often in the herring season....

“At Inverary, I was lodged at a gentleman’s house, invited to another’s
in the neighbourhood, and attended round the Duke of Argylle’s policy
(such is called the grounds dedicated to beauty and ornament). I went
also to see the castle built by the late duke. It appears small by the
vast objects near it. This great lake before—a vast mountain covered with
firr and beech behind—it, so that, relatively, the castle is little. I
was obliged to return back to Glasgow the same way, not having time to
make the tour of the Highlands. Lord Provost had an excellent dinner
and good company ready for us. The next day I went to Lord Kames’,
near Sterling, where I had promised to stay a day. I pass’d a day very
agreeably there, but could not comply with their obliging entreaties to
stay a longer time, but was obliged to return to Edinburgh. Lord Kames
attended me to Stirling Castle, which is on the road, and from thence
to the iron-works at Carron. Then again I was on classical ground. We
dined at Mr. Dundass’s. At night, I got back to Edinburgh, where I rested
myself three days, and then, on my road, lay at Dr. Gilbert Elliot’s,
and spent a day with him and Lady Elliot. They facilitated my journey by
lending me relays, which the route did not always furnish; so I sent my
own horses a stage forward. I crossed the Tweed again; dined and lay at
the Bishop of Carlisle’s, at Rose Castle, and then came home much pleased
with the expedition, and grateful for the infinite civilities I had
received.

“My evenings at Edinburgh passed very agreeably with Doctor Robertson,
Doctor Blair, Lord Kames, and divers ingenious and agreeable persons.
My friend, Doctor Gregory, who was my fellow traveller, tho’ he is a
mathematician, has a fine imagination, an elegant taste, and every
quality to make an agreeable companion.... He came back to Denton with
me, but soon left us. I detain’d his two daughters, who are still with
us; they are most amiable children....

“I was told Mr. Gray was rather reserved when he was in Scotland, tho’
they were disposed to pay him great respect. I agree perfectly with
him, that to endeavour to shine in conversation and to lay out for
admiration is very paltry. The wit of the company, next to the butt of
the company, is the meanest person in it. But at the same time, when a
man of celebrated talents disdains to mix in common conversation, or
refuses to talk on ordinary subjects, it betrays a latent pride. There
is a much brighter character than that of a wit or a poet, or a savant,
which is that of a rational and sociable being, willing to carry on the
commerce of life with all the sweetness and condescension decency and
virtue will permit. The great duty of conversation is to follow suit,
as you do at whist. If the eldest hand plays the deuce of diamonds, let
not his next neighbour dash down the king of hearts, because his hand is
full of honours. I do not love to see a man of wit win all the tricks
in conversation, nor yet to see him sullenly pass. I speak not this of
Mr. Gray in particular; but it is the common failing of men of genius
to assert a proud superiority or maintain a prouder indolence. I shall
be very glad to see Mr. Gray whenever he will be pleased to do me the
favour. I think he is the first poet of the age; but if he comes to my
fireside, I will teach him not only to speak prose, but to talk nonsense,
if occasion be.... I would not have a poet always sit on the proud summit
of the forked hill. I have a great respect for Mr. Gray as well as a high
admiration.” ...

Whenever Mrs. Montagu got up to ride a simile, there was ground for
anxiety on the part of her friends; some among them, too, must have
wished that she had called a nightingale a nightingale, and not
“philomel.” In travel, however, she saw what she saw, which many
travellers never do. She was not at all like the wife of Sir George
Cornewall mentioned by Lady Malmesbury, in a letter to her son, written
at Chambéry, 1816: “She never looks at anything, but works in the
carriage all day long. She will not even go to Chamouni;” or that other
lady who, passing through the sublimest of mountain scenery, kept her
eyes shut, declaring that it was too beautiful to look at.




CHAPTER VI.


In 1769, the critical state of public affairs drew from Mrs. Montagu the
following reflection: “I hope I shall see all my friends safe and well
at my return to town; but, indeed, a wicked mob and a foolish ministry
may produce strange events. It was better in old times, when the ministry
was wicked and the mob foolish.... Ministers, however wicked, do not pull
down houses, nor ignorant mobs pull down government. A mob that can read
and a ministry that cannot think are sadly matched.”

In truth, however, Mrs. Montagu was engaged during this year on a work
which was not only praiseworthy for the motive which induced her to
undertake it, but honourable to her for its execution, and it may almost
be added, glorious to her personally in its results.

In 1769 Mrs. Montagu published, anonymously, her “Essay on the Writings
and Genius of Shakespeare.” This work, once widely famous, may still
be read with pleasure. It was written in reply to Voltaire’s grossly
indecent attack on our national poet. Some previous allusion which he
had made to Shakespeare, to show his own learning, had directed the
notice of French readers to a new dramatic literature which soon won
their admiration. Voltaire’s jealousy induced him to denounce what he
had before extolled, and he did this in the spirit of the tiger and the
monkey—the component elements, according to his own mendacious saying,
of all Frenchmen. He had no deep knowledge of the subject he affected
to criticise, and was not made of the stuff that could lead him to feel
sympathy with the lofty sentiments, or to be stirred by the searching
wit of the greatest of dramatic poets. Voltaire could no more appreciate
Shakespeare than he could estimate the divine character of Joan of Arc.
If Joan’s own countrymen betrayed her, Voltaire stands foremost among
Frenchmen as the beastly polluter of her spotless reputation.

Mrs. Montagu makes the following playful allusion to her authorship, in
a letter to Lord Lyttelton, December, 1769: “I am sorry to tell you that
a friend of yours is no longer a concealed scribbler. I had better have
employed the town crier to proclaim me an author; but, being whispered,
it has circulated with incredible swiftness. I hear Mr. Andrew Stone is
very indulgent to my performance, which much flatters my vanity. Mr.
Melmoth, at Bath, flatters me; but I am most flattered that a brother
writer says the book would be very well if it had not too much wit. I
thought there had been no wit at all in it; and I am as much pleased as
M. Jourdain was when his preceptor told him he spoke prose. If my wit
hurts anybody or anything, it is chance-medley—no premeditated malice;
neither art nor part has my will therein. I don’t love wit: it is a poor,
paltry thing, and fit only for a Merry Andrew.

“I look very innocent when I am attacked about the essay, and say, ‘I
don’t know what you mean!’ I shall set about a new edition as soon as
your lordship comes to town; for the first thousand is in great part
sold, tho’ the booksellers have done me all the prejudice in their
power.” The new edition was even more successful than the first.

Mrs. Montagu’s defence may appear a little too apologetic now; but it is
marked by good taste, by evidences of deep thought, by flashes of wit,
and by the grasp she has, firmly and gracefully, on her subject. She
deals with dramatic poetry and the historical drama, examines the first
and second parts of “Henry IV.,” treats of the preternatural beings of
Shakespeare, and ends by a comparison of “Cinna” and “Julius Cæsar.”
If any may differ with her in respect to Corneille, whose third act of
“Cinna” is worthy of the great French dramatic poet, no reader will
hesitate to praise the earnestness and delicacy with which this Lady of
the Last Century has executed her noble task.

A French translation appeared in Paris in 1777—the year before Voltaire
died. In England, six editions of the essay were published, the last in
1810. In 1827, it had the honour of being noticed with high praise, by M.
Villemain, in his “Nouveaux Mélanges Historiques et Littéraires;” and in
1840, an edition in Italian was published in Florence.

Few English readers had read Voltaire so thoughtfully as Mrs. Montagu,
and perhaps none reflected more on what they read than she did, or gave
more graceful expression to consequent judgment. One side of Voltaire’s
character she described (while the witty Frenchman was preparing his
attack on Shakespeare) to Lord Kames.

“Voltaire sent a tragedy to Paris, which he said was composed in ten
days. The players sent it back to him to correct. At threescore and ten
one should not think his wit would outrun his judgment; but he seems
to begin a second infancy in wit and philosophy,—a dangerous thing to
one who has such an antipathy to leading-strings.” It was Voltaire’s
self-praise that offended Mrs. Montagu as much as his offensive
condescension to, and disparagement of, Shakespeare. When she was told
that Voltaire had said boastingly: “C’est moi qui autrefois parlai le
premier de ce Shakespeare. C’est moi qui le premier montrai aux Français
quelques perles que j’avais trouvé dans son fumier.” “Ah!” replied Mrs.
Montagu, with great readiness, “C’est un fumier qui a fertilisé une terre
bien ingrate.” French fashionable circles, which loved wit and cared
not a jot who suffered by it, received and repeated the saying of the
accomplished English lady as if it had been ten times more brilliant than
it was in reality.

Mrs. Montagu’s defence of Shakespeare was not too tenderly treated by
her own friends. All the frankness of friendship was cheerfully given to
it. The plain-spoken Dowager Countess Gower thus wrote soon after the
appearance of the Vindication:

_1769._—“Fortune has blest this forest with the geniuses of the age;
Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Dunbar, etc., etc., and Lord Lyttelton
are at Sunning Wells, and sport sentiment from morn till noon, from
noon till dewy eve. I molest ’em not; contenting myself in my rustic
simplicity. ’Tis a stupidity that may be felt, I don’t doubt, but not by
me. Mrs. Montagu has commenced author, in vindication of Shakespeare,
who wants none; therefore her performance must be deemed a work of
supererogation. Some commend it. I’ll have it, because I can throw it
aside when I’m tired.” Johnson treated it with greater brutality. He
had once compared Mrs. Montagu with Queen Elizabeth, and had recognized
in the former the greater qualifications. Now, he denounced the essay
when he had only looked into it. He had taken up an end of the web, and
finding packthread, thought it useless, as he said, to go further in
search of embroidery. Reynolds thought it did her honour, which Johnson
allowed, but he spoiled the admission by asserting that it would do
honour to no one else. Garrick said she had pointed out Voltaire’s
blunders; to which Johnson replied, that it wasn’t worth while, and that
there was no merit in the way of doing it. Subsequently, he declared:
“Neither I, nor Beauclerk, nor Mrs. Thrale could get through the book!”—a
declaration which was unfounded, as far as Mrs. Thrale was concerned;
for she protested that she had read it with pleasure. The great man, in
short, talked nonsense, but dressed it in fine words. “There was no real
criticism in it,” he said, “showing the beauty of thought, as formed in
the workings of the human heart.” Mrs. Montagu did not feel called on
to exhibit any such beauty or any such superstructure. She exposed the
blundering arrogance of Voltaire, who first praised Shakespeare, for the
annoyance of his own countrymen, and then, finding the French inclined
to accept the praise, aspersed brutally the poet whom he had pillaged
without mercy.

Johnson thought little of Garrick, probably because Garrick approved the
object of Mrs. Montagu’s Shakespearian essay, and because the lady gave
very high praise to Garrick as an actor. Johnson thought it was fit
that she should say much, and that he should say nothing, in Garrick’s
praise. Accomplished Bruin, however, said much to the great player’s
disparagement. He maintained that Garrick had been overpaid for what he
had done for Shakespeare. “Sir, he has not made Shakespeare better known.
He cannot illustrate Shakespeare!” When Johnson afterward wrote to Mrs.
Thrale, that speaking of “Shakespeare and Nature” rightly brought Mrs.
Montagu into his mind, he is supposed to be inconsistent, when he was,
it may be, only satirical. He certainly uttered a judgment on the essay,
which is not to be gainsaid, when he maintained, according to Mr. Seward,
that the work was “ad hominem, conclusive against Voltaire,” and that
“she had done, sir, what she intended to do.”

The greatest praise which the essay received was awarded to it by Cowper
many years after it was published. Writing on May 27, 1788, to Lady
Hesketh, Cowper said: “I no longer wonder that Mrs. Montagu stands at
the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic veils his
bonnet to her superior judgment. I am now reading and have reached the
middle of her essay on the genius of Shakespeare—a book of which, strange
as it may seem, though I must have read it formerly, I had absolutely
forgot the existence.

“The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and the wit displayed
in it fully justify, not only my compliment, but all compliments that
either have been already paid to her talents, or shall be paid hereafter.
Voltaire, I doubt not, rejoiced that his antagonist wrote in English,
and that his countrymen could not possibly be judges of the dispute.
Could they have known how much she was in the right, and by how many
thousand miles the Bard of Avon is superior to all their dramatists, the
French critic would have lost half his fame among them.”

While honour was being showered on the writer of the essay, ill health,
from which she suffered long and frequently, marred her triumph.

Writing to Mrs. W. Robinson, from Hill Street, November the 19th, 1770,
she says: “... I fell ill on my journey to Denton, or rather, indeed,
began the journey indisposed, and only aggravated my complaints by
travelling. Sickness and bad weather deprived me of the pleasure of
seeing the beauties of Derbyshire. However, I got a sight of the stately
Palace of Lord Scarsdale, where the arts of antient Greece and the
delicate pomp of modern ages unite to make a most magnificent habitation.
It is the best worth seeing of any house, I suppose, in England. But
I know how it is that one receives but moderate pleasure in the works
of art. There is a littleness in every work of man. The operations of
nature are vast and noble, and I found much greater pleasure in the
contemplation of Lord Breadalbane’s mountains, rocks, and lakes than in
all the efforts of human art at Lord Scarsdale’s.”

Mrs. Montagu’s illness increasing at Denton, she writes: “Doctor Gregory
came from Edinburgh to make me a visit, and persuaded me to go back with
him. The scheme promised much pleasure, and, I flattered myself, might
be conducive to health, as the doctor, of whose medical skill I have the
highest opinion, would have time to observe and consider my various
complaints. I was glad also to have an opportunity of amusing my friend,
Mrs. Chapone, whom I carried into the north with me. We had a pleasant
journey to Edinburgh, where we were most agreeably entertained in Doctor
Gregory’s house, all the literate and polite company of Edinburgh paying
me all kind of attentions; and, by the doctor’s regimen, my health
improved greatly; so that I was prevailed upon to enjoy my love of
prospects by another trip to the Highlands, my good friend and physician
still attending me. The first day’s journey was to Lord Buchan, brother
to Mr. Charles Erskine, who was the intimate companion and friendly
competitor of my poor brother Tom. Each of them was qualified for the
highest honours of their profession, which they would have certainly
attained, had it pleased God to have granted longer life. Lord Buchan had
received great civilities at Horton when he was pursuing his law studies
in England; so he came to visit me as soon as I got to Edinburgh, and, in
the most friendly manner, pressed my passing some days at his house in
Perthshire. I got there by an easy day’s journey, having also walked a
long time about the castle of Stirling, which commands a very beautiful
prospect.

“Lord Buchan’s place is very fine and in a very singular style. His house
looks to the south, over a very rich valley, rendered more fertile as
well as more beautiful by the meanderings of the river Forth. Behind his
house rise great hills covered with wood, and over them stupendous rocks.
The goats look down with an air of philosophic pride and gravity on folks
in the valley. One in particular seemed to me capable of addressing the
famous beast of Gavaudan, if he had been there, with as much disdain as
Diogenes did the great conqueror of the East. Here I passed two days
very agreeably, and then his lordship and my doctor attended me to my
old friend Lord Kinnoul’s. You may imagine my visit there gave me a
great deal of pleasure besides what arose from seeing a fine place. I
was delighted to find an old friend enjoying that heartfelt happiness
which attends a life of virtue. Lord Kinnoul is continually employed
in encouraging agriculture and manufactures, protecting the weak from
injury, assisting the distressed, and animating the young people to
whatever in their various stations is most fit and proper.... He appears
more happy in this situation than when he was whirled about in the vortex
of the Duke of Newcastle. The situation of a Scottish nobleman of fortune
is enough to fill the ambition of a reasonable man, for they have power
to do a great deal of good.

“From Dupplin we went to Lord Breadalbane’s, at Taymouth. Here unite
the sublime and beautiful. The house is situated in a valley where the
verdure is the finest imaginable; noble beeches adorn it, and beautiful
cascades fall down the midst of it. Through this valley you are led to a
vast lake. On one side of the lake there is a fine country; on the other,
mountains lift their heads or hide them in the clouds. In some places
ranges of rocks look like vast fortifyed cittadels. I passed two days in
this fine place, where I was entertained with the greatest politeness
and kindest attentions, Lord Breadalbane seeming to take the greatest
pleasure in making everything easy, agreeable, and convenient.

“My next excursion was to Lord Kames’; and then I returned to Edinburgh.
With Lord Kames and his lady I have had a correspondence ever since I
was first in Scotland, so I was there received with cordial friendship.
I must do the justice to the Scottish nation to say, they are the most
politely hospitable of any people in the world. I had innumerable
invitations of which I could not avail myself, having made as long a
holiday from my business in Northumberland as I could afford.

“The newspapers will inform you of the death of Mr. George Grenville.
I think he is a great loss to the publick; and tho’ in these days of
ribbaldry and abuse he was often much calumniated, I believe time will
vindicate his character as a publick man: as a private one, he was quite
unblemished. I regret the loss to myself. I was always pleased and
informed by his conversation. He had read a vast deal, and had an amazing
memory. He had been versed in business from his youth; so that he had a
very rich fund of conversation, and he was good-natured and very friendly.

“The King’s Speech has a warlike tone. But still we flatter ourselves
that the French king’s aversion to war may prevent our being again
engaged in one.... Lord Chatham was to have spoken in the House of Lords
to-day, if poor Mr. Grenville’s death, which happened at seven this
morning, had not hindered his appearing in publick....

“Mr. Montagu did not leave Denton till almost a week after I came away;
and he was stop’d at Durham by waters being out; but I had the pleasure
of hearing yesterday that he got safe to Darlington, where he was to
pass a few days with a famous mathematician, but I expect him in town
the end of this week. My nephew, Morris, has got great credit at Eton
already.... My doctors order me to forbear writing, but this letter does
not show my obedience to them.... The celebrated coterie will go on, in
spite of all remonstrances, and there is to be an assembly thrice a week
for the subscribers to the opera, so little impression do rumours of wars
and apprehensions of the plague make in the fine world....

“I am in your debt for my pretty neice’s dancing-master, which I forgot
when I had the pleasure of seeing you. I shall hope to supply her, as
opportunity offers, with all the assistance of that sort which her happy
genius will make of great use to her; but your constant care will supply
many better things than those the artists teach, and I do not doubt of
her making an amiable and valuable woman. With the most sincere regard,
I am, dear madam, your very affectionate sister, and faithful friend,
and humble servt., E. M.... I know you will be very glad to hear I left
everything in such order in the north, that I shall not pay my devotions
to ye pole-star again for some years.”

No two people had more delight in mutual conversation than Mrs. Montagu
and Lord Kames. They were so agreed upon one subject,—the insincerity,
ignorance, and meanness of Voltaire, as to make their conversation most
lively when it turned upon the Frenchman who defiled the character of
the most glorious of Frenchwomen, Joan of Arc,—who heaped abuse upon
Shakespeare and on those who defended him,—and who hated and miscalled
Lord Kames for having weighed his “Henriade” in the scales of criticism,
and for having found it “wanting.” Over this reply of Voltaire to Lord
Kames, that judge and philosopher, reading it aloud, laughed himself, and
raised irrepressible laughter in the lady who listened to him. The reply
is in one of Voltaire’s “Lettres à un Journaliste.” “Permit me to explain
to you some whimsical singularities of ‘The Elements of Criticism,’ in
three volumes, by Lord Makames (sic), a justice of peace in Scotland.
That philosopher has a most profound knowledge of nature and art, and he
uses the utmost efforts to make the rest of the world as wise as himself.
He begins by proving that we have five senses; and that we are less
struck by a gentle impression made on our eyes and ears, by colours and
sounds, than by a knock on the head or a kick on the leg. Proceeding from
that to the rules of time and space, M. Home concludes with mathematical
precision, that time seems long to a lady who is about to be married,
and short to a man who is going to be hanged. M. Home applies doctrines
equally extraordinary to every department of art. It is a surprising
effect of the progress of the human mind, that we should now receive from
Scotland rules for our taste in all matters, from an epic poem down to
a garden. Knowledge extends daily, and we must not despair of hereafter
obtaining performances in poetry and oratory from the Orkney Islands. M.
Home always lays down his opinions as a law, and extends his despotic
sway far and wide. He is a judge who absorbs all appeals.”

The famous mathematician to whom Mrs. Montagu refers in the above letter
was William Emerson, of whom Mr. Montagu is believed to have been the
original patron. Mr. Montagu may, in some degree, have helped that poor
and eccentric scholar, but the energies of the once idle Yorkshire
dreamer were really developed by an injustice. He had married the niece
of a clergyman, who basely cheated the bride out of her dowry of £500.
Whereupon the proud and angry husband sent back the whole of his wife’s
wardrobe, with the message that he would “scorn to be beholden to such
a fellow for a rag!” When Mr. Montagu married Elizabeth Robinson,
Emerson had just ready for the press the work which gave him a place
in the highest rank of mathematicians—his “Doctrine of Fluxions.” The
distinction neither affected his eccentricity nor softened his audacity.
He was wont to sign his mathematical solutions with a name that might
have made Minerva breathless—“Philofluentimechanelgegeomastrolonzo,” and
he lived to shock Mrs. Edward Montagu by snapping his fingers at the
Royal Society, and damning the fellows and their fellowships!

George Grenville and Burke are among the best samples of the men whom
Mrs. Montagu appreciated, and who could thoroughly appreciate Mrs.
Montagu. Burke has spoken in the highest terms of both. Of the statesman
who, five years before his death, resigned all his offices, Burke said:
“With a masculine understanding and a stout and resolute heart, he had
an application undissipated and unwearied. He took public business, not
as a duty he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he
seemed to have no delight out of the house, except in such things as in
some way related to the business that was to be done within it. If he
was ambitious, I will say this for him, that his ambition was of a noble
and generous strain. It was to raise himself not by the low, pimping
politics of a court, but to win his way to power through the laborious
gradations of public service, and to secure himself a well-earned rank in
Parliament, by a thorough knowledge of its constitution and in perfect
practice in all its business.” Mrs. Montagu might justly be proud of the
good opinion of a friend who could express such a judgment of another
friend like Grenville, for whom she herself entertained the highest
esteem.

Mrs. Montagu to Mrs. Robinson. “_January 17, 1771._ ... I have kept very
well all this frost, and what is more strange in a town lady, I have
been very discreet. I have improved upon Lady Grace’s plan of doing very
soberly. I have been serious, and solemn and retired, and have sat as
quietly at my fireside as any antiquated dowager when her quadrille party
was gone into the country. But I have said enough upon such an atom, and
I will now talk of ye great persons and things of this world. The Duke
of Bedford died of a fit of the asthma. He departed singing the 104th
Psalm. This shows he had some piety, but I think his grace sang out of
tune; so I am not an admirer of his singing.” (Walpole says he “had lost
his sight, and almost his speech and limbs.”) “I like a Psalm-singing
cobler in death as well as in life. A poor man who has maintained a wife
and children by his labour, has kept the ten commandments, has observed
the Sabbath, kept the laws of the community, and lived kindly with his
neighbours, may sing his own requiem with a comfortable and cheerful
assurance. Of him to whom little is given, little shall be required.
But the debtor and creditor of a long account is not so easily settled.
Wealth, titles, power give a great influence in society. Have the poor
been relieved, the weak protected, the industrious been encouraged,
virtue countenanced, merit brought forth to view, the profligate
discouraged, the commonwealth served equal to its great demands on a Duke
of Bedford, the proprietor of a vast estate? I mean not to intimate that
he was to dye in despair, for his Judge is merciful, but in his sight no
man living shall be justified; so that, unless there is an uncommon merit
or innocence of character, I see no reason for this kind of jollity. His
grace has left enough to make the duchess’s jointure £6,000 a year. She
is to keep up the houses at Bloomsbury and at Wooburn. Her grace, Mr.
Palmer, and the Duchess of Marlborough are trustees for the young duke....

“As the late duke was sometimes headstrong, the court will have an
advantage in having the duchess to deal with, as Lord Sandwich is her
guide in politicks. The duke left Mr. Rigby £5,000, a sum for which he
had Mr. Rigby’s bond. He has left a sum of fourscore pound a year to Miss
Wrottesley; a year’s wages to servants. I hear not of other legacies. It
is believed Lord Suffolk will not accept of any place....

“It is believed we shall have a Peace. The King of Prussia and the
Emperor joined to get a peace for the Turks. These potentates design to
keep the French in order and to defend Germany. The Emperor wishes to
recover Lorraine and Alsace. So it is supposed the French will sit quiet
even if the Spaniards should go to war with us. I am not afraid of the
Dons, if not assisted by French vivacity. All our family is well, and the
_père de famille_ best of all.... Mr. M. is pure well.”

The following letter to Mrs. Robinson, the writer’s sister-in-law, whose
father, Mr. Richardson, was a private gentleman of Kensington, contains
a reference to the Kensington “ladies’-school” of the writer’s early
time, and one to the Chelsea school, where she visited Mrs. William
Robinson’s daughter in 1772. These references are valuable illustrations
of the female scholastic life of the two periods. “I called on my pretty
neice at Chelsea, who I had the pleasure of finding in perfect health,
with a little addition of embonpoint extremely becoming. She received
me very politely, and her governesses spoke much in her praise. Indeed,
she is a very good subject for them, appearing to have much good-humour,
docility, and everything I could wish.” The young Sarah Elizabeth’s
extremely becoming embonpoint induced her sagacious aunt to look at her
stays. “I found fault with her stays,” she writes, “which lift up her
shoulders; and they say they had your leave to get others, but I could
not understand why they had neglected to do it. I was pleased to find my
neice perfectly clean and neat, tho’ I called on ye Saturday, which is
usually only the eve of cleanliness. I remember at Mrs. Robartes’, at
Kensington, the girls used to be so dirty, sometimes one could not salute
them!”




CHAPTER VII.


Mrs. William Robinson, who, with her husband and children, had been so
long abroad, had now returned to England, and had visited Mr. and Mrs.
Montagu. Late in the year, Mrs. Montagu wrote to her sister-in-law:

“_August ye 9th, 1772._ ... I am quite ashamed to think how ungrateful I
must have appeared to you and my brother for your kind visit and obliging
letter, in letting so long a time pass before I returned my thanks. Your
visit appeared to us like a pleasant dream, from which we were sorry to
awake and find ourselves deserted by such agreable guests. The Duchess
of Portland arrived in two or three days after your departure. She made
me rather a longer visit than you did, but still a much shorter than
I wished it. Her grace submitted with infinite good-humour to all the
awkwardnesses of a Tunbridge lodging. We had, happily, that kind of
weather which makes pastoral life agreable. I was delighted to find that
time had not robbed her grace of her pleasing vivacity, and we laugh’d
as heartily as we used to do in our younger days. Her grace gave me as a
fairing the most beautiful, rich, and elegant snuff-box I ever saw, for
which I could only return her thanks; for I thought it would be putting
myself too much upon a par with her, to make a return in kind. If I
could get any natural curiosity to add to her collection, it would make
me very happy.

“Every day after you left us the place began to fill with company.

“... We have had the finest weather I ever saw for any long continuance.
As a farmer, I have some fault to find with it. Our wheat, and barley,
and turnips have all suffered by drought. We had not any reason to
complain of our hay, but the grass is very much burnt. The dearness of
all kinds of provisions have reduced our poor neighbours to a state of
wretchedness which I never saw before in England.... My father has been
ill, but I believe his complaints were nervous, and partly the effects of
hot weather. I wonder how he can endure to live in a brick oven all the
summer season.

“... I went the other day to Winchester, and dined with Doctor Warton,
and saw the school. The doctor allowed me to ask a play for the boys,
which made them very happy, and gave him leisure to pass the time with
me. My sweet, lovely Miss Gregory and I set out very early in the
morning, so that we got to Winchester before eleven o’clock, and staid
there till between six and seven, and were at home in good time.... Miss
Gregory and Mrs. Morgan are much your humble servants.... When you have
an opportunity to get the nankeen, tea, and handkerchiefs, I can pay what
is due for them to your banker. If a blue tafety, or a white of a very
fine colour should come in your way and seem a pennyworth, please to add
it, or anything you may have offered that is plain.... Cheap, pretty,
plain muslin for gowns would not come amiss. But, as smuggling is a
dangerous trade, much counterband goods must not travel in the same box.
All possible love to my dear nephew and neices, with whom I hope to make
a more intimate acquaintance before they have disposed of all their love
and friendship.”

_August 15, 1772._—Mrs. Montagu to Mrs. Robinson. “... I was very sorry
that your races happened so untowardly, that I could not edge in my
visit without being complicated in them. I remember the time when the
said races would have a very different effect than deterring me from the
neighbourhood; but we change to everything and everything changes to
us. I cannot say that as one grows older, one grows so much wiser as to
despise foolish amusements, but one likes new kinds of follies. I mean we
always like some of those things severe and frowning wisdom calls follies.

“I had the pleasure in finding Mr. Montagu in extreme good health, which
gave me the higher satisfaction, as I had been alarmed about him some
time before.

“I went a few miles out of my road to Sandleford, to fulfill my old
promise to Mr. Burke to spend a day or two with him and Mrs. Burke, at
Beaconsfield. I was sorry that I could not continue there longer than
one whole day, as I was then not so assured that Mr. Montagu was in
perfect health. When the talents of a man of genius, the acuteness of a
politician, the alert vivacity of a man of business are all employed to
make conversation agreable and society pleasant, one passes one’s time
very delightfully in such company.

“At Beaconsfield, Mr. Burke is an industrious farmer, a polite husband, a
kind master, a charitable neighbour, and a most excellent companion. The
demons of ambition and party who hover about Westminster do not extend
their influences as far as the villa. I know not why it is, but these
busy spirits seem more tranquil and pleased in their days of retreat
than the honest, dull justice of the quorum, who never stretched forth
his hand to snatch the sceptre of power, or raised his voice in publick
to fill the trumpet of fame. A little mind is for ever in a tracasserie,
because it is moved by little things. I have always found that nothing
is so gentle as the chief out of war, nor so serene and simple as the
statesman out of place. If it were fit to name names and certify places,
I would bring many examples to justify my assertion. I so much delight
in these working master-spirits in their holiday humour, that I had
rather play at tee-totum or cross and pile with Julius Cæsar than with
Sardanapalus. The first would have the easy indifference that belongs to
play; the other, the seriousness and anxiety which belong to business.

“I am now preparing for a little excursion in which I shall see some of
the busy folks of the great world; so I expect to enjoy my time in the
more joyous tranquility. On Friday, I am to go to Stowe, Lord and Lady
Temple having given me repeated invitations there. I am much afraid the
weather will not favour my excursion; however, as I shall stay four
days at Stowe, I hope to see those superbe gardens while I am there
in favourable gleams of sunshine. I have not seen Stowe since I first
married. Lord Temple, I hear, has much improved them.

“I shall have the pleasure of making a visit at another fine place
which I never yet saw, which is Lord Nuneham’s, in Oxfordshire.... Mr.
Herbert has given me a very agreable neighbour in Lady Elizabeth. She has
been very well educated, and I dare say will always behave with great
propriety. Mr. Herbert is a young man of uncommon understanding and
merit. He has come early, and not too early, into ye possession of an
ample fortune.

“... I am much pleased to hear my neice is so tractable and good;
a disposition to oblige her Parents, and to do what those who love
her advise her to, will make her much happier than wilfulness and
obstinacy.... My nephews, Morris and Matthew, are just arrived. They are
fine boys. Morris grows very handsome, and he has a very good character
amongst his schoolfellows. These little men will be a great amusement
to Mr. Montagu in my absence. I passed my time very well at Tunbridge,
having so agreable a companion at home as my sister; so that I depend on
the great world for nothing more than vagrant amusement at idle hours;
and this is all one can reasonably expect of the great world. One should
have one’s solid comforts at home. One makes a good meal; the other a
pleasant dessert.

“... I regret that poor Mr. Gray is now no more than Pindar. One fatal
moment sets two or three thousand years aside, and brings the account
equal. I really believe our British Pindar not unequal in merit to the
bard of Thebes. I hope Mr. Gray has left some works yet unpublished.”

Walpole, who never appears in a more favourable light than when he speaks
with affectionate reverence of Gray, supplemented Mrs. Montagu’s hopes by
saying: “I should earnestly wish, if he has destined anything for the
public, to print it at my press. It would do me honour and give me an
opportunity of expressing what I feel for him. Methinks, as we grow old,
our only business here is to adorn the graves of our friends or dig our
own.”

From these reflections, Mrs. Montagu takes her readers back to life and
its varieties, in a letter without date, but it is endorsed in a hand,
not hers, 1773.

“In the early part of my life I was a most punctual correspondent; but
of late I have been as much too remiss as I was formerly too diligent
in writing letters. I have at length discovered that writing letters is
idleness without ease, and fatigue without a purpose. When newspapers
only told weddings, births, and burials, a letter from London bore some
value; but now that the public papers not only tell when men are born
and dye, but every folly they contrive to insert between those periods,
the literary correspondent has nothing left. Lies and dulness used to be
valued in manuscript, but printing has assumed a right over the lies of
the day and the amusement of the hour. On stamped paper and by authority
are publish’d what Lady B—— L——e says of a fat alderman, and how Miss
Biddy Bellair was dress’d at the last masquerade. I can, however, tell
you some news from St. Vincent, which I had just now from a gentleman
in a public office, which is, that an account has just arrived from
Colonel Dalrymple, with news of the total reduction of the Caribs, in St.
Vincent, and a treaty concluded with them, with small loss on our side. I
could find in my heart to say ‘poor Caribs!’

“I suppose you are not very deeply interested in Sir George C——ke’s
affairs.... I hope no one will lose anything of such importance as to
affect them essentially, as this disaster has been so long expected. It
was said the other day, his effects amounted to £700,000, his debts to
£300,000; but his contracts and dealings have been so universal, that
I presume no one can tell ye just sum of the one or the other. Part of
his effects are hemp and alum. Never was so much of the first used at
Tyburn, nor of the second at the bakers’, as at this moment; but as I
presume those commodities do not bear a settled price, a just estimate
cannot be made. In ye present lack of specie and of confidence, paper,
estates and houses must sell badly. I hope his unmarried sister will not
lose anything, and that his family will not fall from affluence to narrow
circumstances. I hear Lady C——ke has an estate in Jamaica of £4,000 per
annum settled upon her. It is said the Irish Bank has only stopped for
awhile, and that nothing will be lost. The state of that country is very
bad. The poor are wretched, and all people discontented. The condition
of Scotland is not much better. The bankruptcies there are numerous, and
ye manufactories are stopped. I wish the bankruptcies here may not have
as bad an effect on our trade. I rejoice that my brother Robinson has
returned to his native land, and wish he would come and visit his friends
in town.

“... Mr. Montagu has (in the main) had a pretty healthful winter. His
cough is at present troublesome to him, but I hope the warm weather we
have now a right to expect will soon cure him.

“The Archbishop of York’s second son, a fine youth dyed of a milliary
fever this morning. I lament the young man, and am heartily concerned for
his family.

“As I have good luck in smuggling, I will wait for my gown till you come
to town, and will send you a black silk, for which it may serve as a
lining. The taffety will serve for another year, if it be too warm for
this season, when it comes to London.

“I am glad you intend to send my eldest neice to a boarding-school. What
girls learn at these schools is trifling, but they unlearn what would be
of great disservice—a provincial dialect, which is extreamly ungenteel,
and other tricks that they learn in the nursery. The carriage of the
person, which is of great importance, is well attended to, and dancing
is well taught. As for the French language I do not think it necessary,
unless for persons in very high life. It is rarely much cultivated at
schools. I believe all the boarding-schools are much on the same plan, so
that you may place the young lady wherever there is a good air and a good
dancing-master. I dare say you will find great improvement in her air and
her speech by the time she has been there a year, and these are points
of great importance. The Kentish dialect is abominable, tho’ not so bad
as ye Northumberland and some others; but in this polish’d age, it is so
unusual to meet with young Ladies who have any _patois_, that I mightily
wish to see my neice cured of it.

“The Duke of Gloucester is relapsed into a bad state of health. Miss
Linley, who I suppose you have seen at Bath, is much in vogue. I am to
hear her sing to-morrow morn at ye Bishop of Bristol’s.

“... Papa bears Sir G. C——’s shutting shop very patiently. If his money
is safe, he has no objection to its being locked up. I do not imagine
we shall lose anything. I am only sorry for him and for his family, as
these things must be very unpleasant. There is a great deal of poverty
and distress in London and in the southern counties. I wish very much to
see my brother Robinson after his long absence. I rejoice that his health
is so good. I wish you could persuade him to come to London. He improves
society, and it is a pity he should not live in it.”

Another of the writer’s nieces is referred to in the following discursive
letter:

“_January ye 1st, 1774._ DEAR MADAM,—I was very glad to hear that my
pretty little friend got safe to you. I dare say the holidays will pass
with her and her brother and sister in all the gayety and jolly mirth
which belong’d to them in former times. When our maccaronic beaux and
cotterie dames go into the country to pass the Christmas holydays, I have
no great opinion of the festivity and joy of the party. Mirth belongs to
youth and innocence. When the World was young and innocent, its laugh
was hearty, and its mirth sincere, and festivals were gay. Old Father
Christmas must now be content to gambol in the nursery; but such is the
force of custom, that many persons go at this dreary season to their
dreary mansions to keep their Christmas, who will not laugh till they
return to London.

“... I think the fish will come safest by my neice, as it will escape
being rummaged by the custom-house officers, who will be apt to suspect
it has a pudding of Brussels lace in it. I thank you for two pound more
of excellent tea. I think it full as good as that which costs me 16_s._ a
pound.... My pretty neice is so good-humoured: she is never troublesome.
She is a mighty orderly person, folds up her things very nicely. She will
be both a notable housewife and a good-humoured woman, and therefore will
make an excellent wife. Happy will be the man to whose lot she will fall.
It is very rarely that one sees these characters meet. A good housewife
is generally an anxious, peevish thing; and a good-humoured woman is too
often careless and unmindful of her family. As she is your daughter, I
do not wonder at her uniting perfections that are but rarely united. My
brother William was a favourite of my mother’s, and she certainly made
his whole christening suit of that part of her linnen which is supposed
to derive matrimonial blessings on the son. For what mother’s darling my
neice is reserved I do not know, but I hope one who will deserve her.

“I believe you will hardly be able to read my scrawl, which is even worse
than usual; for I have almost put my eyes out with accounts, of which our
steward brings a plentiful quantity at this time of year. He is a very
diligent Person, and expects that I will apply many hours in the day. Our
affairs go on very prosperously and in great order, so that I have as
little trouble as is possible in a case where so many and large accounts
are to be look’d over.

“... It is said that gaming is carried on with greater spirit among
the fine people than ever was known. I desire my most affectionate
compliments to my brothers of Horton, Denton and Canterbury.... My best
love to ye dear little ones who adorn your fireside, and best wishes
for the year begun, and for all succeeding years, to the parents and the
babes.”

It was in this year, 1774, that Mrs. Montagu wrote the following to Mrs.
Robinson, from Sandleford, September the 5th, 1774:

“... I had intended writing to you as soon as I could get a frank....
All frothy matter takes up a great deal of space, and my letters always
run over the fourth side and incur double taxes at the post-office. By
mistake I had left my franks to you in London, so I waited till I could
see Mr. Congreve, the only member of Parliament in our neighbourhood.

“... The wet weather has hurt me as a valetudinarian, and mortified me
as a farmer, so that I cannot say, in the pert fashionable phrase, it
has not made me sick nor sorry, but more of the first than the last, and
not greatly either.... We have a prodigious crop of barley, and there
seems to be a great plenty of it everywhere, and yet the maltsters are
contracting for it already at 30_s._ per quarter. I suppose the ensuing
elections will raise the price of malt. I wish our poor people ate more
and drank less.

“I am extremely mortified at Lord Mahone’s too great vivacity. Lord
Stanhope brought him to Tunbridge to spend a day with me. I was pleased
with his conversation and manners, and particularly in not finding him
so exotick as I expected. His sentiments and language appear to me
perfectly good English, such as suited the heir of an English peer, and
not borrow’d from _un bourgeois de Genève_, which, with all due respect
to Jean Jacques, I take to be much inferior in nobleness of mind as
well as dignity of office. But his lordship’s attack on Mr. Knight and
his presenting articles to a candidate, looks as if he had steep’d his
patriotism in the Lake of Geneva. Lord Stanhope is a very respectable
man; has great virtues and great talents. These, under the military
discipline of worldly warfare, do great things, while they lead and
command regiments of inferior minds which fight under them. But in our
days the unconnected patriot makes just such a figure in the political
system as the _preux_ chevalier would do now in the military. Nothing is
to be done in these days by single combat. Neither the patriot nor the
champion would be able to effect the abolition of the exorbitant toll of
a bridge. If I had a son, I should desire him never to wander single in
quest of adventures. Virtue, wisdom, honours, prosperity, happiness, are
all to be found on the turnpike road, or not to be found at all....

“I had strong inclinations to make you and my brother at Horton a
visit when I left Tunbridge; but as a northern journey was then in
contemplation, I durst not propose such a measure to Mr. Montagu. He
still talks of our going to Northumberland, but delays setting out. In
the meantime, winter approaches. He is in very good health and spirits,
but extremely feeble; goes to bed every afternoon by five o’clock, and
seems by no means equal to so fatiguing a journey; so I hope it will end
in talk.... Mr. Montagu loves delay so well, he intends not to set out
till a fortnight after me. He did not leave London till the middle of
August, tho’ he had not any business to detain him.

“... If I had children, I should be much more solicitous about their
temper than talents. As many hours in the day as a man of the finest
parts is peevish or in a passion, he is more contemptible than a
blockhead, and suffers (though he does not know it) the internal scorn
and contempt of every rational creature that is in good humour. We are,
too, much earlier able to judge of a child’s temper than capacity. Minds
ripen at very different ages. If the understanding is naturally slow,
preceptors should be patient, and not put it too much out of its natural
pace. Some children apprehend quick; others acquire everything with
difficulty. In the latter case, they should be encouraged, led, and not
driven.”

Miss Gregory (a friend and companion of the writer) was very much liked
at Cambridge. “Her sweet temper, good sense, and elegant simplicity of
manners much charm every one who is well acquainted with her. She is
perfectly free from missy pertnesses, airs, and minanderies, which put
many of our girls of fashion upon a line with milliners’ apprentices.
Though she has lived so much with me I never saw her out of humour. She
seems as pleased with retirement as in a publick place; and is as sober
and discreet in a publick place as in retirement.

“There is a report that Captain Darby is going to be married to a widow
worth fourscore thousand pounds. It seems her first husband was a
good-humoured, quiet, dull man. _Elle s’en trouvait bien_, and is going
to take such another; but still, fourscore thousand pounds is a great
price for a dull man.... Miss Snell is married to a gentleman of good
character and six thousand pounds.

“I beg my best respects and most affectionate compliments to my brother
Robinson. Will he never let us have the pleasure of seeing him? I wish he
would visit the farmer and farmeress of Sandleford.”

In the course of the above year, 1774, when an invitation to Mrs.
Montagu’s house in Hill Street was not lightly sent and was highly
esteemed, she despatched a card of invitation to Doctor Johnson. The
philosopher neither went to her assembly nor acknowledged the invitation.
In a subsequent apologetic note, he said: “Having committed one fault
by inadvertency, I will not commit another by sullenness.... The favour
of your notice can never miss a suitable return but from ignorance or
thoughtlessness; and to be ignorant of your eminence is not easy but to
him who lives out of reach of the public voice.” Allegiance could not be
more perfect! But Mrs. Montagu was not influenced by it, when, in 1775,
she settled a small annuity on Doctor Johnson’s friend, Mrs. Williams,
saving her from misery; for which rescue Mrs. Williams expressed her
thanks in words almost of divine adoration. Doctor Johnson was moved
by the generous act, when he subsequently heard that Mrs. Montagu was
in town, ill. He wrote like a gallant. “To have you detained among us
by sickness is to enjoy your presence at too dear a rate.” He wishes
she may be “so well as to be able to leave us, and so kind as not to be
willing.”... Here is more: “All that the esteem and reverence of mankind
can give you, are already yours; and the little I can add to the voice of
nations will not much exalt. Of that little, however, you are, I hope,
very certain.”

The poor lady had now more serious matters claiming her attention than
quarrels or compliments with Johnson. Her kind-hearted and now aged
husband had long been slowly dying. His last hour seemed now approaching.
In May, 1775, Mrs. Chapone, in a letter to Mrs. Delany, described Mrs.
Montagu as being “in a most distressful situation.” Mr. Montagu, “instead
of sinking easily, as might have been expected from so long and gradual a
decline, suffers great struggle, and has a fever attended with deliriums,
which are most dreadfully affecting to Mrs. Montagu. If this scene
should continue, I tremble for the effects of it on her tender frame;
but I think it must very soon have an end, and she will then reconcile
herself to a loss so long expected, tho’ I doubt not she will feel it
very sincerely. He is entitled to her highest esteem and gratitude, and,
I believe, possesses them both.”

The aged philomath might have been the original of the legendary
mathematician, who, having been induced to read “Paradise Lost,” asked,
on reaching the last line of the poem, “Well, what does it prove?”
Mr. Montagu’s wonted fires and ruling passion partook exclusively of
a mathematical ardour. His wife, who had, previous to her husband’s
fatal illness, passed from the most sincere spirit of free inquiry into
the equally sincere acceptance of orthodoxy, was very anxious that her
husband should be of the same faith with herself before they were parted
for ever. She begged Beattie to effect this desired consummation, if
it were possible. The aged mathematician was too much, however, for
the minister and his clever wife together. “To her great concern,”
says Beattie, in a letter to Doctor Laing, “he set too much value on
mathematical evidence, and piqued himself too much on his knowledge in
that science. He took it into his head, too, that I was a mathematician,
though I was at a great deal of pains to convince him to the contrary.”
Mr. Montagu died in May, 1775. The poor gentleman’s death was immediately
made the opportunity for speculation on the part of his friends, as to
the prospects of his widow. “Mr. Edward Montagu is dead,” wrote Mrs.
Delany. “He has left his widow everything, both real and personal: only
charging it with a legacy of £3,000. If her heart prove as good as her
head, she may do an abundance of good. Her possessions are very great.”
Walpole speculated in another fashion on this gentleman’s demise. He
wrote to Mason: “The husband of Mrs. Montagu, of Shakespearshire, is
dead, and has left her an estate of £7,000 a year in her own power. Will
you come and be candidate for her hand? I conclude it will be given to a
champion at some Olympic games; and were I she, I would sooner marry you
than Pindar!”

Johnson fully illustrated the charitable side of Mrs. Montagu’s
character, when he said, in 1776, in reply to a hint that her liberality
was pharisaical, “I have seen no beings who do as much good from
benevolence as she does from whatever motive.” Johnson subsequently was
less charitable and less accurate. Mrs. Montagu’s letters abound with
references to her complete ignorance of Greek and her small knowledge of
Latin. “But,” said Johnson, “she is willing you should think she knows
them, but she does not say she does.” A hundred times she wrote that she
did not. Johnson’s were hardly the “respectful sentiments” he professed
to have when he begged for a copy of her engraved portrait, as a reward
for his love and adoration.




CHAPTER VIII.


Mrs. Montagu respected her gentle husband’s memory in the way he would
have approved—by attending to the business which his death left on her
hands. She withdrew to Sandleford, not to cover her face, but to woo
the fresh air. She then travelled to Denton Castle, to plunge into
occupation, and to show her steward that her recent grief had not
rendered her insensible to her interests. From the castle, or hall (it is
called by both names), she wrote on July the 10th, 1775, the following,
not at all woebegone, but sensible, letter to her sister-in-law:

“... I know your good-nature will have suggested to you, and accepted as
an excuse for my long delay of writing, the various business which my
present situation occasions. My long and very melancholy confinement much
affected my health and spirits. The fresh air and constant exercise at
Sandleford proved of great service to me, and encouraged me to venture on
a much longer journey. On the 30th of June, I set out on my expedition
to Northumberland, and, on the 3d of July, at noon, I got as far as my
estate at Burniston. Exactly opposite to some of my land, there is a
tolerable inn. I eat a hasty dinner, and taking my steward with me, went
over as many of the farms as I could that night, and sent invitations to
my tenants to dine with me the next day.

“Mine Host, by sending to the neighbouring markets, assembled together
sirloins of beef, legs of mutton, loins of veal, chickens, ducks, and
green peas, which, with ham, pigeon-pie, tarts, and custard, fill’d up
every chink of table, and, I believe, of stomach. Unfortunately, there
was not a room large enough to contain all my good friends, so the women
and the young lasses dined with me, and the men with the steward.

“As Mr. Montagu had been always a very good landlord, I thought it right
to show the good people they would have a kind landlady, and therefore I
would not pass by without taking notice of them. Several of them enquired
after the young gentlemen that came from Horton to Allerthorpe. I assured
them Mr. William Robinson was a profound divine, and Mr. Charles a sage
counsellor at law. They rejoyced that Master Willie was happy in a good
and rich wife, and had three fine Bairns. In the evening I went on to
Darlington, where part of my estates come down to the turnpike road. I
stopped at a tenant’s who has a pretty large house, desired them to dress
a dinner the next day for me and my tenants.... Darlington was rather
too far for the women to reach. I lay at Darlington, and early ye next
day went over to this Estate, and passed the whole day there with great
pleasure. A fine, rapid river, woody bank, and some of the most stately
oaks and beech in Yorkshire, would recommend it sufficiently to the eye
that does not behold it with the complacency of a proprietor, and you
will believe it loses nothing of its charms by that circumstance. After
dinner I wandered again about the place, visited most of my tenants’
houses, and did not take leave of Eryholme (?) till night drew her sable
curtain, which gave me occasion to recollect that the day of my life must
soon close, and all these things be hid from me; but if I make a proper
use of them while they are mine, it is all I ought to be solicitous for,
as I am not amongst those unhappy Persons whose views are bounded to the
short day of human life.

“I was much pleased with all my tenants in Yorkshire. They are a very
different sort of people from the farmers in ye south. They are alert in
their business and interests, and far from the stupid state of savage.
At the same time, they do not ape the manners nor imitate the dress of
the fine folks. The farmer’s wife spins her husband’s shirts, and the
daughters make butter and cheese at the hours our southern women work
catgut and dress wire caps. Some of my tenants have been about fifty
years on the estate; have married their sons to girls worth many hundred
pounds, and have got their sons into their farms, and they are retired
on a decent subsistance, gained by many years of frugal industry. They
all pay duely on their rent-days. No complaint, on the part of the
tenants, of poverty; or, on the landlord, of arrears. The land is in
good condition, and by having been long settled, they have acquired an
affection for the farm they are placed upon, and will always give as
good a rent as it deserves; and they know the nature of the undertaking
too well to give more. It is a folly to let farms too cheap; and it is
both wickedness and folly to let them too dear. This year has been
particularly unfavourable to my tenants, as the estates are chiefly
meadow and pasture; and yet, though these estates had been lately raised,
they did not ask any indulgence or favour. They said there had not been
such a dry season these fifty years; and, with great good-humour, said
they hoped the next would be better. Indeed, the drought is terrible for
the dairy-farms. Hay here will be at an excessive price. The coal-owners
who are not provident with stocks of it will be at vast expenses. I have
always two years’ stock in hand. The further north, the greater the
drought. I believe there has not been any material rain since the 18th
of March. Cows there (and here) are obliged to be driven to the rivers
to drink. Our little streams are all dry’d. My cows go every day to the
Tyne to get drink. The Tyne Vale, where I live, used to look green and
pleasant. The whole country is now a brown crust, with here and there a
black hole of a coal-pit, so that I cannot boast of the beauty of our
prospects. As to Denton, it has mightily the air of an ant-hill: a vast
many black animals for ever busy. Near fourscore families are employ’d
on my concerns here. Boys work in the colliery from seven years of age.
I used to give my colliery people a feast when I came hither, but as the
good souls (men and women) are very apt to get drunk, and, when drunk,
very joyful, and sing, and dance, and hollow, and whoop, I dare not, on
this occasion, trust their discretion to behave with proper gravity; so I
content myself with killing a fat beast once a week, and sending to each
family, once, a piece of meat. It will take time to get round to all my
black friends. I had fifty-nine boys and girls to sup in the courtyard
last night on rice pudding and boil’d beef; to-morrow night I shall have
as many. It is very pleasant to see how the poor things cram themselves,
and the expense is not great. We buy rice cheap, and skimmed milk and
coarse beef serve the occasion. Some have more children than their labour
will cloathe, and on such I shall bestow some apparel. Some benefits of
this sort, and a general kind behaviour, gives to the coal-owner, as well
as to them, a good deal of advantage. Our pitmen are afraid of being
turned off, and that fear keeps an order and regularity amongst them that
is very uncommon.

“The general coal trade and my concerns in it are, at present, in a
thriving way, and if all goes on so well two years longer, and I live
till then, I will establish a spinning, knitting, and sewing-school for
ye girls. When I say establish, I mean for my life, for one cannot be
charitable longer. When the night cometh, no man can work. Charitable
institutions soon fall into neglect and abuse. I made a visit at
Burniston to my Uncle Robinson’s almshouses. I gave each of the old
people a guinea. I have sometimes sent them money; for what my uncle
appointed near a hundred years ago is hardly a subsistence. Indeed, they
would starve if they had not some helps.

“I have not been one moment ill since I set out on my journey. I walk
about my farms, and down to my colliery, like a country gentlewoman of
the last century. I rejoyce in the great improvement of my land here
by good cultivation, but I do not like my tenants so well as those in
Yorkshire. We are here a little too rustick, and speak a dialect that
is dreadful to the auditor’s nerves; and as to the colliery, I cannot
yet reconcile myself to seeing my fellow creatures descend into the dark
regions of the earth; tho’, to my great comfort, I hear them singing in
the pits.... If I did not think you kindly interested yourself, I would
not trouble you with this long history of myself.

“I had the pleasure of seeing my neice in great good-humour, beauty, and
health; and these are the fairest features of youth. Long may they dimple
and bloom on her cheek. I approve much of my little nephews going to a
school of a private sort at first. I think boys of a gentle and bashful
disposition are discouraged at being thrust at once into the prodigious
racket of a great school....

“I think my sister Scott greatly mended by James’s powders. I was very
uneasy about her before she went to Bath, but Doctor Moisy has done great
things for her.... I have not seen her look so well for some years.... I
expect Doctor Beattie and his wife every day. I propose to return to the
south the end of this month, in order to take some weeks at Tunbridge....
I believe I shall pass the winter in the south of France, but have not
yet determined, as all human projects are uncertain; but it is my wish to
do so.”

Illness delayed the realisation of this wish. Mrs. Montagu was in Hill
Street in November, receiving only a few of her most intimate friends.
“I called on Mrs. Montagu,” writes Mrs. Boscawen to Mrs. Delany, in the
above month; “only Lady Townshend was there, and in her best way, very
chatty.”

In 1775-76, among the visitors at Bath occasionally seen by Mrs. Scott,
was a little lame Scottish boy, between four and five years old. When
he had bathed in the morning, got through a reading-lesson at an old
dame’s near his lodging on the Parade, and had a drive over the Downs
with the author of “Douglas” and Mrs. Home, the boy was sometimes to be
seen in the boxes of the old theatre. On one such occasion, witnessing
“As You Like It,” his interest was so great that, in the middle of the
wrestling-scene in the first act, he called out, “A’n’t they brothers?”
The boy, when he had become a man, said in his autobiography, “A few
weeks’ residence at home convinced me, who had till then been an only
child in the house of my grandfather, that a quarrel between brothers
was a very natural event.” This boy’s name was Walter Scott. Much of the
other company at Bath was then about to withdraw from the stage which the
boy was to occupy with such glory to himself, and to the lasting delight
of his countrymen.

The year 1778 opens with the following letter to Mrs. Robinson: “... I
wish I could thank you for your letter in as fair characters as my neice
returned hers for the books. I have ostentatiously shewed her letter to
many of my friends. My sister and I have not let my brother share in
the honour; for we confess no Robinson ever wrote so well; so that she
inherits this, with many other good things, from her Mama. If she can
compose a sermon as well as her brother, and writes it in her own hand,
it will retrieve the honour of manuscript-sermons, which of late years
have sold cheaper than even any other goods....

“The town is very empty, and I know not how we who are here contrive to
be as much engaged as at other seasons. The Bath has been very full of
persons of distinction.

“Lord Villiers (the prince of maccaronies) gave, a few days ago, a play
in a Barn. He acted Lord Townley; Miss Hodges, Lady Townley. I suppose
the merit of this entertainment was, that people were to go many miles,
in frost and snow, to see in a barn what would have been every way better
at the theatre in Drury Lane or Covent Garden. There was a ball also
prepared after the play, but the barn had so benumbed the vivacity of the
company, and the beaux’ feet were so cold, and the noses of the belles
were so blue, many retired to a warm bed at the inn at Henley, instead of
partaking of the dance. M. Texier acted M. Pigmaleon, and Miss Hodges the
Statue. Modern nymphs are so warm and yielding, that less art than that
of M. Texier might have animated the nymph. My neice will never stand
still to be made love to before a numerous audience. Miss Hodges’ father
is lately dead; her mother is dying. How many indecorums the girl has
brought together into one petite peice!

“I dare not send you any publick news, as my brothers are engaged to the
Congress and American Independency.

“I think the fine world goes on as usual at this time of the year.
‘Caractacus’ has succeeded very well on the stage, tho’ it is more
calculated for the study than the theatre.

“Our French ambassador pleases all people, of course, by his conversation
and manners. By his splendour of living and polite attentions at table,
he charms the great vulgar; so that he is in general esteem, and, indeed,
deserves to be so. He dined with us ye other day, and I am to dine with
him on Sunday. Mme. de Noailles cannot come to me till she is brought to
bed. She is extremely sensible and agreable.

“Lord Granby very thoughtlessly carried his lady to Brussels, on a jaunt
of amusement, soon after she was brought to bed, and, by getting cold,
she is most dangerously ill. She is much better; but the duchess dowager
is so uneasy about her, I am afraid we shall not be able to dissuade her
from going to Brussels, tho’ this weather makes sea voyages and, indeed,
land journeys very terrible.

“... My brother Charles told me the good folks in Kent were angry with me
or your consort for making a justice of peace of Doctor Pennington; but,
indeed, I never heard the doctor had an ambition to be of the worshipful
quorum till my brother mentioned it. As it is not Greek and Hebrew, but
lands and tenements and such solid property, which give a title to be
justice of peace, I should not in any way have assisted the doctor’s
project, if I had had it in my power. I am so far from being a favourer
of the Alliance of Church and State, I think the further they keep
asunder the better—a two-edged sword is a terrible weapon.”

In the summer of 1776, Mrs. Montagu was to be seen in Paris, welcomed
to the first circles as a happy sample of an accomplished English lady.
Voltaire, then in his dotage, took the opportunity of her presence to
send to the Academy a furious paper against Shakespeare. The lady had a
seat of honour among the audience while the vituperative paper was read.
When the reading came to an end, Suard remarked to her, “I think, madam,
you must be rather sorry at what you have just heard!” The English lady,
Voltaire’s old adversary, promptly replied, “I, sir! not at all. I am not
one of M. Voltaire’s friends!” She subsequently wrote: “I felt the same
indignation and scorn, at the reading of Voltaire’s paper, as I should
have done if I had seen harlequin cutting capers and striking his wooden
sword on the monument of a Cæsar or Alexander the Great.”

In October, after her return to Hill Street, she thus described to
Garrick the influence exercised over her by French tragedy and French
tragedians:

“... Mrs. M—— cannot help intimating that she never felt such pity and
terror, which it is the business of tragedy to excite, as at the French
theatre, where M. le Kain roars like a mad bull, and Molé rolls his eyes,
and has all the appearance of a man in a phrensy ... persons of real
taste seem convinced of the false taste prevalent in their tragedies.”

The “flutter of Paris” was almost more than her strength could bear. The
idea of its being succeeded by the “racket of London” alarmed her. She
avoided the “racket,” and recovered from the “flutter,” by spending a
season of rest at Sandleford, where she dreamed over Voltaire’s address
against Shakespeare, became a rural cottager, feeder of pigs, cultivator
of potatoes, or pretended to be so, and “did idleness.” “There is as much
an idleness to be done,” she wrote to Garrick, “as there is a darkness
that may be visible, and is, like the other, a state and a condition, and
a very pleasant and gentle one, when the working-day of bustle and hurry
is over.... I came to do idleness, and it is not all done.”

The visit to Paris is alluded to among an “infinite deal” of other
subjects, in a letter to her brother William, dated Sandleford, June 9,
1777.

“It would be with much greater pleasure I should take up my pen to tell
you I am at Sandleford, if I could flatter myself with the hope of
alluring you to it: you would find me in the character of a housewife.
The meagre condition of the soil forbids me to live in the state of a
shepherdess-queen, which I look upon as the highest rural dignity. The
plough, the harrow, and the spade remind us that the golden age is past,
and subsistence depends on labour; prosperity on industrious application.
A little of the clay of which you complain, would do us a great deal
of good. I should be glad to take my dominions here from the goddess
Ceres to give them to the god Pan, and I think you will agree with me
in that taste; for wherever he presides, there Nature’s republick is
establish’d. The ox in his pasture is as free and as much at his ease
as the proprietor of the soil, and the days of the first are not more
shorten’d to feed the intemperance of others, than the rich landlord’s by
the indulgence of his own. I look upon the goddess Ceres as a much less
impartial and universally kind deity. The antients thought they did her
honour by ascribing to her the invention of laws. We must consider her
also as the mother of lawsuits and all the divisions, dissentions, and
distinctions among mankind. Naturalists tell us all the oaks that have
ever been, were contain’d in the first acorn. I believe we may affirm,
by the same mode of reasoning, that all arts and sciences were contain’d
in the first ear of corn. To possess lasting treasure and exclusive
prosperity, has been the great business and aim of man. At Sandleford you
will find us busy in the care of arable land. By two little purchases
Mr. Montagu made here, my farm contains six hundred acres. As I now
consider it an amazonian land, I affect to consider the women as capable
of assisting in agriculture as much as the men. They weed my corn, hoe my
turnips, and set my Pottatoes; and by these means promote the prosperity
of their families. A landlord, where the _droit du seigneur_ prevailed,
would not expose the complexions of his female vassals to the sun. I must
confess my amazons hardly deserve to be accounted of the fair sex; and
they have not the resources of pearl-powder and rouge when the natural
lilies and roses have faded.

“You are very polite in supposing my looks not so homely as I described
them; but tho’ my health is good, the faded roses do not revive, and I
assure you I am always of the colour of _la feuille-morte_. My complexion
has long fallen into the sere and yellow leaf; and I assure you one is
as much warned against using art, by seeing the ladies of Paris, as the
Spartan youths by observing the effects of intoxicating liquors on the
Helots. The vast quantity of rouge worn there by the fine ladies makes
them hideous. As I always imagine one is less looked at by wearing the
uniform of the society one lives in, I allowed my frizeuse to put on
whatever rouge was usually worn. But a few years ago, I believe, my
vanity could not have submitted to such a disfiguration. As soon as I
got to Dover, I return’d to my former complexion. I own I think I could
make that complexion a little better by putting on a little rouge; but
at my age, any appearance of solicitude about complexion is absurd, and
therefore I remain where age and former ill health have brought me;
and rejoice that I enjoy the comforts of health, tho’ depriv’d of its
pleasing looks.

[Illustration: “I allowed my frizeuse to put on whatever rouge was
usually worn”

_Photogravure after the painting by Girardet_]

“I am very glad to find my neice has recovered her health. I was much
afraid of a consumption for her.... It has given me great pleasure to
hear your health is pretty good, ... but if St. Anthony’s fire should
menace, remember that his distemper, as well as his temptation, is most
dangerous in a desart or wilderness, and repair to the city of Bath. Tho’
I say this, I was never in my life more sensible of the charms of rural
life and the blessings of tranquility, but at the same time I am sensible
that my relish of them is much quickened by having been for a twelvemonth
past in a very different mode of life. I regret very much that the
emperor did not come to Paris last summer, tho’ I suppose, among the
French nobility, I met with men as polite; among the academicians, with
men more learned, ingenious, and witty; yet, as I am a Virtuoso in what
relates to the human character, and love to see how it appears in various
situations, I should have seen an emperor, as an emperor is an unique
in human society at present; and the Austrian family has always had a
strongly-marked personal character. All my French correspondents assure
me that his Imperial Majesty veils his dignity on all occasions under
the character of Count de Falkenstein. He sleeps at his ambassador’s,
but dines with the two noblemen of his Court who attend him at an _Hôtel
garnie_. When he goes to Versailles to visit his sister, he refuses
to lodge in the palace, and lodges at a bagnio. He goes sometimes to
Versailles in his coach; at others, in a fiacre, or walks. The French,
who are much struck with everything that is new, are full of wonder
and respect at the publick spectacles. They give a thunder of applause
whenever he appears. In private society, his Majesty is easy and affable,
and, by what I can understand, glad to show he is more conversant in
the common affairs of common life than princes usually are. The objects
of his curiosity and the subjects of his discourse are such as seem to
indicate he is a man of sense. Whether he has talents for empire, time
must show. Without understanding the doctrine of chances as well as
Demeri (?), one may pronounce the chances are nearly infinite he has not.
I am glad, however, princes begin to travel. One has a chance of meeting
these itinerant monarchs somewhere; and they amuse, at least, as well as
stuff’d eagles or lions in a museum. I was in great hopes that you would
have come to town to hear Lord Chatham, in support of his motion, the
other day.”

In the following month, the letter below was written at Sandleford, July
the 9th, 1777:

“... As she” (one of Mrs. Montagu’s nieces) “was not the worse for the
ball, I am glad she partook of the pleasure of it. If she resembles a
certain Miss Robinson who lived in the neighbourhood some years ago,
she will reckon a ball amongst the first enjoyments of human life.
Considering her state of health, I do not know whether it was very
prudent in her brother to carry her there, but I am sure it was very
amiable; the error should always be rather on the side of indulgence. We
should consider that, though there will be dancing as long as the world
endures, it is but a short time that an individual will dance.

“... The warmth of the weather prevented my seeing the ‘School for
Scandal,’ but every one agrees with you to commend it. Of all the vices
of the human disposition, a love of scandal and detraction is the most
contemptible. It is now got from the gossips’ tea-table to the press. The
scriblers weekly let fly their pop-guns at the Duchess of Devonshire’s
feathers. Her grace is innocent, good-humoured, and beautifull; but these
adders are blind and deaf, and cannot be charmed. However, the scriblers
are all of them hungry; but the circulators of scandal, who have neither
hunger for their excuse, nor wit to give it a seasoning, are sad vermin,
and I am glad Mr. Sheridan has so well exposed them.

“The uncertainty of human life is certainly a discouragement to every
enterprize, but to none less, I think, than to building a house. If it is
a good one, there will be somebody to live in it and enjoy its comforts;
if otherwise, its inconveniences will not make one uneasy in the tomb. To
undertake a trust which, by not fulfilling, may be detrimental to some
person; to bring children into the world when it is too late in life
to hope to see them educated and established, are things about which a
prudent person may hesitate; but even in this case, we can never do
wrong when we follow the general principles by which the author of our
nature has intended we should be directed. The shortness and uncertainty
of life would discourage all great undertakings; and, as the human race
is to continue, providence has ordered we should act as if we were to
live for ever.

“We have had a series of the worst weather I ever knew since I came
here, at this time of year. Sir William Temple says, the three greatest
blessings are health, peace, and fine weather. The first two are the
most important and I have enjoyed them in so perfect a degree, that I
have well endured the want of the third. Doctor Robinson’s ‘History of
America’ has amused me by my fireside, when wind and rain have combined
against my amusements abroad. A long deprivation of the quiet joys of
rural life gave me a quick relish for them. If I had staid in town, the
great numbers of foreigners who have lately arrived there, who have all
brought letters of recommendation to me, or who would have been naturally
introduced by my previous acquaintance with them abroad, must have taken
up much of my time and attention.

“Lord Shelburne called here the other day to invite me to Bowood, to
meet l’Abbé Raynal, who I knew at Paris, and two French countesses who
brought letters to me from some of the _beaux esprits_ there; so to them
I shall have an opportunity of expressing my regret at being out of
town. But there is a Spanish Baron de Castile and some others who were
also recommended to me, who I fear will depart with a bad opinion of
my hospitality; for, twenty to one, my English porter in Hill Street
could not make them understand, when they delivered their letters, that
I was in the country. At present my scheme is to go to London for the
melancholy pleasure of taking leave of the Lord Primate and my friend
Mrs. Vesey.... When these friends leave London, I believe I shall set
out for Mount Edgecumbe, having long promised Lady Edgecumbe a visit,
and shall carry Montagu with me, who is a schoolfellow of Mr. Edgecumbe,
and is much invited.... Mr. and Mrs. Vesey are going to Mr. Burke’s, at
Beaconsfield, who has kindly asked me to be of the party; but I shall
be a good while absent from Sandleford, and have many domestick matters
to settle before I depart. I had a most polite, entertaining letter the
other day from my Brother Robinson. I wish we two honest farmers lived
nearer together with brotherly love and rural sincerity. I flatter myself
we should be very happy; but in this short life, how short a time does
one enjoy the friends one loves.

“... In spite of my cure and Doctor Fothergill’s skill, I have made but
a poor progress towards health.... My nerves mend, but I cannot better
bear the noise of a cannon now than I could the report of a pistol when I
first return’d to Hill Street. My doctor keeps me very quiet. He will not
allow me to see the wise, the witty, or the fashionable world. I have not
dined below stairs these four or five days. The doctor has to-day begun
to try a new medicine; but I have as little faith in doctors of physick
as some of my family have in doctors of divinity. I imagine my fever at
Canterbury was the influenza, which has lately raged so much. It leaves
people very weak, and much affects the nerves. Some have lost their
speech for a few days; others their hearing. My Northumberland steward
and my brother who left London when I did, were both taken ill on the
road. I believe fatigue of preparation for my foreign journey did me some
harm; but I believe my principal illness was owing to contagion in the
air. My servants have all been sick. None of my family have escaped but
Miss Gregory and Matt.

“The patriots are rather in despair of changing the ministry. This may
damp their ambition, but will keep their patriotism in its vigour. There
is something so mortal to patriotism in a place, that one can never wish
those who have assumed that character to sacrifice it to the emoluments
of an employment....

“Mr. Burke is kept from the House of Commons by the death of his
father-in-law. Lady Mary Somerset has recovered her health, and her
nuptials will soon be celebrated. Hymen may exult, for the pair are
lovely. Miss Gregory often spends the evening with Lady Mary and Lady
Betty. As Lord Granby is of the party, you may suppose Lady Betty and
Miss Gregory attend most to each other.... Tell my neice I have not
forgotten her doll, but have not been well enough to accomplish an affair
of such importance as dressing a lady. My nephews both shall come with
the doll, thus teaching by allegory, that men are to be learned, and
ladies elegant.”

In Mrs. Scott’s letter which now follows, the details refer to the death
of the brother most dearly loved by both his sisters—Morris Robinson,
who married Jane, daughter of John Greenland, of Lovelace. His two sons,
Morris and Matthew, succeeded, in the order indicated, to the barony of
Rokeby. Matthew was at this time domiciled with Mrs. Montagu, whose name
he had taken as her acknowledged heir.

Mrs. Scott to Mrs. Robinson. “_November 16, 1777._ ... The world has
indeed become a very different scene to me since we parted. It has lost
the greatest charm it had for me. The loss is not only a brother, but, as
Solomon expresses it, that friend that was more than a brother, one with
whom I had lived full forty years in the tenderest affection, in the most
perfect harmony; never interrupted even by a mere dispute, except on his
first connexion with his present widow. It is totally irreparable. I own
I loved nothing so well; and though I am not so new to misfortune as not
to have learnt to bear patiently, and to see, while I lament the loss of
a blessing, that I ought to be grateful for having so long enjoyed one so
uncommon; yet the sense of it must ever lie a sorrow at my heart. There
was a loveliness of nature in him that I never saw equalled.... I do not
think he had a fault, except the weakness of complying with one who was
not satisfied with that degree of expense which was proper for them; and
for that he might make the same excuse that the great Duke of Marlborough
did when told he was too complying a husband: ‘Friend, can a man live
without sleep?’ His own disposition did not lead him either to vanity or
extravagance. I confess, therefore, he was guilty of a weakness, but it
was one founded on the extreme sweetness of his temper; an unfortunate
effect of a most amiable cause. However, she to whom it is owing is now
much to be pitied. She would not believe what he frequently told her,
but is now sadly awakened to the truth of it.”

In the subjoined fragment of a letter from Mrs. Montagu, reference is
made to the Scotch thief and deserter, John Aitkin, the incendiary,
otherwise known as Jack the painter, who was hanged, in 1777, for
attempting to set fire to Portsmouth Dockyard and shipping.

“... I was mortified to hear the dreadful box which was intended to
destroy Portsmouth was made at the respectable city of Canterbury. Mr.
Silas Deane will make no very respectable figure when John Painter’s
story is produced in public. If Doctor Franklin had been an incendiary,
he would have been a more dangerous man than Mr. Deane; for you know
he can bottle up lightning; but philosophers are honester men than
politicians.... Lord Temple has been very useful in getting this horrid
affair of John the painter brought to light.... Doctor Dodd’s affair
is almost forgot. Some suppose that for want of some formality on his
trial, he will escape hanging. Lord Chesterfield has behaved with great
kindness to the doctor’s brother, who is a worthy man, and to Mrs. Dodd’s
nephew....

“The match between Lord Powis and Miss Warren is not to take place, the
young lady having expressed a predilection for Lord Bulkely, who is to
have her.

“Lady Strathmore’s conduct at Newcastle, in the election, is, perhaps,
not generally known. Her ladyship sits all day in the window at a
public-house, from whence she sometimes lets fall some jewels or
trinkets, which voters pick up, and then she gives them money for
restoring them—a new kind of offering bribes. What little interest I
have I gave to Sir John Trevelyan, who, we hope, will carry the election
by a good majority. My steward tells me he is very weary of the bustle
and treating the voters; and that the town is in a wild uproar. Mr.
Stoney Bowes has sold £5,000 a year of his lady’s income for her life
to procure himself £40,000. I believe this gentleman will revenge the
wrongs Lord Strathmore suffered from her ladyship. It is said Sir Thomas
Robinson died worth above £10,000, but it is supposed he has left it to
his natural daughter.”

Lady Strathmore had the misfortune to be an heiress, Mary Eleanor Bowes.
Lord Strathmore took her, her money, and her name, in 1767. In nine
years he was removed by death; his widow soon after married Mr. Stoney,
an Irish heiress-hunter, who adopted the name of Bowes, and thoroughly
avenged the wrongs and sufferings of the first husband. But Stoney
Bowes was sorely mauled in the cruel and scandalous struggle. It is a
disgraceful story, from which the reader may well turn to a few plain
lines from Mrs. Scott, in a fragment of a letter of this date: “I shall
be very glad of my niece’s company on her way to Whitelands, and if I can
find out any amusement for her, she shall have it. Plays, which I think
are the best, it is so difficult for those to get places at, who do not
give largely to the box-keepers, that I am discouraged from attempting,
by having no hopes of success (but I shall try when my niece comes), tho’
I feel no degradation to my dignity from sitting in a front box, and like
it just as well as the side, if not further back than the second row. I
went with my sister to ‘Percy,’ and that is the only one I have seen.”

The side boxes ranked then as the orchestra stalls do now—the most
fashionable, but among the very worst seats in the house. Mrs. Montagu,
in the letter opening the next chapter, takes her correspondent to houses
of a more agreeable quality.




CHAPTER IX.


“Sandleford, _September 26, 1778_.... Nuneham is a very fine place, and
the owners of it are so amiable and agreable, that one passes one’s time
very pleasantly. It sometimes resembles a congress of all the ambassadors
in Europe; for Lord Harcourt, having been in a publick capacity, all the
ambassadors, and, indeed, all the foreigners of distinction come thither.
I remember passing three days there once without hearing a syllable of
English spoken. Had every one of the company spoken his mother tongue,
it would have resembled Babel. Monsieur and Madame de Noailles are most
agreable persons, and I wish we may not have any other foreigners while
they stay.

“... I do not know any one who makes his house so agreable to his friends
as my brother (William). His parts and knowledge make him an excellent
companion; and his apparent benevolence, integrity, and virtues endear
his talents.... I agree entirely with the Primate that your rev. consort
would grace a Stall; but he is of so unambitious a spirit, I believe
he will not take any pains to get into one. Dean of Canterbury would
suit him very well. A dean is not obliged to fast or pray, nor has the
troublesome care of any soul but his own.

“... We are now very busy with the harvest. We had a great deal of hay,
and, fortunately, very little of it was spoiled. We have a prodigious
crop of Wheat this year, and I dare say our neighbours have the same; and
yet old wheat sold at 7_s._ 6_d._ a bushel last week; and some new wheat
for 8_s._ I hope, though I am a farmer, that the prices will soon fall,
for the poor labourers cannot earn a subsistence for their families when
bread bears such a price. I have about forty reapers at work, at present,
to take advantage of the fine weather. I brewed seven hogsheads of
small beer for them, and fear it will not last till the end of harvest.
The poor reapers and haymakers bring nothing but water into the field,
which, with bad cheese and fine bread, is their general fare. I think our
northern people are much more notable. Their meals are more plentiful and
less delicate. They eat coarse bread, and drink a great deal of milk, and
have often salt beef.

“... I must not congratulate you on the taking of Ticonderoga, as I
imagine all the prophecies in your House foretold it would not be taken;
and I observe, in general, if people have predicted a misfortune,
they had rather it should happen than have their prediction fall into
discredit.”

London life began to try her strength. In a note to Garrick, at the close
of the year: “I’m hurried to death with assemblies,” is the form of
her excuse for not calling on Mrs. Garrick; “and I am forced to manage
_mon souffle de vie_.” She hardly dares hope to secure Lord Lyttelton’s
company to meet Garrick, unless on a Saturday or Sunday; “for the
peers are as inactive as Jews on Saturday, and as jolly as the idlest
Christians on Sunday.”

The shadow of the loved brother Morris falls on the following letter:

“_January 8, 1778._ ... My spirits felt a great damp at first returning
to London, where I used to enjoy the friendly converse of my poor
departed brother. Death, disasters, and incidents have reduced a large
fireside to a small circle. A few years, indeed, shows me that the
flattering hopes one entertained in the nursery, of living and social
gaiety and freedom with those nearly allied in blood, were mere pleasing
delusions. If other things do not sever these natural connections, the
fatal scissors cuts their thread.

“Tho’ my poor brother never had opportunity of amassing great wealth, I
was in hopes he would have left some thousands more behind him; but the
easiness and flexibility of his temper, and a certain placid indolence,
made him give into more expense than was prudent. The world lays the
whole blame on him, and is loud in compassionate lamentations for his
widow. Indeed, her present condition is very lamentable, and I pity her
extremely; but certainly she loved expense better than he did. I imagine,
poor man, he thought her fine dress and appearance raised her in the eyes
of the world. There is no end of the bad consequences of an improper
marriage. When men and women make an indiscreet match, they say it is no
concern of any one; but when any distress is the consequence, the friends
who were thought impertinent if they troubled themselves about the match,
are thought cruel if they take no part of the evil.

“... M. de Jarnac, who married an Irish beauty, in the mistaken opinion
that she was also a fortune, has been stock-jobbing here prodigiously;
but if we should really have a French war, he will be bit.

“A very superb theatre is going to be built in the Haymarket. It is to
be in prices the same as the opera; no places taken, and the play to
begin at eight o’clock, which certainly suits better the present hour of
dining. Once a week, each of the other theatres, on certain conditions,
are to lend their actors; so they will each save the expence of a sixth
part at least of their theatrical shows. The other five nights their
houses will be the fuller. If ye London apprentices of these days are
half as bold as he who kill’d the lion, I think they will assault our new
theatre. Neither its price, hours, nor situation will suit them. The town
has been very sickly. Lady George Germaine has been dangerously ill of
the measles, but is better.

“... Montagu” (her nephew and heir) “is in fine health; and as to
spirits, he never wants them. He rides in the manège from eleven till
twelve, and then his tutor sets him on Pegasus. The day before yesterday
was the first time he had attain’d the honour of riding between the
pillars, and he was as proud of it as Alexander when he had tamed
Bucephalus. He dances, under the care of the celebrated M. Valonys, early
every morning. These exercises make a boy more healthy as well as more
graceful. On Tuesday he returns to Harrow, where his master tells me
he does very well. I carried him to-day to see Mr. Lever’s museum. The
collection of birds, both as to their variety and preservation, exceed
that in the King of France’s collection of natural curiosities; but, not
being shown me by M. de Buffons and Monsr. D’Aubenton, I did not see them
with so much pleasure. The finest as well as rarest bird being a wise and
learned man. Mr. Lever is gone into the country, and I was disappointed
at not seeing a man who would sell in exchange an acre of good land for
an extraordinary fungus.”

_Hill Street, February 21, 1778._—“... The town is now full of company;
full of bustle. Real business and serious occupation have their hours of
retreat and rest, but the pursuits of pleasure have no intermissions. The
change of objects is the _delassement_ in that case. As to me, I am, like
other light and insignificant matters, whisked about in the whirlwind.

“I approve my dear neice’s ambition to excel in dancing a minouet; not
that dancing a minouet is a matter of great importance; but a desire to
do everything well will carry her on to perfections of a higher kind....
A little ball, a frolick now and then, is very good for young persons,
but I think you and my brother judged very well in not carrying my neice
to assemblies. In our silly, dissipated town, girls never are produced
into assemblies till after seventeen, and, indeed, they would never have
anything but absurdity and affectation, if they were introduced into the
world in their infancy.

“... I am glad my father has agreed to allow Mrs. (Morris) Robinson an
hundred pounds a year, to which I have added fifty. She now knows that
she will have a subsistence, and must accommodate herself to it. So far
it is comfortable to her, and I am sure it is happy for the family
that the world should not have a reason to be talking about it. Mr.
Danne, Mr. Wilmot, and several persons of credit in the law and in other
professions, came to me with strong remonstrances at the cruelty of
letting Mr. Morris Robinson’s widow be destitute. So that, for the honour
of the family, I would have given her what she now has, if my father
had refused it. I have had only a thousand pounds out of my family, and
for Mrs. (Morris) Robinson I have no partiality; but in Italy you have
heard the most powerful of all arguments to do right, it is the address
of beggars, their ‘_Fate ben per voi!_’ To be justifying bad things
by others’ faults is never graceful; but in family connections there
is great folly in it, and it is only giving people occasion to throw
disgrace when it comes too near one.

“It has been a great mortification that Mrs. (Morris) Robinson’s name
has been often mentioned at this end of the town lately. I was always
desirous that it might remain on the other side Temple Bar; but my
brother was so generally beloved, that, out of respect to him, his widow
was an object of compassion.”

The subject is pursued in the next letter to Mrs. William Robinson.

“_February 28, 1778._ ... I am sure you who have a feeling and a generous
heart will be pleased with Mr. Thomas Harris and Mrs. Harris’s behaviour
to Mrs. M. Robinson. Besides paying her all kinds of civilities, Mr.
Harris desired that when she went to a new habitation, he might present
her with a hundred pounds towards furnishing it. Bad as the world is,
and tho’ selfishness makes so great a part of the human composition, yet
a social, kind character like my poor brother’s makes its impression on
tempers of the like kind, and, indeed, one has a comfort in seeing his
memory so much beloved and respected. Mrs. M. Robinson has continually
some marks of attention paid to her. As hard hearts love to insult
adversity, tender ones endeavour to console it. The civilities the poor
woman receives are paid, not to her merits, but to her distress or my
brother’s memory. In either case, they do honour to human nature.”

An incident that might have cost Mrs. Scott her life, from her cap having
caught fire, is cheerfully noticed in a letter, dated Saturday, March 1,
1778, from Mrs. Scott to Mrs. Robinson: “I am burned pretty deep in the
back of my neck.... From thence to my face, I have reason to hope, will
be more speedy of cure, and the little damage my face received is well
already, except an abridgment of eyebrow and eyelash, which, perhaps, may
never come again, and I am perfectly indifferent whether they do or no;
for at fifty-five (at least), half an eyebrow is just as good as a whole
one. I have reason to think myself most happy in having come off so well
as I did, considering all the very horrid circumstances of the affair....”

Of one of her nephews, she significantly adds: “I think how much better
a good dull man is than a Charles Fox and many others, whose talents and
vices have grown together in a superlative degree.” And in a subsequent
letter she treats of her young niece and what young nieces love:

_May 7, 1778._ Mrs. Scott to Mrs. Robinson.—“I had the pleasure of seeing
your daughter on Monday look very well, and dance a good minuet.... Her
mantua-maker is certainly the most insatiable of that insatiable tribe.
She requires two yards more of lutestring, tho’ she has already had
twenty-three, which is most shameful; and her art gives her no right to
be so, for it is not well made; at least, the sleeves set abominably....
The ball was resplendent—was full, and the children’s dresses extremely
expensive, and very pretty and whimsical; but I could not forbear being
sorry to see so much extravagance used, to breed girls as early as
possible to the love of it, as if it would not come quite soon enough:
though my niece’s dress was not chargeable with that fault: being white,
it looked very nice and genteel, and became her....

“It is reported that Lord Percy’s haste for a divorce is increased by his
having fallen violently in love with Miss Burrell. It is so like a story
to be made that the truth appears to me doubtful.” ...

The same writer subsequently touches on a variety of subjects: “Mrs.
(Morris) Robinson tells me she finds a good dinner more necessary than
ever; ... and as she is determined to live in London, tho’ she should be
able to afford but one room, yet she has friends who will often invite
her to a good house and a good dinner.

“... Her resentment appears to me very unreasonable, but her anger
was always more ready at call than her reason, and, by her present
distresses, seems to have gained superior strength. Had the late
misfortunes softened her temper into mildness, she might justly have
said, ‘It is good for me that I have been afflicted!’”

In speaking of a tutor recommended for young Morris Robinson, Mrs. Scott
writes: “At Mrs. Cockerell’s he taught the young ladies to read, had a
few pupils of his own, and read and preached well as curate in Chelsea
Church.... The only blot in Mr. Sympson’s character is that he was, I
presume, two or three years married before he acknowledged it, in order
to keep his fellowship; for when he brought his wife to Chelsea, she had
a child or two. Though necessity ought not to be without law (we are told
it is so), it may justly be pleaded as some alleviation of the breach of
law. As his wife, on this account, came among us under a little cloud,
the quality of Chelsea did not visit her, except Mrs. Freind, and one or
two more who spoke well of her.... The other Miss Burrell (one, you know,
married Lord Algernon Percy) is going to be married to Duke Hamilton, and
they are going to consummate their unfinished loves on shipboard; for
she is to accompany him to America, where it is very proper he should
go, as the amplest field for him to indulge his passion for shooting.
He has exercised himself with shooting across Hanover Square out of a
wind-gun, to the utter dismay of old Lady Westmoreland, and Sir Thomas
Fredericks. A bullet whistled by the ear of the latter, as he sat in his
dining-room, and lodged in the wainscot; two more penetrated into other
parts. Surprized at so dangerous an incident, he ran to the window, and
there saw the duke, his _vis à vis_, at his window, with a gun in his
hand. He immediately sallied forth to give his grace a deserved chiding,
but during the time, the duke having had leisure to charge again, he shot
dead a favourite dog which bore Sir Thomas company.”

In a later letter, Mrs. Montagu, referring to the above marriage, says:
“Miss Burrell has no reason to be afraid of Duke Hamilton. He might
boyishly fire off a gun, but he has the character of a very good-humoured
young man. He has no vices, is handsome, and is, in all respects, like
other people. He does not make any great _éclat_; but the next best thing
to great and good reputation is, to be little spoken of. When there are
not talents for the first, there is prudence in the latter.

“... I suppose you know there was a report of my father’s death. My
porter had a very fatiguing morning with messages. I had promised to
introduce the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort to the French ambassadress on
Wednesday night. So, tho’ the weather was terrible, I went out, and such
was the report of poor papa, that I was stared at as a ghost as I enter’d
the room, and the servants below were very busy questioning my footmen.
To-day I had a message from Lady Anne and Lady Betty Finch, with an
apology, that not having heard of that melancholy event till to-day, they
had not sent their enquiries. All this while the old gentleman is in as
good health as he has been this twelvemonth.”

This purely private subject is followed, in a letter of April 10, 1778,
by one of public importance.

“... I am sure you will be desirous to hear a true account of Lord
Chatham’s accident in ye House, and of his present condition of health.
The newspapers are in but little credit in general, but their account of
that affair has been very exact. His lordship had been long confined by a
fit of the gout, so was debilitated by illness and want of exercise. The
House was invaded by numbers who went to hear him on so critical a state
of affairs. The thunder of his eloquence was abated, and the lightning of
his eyes was dimmed in a certain degree, when he rose to speak; but the
glory of his former administration threw a mellow lustre around him, and
his experience of publick affairs gave the force of an oracle to what he
said, and a reverential silence reigned through the senate. He spoke in
answer to the Duke of Richmond. The Duke of Richmond replied. Then his
lordship rose up to speak again. The genius and spirit of Britain seemed
to heave in his bosom, and he sank down speechless. He continued half an
hour in a fit. His eldest and second sons and Lord Mahon were in great
agony, waiting the doubtful event. At last, he happily recovered; and
though he is very weak still, I am assured by his family, that he looks
better than he did before this accident. The next day, Lord Shelburne and
the Duke of Richmond carried on the same debate, and Lord Shelburne’s
speech was much admired.

“... It is said my friend, Mr. Pulteney, has been twice at Paris,
negotiating with Doctor Franklin; but the result is not known. Mrs.
Pulteney was here last night, but I was too discreet even to mention the
affair.

“... Montagu came home to-day. The school in a manner broke up yesterday,
but as the weather is hot, the town sickly, and I was to have an
assembly, I would not bring him home. He goes to Sandleford on Tuesday,
and I am to follow him on Wednesday. The weather is inviting, and I hate
this season of the year in London. If I am here, I am obliged often to
have company, and my eating-room is not large enough nor high enough for
large dinners and numerous guests.

“... Doctor Robinson, who call’d on me this morning, told me, a gentleman
he met in Berkely Square just before, assured him the French had taken
two of our armed ships. The doctor is an historian of great veracity, but
in an affair of this kind, he could not examine the evidence.

“... Lord Kerry’s fine furniture sold very dear these bad times. I bought
a large glass at the French ambassador’s sale, and some other things for
my new house, pretty cheap. I suppose so great a sale just before made
the second sale more reasonable.”

_October 10, 1778._ Mrs. Scott to Mrs. W. Robinson.—“... He” (Rev. Wm.
Robinson, who had published a political pamphlet,) “has won the heart of
the wax-worker, Mrs. Wright. Mr. Roweller went to see her performances,
and, in conversation, asked her if she had seen the pamphlet. She told
him she was charmed with it, had sent over a great number into her
country, and assured him the author would be adored there; and desired,
if he knew him, that he would tell him, that if he liked her or either of
her daughters, they were entirely at his service. One of the girls cried
out, ‘Lord, mamma, we never saw the gentleman. We may not like him!’ ‘I
don’t care a farthing for that,’ replied Mrs. Wright; ‘if he likes you,
you shall marry him!’”

Ladies of another quality come upon the stage in the following chapter.




CHAPTER X.


_December 20, 1778._ Mrs. Scott to Mrs. Robinson, Denton.—“... Miss
Coke is a most extraordinary character, and, in my opinion, a most
contemptible one, though I suppose she thinks herself a heroine. I have
great compassion on one who blushes at her frailties, or rather her
vices, for I hate those mincing names, designed only to palliate wrong
actions; but I detest a woman who glories in her shame, and sets the
world at defiance. Such desperate spirits should not be clad in feminine
bodies. They are fit only for Sixteen-string Jack and his brother
ruffians. Your daughter may in due time fall in love; nay, tho’ not very
probable, she may even fall, in a stronger sense of the word; ... but I
will venture to answer for her never being one of those intrepid damsels
who brazen out their vices, and, without any change of countenance, raise
blushes on the cheeks of all their sex. If she ever does ill, she will
do it sneakingly; will feel the censure of others, and, suffering for
her own, will rectify her errors. However, I am apt to believe she will
escape clear of any of this nature.

“... The new singer at the Pantheon is said to be the most extraordinary
that ever was heard; unlike every one that ever sang before; very much
like a bird, and the compass of her voice far above whatever was known.
She has one hundred guineas a night. When, in infancy, she was taken
out of a ditch, after a boar or a hog had devoured one fesse,—_car elle
est aussi mal partagée que la suivante de la Princesse Cunegonda_,—who
would have imagined she could ever be so great a lady? All her charms are
centred in her voice; for she is exceedingly ugly.”

_December 31, 1778._ Mrs. S. to Mrs. R.—“On my brother (William)
Robinson’s return from Burfield, he will be in better spirits, as a light
heart and a thin pair of breeches is a conjunction he has little notion
of. I fancy when he feels the gain of godliness in his pocket, he will be
mighty alert and joyous, and have a better idea of a merry Christmas than
he has ever yet formed.”

Mrs. Montagu’s letters now succeed.

To Mrs. Robinson. “_Tunbridge Wells, 1778._ ... I love London extremely,
where one has the choice of society, but I hate ye higgledy-piggledy of
the watering-places. One never sees an owl in a flock of wild geese,
nor a pigeon in the same company as hawks and kites. I leave it to the
naturalists to determine on ye merit of each species of fowl. All I
assert is, that nature has designed birds of a feather should flock
together. On the menagerie of the Pantiles there is not so just an
assortment. However, I have been fortunate now in finding Lady Spencer,
Lady Clermont, Mrs. Boughton, Mr. and Mrs. Wedderburne, and many of
my voluntary London society here. There was a pretty good ball last
Tuesday; and Lady Spencer and the Duchess of Devonshire were so good as
to chaperone Miss Gregory; so I did not think it necessary for me to sit
and see the graces of Messrs. L’Epy Valhouys and Mlle. Heinel exhibited
by the misses. I understand there are not above three dancing-men, and
the master of the ceremonies makes one of this number.

“Minouet dancing is just now out of fashion; and by the military air
and dress of many of the ladies, I should not be surprised if backsword
and cudgell playing should take place of it. I think our encampment
excellent for making men less effeminate; but if they make our women
more masculine, the male and female character, which should ever be kept
distinct, will now be more so than they have been.

“... We still have fine weather here, and I agree with you, that the dust
and other little inconveniences that attend a dry season are not to be
put in any account. I would have months of dust for one fine day.

“... I have not said anything yet to you of my poor father. The subject
is a very melancholy one. At present, all one can hope for him is an easy
exit. The great decay of his mental powers has for some time rendered
him an object of great pity; yet, to my unspeakable indignation, I was
told by a gentleman here, that one of ye whist-party at the coffee-house,
some months ago, had not only refus’d to pay a debt of eighteen guineas,
which he owed my father, but had triumphed over him in a shocking manner,
asserting his loss of memory and imbecillity. What a wretch must it be
that would insult an old man. Extream old age is little to be coveted.
In a long life one must outlive one’s friends, and, perhaps, oneself. I
imagine by the accounts of to-day, that the great deliverer from human
woes has before this time given him his release. My porter calls every
night, just before the last letter bell, to let me know how he does....

“It is much the fashion here to go and see the camp at Coxheath.... My
father’s illness would make it impossible for me to go; and I had much
rather have the honour of seeing their majesties at St. James’s. Of all
fields, the field of Mars is that I like least. The fields which sustain
manhood are pleasant objects; those in which they are destroyed, suggest
melancholly ideas.

“The fine condition in which I found my estates in Northumberland and
in Yorkshire, and the universal prosperity there, made me wish we might
enjoy our plenty in peace, run no new hazards, and incur no new taxes.
The labouring people in the north do not suffer the poverty we see in the
same rank in the south, and our parish rates are very low.

“... Lord Kames and Mrs. Drummond, his wife, came from Edinburgh, which
is an hundred miles from Denton, on purpose to spend a few days with me.
His lordship is a prodigy. At eighty-three he is as gay and as nimble
as he was at twenty-five. His sight, hearing, and memory perfect. He
has a great deal of knowledge and a lively imagination, and is a most
entertaining companion. I have promised to return his visit two years
hence. I think as he has not grown old in the space of eighty-three
years, two years more cannot have much effect. If it should abate a
little of his vivacity, he would still have enough left.”

“_Sandleford, February 10, 1779._ ... I am inform’d that our minister at
Lisbon sends an account that Admiral Rodney fell in with the Spanish
fleet in the Gulf of Gibraltar, has blown up the admiral’s ship of ninety
guns, taken four or five ships, and only one has got into Cadiz. This
news is but just arrived. Rule, Brittannia, rule the waves. There is an
admirable work of Mr. Anstey’s just published called ‘Speculation; or, a
Defence of Manhood,’ a poem.

“... Montagu is still at Harrow.... His master says more of him than
it becomes me to repeat; so I will, for once in my life, show more
discretion than vanity.”

To Mrs. Robinson. “_Sandleford, June ye 13th, 1779._ ... As I had not
been to Bath since the Circus was finished and the Crescent began, I
was much struck with the beauty of the town. In point of society and
amusement, it comes next (but after a long interval) to London. There
are many people established at Bath who were once of the polite and busy
world, so they retain a certain politeness of manner and vivacity of mind
which one cannot find in many country towns. All contracted societies,
where there are no great objects of pursuit, must in time grow a little
narrow and _un peu fade_; but then there is an addition of company by
people who come to the waters, from all the active parts of life, and
they throw a vivacity into conversation which we must not expect from
persons whose chief object was the odd trick or a _sans prendre_. Cards
is the great business of the inhabitants of Bath. The ladies, as is usual
in little societies, are some of them a little gossiping and apt to find
fault with the cap, the gown, the manner, or the understandings of their
neighbours. But that does not much concern the water-drinkers, who, not
being resident, are not the objects of their envy; and, I must say, they
are all very obliging to strangers. As the primate of Ireland was at Bath
almost all the time I was there, I had the daily pleasure of passing my
time in the most agreable society; for such is that of a person of his
noble mind, endeared still more by his friendship to our family.

“I did not go at all to the publick rooms, which are hot and noisy. As
much as I could, I excused myself from private assemblies. So, when the
primate, Lord Stormont, and some others of my acquaintance who happened
to be at Bath, had an idle hour, they bestowed it on me. The Bishop of
Peterborough, very unluckily for me, went away the day I came to Bath.
We just met at Marlbro’. Another agreable acquaintance of mine, the
Provost of Eton, arrived only just before I came away. Mr. Anstey was
often with me, and you will believe he is very droll and entertaining;
but what recommends him more, is his great attention to his family. He
has eight children. He instructs his boys in the Greek and Latin, so that
they are fitted for the upper forms of Eton School, where their education
is finished. He has a house in the Crescent, at which he resides the
greatest part of the year. Mrs. Anstey is a very sensible, amiable woman,
and does not deal in the gossip of the place. There is also Mr. Hamilton
in the Crescent. He is very polite, agreable, and has been much abroad
and lived much in the great world.

“I should dislike the Bath much less, if the houses were larger. I always
take the largest that can be got in the Circus or Crescent. On the
outside it appears a good stone edifice; in the inside, it is a nest of
boxes, in which I should be stifled, if the masonry were not so bad as to
admit winds at many places. The society and mode of life are infinitely
preferable to what one can find in any other country town, but much less
agreable than London. I believe if I was to act the part of Minos in this
World, I should use it as a kind of purgatory, to which I should send
those who had not the taste or qualifications which deserved to be put
into the capital city, nor were yet so disagreably unsociable as to merit
suffering the terrors and horrors of a long winter in the country.”

The devotion of Bath visitors to cards has been satirised in many an
epigram, more or less pointed. There were certain individuals among them
who were not likely to come under the eye of Mrs. Montagu, but who did
not escape the notice of Fielding. “I have known a stranger at Bath,”
he says, in the first volume of “Amelia,” “who has happened fortunately
(I might almost say unfortunately) to have four by honours in his hand
almost every time he dealt for a whole evening, shunned universally by
the whole company the next day!”

“Mr. Anstey, in a little excursion from home, called here on his way to
London, where he arrived just to behold the horrors of the conflagration.
On his return back, he made me another visit, and his countenance bore
the impression of horror, from the dreadful things he had beheld. He got
back to Bath just in time to be present at ye riots there.

“Tho’ I am not personally acquainted with the family of Sir E.
Knatchbull, I cannot help being glad the heir of it has made so proper
a match. I have heard a good character of the young lady. She has a
noble fortune, and, by her mother, must be allied to the best families
in Kent. Commerce has so enriched this kingdom, that in every county
there are some new gentry who eclypse those ancient families which once
had the superiority, and I must own I love to see it return to them.
The mellow dignity of a gentleman is infinitely preferable to the crude
pride of a nabob. I believe you are acquainted with Sir Archer and Lady
Croft. They are now come to live in their house in this neighbourhood.
It had been lett to a mad West Indian, who ruined his fortune, and then
shot himself; after that, to a nabob. I never visit the West Indians in
my neighbourhood, because they would teach my servants to drink rum; nor
the nabobs, lest they should teach them to want to eat turtle and rich
dainties. So I had not been at Dunstan till the other day, since the old
proprietor left it.

“I find the lower kind of neighbours are not pleased with Sir A. and Lady
Croft, because they are not so profuse as the West, nor magnificent as
the East, Indian; but they seem to me very well-bred people.

“My nephew Robinson, according to the primate’s advice, is studying
hard at Cambridge this vacation. He has very good sense and an uncommon
memory, so he will reap great advantage from application to study.
The generality of young people in these days spend all their time in
travelling from place to place. Such a life may fit them to be surveyors
of highroads, or, if very ingenious, to make maps of England, but for
nothing better. An uniformity of life goes far in forming a consistency
of character.

“It would have done no harm to Montagu to have practised lessons of
idleness rather than study; from the last, there is not anything to
divert him here.

“I am very sorry I have not a frank in Denton. However, that my double
letter may not put your pocket, as well as patience, to double expence, I
convey it to London in a frank, to save half the charges.”

To Mrs. Robinson. “_Sandleford, August 18, 1779._—Montagu’s master wrote
me a letter on my nephew’s leaving Harrow, giving him every praise I
could have wish’d, and desiring me to give him his portrait to hang up
with those of four of his distinguish’d scholars who had left his school
there. Those young men have since had a considerable reputation at the
university, and I hope my young friend will have the same. But one fears
for youth in every new stage it is to pass through. He was this summer
admitted of Trinity College. I should have preferr’d St. John’s, as
the discipline there is stricter; but his tutor, Mr. Gilbank, being of
Trinity, I could not continue my nephew under his daily inspection if he
was not at the same college; and tho’ the salary I give the tutor makes a
considerable difference in the expence, yet if parents are to be pardon’d
who spoil the child by sparing the rod, they are not so who spoil the
child to spare the guinea.”

Referring to the marriage of the daughter of her brother Charles, she
says: “... I imagine this week my neice at Canterbury is made a happy
bride, and what is better, in the probability of being a happy wife.
Mr. Hougham has a very good character, and I believe my neice is very
amiable. Discretion and good-humour are the great sources of domestick
happiness.... I dare say my dear neice (Mary) adorned the ball at
Canterbury with a charming minouet. I believe the present Miss Robinsons
excell by far in that respect the former Miss Robinsons. And I heartily
wish all the steps they take in life may be with more smoothness and more
graces.

“I am impatient to have my new house fit for habitation, as I think the
large and high rooms and its airy situation will be of great service to
my health; and I am sure such noble apartments will be a great addition
to my pleasures. In the winter of the year and the winter of our life,
our principal enjoyments must be in our own house.... I suppose I shall
be advised to take some Bath waters before the winter sets in.... I will
get the better of my passion for my new house, which is almost equal to
that of a lover to a mistress whom he thinks very handsome and very good,
and such as will make him enjoy the dignity of life with ease, yet I will
give as much of the autumn as I shall be advis’d to the Bath waters.... I
have found much more benefit from Bath waters than I have from Tunbridge
for some years past; and the accommodations at Bath are infinitely
preferable. There are not above two houses on Mount Ephraim and Mount
Pleasant that are not mere hovels; the bedchambers are so low and small
that one is stifled; and, if the weather is bad, one is confin’d all day
in a little parlour not much larger than a bird-cage; so that unless
one goes to Tunbridge at the beginning of the season, one is miserably
accommodated.

“The airings round Bath are delightful. From every window of my house
in the Crescent I had the most beautiful prospects imaginable; so that
I enjoyed the sweet face of the fair month of May in all her blooming
charms.

“... I am very far from laughing at you, as you suppose, for indulging
reveries about your son’s marrying. I often allow my fancy to dance at
Montagu’s wedding; and the times are such I can hardly restrain it from
attending his divorce bill through the Houses of Lords and Commons.
However, it is better to suppose the times will mend. We do more wisely,
when we sweeten present cares with the prospect of future pleasures, than
when we embitter present pleasures with future apprehensions.”

When Mrs. Montagu made the last reflection, she probably had in her mind
the lines in her favourite “Comus:”

            “... Be not over exquisite
    To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;
    For grant they be so, while they rest unknown,
    Why need a man forestall his date of grief,
    And run to meet what he would most avoid?”

“... I have two objects in a daily state of improvement—my nephew Montagu
and my new house. Many people would say my pleasure in both will be less
when they are arriv’d at their state of perfection, but I am not of that
opinion. The pleasures of expectation and of possession are different,
but the quiet serenity of the latter is, methinks, the best.”

To Mrs. Robinson. “_December ye 29th, 1779._ ... Our town amours present
us with every thing that is horrible. Women without religion or virtue,
and men void even of a sense of honour. Never till now did one hear of
three divorces going forward in one session, in which the ladies of the
most illustrious rank and families in Great Britain were concern’d. Lady
Percy was the wife of a nobleman of a most distinguished merit, who had
a mind too noble to be satisfied with the greatest hereditary wealth and
honours, has, merely to serve his king and country, exposed himself to
all the difficulties and dangers of military service. Lord Carmarthen
is the prettiest man in his person; the most polite and pleasing in his
manners, with a sweet temper and an excellent Understanding, happily
cultivated. As to Lord Derby, to be sure, he has nothing on his side
but the seventh commandment; but that should be sufficient, and was
sufficient, in former times. Her family, it is said, triumph that this
divorce is only an ugly step to an elevation of title. However, the name
of an adulteress will surely blot whatever shall be written over it,
even were it an imperial title. It is said, however, that Lord D. will
be only divorced in the Spiritual Court; and, in that case, he will have
the revenge of keeping her in her present awkward situation; but while he
is punishing the faithless Wife, he is doing the greatest service to her
gallant (the Duke of Dorset), whom he prevents from incurring infamy and
also getting a most extravagant wife.

“I approve much of your getting a dance once a week for the young folks,
and I am particularly glad my nephew is of the party. Grace of person
is more important for a woman than a man; but the capacity of dancing a
minouet is more serviceable to a young man, for, by so doing, he obliges
many young ladies, while the minouet miss seldom pleases any girl but
herself. Unless a girl is very beautiful, very well-shaped, and very
genteel, she gives little pleasure to the spectators of her minouet;
and, indeed, so unpolite are the setters-by in all assemblies, that they
express a most ungrateful joy when the minouets are over. For my part,
tho’ I feel as great ennui as my neighbours on those occasions, I never
allow myself to appear so; for I look upon a minouet to be generally an
act of filial piety, which gives real pleasure to fathers, mothers, and
aunts.... In France, good minouets are clapped; but I believe no nation
arrived at such a degree of civilization as to encore them.

“... I do not know whether I am more stupid than other people, but I
neither find any of the vexation some find in building, nor the great
amusement others tell me they experience in it. Indeed, if it were not
that a house must be building before it can be built, I should never
have been a builder.... I have not had a quarter of an hour’s pain or
pleasure from the operation. I have not met with the least disappointment
or mortification. It has gone on as fast and well as I expected, and,
when it is habitable, I shall take great pleasure in it; for it is an
excellent house, finely situated, and just such as I have always wish’d,
but never hoped, to have.

“... I know that in some little alterations we made at Sandleford, the
country workmen were so tedious, we were obliged to send for carpenters
from London; but here we have such a plenty of Hands, that everything
goes continually on.

[Illustration: The Minuet

_Photogravure from the painting by E. L. Garrido_]

“... I was grieved to see Scott’s Hall advertised to be sold. It is a
pity such an ancient family should be rooted up to plant some upstart
nabob in its place.

“... I suppose your consort was concerned at the indiscretion of his
Pallas, Mrs. Macaulay. Had she married a great-great-grandson of one
of the regicides, however youthful he had been, it might have been
pardonable; but the second mate of a surgeon to an Indian man-of-war, of
twenty-two, seems no way accountable. If ye Minerva she carried on the
outside of her coach had been consulted, no doubt but the sage goddess,
even in effigy, would have given signs of disapprobation. I have sent you
some verses of Mr. Anstey’s on the subject. The first copy he put into
the urn, at Mrs. Millar’s, at Batheaston; and being desired, when he drew
them, to read them a second time, instead of so doing, he read the other
copy.”

“_Bath, November ye 21, 1780._ ... It was time for Montagu to go to
Cambridge, where I had rather he had lectures and took degrees under
_alma mater_ than under the goddess of folly and dissipation here. In
these water-drinking places, every one is more idle and more silly than
at their respective homes, where all have some business, and many most
important pursuits. I consider, really, life here as a mere dream. Some
walk very gracefully, and talk very agreably in their sleep; but a young
man should not begin life by acting Le Sonambule. It is very well to
do so between the acts of a busy drama, or, alas! as a farce, when the
chief catastrophe is over, and the curtain is dropped between the busy
world and us.... The primate of Ireland is here. He very kindly sent
to my nephew Morris to come to him. Under such protection, I think Bath
as good a place as any he can be in. The advantage of domestick society
with the primate is the greatest imaginable; nor could any parent behave
with more real kindness to the young man, whose gratitude and deference
to his grace make the best return that can be to such goodness.... My
Nephew very wisely and laudably pursued, with the greatest application,
the course of classical studies the primate wish’d him to fall into; and
it is with great satisfaction I hear his grace speak of what he has done,
with the highest approbation.

“... My new house is almost ready.... I propose to move all my furniture
from Hill Street thither, and to let my house unfurnished till a good
purchaser offers. Then, should I get a bad tenant, I can seize his goods
for rent; and such security becomes necessary in these extravagant times.

“... Doctor Moisey being dead, I applied to Doctor de la Cour, your
friend, when I had my cold, to know if I might drink the waters. The poor
doctor is very sickly, and, perhaps, from that reason, he is the most
inattentive physician I ever knew or heard of. He is very agreable in
conversation, but does not remember for a whole day what he has ordered.
He suits me very well at present; for I want no medical help, and I
always love a lively companion. He took three guineas of me, for which I
had some saline draughts and a long direction as to food, the quantity of
water to be taken.... The saline draughts were very good and the food was
very wholesome; but as I knew before that those draughts were good for a
cold, and mutton and chicken easy of digestion, I rather regret my three
guineas. But this is between ourselves; for I never say what may hurt a
man in his profession; so that, when others complain of a loss of memory
and inattention, I am silent.”

The period has now arrived in which some notice is required of the
Bluestockings, of the date of whose origin Boswell has made an erroneous
statement.




CHAPTER XI.

THE BLUESTOCKINGS


To Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey (a warm-hearted Irish lady), and Mrs. Ord
(daughter of an eminent surgeon, named Dillingham, and subsequently a
wealthy widow) is generally ascribed the merit of having founded parties
where conversation should form the chief, if not only, occupation. But
there was a lady much connected with the above, and, indeed, with all the
Blues, to whom may be assigned the honour of first attacking what it was
the object of the Bluestockings to overthrow, namely, Miss Mulso, better
known to us as Mrs. Chapone,—a name which she acquired by marriage in
1760. When this lady was about twenty-three (1750), she, in concert with
Johnson, wrote the tenth number of the _Rambler_. Under the character of
Lady Racket, she sent compliments to that censor of manners, and “lets
him know she will have cards at her house every Sunday, ... where he will
be sure of meeting all the good company in town.... She longs to see the
torch of truth produced at an assembly, and to admire the charming lustre
it will throw on the jewels, complexions, and behaviour of every dear
creature there.”

Of course, this note was written as a text to which Johnson might append
a comment that should sharply censure that card-playing against which
intellectual ladies were beginning to set their faces and close their
doors. Accordingly, the _Rambler_ remarks: “At card-tables, however
brilliant, I have always thought my visit lost; for I could know nothing
of the company but their clothes and their faces. I saw their looks
clouded at the beginning of every game, with a uniform solicitude now and
then in its progress, varied with a short triumph, at one time wrinkled
with cunning; at another, deadened with despondency, or, by accident,
flushed with rage at the unskilful or unlucky play of a partner. From
such assemblies ... I was quickly forced to retire; they were too
trifling for me when I was grave, and too dull when I was cheerful.” When
Johnson suggests to Lady Racket to “light up her apartments with myrtle,”
he seems to have made the suggestion which ladies of sense and means
adopted, and for which they were ridiculed and nicknamed by persons as
brainless as any of the figures staring stupidly at nothing on the court
cards.

There already existed, however, conversation parties that were as little
attractive to persons of good taste as the ruinous card-tables were
to persons of prudence. In one of the few letters of Mrs. Scott which
survived her unfortunate request that all should be destroyed, she thus
wrote of card-parties and _conversations_ in the very year, 1750, that
Johnson and Miss Mulso combined in the _Rambler_ to reform both:

“I find no objection to large companies, except the want of society
in them.... I have not the natural requisite for society—the love
of cards.... I excuse myself from card-parties by saying I have a
great dislike to sitting by a card-table, which no one can pretend is
unreasonable; and I find nothing is so useful as asserting one’s liberty
in these ceremonious points: it gives little offence, and without it, one
may remain all one’s life the suffering slave of a painful civility....
I am glad, by-the-bye, there are such things as cards in the world; for
otherwise one would be teazed by eternal conversation parties, which are
terrible things. I seldom venture into a Sunday-night circle, and I quite
disclaimed them a year before I left London. The principal speakers are
always those to whom one is the least inclined to attend. Every day in
the week would be as much taken up with these parties, if cards did not
conquer even the love of talking.”

Mrs. Montagu, a year before she acquired that name, had expressed her
distaste for the flashy conversation of her time. In a letter to her
sister Sarah, she describes one of the “talkers” with great vivacity.
“Mr. B——’s wife put out her strength to be witty, and, in short, showed
such a brilliant genius, that I turned about and asked who it was that
was so willing to be ingenious; for she had endeavoured to go off two or
three times, but had unhappily flashed in the pan.” In 1750, Mrs. Montagu
and some other ladies attempted to reform manners, by having parties
where cards could not be thought of, and where the mental power was
freshest for conversation.

In that year, 1750, there was a charming French lady taking notes amongst
us. Madame du Bocage, in her “Letters on England, Holland, and Italy,”
notices Mrs. Montagu; and from the notice may be learned, that the
last-named lady was already giving entertainments of a nature to benefit
society. While at the Duke of Richmond’s, as many as eighteen card-tables
were “set for playing” in the gallery of his house near Whitehall, with
supper and wine to follow, for the consolation of the half-ruined, and
congratulation of the lucky, gamblers, Mrs. Montagu gave breakfasts.
Madame du Bocage thus speaks of them and of the hostess:

“In the morning, breakfasts, which enchant as much by the exquisite
viands as by the richness of the plate on which they are served up,
agreably bring together the people of the country and strangers. We
breakfasted in this manner to-day, April 8, 1750, at Lady Montagu’s” (as
Madame du Bocage mistakenly calls her), “in a closet lined with painted
paper of Pekin, and furnished with the choicest movables of China. A long
table, covered with the finest linen, presented to the view a thousand
glittering cups, which contained coffee, chocolate, biscuits, cream,
butter, toasts, and exquisite tea. You must understand that there is no
good tea to be had anywhere but in London. The mistress of the house, who
deserves to be served at the table of the gods, poured it out herself.
This is the custom, and, in order to conform to it, the dress of the
English ladies, which suits exactly to their stature, the white apron and
the pretty straw hat, become them with the greatest propriety, not only
in their own apartments, but at noon, in St. James’s Park, where they
walk with the stately and majestic gait of nymphs.”

Mrs. Montagu was not the only lady who gave those literary breakfasts.
Lady Schaub (a foreign lady who would marry Sir Luke) received company at
those pleasant repasts. Madame du Bocage met Frederick Prince of Wales at
one of them. The prince, who, with all his faults, was an accomplished
gentleman, came incognito, so as to enjoy and to allow greater freedom.
Madame du Bocage treated him as an ordinary gentleman, and was perfectly
delighted with his conversation, as well as with his thorough knowledge
of the literature of her own country. They gossiped beneath the
Sigismunda (one of many fine pictures possessed by Sir Luke), which
stirred Hogarth to paint the same subject, in rivalry, as he thought,
with Corregio; but the picture was since discovered to be by Farini.

When the breakfasts gave way to the evening coteries for conversation
(with orgeat, lemonades, tea, and biscuits) is not known. After these had
lasted a few years, the word “Bluestocking” occurs for the first time
in Mrs. Montagu’s letters. Writing, in March, 1757, to Dr. Monsey, she
says: “Our friend, Mr. Stillingfleet, is more attached to the lilies of
the field than to the lilies of the town, who toil and spin as little
as the others, and, like the former, are better arrayed than Solomon
in all his glory. I assure you, our philosopher is so much a man of
pleasure, he has left off his old friends and his blue stockings, and
is at operas and other gay assemblies every night; so imagine whether
a sage doctor, a dropsical patient, and a bleak mountain are likely to
attract him.” Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet used to be seen as often at Mrs.
Vesey’s gatherings as at Mrs. Montagu’s. “Bluestocking” was not a term
exclusively applied to Mrs. Montagu’s assemblies. To all assemblies
where ladies presided and scholars were welcomed, the name seems to have
been given. A “Bluestocking club” never existed. The title was given in
derision by persons who, as before said, lacked the brains, or who were
not distinguished by other merits that would have entitled them to an
invitation. The assemblies of Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey, and Mrs. Ord were
spoken of indifferently as _bas-bleu_ assemblies.

Sir William Forbes, in his “Life of Beattie,” states that the society
of eminent friends who met at Mrs. Montagu’s originally consisted of
Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Lord Lyttelton,
the Earl of Bath (Pulteney), Horace Walpole, and Mr. Stillingfleet.
Around these some of the most distinguished persons of intellect used
to assemble. Mrs. Vesey (daughter of the Bishop of Ossory and wife of
Agmondesham Vesey), says Sir William, was another centre of pleasing
and rational society. Without attempting to shine herself, she had the
happy secret of bringing forward talents of every kind, and for diffusing
over the society the gentleness of her own character. Mrs. Boscawen
(née Granville, wife of the renowned admiral), unknown to the literary
world, but made familiar to modern readers by her pleasant letters in
the Delany correspondence, made herself welcome by “the strength of her
understanding, the poignancy of her humour, and the brilliancy of her
wit.” Sir William adds, that Stillingfleet was a learned man, negligent
in his dress, and wearing gray stockings, which attracted Admiral
Boscawen’s notice, and caused the gallant seaman to call the assembly of
these friends the Bluestocking Society, as if to indicate that when those
brilliant friends met, it was not for the purpose of forming a dressed
assembly.

To one of the so-called Bluestocking Ladies, the once renowned Literary
Club owed its name. Sir Joshua Reynolds proposed the formation of such
a club; Johnson joyfully acceded, and “the club” was formed. Hawkins,
one of the members, has left on record that “a lady, distinguished by
her beauty and taste for literature, invited us two successive years
to dinner at her house.” Hawkins does not name the hostess (opinion
is divided between Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey, and Mrs. Ord); but he
ascribes her hospitality to curiosity as to a desire to intermingle
with the conversation of the members the “charms of her own.” This
idea of “conversation” in place of gambling and other fashionable
follies, was the leading idea with the ladies who share the merit of
having founded the Bluestocking assemblies. The hostess who received
the club “affected,” says Hawkins, “to consider the members as literary
men;” and he thinks it probable that the club thence derived an
appellation which it never arrogated to itself. The Bluestockings and
the Literary Clubbists seem to have had this in common: their discourse
was miscellaneous, chiefly literary; politics were alone excluded. The
last, however, were sometimes quietly discussed in one or other of the
groups into which the assemblies under the leadership of ladies divided
themselves.

Mrs. Montagu, being a thorough woman of business as well as a recognised
leader in social life, did not make her house in Hill Street a “court
for the votaries of the muses” all at once. She had a wholesome horror of
being in debt, and she indulged her tastes only when her purse authorised
the outlay. In 1767, she completed the Chinese-room which had charmed
Madame du Bocage years before. “Mr. Adams,” as Mrs. Montagu informed Lord
Kames, “has made me a cieling, and chimney-piece, and doors which are
pretty enough to make me a thousand enemies. Envy,” she said, jestingly,
“turns livid at the first glimpse of them.”

At this time, Mrs. Montagu had been living in Hill Street more than
thirty years. It was not even at the later period the well-macadamised
and broadly paved street it now is. A few of the original and noble
houses still dignify the street. Mrs. Montagu began to reside there
a short time before Lord Chesterfield removed from Grosvenor Square
to Chesterfield House; namely, in 1748. In the June of that year,
Chesterfield wrote to Mr. Dayrolles: “I am now extremely busy in moving
to my new house, where I must be before Michaelmas next.... As my new
house is situated among a parcel of thieves and murderers, I shall have
occasion for a house-dog.” Chesterfield House is within a stone’s throw
of Hill Street. The “thieves and murderers” were among the butchers of
May Fair and Sheppard’s Market—not then cleared out for such streets as
have since been erected on the site. Park Lane was then Tyburn Lane,
and what with the fair of six weeks’ duration (with blackguardism and
incidents of horror that will not bear repeating), and the monthly
hangings at Tyburn, from which half the drunken and yelling spectators
poured through May Fair, Hill Street, and adjacent outlets on their way
to home and fresh scenes of riot,—between the fair, the gallows, and the
neighbouring rascalry,—the district was not to be entered after dark
without risk of the wayfarer being stripped by robbers. Footpads were as
common between Hay Hill and Park Lane as highwaymen between Hounslow and
Bagshot. Now, Hill Street looks as if no mounted gentleman of the road
had ever quietly ridden through it on a summer’s evening westward, on
felonious thoughts intent. Chesterfield House stands, but new mansions
occupy its once brilliant gardens, whence all the gay spirits have been
driven. In that locality no longer can it be said that—

    “... round and round the ghosts of beauties glide,
    Haunting the places where their honour died!”

In 1770, Hill Street, still unpaved, was most crowded with the carriages
of visitors to Mrs. Montagu’s rooms. In the assemblies held there, the
hostess had words for all, but she had no special idols; and this was
not always gratifying to those who looked for idolatry. Boswell notices
one night when “a splendid company had assembled, consisting of the most
eminent literary characters. I thought he (Johnson) seemed highly pleased
with the respect and attention that was shown him, and asked him on our
return home if he were not highly gratified by his visit. ‘No, sir,’ said
he; ‘not highly gratified, yet I do not recollect to have passed many
evenings with fewer objections.’”

How “objectionable” Johnson could be to others is well known; but they
took it good-naturedly. Soame Jenyns having been roughly treated by
the doctor on one of these occasions, revenged himself by writing an
anticipatory epitaph. It was probably read aloud at one of Mrs. Montagu’s
coteries. The original is preserved, with half a hundred sprightly
letters by Garrick, among the MSS. belonging to Earl Spencer.

    “Here lies poor Johnson! Reader, have a care,
    Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear!
    Religious, moral, generous, and humane
    He was; but, self-sufficient, rude, and vain.
    Ill-bred, and overbearing in dispute,
    A scholar, and a Christian, and a brute.
    Would you know all his wisdom and his folly,
    His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy,
    Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit,
    Will tell you how he wrote, and talked, and coughed, and spit!”

Mrs. Garrick was among the ladies who met in Mrs. Montagu’s drawing-room,
and she remained the fast friend of the latter till death parted them.
About a quarter of a century had elapsed since, as Eva Violetti, Mrs.
Garrick had made her first appearance on the stage as a dancer. In what
guise she made her début was, doubtless, laughingly alluded to by the
Bluestockings. The Earl of Strafford, who died childless, in 1791, has
left a record of the fact in an unpublished letter (March, 1746) in the
Cathcart collection. “She surprised her audience at her first appearance
on the stage; for at her beginning to caper, she showed a neat pair of
black velvet breeches, with roll’d stockings; but finding they were
unusual in England, she changed them the next time for a pair of white
drawers.” This was a joke for the more intimate circle in Hill Street.
It is probable that it was at the more exclusive gatherings at Mrs.
Montagu’s that the satirists, who had no title to enter, flung their
shafts. “Beattie used to dwell with enthusiasm and delight,” says Sir
William Forbes, “on those more private parties into which he had had
the happiness of being admitted at Mrs. Montagu’s, consisting of Lord
Lyttelton, Mrs. Carter, and one or two other most intimate friends, who
spent their evenings in an unreserved interchange of thoughts; sometimes
on critical and literary subjects; sometimes on those of the most serious
and interesting nature.”

Mrs. Montagu’s assemblies were held within-doors. Other ladies varied
the character of their entertainments. Lady Clermont (for example) was
not more remarkable for her conversational parties than for her al
fresco gatherings. In May, 1773, when living in St. James’s Place, she
issued invitations to three hundred dear friends, “to take tea and walk
in the Park.” It is said that the Duchess of Bedford, who then resided
on the site now occupied by the north side of Bloomsbury Square, sent
out cards to “take tea and walk in the fields.” It was expected that
syllabubs would soon be milked in Berkeley Square, around the statue
of his Majesty. Walpole speaks of being invited to Lady Clermont’s
conversation pieces. These conversation pieces led to such easy manners,
that etiquette was sometimes disregarded when it was most expected. Lady
Clermont, for instance, being at a card-party at Gunnersbury, with many
royal personages, and many witty ones, including Walpole, she remarked
aloud that she was sure the Duke of Portland was dying for a pinch of
snuff! and she pushed her own box toward him, across the Princess Amelia.
Her fluttered Royal Highness, remembering that my lady had been much
favoured by the Queen of France, said: “Pray, madam, where did you learn
that breeding? Did the Queen of France teach it to you?”

The district around Berkeley Square, Hay Hill, Hill Street, etc.,
continued to be a dangerous district. Lord Cathcart, in an unpublished
letter to his son William, dated December, 1774, affords an instance of
the peril which people ran on their way to the houses of Mrs. Montagu,
Lady Clermont, Lady Brown, and other residents of that neighbourhood.
Lord Cathcart tells his son, that as his sisters and Mr. Graham
(afterward Lord Lyndoch) were going to Lady Brown’s, in a coach, they
were attacked by footpads on Hay Hill. One opened the door and demanded
the company’s money. The future Lord Lyndoch showed the stuff of which
that gallant soldier was made. He upset the robber who addressed them,
then jumped out and secured him. The confederate took to his heels.

One night in the autumn of 1776, the house in Hill Street was crowded.
The French ambassador and Mme. de Noailles were there, but the hero of
the night was Garrick, who electrified his audience by reciting scenes
from Macbeth and Lear. “Though they had heard so much of you,” Mrs.
Montagu wrote to Roscius, “they had not the least idea such things were
within the compass of art and nature. Lady Spencer’s eyes were more
expressive than any human language.... She amazed them with telling them
how you could look like a simpleton in Abel Drugger, had many comic arts
equally surprising, when murderous daggers and undutiful daughters were
out of the question.” Mme. de Noailles was so profuse, as she descended
the stairs, in thanks for the great intellectual enjoyment, that Mrs.
Montagu was afraid she would forget herself, and, by a false step, break
her neck. She fervently hoped, too, that Garrick had not caught cold
by going out into the air, “when warmed with that fire of genius which
animated every look and gesture.”

In March, 1779, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale: “On Monday, I came late
to Mrs. Vesey. Mrs. Montagu was there. I called for the print” (of Mrs.
Montagu, in the costume of Anne Boleyn) “and had good words. The evening
was not brilliant but I had thanks for my company.” In October of the
same year, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale: “I have been invited twice to
Mrs. Vesey’s _conversation_, but have not gone.”

Johnson has described a scene at one of the Bluestocking assemblies
(Mrs. Ord’s) where, as he wrote to Mrs. Thrale: “I met one Mrs. Buller,
a travelled lady of great spirit and some consciousness of her own
abilities. We had a contest of gallantry an hour long, so much to the
diversion of the company, that at Ramsay’s, last night, in a crowded
room, they would have pitted us again. There were Smelt, and the
Bishop of St. Asaph, who comes to every place, and Lord Monboddo, and
Sir Joshua, and ladies out of tale.” On another night he was at Miss
Monkton’s, the then young lady who many may remember as the old and
eccentric Lady Cork. Mr. Langton, in a letter to Boswell, thus paints
the groups of Bluestockings at the house of the lady who shared with
Mrs. Montagu the glory of being their founder: “The company consisted
chiefly of ladies, among whom were the Dowager Duchess of Portland, the
Duchess of Beaufort, whom, I suppose from her rank, I must name before
her mother, Mrs. Boscawen, and her eldest sister, Mrs. Lewson, who was
likewise there, Lady Lucan, Lady Clermont, and others of note, both for
their station and understandings. Amongst other gentlemen were Lord
Althorp, Lord Macartney, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lord Lucan, Mr. Wraxall
(whose book you have probably seen, the ‘Tour to the Northern Parts of
Europe,’ a very agreeable, ingenious man), Dr. Warren, Mr. Pepys the
master in chancery, and Dr. Barnard the Provost of Eton. As soon as Dr.
Johnson had come in and had taken the chair, the company began to collect
round him till they became not less than four, if not five, deep, those
behind standing and listening over the heads of those that were sitting
near him. The conversation for some time was between Dr. Johnson and
the Provost of Eton, while the others contributed occasionally their
remarks.” How well Mrs. Montagu could converse, Johnson has portrayed
in a few comprehensive words to Mrs. Thrale: “Mrs. Montagu is _par
pluribus_. Conversing with her, you may find variety in one.” These
assemblies were miscalled and sneered at only by the blockheads. Walpole
was scarcely sincere when he affected to laugh at them. He not only
attended them, but stirred others to do so. Four years after this, he
writes to Hannah More: “When will you blue stocking yourself and come
among us?”

In 1781, Hannah More took the Bluestockings for a theme for her sprightly
little poem, which she entitled “Bas Bleu,” and dedicated to Mrs.
Vesey. In a few introductory words, the author explained the origin and
character of the assemblies to which the well-known epithet was given.
“Those little societies have been sometimes misrepresented. They were
composed of persons distinguished in general for their rank, talents,
or respectable character, who were frequently at Mrs. Vesey’s and a few
other houses, for the sole purpose of conversation, and were different
in no respect from other parties, but that the company did not play at
cards.”

Hannah More describes the hours she passed at these parties as “pleasant
and instructive.” She states that she found there learning without
pedantry, good taste without affectation, and conversation without
calumny, levity, or any censurable error.

From the following lines, the names of the founders of the new assemblies
may be learnt. Their object was to rescue—

    “... Society o’errun
    By Whist, that desolating Hun;”

and from despotic Quadrille, the “Vandal of colloquial wit.” Three
ladies, according to Hannah More, effected the reformation.

    “The vanquish’d triple crown to you, (Mrs. Vesey)
    Boscawen sage, bright Montagu,
    Divided fell. Your cares in haste,
    Rescued the ravaged realms of taste.”

Among the genial and the lofty spirits found in the rooms of those
ladies, and of Mrs. Ord and others, Hannah More names accomplished
Lyttelton, witty Pulteney, polished, sometimes sarcastic, Walpole, with
humourists who charmed and never wounded, critics who recorded merits
before they looked for defects, Christian poets, skilled physicians,
honest lawyers, men of all shades of politics, with princes of the
church, ladies of ton, and “reasonable beauties.” Roscius (Garrick), Mars
(Mason), Cato (Johnson), and Hortensius (Burke), are recorded amongst
those who, at those intellectual gatherings, at various times, led the
conversation, and made it as glorious as Hannah More, who shared therein,
proceeds to describe it.

The chief incident in Mrs. Montagu’s life in the year 1781, one which
threw a shade over several succeeding years, was her quarrel with Doctor
Johnson, founded on certain depreciatory passages in Johnson’s “Life
of Lyttelton.” When Johnson sent to Mrs. Montagu his MS. of the Life
before it went to press, the homage implied that he submitted it to her
judgment for approval or correction. Mrs. Montagu disapproved the tone,
and Johnson sent his copy to press without altering a word or modifying a
sentiment.

Nevertheless, Johnson’s account of Lyttelton seems fair enough to
readers of the present day, though it greatly offended the lady who
paid Lyttelton a homage of reverential affection. Johnson duly records
Lyttelton’s precocity at Eton, and his creditable attempt in his
“Blenheim,” to become a poet, at Oxford. His political career, as the
opponent of Walpole, by whose fall Lyttelton came into office, is told
without passion, and Lyttelton’s honest progress from honest doubt
to honest conviction of the truth of Christianity is delicately and
sympathetically narrated. His merits as a landlord, his good fortune as
a politician, his fidelity as a friend, and his anxiety to be at least
accurate as an historian, are chronicled without reserve. The details
of Lyttelton’s dignified death might have made his best friend forget
and forgive the criticisms on some of his writings. Mrs. Montagu might
forget a part, but she could not forgive an expression of compassionate
contempt, which was worse than adverse criticism. She might forget
that Johnson spoke of “The Progress of Love,” as verses that “cant of
shepherds and flocks, and crooks dressed with flowers.” She may have been
only momentarily stung by the censurer’s remark that, in the “Persian
Letters,” the ardour for liberty which found expression there, was only
such “as a man of genius always catches when he enters the world, and
always suffers to cool as he passes forward.” She might herself have
sneered at Johnson’s praise of the “Advice to Belinda,” on the score of
its purity, truth, vigour, elegance, and prudence, whereas, with some
merits, it is a poem which no one now would dare to read aloud, where it
was meant to be read, to Belindas of the time being. The paragraph in
the Life which gave Mrs. Montagu such exquisite pain was the following,
in reference to the “Dialogues of the Dead:” “When they were first
published, they were kindly commended by the critical reviewers; and
poor Lyttelton, with humble gratitude, returned his acknowledgments in a
note which I have read; acknowledgments either for flattery or justice.”
This paragraph gave the great offence. The words “poor Lyttelton”
rendered it almost unpardonable. Notwithstanding the offence, Mrs.
Montagu subsequently invited Johnson to dinner; but she could not treat
him with her old cordiality, nor would she fall into conversation with
him. General Paoli sat next to the doctor. Johnson turned to him and
remarked, “You see, sir, I am no longer the man for Mrs. Montagu!” He
was not indifferent to this condition of things. “Mrs. Montagu, sir,” he
afterward said to a friend, “has dropt me. Now, sir, there are people
whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropt
by.”

Good-natured friends embittered the quarrel. Mrs. Vesey “sounded the
trumpet,” as was remarked by Walpole, who added: “It has not, I believe,
produced any altercation; but at a Bluestocking meeting, held by Lady
Lucan, Mrs. Montagu and Johnson kept at different ends of the chamber,
and set up altar against altar there. She told me, as a mark of her high
displeasure, that she would not ask him to dinner again. I took her
aside and fomented the quarrel, and wished I could have made Dagon and
Ashtaroth scold in Coptic.” Walpole (who in this quarrel was quite as
malicious as Mrs. Vesey, whom he affected to laugh at, was indiscreet)
called Johnson in another letter referring to this quarrel, “Demagorgon,”
and says that the doctor and the lady kept aloof “like the west from
the east.” He states that Lady Lucan, whose house was the scene of the
comedy, “had assembled a Bluestocking meeting in imitation of Mrs.
Vesey’s Babels. It was so blue, it was quite mazarin blue. There were
Soame Jenyns, Persian Jones, Mr. Sherlock, the new court, Mr. Courtenay,
besides the outpensioners of Parnassus.” And besides those named, every
man of whom was a man of intellect, there was Mr. Horace Walpole himself,
who certainly was present, because he knew he would not be among fools,
though he pretended to go as if he found amusement in their folly. He
seems, in the above extract, to recognise the good-natured Irish lady,
Mrs. Vesey (whose house in Bolton Row, or subsequently in Clarges Street,
was hospitably open to people of merit—proved or promised), as the
founder of assemblies to which the slang name of _bas-bleu_ assemblies
was given. Referring to Mrs. Montagu, with whom he was very glad to dine,
he says (in this year, 1781), “She is one of my principal entertainments
at Mrs. Vesey’s, who collects all the graduates and candidates for fame,
where they vie with one another till they are as unintelligible as the
good folks at Babel.” We should honour any lady of the present century
who, like Mrs. Vesey, Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Ord, Lady Lucan, and others in
the last century, welcomed to their houses, not only all the graduates,
but also the candidates for fame. Johnson himself was annoyed when not
invited to those intellectual meetings. In 1780, he writes, “I told
Lady Lucan how long it was since she sent to me; but she said, I must
consider how the world rolls about her.” From the lips of the guests
whom Walpole met at the houses indicated he could not carry away the
stories that he loved so well as to insert them, in his most exquisite
hand, into folios carefully arranged. These still exist; they illustrate
phases of life among high-born women and men of the last century who were
graduates, not in fame, but in infamy. Nothing could well be worse,
except the infamy of him who must have passed many a night in penning
that unutterably horrible and scandalous chronicle. The chronicler, on
the other hand, is not to be blamed for noting the little affectations of
those whom he encountered, as in the following example, the date of which
is 1781: “I met,” he says to Lady Ossory, “Mrs. Montagu the other night
at a visit. She told me she had been alone the whole preceding day, quite
hermetically sealed. I was very glad she was uncorked, or I might have
missed that piece of learned nonsense.” However, “Mrs. Montagu,” writes
Mrs. Boscawen to Mrs. Delany, “is in perfect health and spirits in her
Château Portman.” But, in Montagu House, Portman Square, the so-called
Bluestockings were much less at home than in Hill Street. Nevertheless,
there, and at similar houses supposed to be of a Bluestocking class,
Walpole was much more amused than when he was at the Princess Amelia’s,
at Gunnersbury, with the “cream of the cream” of Europe, and playing
commerce with the grandest of them. He never had to say of himself at
Mrs. Montagu’s, as he did of his doings at the Princess’s, “Played three
pools of commerce till ten. I am afraid I was tired, and gaped!”

There died in this year, 1781, a Provincial Bluestocking,—who has been
delicately praised by Miss Seward, and furiously attacked and ridiculed
by Horace Walpole,—Mrs. Miller, the neighbour of Mrs. Scott and Lady Bab
Montagu at Batheaston. There is an old story that Walpole, declining
to recognise a man in London whom he had known at Bath, explained
himself by saying, that he would be happy to know the same individual
again—at Bath! So, with regard to literary or _bas-bleu_ assemblies, he
acknowledged those only of London. Provincial meetings he treated as
shams, and covered them with ridicule. Mrs. Miller’s house,—to which she
invited a rather mixed assembly of persons distinguished for intellectual
merit, or persons who were distinguished only by the accident of
birth,—Walpole mis-named the “puppet-show Parnassus at Batheaston” (or
Pindus)—“a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels, a myrtle-tree, a
weeping willow, and a view of the Avon, which has been new-christened
Helicon.” Miss Rich, Lady Lyttelton’s sister, took Walpole to dine
there.... He ridiculed his hosts, described Captain Miller as officious,
though good-natured, who, with his wife, had caught “taste,” and outlived
their income. Having (like wise and honest people) recovered themselves
by living economically abroad, they resumed their old home with improved
habits. “Alas!” says Walpole, “Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a
genius, a Sappho, a tenth Muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle de Scuderi,
and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. They have introduced _bouts-rimés_
as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, give out
rhymes and themes, and all the flux and quality of Bath contend for the
prizes. A Roman vase, decked with pink ribbons and myrtle, receives the
poetry, which is drawn out every festival. Six judges of these Olympic
games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective
successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair
hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle.... The collection is printed,
published,—yes, on my faith, there are _bouts-rimés_ on a buttered
muffin, by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland, receipts to make
them, by Corydon the Venerable, alias George Pitt; others, very pretty,
by Lord Palmerston; some by Lord Carlisle; many by Mrs. Miller herself,
that have no fault but wanting metre.... There never was anything so
entertaining or so dull.” It may be added here, that Lord Palmerston’s
lines “On Beauty” are more than “very pretty,” and that the duchess could
not avoid the subject laughed at, since two of the rhymes given to her
were “puffing” and “muffin,” and she came out of the difficulty with
skill and dexterity. There are, perhaps, few people in a mixed company at
the present time, who could more pleasantly dance such an intellectual
hornpipe in similar fetters.

Miss Seward modifies Walpole’s satirical account without disturbing
the main facts. She adds, with reference to the volumes of these prize
poems then published: “The profits have been applied to the benefit of a
charity at Bath, so that Lady Miller’s institute” (her husband had been
knighted) “was not only calculated to awaken and cultivate ingenuity, but
to serve the purposes of benevolence and charity.” Walpole suppressed
the fact that any one profited by the assemblies at Lady Miller’s, of
whom and of whose husband who presumed to have Walpole’s predilection for
_virtu_, Horace says: “They make themselves completely ridiculous, which
is a pity, as they are good-natured, well-meaning people.”

Some fine spirits contributed to the Batheaston vase, and their
contributions, for which the writers generally had a fortnight’s
notice,—the one theme being given to all competitors,—are often marked
by power, grace, fancy, and, in the comic pieces, rough humour. On one
occasion, some scandalous verses were dropped into the vase, the reading
of which in the very first lines called up blushes on the cheeks of the
modest, and caused suspicion to rest on the rather audacious Christopher
Anstey. “An enemy hath done this,” was the sum of the general comment.
Lady Miller’s death soon followed. Miss Seward has generously spoken of
her really intellectual friend, though she begins with a curious figure
of speech. “Lady Miller,” she says, “was surrounded by a hornet’s nest,”
which was, as she goes on to state in more common sense style, “composed
of those who were disappointed in their expectations of being summoned
to her intellectual feast, and of others whose rhyming offerings could
neither obtain the wreath, nor be admitted to a place in her miscellany.
‘Who knows not the active malice of wounded vanity to blot the fairest
worth and blast the brightest fame?’ From its venom, excellence cannot
even find repose in the grave, and it never fails to descend upon those
who dare defend the claims of the deceased.”

Reference has been made, in a previous page (see p. 46) to Boswell’s
error in stating that the Bluestocking Clubs were originally established
about this time, 1781, when Hannah More was writing of them as
institutions, the chief members of which had already passed away. The
amiable philosopher and thoroughly honest, modest, and accomplished man,
Benjamin Stillingfleet (the grandson of the bishop), from whom they are
supposed to derive their name, had been dead ten years. In his early
days, he made the ascent of Mont Blanc; his last were spent in Kensington
Barracks, where his salary as barrack-master satisfied his wants and
left him wherewith to help those who were in need. He contributed toward
the social reform commenced by Johnson, Miss Mulso (Chapone), and Mrs.
Montagu in 1750, a poem on “Conversation.” It rings with echoes of Pope,
and lays down some very excellent rules that, implicitly followed, would
make conversation impossible. Boswell refers to Hannah More’s poem on the
Bluestockings without noticing her record that so many of the persons
named in it were then dead. The institution, in fact, was in “the sere,
the yellow leaf,” and one, at least, of its old leaders was weary. In
1782, when Mrs. Montagu was established in her palace (as Wraxall says
the Italians would call, and as many English people did call, it), in
Portman Square, her assemblies were more crowded than ever. She herself,
queening it beneath the ceiling painted by Angelica Kaufmann, felt, or
affected to feel, a little weary of her splendour.

“I think,” she wrote to Lord Kames, in 1782, “the calm autumn of life, as
well as of the year, has many advantages. Both have a peculiar serenity—a
genial tranquility. We are less busy and agitated, because the hope of
the spring and the vivid delights of the summer are over; but these
tranquil seasons have their appropriate enjoyments, and a well-regulated
mind sees everything beautiful that is in the order of nature.”

In 1785, Cumberland took the new assemblies, at Montagu House, for
the subject of an essay in _The Observer_. He places Mrs. Montagu,
under the name of Vanessa, in the foreground, and mingles praise with
mockery. He does not refer to the slang word by which the assemblies
conducted by ladies were known; he calls Vanessa’s assembly the Feast of
Reason. Throughout life, according to this essayist, Vanessa had been
a beauty or a wit, whose vanity had this good quality, namely, that
it stimulated her to exercise charity, good nature, affability, and a
splendid hospitality,—qualities which carried her into all the circles
of fine people, and crowded all the fine people into hers.... In her
saloons there was a welcome for every follower of science, every sort of
genius,—a welcome which extended, so the satirical essayist affirms, from
the manufacturer of toothpicks to the writer of an epic poem. Authors
looked to her for fees in return for dedications; and players, for
patronage and presents on their benefit nights.

According to Cumberland, the lady of Montagu House was seated, like the
statue of Athenian Minerva, incensed by the breath of philosophers,
poets, orators, and their intellectual brethren. Hannah More states, on
the contrary, that at the original Bluestocking parties, previous to
1781, the company, instead of being a formal unity, were broken up into
numberless groups. Something, too, of this fashion seems to be referred
to by Cumberland, who describes Vanessa as going from one to another,
making mathematicians quote Pindar, persuading masters in chancery to
write novels, and Birmingham men to stamp rhymes as fast as buttons.

We are further told that the books on Vanessa’s table (and Mrs. Montagu
often complained of the number of presentation copies which were sent to
her) indicated who were among her guests. This little civility is sneered
at, and she from whom it emanated was also occasionally sneered at by
some of her guests; which would have been more natural than courteous if
the lady of the house ever dressed herself, as Cumberland describes her
with boundless exaggeration, in a dress on which were embroidered the
ruins of Palmyra! The same exaggeration is applied to the description of
the company, among whom figure cracked philosophers and crazy dreamers,
with Johnson alone grand, powerful, majestic, eloquent, and ill-mannered.

Next, and perhaps equal with Johnson, is the unmistakable presence of
Mrs. Siddons, who, since the October night of 1782, when she took the
town by the passion and pathos of Isabella, had been the idol of the
time. There she sits at Mrs. Montagu’s on a sofa, leaning on one elbow,
in a passive attitude, counting, or seeming to count, the sticks of her
fan, as homage and compliments are profusely laid at her feet. To silly
questions she has sensible replies—replies which indicate the queries:
“I strove to do it the best I could; I shall do as the manager bids me;
I always endeavour to make the part I am about my best part;” and, “I
never study anything but my author.” There is, probably, no exaggeration
in this; and the more fantastic side of Mrs. Montagu’s character is not
overcharged in the incident that follows. The hostess introduces a “young
novitiate of the Muses,” in a white frock. A fillet of flowers crowns
her long hair, and the novice, advancing to Melpomene, addresses her with—

    “O thou, whom Nature’s goddess calls her own,
    Pride of the stage, and fav’rite of the town;”

which puts poor Mrs. Siddons to the blush, and half of those who are
within hearing to flight.

In 1790, the so-called Bluestocking Club puzzled dwellers in country
places. Nestor, of Bark Place, Salop, was sadly perplexed as to what
the club was, and also as to the meaning of another slang term then
prevailing. He writes to Sylvanus Urban accordingly, with a sort of
apology for being old and living in remote Shropshire. Among others, he
frequently meets with the term “white bear,” applied to many characters
of eminence; and often reads of “the Bluestocking Club,” which he knows
consists chiefly of the literati. But being ignorant of the derivation
and propriety of application of those terms, he will be much obliged to
any correspondent who will condescend to inform him. It does not appear
that any correspondent, not even the editor himself, could enlighten
Nestor, either as to the bear or the club.

Among the latest writers who have, as Hannah More said, misrepresented
these intellectual parties is Miss Mitford. She speaks of Batheaston
in her “Recollections of a Literary Life” (A. D. 1857) as “memorable
for the Bluestocking vagaries of a certain Lady Miller, a Somersetshire
Clemence Isaure, who, some seventy years ago, offered prizes for the best
verses thrown into an antique urn; the prize consisting, not of a golden
violet, but a wreath of laurel, and the whole affair producing, as was
to be expected, a great deal more ridicule than poetry.” In Lady Miller’s
case, the original object, “conversation,” was lost sight of; and some
vanity was mixed up with the doings of the Batheaston Muse. But to stir
up even dull minds to make an attempt to write some sort of poetry was an
intellectual exercise at least as beneficial as the process which counts
honours, and eternally asks, “What’s trumps?”




CHAPTER XII.


Returning to the year 1781, it is to be observed that after that year,
the Bluestocking assemblies gradually died out. Cumberland’s caricature
of them excited the displeasure of good Queen Charlotte; and Miss Burney,
who recognised herself as alluded to under the guise of an Arcadian
nymph, has given a description of a breakfast at the palace in Portman
Square, which did not the least resemble that which was described,
a generation earlier, by Madame du Bocage. The later breakfast was
sumptuous, gorgeous, overcrowded. In splendour of company, banquet, and
locality, it could not be surpassed; and hundreds were there. But we
miss the more select number of intellectual people, who used to fill the
smaller house in Hill Street, where the Bluestockings met, and dignified
their place of meeting. From the year 1781, Mrs. Montagu’s letters
take a graver tone, which is occasionally enlivened by some of her old
brilliancy of expression. The following letter is without date of the
year, but it was written when Hill Street was about being abandoned for
the palace in Portman Square.

“_Hill Street, 2d March, 1781._ ... You will find this town more gay
and splendid than ever; so little effect has the combined evil of wars,
and devastation, and hurricanes. The profuse liberality to Vestris,
ye dancer, and the enthusiastic admiration of his capers exceeds all
the folly I ever knew. Making a visit to a wife of one of the _corps
diplomatique_, the other night, I had the mortification of overhearing
a group of foreigners ridiculing the English for the bustle made about
Vestris.

“... I have already on my chimney-piece a multitude of cards for
assemblies for every day till near the end of passion week. I hope some
of the fine people will spend the Easter holidays in ye country; for such
a succession of assemblies is tiresome.

“... I have, greatly to my satisfaction, got my new house finished and
fit for habitation; and I should have taken possession at this very time,
but the wise people and the medical people say it would be dangerous to
go into a new house just after the winter damp.... As I always leave
London early in May, I was convinced it was not worth while to run hazard
for a few weeks’ pleasure. It is much the fashion to go and see my house,
and I receive many compliments upon its elegance and magnificence, but
what most recommends it to me is its convenience and cheerfulness. A good
house is a great comfort in old age and among the few felicities that
money will procure.

“... I shall be much obliged to you if you will bring to London Thou’s
History, which I lent to your caro sposo five years ago. I suppose he has
long done with it, and I want to read it.”

“_London, December ye 4th, 1781._ ... At this time of ye year, the great
city is solitary, silent, and quiet. Its present state makes a good
preface to the succeeding months of crowd, noise, and bustle.... One
always finds some friends in town; a few agreable people may at any time
be gathered together; and, for my own part, I think one seldom passes the
whole of one’s time more agreably than before the meeting of parliament
in January; and this never appeared more strongly to me than this year,
when so excellent a house was ready to receive me.

“... As age is apt to bring with it a certain degree of melancholy
and discontent, I endeavour to prevent its having that effect, by
sympathising in the joy of my young friends and of improving the objects
about me.... As fast as time wrinkles my forehead, I smooth the grounds
about Sandleford, or embellish my town habitation. In a little while, I
shall never see anything belonging to me that is not pretty, except when
I behold myself in the looking-glass.... At Sandleford, I can assure you,
Mr. Brown has not neglected any of its capabilities. He is forming it
into a lovely pastoral—a sweet Arcadian scene. In not attempting more,
he adapts his scheme to the character of the place and my purse. We
shall not erect temples to heathen gods, build proud bridges over humble
rivulets, or do any of the marvellous things suggested by caprice, and
indulged by the wantonness of wealth. The noble rooms which Mr. Wyatt was
building when you were at Sandleford are now finishing with the greatest
simplicity.

“... To-morrow is look’d to with anxious expectation, as it will in
some measure declare on what terms peace may be obtain’d. I believe all
the belligerent powers are tir’d of the war. But what difficulties the
cunning of statesmen, the pride of kings, or the caprice of the people
may put in the way, one cannot tell. The Spaniards are proud, the French
are petulant, the Dutch are avaricious, and the English are a happy
compound of all these things.

“... My steward (from Northumberland), who made his annual visit to me in
November, told me that north of my estates there were many fields of oats
and barley lying under the snow. I have been very busy with him, settling
our year’s accounts, for these ten days past.

“Lord Edward Bentinck is going to be married to Miss Cumberland. The
Bishop of St. Asaph’s eldest daughter to the learned and ingenious Mr.
Jones.”

“_Portman Square, January ye 17th, 1782._ ... Montagu,” she writes to her
sister-in-law, “returns to me only at Christmas and the long vacation.
The last is spent entirely at Sandleford; for I think the worst thing one
can do by young persons is to give them a habit of restlessness, which is
now so prevalent in the fine world, that all domestick duties, even the
tender parental attentions, are neglected for it....

“I think you did wisely, as well as kindly, in letting my neice partake
of the pleasures of your neighbourhood. To be within the sound of a ball,
and not allow’d to go to it, must seem a hardship to a young person....
Life never knows the return of spring, and I am always an advocate for
their gathering the primroses of their time. A young person not allow’d
to please himself, sometimes will lose any desire to please others.

“I think it would be very desirable for my brother to be a prebend of
Canterbury. There is a local dignity in it, and a clergyman in the
neighbourhood of Canterbury ought to have a stall in the cathedral,
in which he can take a nap with decorum. I should think from the kind
disposition the primate has shown for the family, he will lend a
favorable ear to my brother’s application.... So great is his respect
and tenderness for his brother, Sir William, that perhaps the request,
supported by him, would have additional force.

“... I am glad my good friend, Mr. Brown, is employed by so rich a person
as Lord Bristol. Such an income as his lordship’s cannot be annually
expended on domestick expenses without foolish prodigality and waste....
I am very glad Mr. Brown likes me as a correspondent; for I am obliged
to make a very paltry figure to him as an employer. He is narrowly
circumscrib’d, both in space and expense; but he really gives the poor
widow and her paltry plans as great attention as he could bestow on an
unlimited commission and an unbounded space. He has made a plan to make
my grounds, in prospect of the house and new rooms, very pleasing, and
will execute as much of it every year as I choose, the expense being
agreed upon, which will keep pace with the improvements. The only way to
cheat old Time is, while it robs us of some enjoyments and pleasures,
to be providing new ones. I am a great deal younger, I think, since I
came into my new House, from its cheerfulness; and, from its admirable
conveniences and comforts, less afraid of growing old. My friends and
acquaintances are much pleased with it, ... and I am not afraid to
confess the pleasure I take in their finding it agreable and commodious
for company. But the great satisfaction I feel, as its inhabitant, I
dare confess to few; for few would hear it without envy. People are not
very envious at any advantages they see another possess, if they do not
perceive those advantages add to the happiness of the possessor. Many a
wrinkled old virgin makes it a necessary article of merit in a blooming
girl, that she should not know she is handsome.

“... The Bishop of Durham is going to be married to Miss Boughton. She is
a very proper Person for a wife to a grave bishop—a woman of good family,
good character, and good temper.

“... Pray have my neices read ‘Le Théâtre de l’Education,’ by Mme. de
Genlis? If they have not, I will get it for them.... I think it is one of
the prettiest books that has been written for young persons. The author
is governess to the Duc de Chartres’ children.”

Even Walpole acknowledged the beauty of the house which Mrs. Montagu
had built for her old age and for her heirs—till Lord Rokeby vacated it
recently, the ground lease having “fallen in,” and the edifice passing
to the ground landlord. “I dined,” writes Walpole to Mason, in February,
1782, “on Tuesday with the Harcourts, at Mrs. Montagu’s new palace, and
was much surprised. Instead of vagaries, it is a noble, simple edifice.
Magnificent, yet no gilding. It is grand, not tawdry, not larded, and
embroidered, and pomponned with shreds, and remnants, and clinquant,
like all the harlequinades of Adam, which never let the eye repose an
instant.”

The next letter is addressed to the writer’s niece, Miss Robinson.

“_July ye 9th, 1782._ ... I was, in my youth, directed in the choice of
friends by their solid merit and established character, which was oftener
found in persons older than myself than in my contemporaries. If from
hence I have often wept for dying, I have never been obliged to blush for
my living, friends.... The chief honour and felicity of my life has been
derived from the superior merit of my friends; and, from my experience,
I would, above all things, recommend to every young person to endeavour
to connect themselves with persons whom they can esteem, and, indeed,
reverence, rather than with those whose understandings and virtues they
think merely on a level with, or, perhaps, inferior to, their own....
Principles, opinions, and habits are acquired and formed from those
with whom we live and converse most.... Be cautious, be delicate, be a
little ambitious, my dear neice, in the choice of your friends. I would
be far from inculcating a supercilious contempt for persons of weak
understanding, or a censorious condemnation of their levity of manners.
Humility and charity are the greatest virtues, and let them ever guide
your manners and regulate your conversation.... Be assured that the
wisest persons are the least severe, and the most virtuous are the most
charitable.”

“_Sandleford, July 9, 1782._ ... I had a great deal of occupation of a
more important kind, which was the examination and payment of ye workmen
who had been employed in building and adorning the said house.... As I
got everything accomplished before I left London, I had the satisfaction
of getting a receit in full of all demands from the various artificers. I
will own my taste is unfashionable, but there is to me a wonderful charm
in those words ‘in full of all demands.’ My house never appeared to me so
noble, so splendid, so pleasant, so convenient, as when I had paid off
every shilling of debt it had incurred. The worst of haunted houses, in
my opinion, are those haunted by duns.

“... Mr. Wyatt has nearly completed what belonged to the architect;
and Mr. Brown, by removing a good deal of ground and throwing it down
below, to raise what was too low, while he sank what was too high, has
much improved the view to the south; and, having, at my request, made
a fanlight over the east window, so that the arch formed by the trees
is now visible, these rooms are the most beautiful imaginable. With
the shelter, comfort, and convenience of walls and roofs, you have a
beautiful passage and the green shade of a grove.... The celebrated Mr.
Brown has already beautified our pastoral scenes extreamly.

“... I can easily give you credit when you say you love society, because
I know society loves you, and I am perfectly of the opinion of the common
maxim, that nobody lives out of the world who is fit to live in it. Now
your husband’s party have got into power, I have no doubt but they will
bestow a prebendary upon him, if he asks them. However, his income will
very well afford your spending some months in London every winter.”

“_Sandleford, June ye 16th 1783._ ... You must know, as many authors
with whom I have not any personal acquaintance do me the favour to send
me their works, I found the carriage of them to be amongst my weekly
expenses during the summer. So, of late, if I make a short excursion into
the country, I order the literature to wait until my return. Or, if I go
for a longer time, to be sent down at proper opportunities, with the tea,
or groceries, or some other of the vulgar necessaries of life. So my dear
nephew’s letter was supposed to come with a pamphlet from a bookseller’s
shop, and my porter kept it, with other things from the same source, till
my return from Bath.

“... I found Sandleford improv’d by the attentions of the great Mr.
Brown. My pleasure in those improvements was mix’d with regret for his
death.... Brown was certainly a man of great genius.... Happily for me,
he made a plan for all that is intended to be done here. As I do not
allow my yearly expenses to exceed my yearly income, I go on softly; so
that the plan will hardly be completed by this time two years.

“... I dare say my brother has read with great pleasure Mr. Potter’s
‘Enquiry into some Passages of Doctor Johnson’s Lives of the Poets.’
Mr. Potter has also ably vindicated his friend Mr. Gray’s Odes, etc.,
from cruel and unjust criticism, and this is done with great wit, taste,
and good manners,—ingredients rarely put into the bitters of criticism.
Modern witts and modern orators are apt to fall into the Billingsgate
style, and from every kind of chastisement, made more severe and
outrageous than the fault it should correct, one takes the part of the
culprit against the harshness of the corrector.”

“_Sandleford, September ye 30th, 1783._ ... We are all very well and
very happy; these are the best articles a country journal can contain,
and most likely to be found in a journal when ambitious pursuits and
tumultuous pleasures are perfectly excluded.

“... There is a mode of taking exercise which, from my own experience,
I think I shall recommend to all my friends who are not riders, and
that is a one-horse chair. Sir Richard Jebb, just before I left London,
advis’d me to the use of this carriage. I objected to it, as unpleasant
and unsafe. He assur’d me, that would I allow him to order me one of his
coachmaker, after a model of one he had used on every kind of roads, he
would answer for my finding it easy and secure. To this I consented,
and, in a very obliging manner, he attended almost daily to see it was
properly constructed, and, about six weeks ago, he wrote me word it was
finished. I sent to London for it; and I find it the most delightful way
of taking exercise imaginable. I take an airing sometimes of sixteen or
seventeen miles (ye going and return included), and I am never weary
while abroad, nor fatigued when I get home. My machine is hung so low,
I am exalted but little above the grazing herds, and at ye same time
can hear distinctly the song of the skylark above my head. No rural
sight or rural sound is intercepted. Miss Gregory is my charioteer: she
prides herself more on caution than dexterity, so avoids everything that
could alarm me. As my driver is young, I chose an old horse to draw me;
but so much has every danger been obviated by the construction of the
carriage, I believe I should be very safe with a steed of more vivacity
and spirit. If the weather is doubtful, my post-chaise follows, that we
may take shelter against its inclemencies. I am much pleased with this
prescription of Sir Richard Jebb’s.

“... We are doing a great piece of work in feathers. Every sort of
feather is useful; so shall be much obliged if you can collect some for
me.”

The old formality toward her sister-in-law never changed, as the
following letter will show:

“_November 26, 1783._ ... You mention, my dear madam, with regret that
you had not asked me to dine; but you wrong your hospitality, for you
offered me a very comfortable dinner; but knowing, in your unsettled
state at Burfield, dining guests must be very troublesome, I had
calculated and contrived all things so as to make you merely a noonday
visit. To tell you the truth, I am so afraid of my postillion and
servants getting a too great dose of ale at the houses of gentlemen in a
country neighbourhood, that I make a rule never to dine from home. I have
enjoy’d your kind and elegant hospitality at your house in Kent, and am
sure the same spirit would ever exert itself to give an agreeable welcome
to your friends.

“... Mr. Barret has been very judicious in his choice of Mr. Wyatt for
his architect. He has a most happy art of improving an old house. Where
a part is to be extended beyond the first intention, the additions
should be Gothick; for symmetry not being the object of the Gothick
architects, irregularity is not considered an imperfection in their
designs. Additions made to houses in any other taste destroy the intended
proportions, and introduce confusion and deformity. I am more a friend to
the Gothick on the outside than within; for, unless by great expense and
care, the Gothick fitting-up is clumsy and gloomy. Mr. Walpole tells me
Mr. Wyatt has made a most beautiful design for Mr. Barret. I shall make
my ingenious friend show it to me when he has leisure.

“Pray do you not begin to entertain hopes that you may one day sail in
the air to our planet? Miss Gregory went yesterday to see our air-balloon
launched. I had letters to write, and expected company to dine with me
and to stay the evening, so I could not find time to attend this aerial
machine. All the philosophers at Paris are busy, making experiments on
their balloons, and their _beaux esprits_ are making verses and uttering
_des bons mots_ on them. A friend of mine brought me a dialogue, written
Paris, between the cock, the duck, and the sheep, which made the air
voyage together. The cock was the only animal that seem’d the greater
coxcomb for his travels. It is impossible to say whether this new
invention may not lead to discoveries of importance. At present, it is
merely a philosophical shuttle-cock for the amusement of old children.
As we are not so eager for new playthings as our lively neighbours the
French, we do not make such a bustle about these balloons as they do;
for I understand they are the subject of conversation in all the polite
circles at Paris.

“... Of the many obligations I have received from Mr. Montagu, I do
not reckon it among the least that he permitted me to have my younger
brothers to dine with me every Sunday while they were at Westminster
School; and, after the death of my mother, to have them at Sandleford
during holydays and vacations. Whether these attention make any
impression on those who receive them or not, the person who has paid them
must ever reflect with pleasure on having done their part. _Fate ben per
voi_, do good for your own sake, is an admirable moral maxim.

“... The Prince of Wales has given many brilliant entertainments, but his
present bad condition of health will suspend, at least, those gaieties.
It is thought he has an abscess forming in his side. It is said he
suffers a great deal, but if those sufferings bring him into a habit of
temperance, it will be good for him to have been afflicted. His political
engagements have been productive of some salutary chastisements. He has
been hiss’d _à toute outrance_ at the theatres.

“The French ambassador has fitted up his house with much gayety and
splendor. He is much connected with that party which is at present very
unpopular. It is affirmed that his court has remitted £70,000 to him, to
support the party in elections. The French Cabinet has ever made use of
bribery whenever they could introduce it for their purposes; and alas!
there are few places or persons to whom gold does not find access!

“... I think your evening readings must be very improving to my neice.
History presents to young persons many good examples, and will counteract
the impressions of our newspapers, which give an account of the vices,
follies, and extravagances of ye times. It is much better for a young
lady to read the characters of the Lucretias and Portias, than to defile
her mind with paragraphs of crim. con., elopements, etc.

“... My health has not been interrupted by the bad weather we have had.
I believe Portman Square is the Montpellier of England. I never enjoy’d
such health as since I came to live in it.”

“_1784, Sandleford._ ... The improvements out-of-doors have advanced
greatly from the time I left Sandleford last August. When I left a
little rivulet had assumed the air of a river. Charming walks on its
banks and through the wood make me often think with gratitude of the
late Mr. Brown, by whose plans all these things were accomplish’d.... We
are now embellishing the grounds to the south and making an approach to
the house, which will be far preferable to the present. Mr. Wyatt has
built me a large bedchamber and dressing-room, which command a beautiful
prospect.... Mrs. More and Mrs. Garrick are now with me, and, I flatter
myself, will not leave me before I may hope for my lord primate’s return.”

It was in the above year that Johnson gave the following testimony to the
quality of Mrs. Montagu’s intellect: “Mrs. Montagu, sir, does not make
a trade of her wit; but Mrs. Montagu is a very extraordinary woman; she
has a constant stream of conversation, and it is always impregnated—it
has always meaning.” He further said, “That lady exerts more mind in
conversation than any person I ever met with. Sir, she displays such
powers of ratiocination, such radiations of intellectual eminence, as are
amazing....”




CHAPTER XIII.


To Mrs. W. Robinson.—“_Sandleford, February 3, 1784._ ... The
air-balloons, without a pun, may be said to rise higher and higher, by
every experiment. Messrs. Roberts performed a journey of 150 miles in
six hours. By this mode of travelling I might go hence to my house in
Northumberland in twelve hours; but till the aerial navigation is more
ascertained, I shall not attempt it; lest, instead of finding myself at
the verge of my coal-pits, the end of my journey, I should alight on the
summit of a Welsh mountain.

“Montagu had last night the pleasure of receiving a very kind and
sensible letter from your son, and every stroke of his pen sets ye
mark of a good heart. I think you will have great comfort in him. The
most brilliant persons are not always the happiest or most esteem’d;
more rarely still the best-beloved. Too much presumption in their own
excellencies, too little indulgence to the defects of others, if it does
not totally destroy our admiration, certainly eliminates our affection;
and it is far better to be beloved than admired.

“... As to the new plantations (at Sandleford), their progress to
perfection will be so much slower than mine to decay, I cannot expect
to see much advance there; but the hope of their giving pleasure to
those I love, when I am no more, will render them objects of pleasant
contemplation.... If you have seen the Recorder lately, he would perhaps
tell you that we had an alarm of fire one night, but it was extinguished
and all danger over in less than an hour. The fire began from my old
dressing-room. It is the second time it has happened there. The first
accident was many years ago. You may imagine we no longer hazard making a
fire in a chimney which has such communication with timber. I assure you,
on the cry of Fire! in the house at four in the morning, Montagu jump’d
out of bed, rush’d into my room, and begg’d that he might immediately
conduct me down stairs, with a tender zeal, equal to that of the pious
Æneas to the old Anchises. The end of the passage, from the dressing-room
to my bedchamber, appeared to be in flames, but we had one staircase at
a distance, which promised a safe retreat; so that really I was not so
much agitated, or he any way disordered. Montagu, by his alacrity, was of
infinite use. The first water thrown on the flames boil’d up; but he and
a blind man whom I have kept ever since he lost his sight, which is about
fifteen years since, were more useful than all the rest of the family. I
sent to Newtown to call up the workmen employ’d at my new offices, and
they pull’d up the beams and rafters as soon as the flames were quench’d.
My Newtown neighbours behav’d with great neighbourly kindness, but all
the assistance had been in vain, if I had not been awake and rais’d
the family at the first crackling of the fire; for it made very rapid
advances. I was much complimented on my courage, from which my composure
was suppos’d to arise, but I confess that composure had its rise in
cowardice. I was so glad to find our lives were not in danger, that
ye consequences threatened to my property made little impression. The
coward’s declaration, ‘Spare my life and take all I have!’ seem’d to be
the expression of my mind. Thank God! the damage has been in all respects
very trifling. I am very glad that this alarm did not happen after my
lord primate and Sir W. Robinson arrived. A fire is the worst _fête
champetre_ one can treat one’s friends with.

“... Business will detain me here for a fortnight longer.... I shall
then go to Bath for about a month, to enjoy the primate’s society, who
generally spends the evening with me. I have not any pretence to drink
the waters, being perfectly well. I may take a little of them, perhaps,
as I love to fall in with the customs of the place in which I reside.

“... My great piece of feather-work is not yet compleated; so, if you
have an opportunity of getting me any feathers, they will be very
acceptable. The brown tails of partridges are very useful, tho’ not so
brilliant as some others.”

At sixty-five, Mrs. Montagu did not consider herself too old to figure
at court. The poets had not ceased to take interest in her and to make
her the subject of their rhymes. “Have you seen Mr. Jerningham’s lines
on Mrs. Montagu falling down-stairs at the Drawing-room?” asks little
Miss Port of her father, in a letter dated February, 1785, in the Delany
correspondence. “In case you should not, I will send them to you.”

    “Ye valiant Fair! ye Hebes of the day,
    Who heedless laugh your little hours away!
    Let caution be your guide, whene’er you sport
    Within the splendid precincts of the Court.
    The event of yesterday for prudence calls—
    ’Tis dangerous treading where Minerva falls!”

Minerva’s sympathies were now aroused by a family incident, thus narrated
to Mrs. Robinson: “_March ye 15, 1785._ ... I know my brother and you
and your daughters will be glad to hear Montagu is going to be married,
in a manner which is agreable to himself and to me. The young lady is so
form’d and qualified as to please both the fancy and the judgment, and
her fortune such as to content any reasonable wishes. She has £45,000 in
present; £3,000 more is to remain in the funds to secure an annuity to a
very old person during his life, and who has been sometime bedridden; so
it will soon come into Miss Charlton. She has also an annuity of £300 a
year on the life of a young prodigal; but the regular payment of this is
not to be depended upon. She has also some other little contingencies; so
that her fortune is not estimated at less than fifty thousand pounds by
her guardians.

“From Montagu’s good character, those guardians and her relations are
very desirous of the match, which will take place when the lawyers
compleat the settlements—an affair which I fear will take up no small
time, as they have no mercy on the impatience of lovers. She is a ward
of Chancery, so many forms are necessary. You may imagine pretty large
settlements in land, both present and future, will be required from
me; but, as Montagu’s happiness and prosperity is my great object, I
shall comply with every reasonable condition. Miss Charlton’s excellent
understanding, and her gentle and unaffected manners, render her very
agreable. She has a very pleasing countenance, and tho’ rather little,
is finely made and remarkably genteel. She is an orphan, but is with
her grandmother—a very sensible, well-bred woman, and who is almost
as much in love with Montagu as her granddaughter is. It adds much to
my satisfaction that those who were at Mrs. Terry’s boarding-school
with Miss Charlton are very fond of her, and speak highly of her good
temper; to which, indeed, her guardians and intimate acquaintance give
ye strongest testimony. As good humour is the great ingredient of human
happiness, it gives me much delight to find my dear Montagu will find
it in his partner. His own temper is the happiest I ever knew. We dined
yesterday at the Bishop of Salisbury’s. I was glad his lordship did not
ask how many months in the year your _caro sposo_ spent at Burfield....
Mr. Pitt is thought to gain ground daily, and the opposition babble is
little attended to in the House. The town is very gay. The balls are
protracted to seven in the morning. Montagu danced till that hour the
other night at the Duchess of Bolton’s, but he yawned so horribly the
next morning, I think when he is Benedict ye married man, he will not
caper at that hour to please ye young ladies. He din’d to-day at ye young
lady’s guardians, and is not come home, or would send his duty.”

“_July ye 12th, 1785._ ... You would know by various sources of
intelligence how our matrimonial negotiations went forward, and the day
on which they were happily compleated. So I will begin my history where
your information ended,—our getting into our carriages at the door of
Marybonne Church.

“Venus no longer sends her car and doves; but a post-chaise with four
able horses and two brisk postillions do as well. At Salt Hill, we
stopp’d to take some refreshment. I eat a good deal of cold ham and
chicken. The lovers sigh’d and look’d, sigh’d and look’d, and sigh’d
again, and piddled a little on a gooseberry tart. At Reading, we drunk
tea, and there Lord Lansdowne, being also on the road, came to us
and made his compliments, but with so much delicacy as not to bring
ye maiden’s blush into ye cheeks of the bride. Indeed, for fear of
distressing her, I did not present her to his lordship, so he only made
her a low bow, accompanied by an emphatical look. To the bridegroom, he
wished joy. At eight, we arrived at Sandleford. Our soup and bouillie had
been ready for some hours; the rest was soon dress’d. We avoided passing
through the town of Newbury; so the bells there, which were jangling on
the happy occasion, did not give us any disturbance. The decent dignity
of the bride’s behaviour and the delicacy of the bridegroom’s did them
honour, and gave me great pleasure; and we are three as happy people as
can be found in any part of the habitable globe.

“Mrs. Matthew Montagu is much pleased with Sandleford. It was always
the favourite of her husband; and now he has got a fair Eve, it appears
to him a Paradise. I am in perfect health and perfect content, which is
enough for me. Joy and rapture are for youth.

“... The Bath is a dull place. Tunbridge has a pert character. The
Pantile Walk in summer is pleasanter than the Pump Room at Bath in ye
winter; and as anything original pleases more than a bad imitation, I
must own I pass’d my time there with less _ennui_ than in the city of
Bath, where the London life is awkwardly imitated.

“... It is believed that Lady Sutherland will marry Lord Trentham; and
some suppose Miss Pulteney will be bestow’d on Lord Morton. I am glad,
for the credit of our sex, neither of these ladies make a scamper to
Gretna Green.

“... Our brother, the Recorder, has acted in a very friendly and generous
manner towards us,—bestow’d without favour or reward much patience and
skill on the voluminous settlements, which the mercenary spirit of
the lawyers employ’d to draw them had extended over as many acres of
parchment as, converted into green land, would make a pretty little farm;
and for which, I suppose, they will charge as much as would purchase
a tolerably good one. To effect this, they were so tedious in their
proceedings; for my proposals were immediately and perfectly approved
both by the Lord Chancellor and Master in Chancery.

“... The bride and bridegroom beg you all to accept their proper respect.”

The following descriptive letter, addressed to Mrs. Robinson, Castle
Street, Reading, was franked by Mr. Matthew Montagu, Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
September 22, 1786:

“... I arrived at Mrs. Garrick’s, at Hampton, the evening of the day on
which I visited you at Reading, and spent five days with her; making,
indeed, almost every day an excursion to London to visit my poor friend,
Mrs. Vesey, whom I found in a very declining state of health. From
Hampton, I went to the Dowager Lady Spencer’s, at St. Albans, where I
passed two days very agreably, and regretted that my business here would
not allow me to prolong my visit. The history of La Fée Bienfaisante is
not half so delightful as seeing the manner in which Lady Spencer spends
her day. Every moment of it is employed in some act of benevolence and
charity. Her ladyship carried me to see the remains of the seat of the
great Lord Bacon, at Gorhambury, where remains, but is soon to be pulled
down, the gallery in which he passed those hours of study which pointed
out the road to science, and investigation of the works of nature. The
estate is now in the possession of Lord Grimston, who has built a fine
house there; but I could not help sighing at the reflection that the
posterity of the ridiculous author of ‘Love in a Hollow Tree,’ should
build on the ruins of Lord Bacon’s habitation.

“From St. Albans I struck into the highroad at Welling, not without
paying the tribute of a sigh to the memory of my old friend Doctor
Young. From that place till I got into Yorkshire, I did not see any
interesting objects but the mile-stones.... Here, at my Gothick mansion
near Newcastle, the naiads are dirty with the coal-keels, and the dryads’
tresses are torn and dishevelled with the rough blasts of Boreas. My lot
has not fallen on a fair ground, but it would be ungrateful not to own
it is a goodly heritage, and makes a decent figure when it arrives at
ye shop of Hoare and Co., in Fleet Street. A week after me, arrived in
perfect health my nephew and neice Montagu. We are always here plagued
with high winds, and this season they have raged with great violence;
but as this house was built in 1620, I hope it will not now yield
to storms it has braved for now two hundred years. The walls are of
immense thickness, having been built of strength to resist our Scottish
neighbours, who, before the Union, made frequent visits to this part of
the world. My Gothick windows admit light, but exclude prospect; so that,
when sitting down, I can see only the tops of the trees.

“... I observe with great pleasure that Montagu has a happy turn
for business, and applies himself to learning the science of
coal-mine-working, of which many coal-owners are ignorant entirely, but
none ought to be so. Without working in the mines, the process may be, to
a certain extent, understood by any one who possesses any mathematical
knowledge. The late Duke of Northumberland was very able in all those
matters. Lord Mount-Stewart is now at Newcastle attending the business
of the collieries he acquired by his marriage with Lord Windsor’s
daughter. Lord Carlisle never comes into Northumberland, but leaves his
affairs entirely to his agents. Lord Ravensworth was very attentive to
his collieries, but his heir, Sir Henry Liddell, is of a very different
character. He amused himself and neighbours with the exhibition of two
Lapland women whom he imported. He collects all sorts of wild beasts; and
his ale-cellars make beasts of men. It is strange that Lord Ravensworth
should prefer such a nephew to his grandsons.

“... I am obliged to you for your kind attention to my feather-work. The
neck and breast feathers of the stubble goose are very useful, and I
wish your cook would save those of the Michaelmas goose for us. Things
homely and vulgar are sometimes more useful than the elegant, and the
feathers of the goose may be better adapted to some occasions than the
plumes of the phœnix.”

Mrs. Montagu was ever touching and reëmbellishing her famous
“feather-hangings.” Cowper has told in song how—

    “The birds put off their every hue,
    To dress a room for Montagu.”

Peacock, pheasant, swan, and “all tribes beside of Indian name,” says the
poet, contributed plumage of—

    “... splendour ever new,
    Safe with protecting Montagu.”

To “her court,” thus decorated, resorted genius, wit, philosophy,
learning, and fancy:

    “All these to Montagu’s repair,
    Ambitious of a shelter there.
    She thus maintains divided sway,
    With yon bright regent of the day;
    The plume and poet both, we know,
    Their lustre to his influence owe;
    And she, the works of Phœbus aiding,
    Both poet saves, and plume, from fading.”

To Mrs. Robinson. “_Portman Square, February 8, 1787._ ... I have been
in town almost three weeks, in all which time I have not had three hours
of leisure. At my arrival in Portman Square, my porter presented me with
an infinite number of cards of invitation, letters, notes, and not
a few books, presents from their authors. I flattered myself that in
four or five days this bustle would begin to subside, but another cause
of receiving visits and writing notes and letters began. The occasion
was, indeed, such as gave me great pleasure, even that on which you so
obligingly congratulated me. So good-natured was the world to the old
aunt, that many members of the House of Commons who had heard his speech,
and many of the House of Lords who had heard of it, called in the morning
to congratulate me, and, indeed, for several mornings, I had a levée
like a minister. Nothing ominous; I hope that ye young man who was the
occasion, will never be in that situation which, I perfectly agree with
my friend Soame Jenyns, is the most miserable of any, except that of king
in a free country. Ladies wrote me congratulatory notes from all quarters
of the town, and I have since had letters from my distant correspondents
in the country, on the subject of the Drawing-room. I received many
compliments, but those which most flattered my vanity were from the
greatest lady there, the first minister, the Lord Chancellor, and some
distinguished persons in the opposition. However, as these glories soon
fade away, and such a kind of speech is forgotten in a few days, the
most heartfelt joy I had, arose from the delight his brother express’d
on his success. The wise man says, A brother is born for the day of
adversity; and, indeed, there are few men so wicked as not to pity and
assist a brother in misfortune. But the good and great mind alone takes
delight in the success and fame of a brother. The envious think they can
escape censure when they neglect a friend or relative in prosperity, and
indulge their malice safely in giving little hints to their disadvantage;
but my nephew show’d a different kind of spirit. As soon as the House
was up, he ran to Mrs. M. Montagu, to his mother, and to me, and with
a most joyous countenance, and in a most expressive manner, told me in
what manner our young orator’s speech had been received in the House.
Montagu felt this instance of fraternal affection with the tenderness and
gratitude it deserved, and I hope they will be through life an honour and
happiness to each other. You rightly imagine the wife and aunt are not
without anxiety, lest parliamentary exertions and attendance should hurt
our young man’s health, but at present he is perfectly well.

“... The only thing that induces the primate to prolong his stay at Bath
is that he is not lame. The dumb gout, as he calls it, which used to make
him so, has for some months in a manner forsaken him, and he thinks it
prudent to endeavour to bring it back.

“... I should have been very anxious if such a cargo as the virtues
and amiabilities of dear Miss Arnold had been put on board the horrid
mail-coach; so, I am obliged to her for complying with my entreaties
to take a slower but safer conveyance.... I write in much hurry; the
letter-bell tinkles.”

The speech referred to in the above letter was made by Mr. Matthew
Montagu, when seconding the motion on the royal address with which
Parliament was opened. The speech was warmly eulogistic of Mr. Eden’s
commercial treaty. Fox praised the young speaker and tore his argument to
pieces.

Wraxall, referring, in the “Memoirs of His Own Time,” to Mrs. Montagu’s
nephew, Matthew Robinson, says: “The celebrated Mrs. Montagu, his aunt,
who so long occupied the first place among the _gens de lettres_, in
London, having adopted him as her heir, he received her husband’s name.
At her feet he was brought up,—a school more adapted to form a man of
taste and improvement than a statesman or a man of the world. After this
gentleman entered the House of Commons, there was some difficulty in
distinguishing between him (Matthew Montagu) and Montagu Matthew. General
Matthew himself defined the distinction. ‘I wish it to be understood,’
said he, ‘that there is no more likeness between Montagu Matthew and
Matthew Montagu than between a chesnut horse and a horse-chesnut.’”

[Illustration: On the Sea-wall at Southampton

_Photogravure after the painting by Clairir_]

To Mrs. Robinson. “_Sandleford, July 14, 1787._ ... That I was delighted
at becoming a grandmother, for such I account myself to the dear babe,
cannot be doubted; and surely it is the most agreable and becoming office
of old age. I have always wonder’d at the wild and rash ambition which
impell’d men to wish and seek for conditions and offices to which they
were not by talents or circumstances well adapted; but I may say without
vanity, I have the age, the experience, the wrinkles, the foibles which
form the compleat character of grandmother; and I long to be in full
office, but it will be above a fortnight before father, mother, child and
cradle will be fix’d at Sandleford.... I should have been under dreadful
anxieties if she had not been so well; for she is the most amiable,
agreable, and valuable young woman I ever knew. She is a mere mortal,
and, I suppose, she must have some faults; but tho’ I have watched her
continually, I have never been able to discover any in her.

“... I am not interested in the Christmas quarter. When one is too old to
play at blind man’s buff and hunt the whistle, I think one cannot pass a
merry Christmas in the country.

    ‘Tower’d cities pleased us then,
    And the busy haunts of men.’

Good society and the animated circle of a great town supply all that the
winter season deprives us of.

“... I was much pleas’d with a work of Mr. Morgan’s, your son’s tutor,
which he had the goodness to send me. I think it not only very ingenious
and well written, but that it will have a very good effect upon the
shallow wits and foolish pedants who affect to be infidels by way of
showing their parts and learning.... I have visited and been visited by
the Pocock family, settled here. They seem very good kind of people.”

“_Friday, September ye 14th, 1787._ To Mrs. Robinson at Mr. Baker’s
Circulating Library, Southampton.—I think there is greater variety in the
environs of Southampton than in any part of England perhaps; and all in
the noble style,—the great ocean, the wide forest, and scenes of rural
beauty are all within reach of our airing. So, as the humour points to
the _allegro_ or the _penseroso_, you may direct your jaunts, and find
the nereids, or the dryads, or Pomona receive you with their best graces
and softest smiles.

“... The lord primate departs from Bristol to-day, and intends to come to
Sandleford the beginning of next week. His grace had appointed a day for
doing me that favour six weeks ago; but the journey caused a return of
the gravel, and he was oblig’d to stop at Marlbro’, and sent a servant to
tell us of the disappointment. So Mrs. Scott and I went to him and staid
two days, at the end of which he was able to return to Bristol by gentle
journeys, and return to the use of the Bristol waters, which, indeed, his
physician was very loth he should quit; and, thank God, he has not since
had any return of the complaint.

“... I have had a succession of company in my house; attention to them,
and morning airings and domestick business have engross’d my time. In the
present state of my house, I have only one spare room, which was first
occupied by Doctor and Mrs. Wharton; then by Doctor Beattie; then by Mr.
and Mrs. Smelt and their neices.

“... Montagu set out for Denton on Monday last, to give his attention
to opening a new seam of coal. It gave me great pleasure to see him
apply to the knowledge of collieries, which not above two or three of
our gentlemen, interested in those valuable possessions, will take the
trouble to do.

“... You will find Sandleford embellish’d since you saw it. I have now
thirty men at work, making a piece of water down to ye river from ye
water on the side of the wood. It will have a very beautiful effect.

“... Will you pardon my making a bold and impertinent petition. The trout
season being now over, I shall be distress’d how to provide fish for the
primate. If any day after Wednesday next, you would let one of your
servants purchase the finest dish of fish the sea produces and direct it,
accompanied by a crab and a lobster, to me, to be left at the turnpike
at Newtown, Hants, I will not grudge any price for it. I would not be
thus troublesome for any guest I did not so much wish to indulge as the
primate.... Mrs. M. Montagu desires her most respectful compliments to
you.”

“_Portman Square, January ye 10th, 1788._ ... I found London on my
arrival, the 11th of November, according to the old song, ‘A fine town
and a gallant city.’ I never knew it so full of the fine world at that
season of the year. At Christmas it is the _Ton_ to go into the country
for the holydays; but yet, on New Year’s Day, the Drawing-room was as
much crowded as it used to be during the sitting of the parliament; but
what adds most to the pleasure of society is the satisfaction all people
express at our triumphs over the ungrateful Dutch and the insidious
French. The Mynheers and the Mounseers bow before us, and all this
obtain’d without any bloodshed, and at little expense.

“I cannot by the best information form any conjecture how the
fermentations in France will end. I rather think the spirit of liberty
they have imported from America will be beat up into the froth of
remonstrances and satires, than have any solid effect. A nabob has
purchas’d Mr. Sawbridge’s house, who, being as prudent in domestick as
sagacious in publick affairs, is oblig’d to give it up to his creditors.”

In 1788, Mrs. Montagu adopted a fashion which had been introduced by the
Duke of Dorset, of giving a _thé_. The Duke had been our ambassador in
France, and had brought thence a fashion, reasonable enough, of offering
a tea at eight to people who dined at two; but unreasonable in England,
where the hour for dinner, in great houses, was six o’clock. Hannah More
describes the teas as Mme. de Bocage, nearly forty years before, had
described Mrs. Montagu’s breakfasts. From fifty to a hundred guests were
seated at a long table or made up little parties at small ones. The cloth
was laid as at breakfast, and the tea was made by the company. Every
one had a napkin, as at a public breakfast. The table was covered with
hot buttered-rolls, muffins, bread and butter, and wafers. Hannah More
adds to her description, made in nearly the above words: “Of all nations
under the sun, as I take it the English are the greatest fools.” At the
breakfasts in Hill Street there was appetite with clear intellects; at
the “Bluestocking” coteries there, a select circle, and not a fool among
them; but what wit could there be among people eating buttered muffins
two hours after a heavy dinner and strong port wine?

“_December, 1788._ MY DEAR NEICE:—As I was indebted to you for the favour
of a letter, when I left Sandleford, I should have fulfill’d my promise
of sending you whatever news I could collect in the great metropolis;
but instead of finding this town the seat of gayety, I found it the
abode of melancholly. Every countenance (except of the fox kind) looked
dejected. The king’s illness and our country’s danger occupied every
mind, and tinctured every conversation with melancholly and anxiety. The
reports of his majesty’s condition for these three days have been much
more favorable than any time since he was first taken ill; so the hopes
of being again under the government of a good king are revived, and the
dread of a bad set of men who wanted to usurp his power, has, from the
spirited conduct of the houses of parliament, much abated.

“Mr. Fox is in a very bad state of health. His rapid journeys to England,
on the news of the king’s illness, have brought on him a violent
complaint in the bowels, which will, it is imagined, prove mortal.
However, if it should, it will vindicate his character from the general
report that he has no bowels, as has been most strenuously asserted by
his creditors.

“After I left Mrs. Boscawen’s, at Richmond, I passed a week very agreably
with my dear friends at Shooter’s Hill; and should have prolonged my
stay there if I had not been afraid to meet December in the country. The
weather has justified my apprehensions. Weather makes small part of the
comforts of a London life, and I have pass’d my time very comfortably.
Twice or thrice a week, I invite seven or eight agreable persons to
dine with me. On others days, I often prevail on some intimate friend
to partake of my mutton and chicken, which, with the visits of such of
my acquaintance as are in town, give me enough of society. I have not
been out of my house above four times since I came to town, the first of
December, for I am afraid to expose my weak eyes to the northern blast.

“My nephew Robinson set out for Horton on Christmas Day. Montagu and
his family intend to continue at Shooter’s Hill till ye parliament meet
daily.... He comes up in a morning to attend the House, and returns the
next morning, but gives me the pleasure of seeing him when he comes
to town; and a kind visit I had also from her yesterday. Few of the
gentlemen of either House of Parliament have yet brought their ladies
to London, so you will not wonder there is little news stirring but of
the political kind. However, there is a marriage going forward, at which
I am rejoyced, as it will add to the happiness of two persons whose
paternal conduct well deserves that reward. Many in our town dissipate
the estates they inherited from their ancestors, and suffer their noble
mansions to fall to ruin; but Lord and Lady Mount Edgcumbe, by prudent
conduct, have retrieved the family estates, which his lordship’s elder
brother had embarrass’d; all which will now be secured by settlements
and inherited by their posterity. Mr. Edgcumbe is going to be married to
Lady Sophia Hobart. Lord Mount Edgcumbe behaves very generously in his
settlements.... The joy those good parents express at seeing their son
now out of danger of any imprudent choice or vicious connection is great.
Indeed, a parent’s satisfaction in his son can never be compleat till
the important point of his marriage is accomplish’d; for, if he marries
a trumpery girl, she not only does not bring any addition to the family
property, but the elevation of her situation so much above her birth,
will probably make her extravagant and fall into absurd method that will
ruin it.”

To her niece. “_Portman Square, December 31, 1789._ ... The kind of life
one leads at Bath, tho’ it offers but few amusements, allows no leisure.
Sauntering is the business of the place. Beaux in boots, and misses in
great coats, visit all the morning, and, having nothing better to do
themselves, will not suffer others to do anything that is better. My
evenings are always agreably engaged with my friends. The Bath is chiefly
fill’d with Irish, but there were many persons there with whom I live in
a great degree of intimacy when in London. I had the pleasure of finding
and leaving the primate and Sir William Robinson in perfect health. I
expect his grace will be in town in a few days. Sir William will remain
at Bath and pursue the warm bathing, which he finds very beneficial.

“... My nephew Robinson was so good as to be with me at Bath.... I came
to town yesterday sennight. The cold lodging-houses at Bath, and the
chill journey, made me feel myself wonderfully comfortable in this good
and substantial mansion. Ever since I first inhabited it, I have been
sensible how much a good habitation softens the severity and enlivens the
gloom of winter.

“Montagu is gone to Lord Harrowby’s to spend ye holydays. He acquitted
himself admirably of all his devoirs at Bath. He danced as many minouets,
caper’d as many cotillions, and skipp’d as many country-dances as any
young gentleman at ye place. He usually open’d the ball, and danc’d to
the last. Indeed, with a great deal of prudence and discretion, he has as
lively, gay spirits as any one I ever knew; so, he is happy at all times
and in all places, and makes those who are with him so.

“... We all imagine Mr. Pitt will have little to fear from the
opposition. I do not hear any news. It would be doing too much honour to
ye slanders of the newspapers to contradict them.

“... You did my letters undeserved honour in taking the trouble to
copy them. As I am arrived at an age to look back on my past life with
more pleasure, perhaps, than to future expectations, I have found some
satisfaction in the recollection of former days, which letters then
written present to the mind in a more distinct and lively manner than
memory can do. Whatever gave one great joy or great grief, leaves strong
marks on the mind, but the soft, gentle pleasures, like ye annual flowers
in a garden, pass away with ye season, unless thus preserved.” These
reflections denote the way whither this Lady of the Last Century was
going. Hannah More, noted, in 1790, the change that had come over the old
order of things. In April, she chronicles, indeed, “a pleasant party,”
at Mrs. Montagu’s, including Burke, “a sufficiently pleasant party of
himself,” and Mackenzie, “the man of feeling;” but she also adds, “the
old little parties are not to be had in the usual style of comfort.
Everything is great, and vast, and late, and magnificent, and dull.”
Wilberforce, too, was one of the welcome guests, and so intimate, that
Mrs. Montagu called him by a pseudonym “the Red Cross Knight.” But the
splendid stage, the superb style, the pillars of verd antique, the room
of feathers, these could not compensate for the less showy, but more
real, delights of the old Bluestocking days in Hill Street. But the lady
of the house had still the same inexhaustible spirits, the same taste for
business and magnificence. Three or four great dinners in a week with
Luxembourgs, Montmorencies, and Czartoriskis. “I had rather,” said the
sage Hannah, “for my part, live in our cottage at Cheddar. She is made
for the great world, and is an ornament to it. It is an element she was
born to breathe in.”

Hannah More’s duties were consistent with cottage life; but Mrs. Montagu
held her fortune in trust, and spent it in gratifications, the cost of
which made glad hearts in a hundred homes. At some of her assemblies,
eccentric as well as intellectual people seem now to have been admitted.
Miss Burney notes, in 1792, having encountered at Montagu House “a
commonish, non-nothingish sort of a half good-humoured and sensibilish
woman!” Soon, however, increasing infirmities weakened Mrs. Montagu’s
powers and affected her spirits. But she who was, as Fanny Burney said,
so “magnificently useful” in her generation, kept up her magnificence
and tried to maintain her usefulness to the last. Her supreme effort to
get together the little comfortable, intellectual parties that delighted
Hannah More, was made in 1798. “I have been at one bit of Blue there,”
wrote Doctor Burney to his daughter. “Mrs. Montagu is so broken down as
not to go out. She is almost wholly blind and very feeble.”

In the succeeding year, Mrs. Carter wrote to Hannah More: “... She has
totally changed her mode of life, from a conviction that she exerted
herself too much last year, and that it brought on the long illness, by
which she suffered so much.... She never goes out except to take the air
of a morning; has no company to dinner (I do not call myself company);
lets in nobody in the evening, which she passes in hearing her servant
read, as her eyes will not suffer her to read herself.” Mrs. Carter hopes
that “a taste for the comfort of living quietly will, for the future,
prevent her from mixing so much with the tumults of the world as to
injure her health.”

Her interest in the education of girls was not affected by her decaying
powers. After Mrs. Hannah More had published her celebrated work on
that subject, and it had been read to Mrs. Montagu, the latter wrote to
the author a letter, in which is the following passage: “_Sandleford,
May, 1799._ You have most judiciously pointed out the errors of modern
education, which seems calculated entirely to qualify young women for
whatever their godfathers and godmothers had renounced for them at
their baptism; and what is most shocking is, that a virtuous matron and
tender mother values herself much on not having omitted anything that
can fit her daughter for the world, the flesh, and the devil.” This was
the final judgment of a lady who, in her own girlhood, had expressed
herself in much the same terms, and who, later in life, had laid it
down as a law for her own niece, that to dance a minuet well was of
more importance than to have a knowledge of a foreign language. She
had escaped perils herself, because she was always occupied. If, when
a nymph, she so sported in the Mary-le-bone waters, that lords wrote
sonnets on her, she forgot the homage in her higher enjoyments of native
and foreign literature. If she went joyously any number of miles to a
ball, danced with the very love of dancing, and shrieked with delight
at being upset on her way home, the next day she had purer enjoyment in
reading, analysing, and judging a translation of a Greek play or a volume
of ancient or modern history. She did not despise being attractive, but
she dressed her mind even more carefully than she did her person. As she
grew in years she was as ready for increasing duties as for increasing
delights, and looked as fascinating among her Berkshire farm-servants
and her Northumbrian pitmen as she did, blazing with diamonds and lively
spirits, in the throne-room at St. James’s. She never had a fool for an
acquaintance, nor ever an idle hour in the sense of idleness. Mistress of
an ample fortune, she lived up to her income, and never beyond it. All
around her profited by such stewardship. She is said to have done all
things with a grace, and most things with ease. It was not more difficult
for her to vanquish Voltaire than to make a grouse-pie for Garrick.
When she passed to her rest, in 1800, she was prepared to go that way
thankfully. Some few of her acquaintances dwelt, as such candid persons
will, upon her little faults. But there was one good woman who remembered
only her great merits. “With Mrs. Montagu’s faults,” wrote Hannah More to
Doctor Whalley, in 1808, “I have nothing to do. Her fine qualities were
many. From my first entrance into a London life till her death, I ever
found her an affectionate, zealous, and constant friend, as well as a
most instructive and pleasant companion. Her youth and beauty were gone
long before I knew her.”

But even in the days of her maidenhood, when she was glad in her youth
and in her beauty, and conscious of her intellect, yet unconscious of the
pleasures, duties, and trials before her, yet when she feared she might
live idle and die vain, she said, “If ever I have an inscription over
me, it shall be without a name, and only,—Here lies one whom, having
done no harm, no one should censure; and, having done no good, no one can
commend; who, for past folly, only asks oblivion.” She lived, however, to
do much good, to make great amends for small and venial follies, and by
the magnificent usefulness, which Little Burney has recorded, to merit
such pains as it may cost a poor chronicler to rescue her name and deeds
from the oblivion which she asked in the pleasant days of her bright
youth and her subduing beauty.


THE END.





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