LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
Her Life and Letters (1689-1762)
By
LEWIS MELVILLE
_WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY AUBREY HAMMOND, AND SIXTEEN OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS_
To
EDITH AND JOHN CABOURN
PREFACE
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has her niche in the history of medicine as
having introduced inoculation from the Near East into England; but her
principal fame is as a letter-writer.
Of her gifts as a correspondent she was proud, and with reason. It was
in all sincerity that in June, 1726, she wrote to her sister, Lady Mar:
"The last pleasures that fell in my way was Madame Sévigné's letters:
very pretty they are, but I assert, without the least vanity, that mine
will be full as entertaining forty years hence. I advise you, therefore,
to put none of them to the use of waste paper." And again, later in the
year, she said half-humorously to the same correspondent: "I writ to you
some time ago a long letter, which I perceive never came to your hands:
very provoking; it was certainly a _chef d'oeuvre_ of a letter, and
worthy any of the Sévigné's or Grignan's, crammed with news." That Lady
Mary's belief in herself was well founded no one has disputed. Even
Horace Walpole, who detested her and made attacks on her whenever
possible, said that "in most of her letters the wit and style are
superior to any letters I have ever read but Madame de Sévigné's." A
very pleasant tribute from one who had a goodly conceit of himself as a
letter-writer.
Walpole, as a correspondent, was perhaps more sarcastic and more witty;
Cowper undoubtedly more tender and more gentle; but Lady Mary had
qualities all her own. She had powers of observation and the gift of
description, which qualities are especially to be remarked in the
letters she wrote when abroad with her husband on his Mission to the
Porte. She had an ironic wit which gave point to the many society
scandals she narrated, a happy knack of gossip, and a style so easy as
to make reading a pleasure.
Some of the incidents which Lady Mary retails with so much humour may be
accepted as not outraging the conventions of the early eighteenth
century when it was customary to call a spade a spade; when gallantry
was gallantry indeed, and the pursuit of it openly conducted. What is
not mentioned by those who have written about her is that she was
possessed of a particularly unsavoury strain of impropriety which
outraged even the canons of her age. Some twenty years after her death,
it was mentioned in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ that Dr. Young, the
author of _Night Thoughts_, had a little before his death destroyed a
great number of her letters, assigning as a reason of his doing so that
they were too indecent for public inspection. Only the other day I had
confirmation of this from a distinguished man of letters who wrote to
me: "I have somewhere hidden away a copy of a letter by Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, which was sent to me by a well-known collector about
thirty-five years ago, because he couldn't destroy it and wouldn't for
worlds be found dead with it in his possession--so terrific is it in
character. I'll tell you about it some day when we meet: I can't write
it. In any case you couldn't use it or even refer to it.... I suppose
that my friend quite felt that the document, however objectionable,
should not, on literary grounds, be destroyed. What my executors will
think of me for having it in my possession, the Devil only knows."
Whether this strain permeated the diary which Lady Mary left behind her
when she eloped in 1712, and which was destroyed by one of her sisters,
no one can say; but it is a curious fact that the diary she kept in
later years was destroyed by her devoted daughter, Lady Bute. "Though
Lady Bute always spoke of Lady Mary with great respect," wrote Lady
Louisa Stuart, "yet it might be perceived that she knew it had been too
much her custom to note down and enlarge upon all the scandalous rumours
of the day, without weighing their truth or even their probability; to
record as certain facts stories that perhaps sprang up like mushrooms
from the dirt, and had as brief an existence, but tended to defame
persons of the most spotless character. In this age, she said everything
got into print sooner or later; the name of Lady Mary Wortley would be
sure to attract curiosity; and were such details ever made public, they
would neither edify the world, nor do honour to her memory."
Lady Bute heard that her mother's letters were in existence, and,
fearful of what they might contain, purchased them. "It is known that
when on her way to die, as it proved, in her own country, Lady Mary gave
a copy of the letters to Mr. Snowden, minister of the English church at
Rotterdam, attesting the gift by her signature," Lady Louisa Stuart has
written. "This showed it was her wish that they should eventually be
published; but Lady Bute, hearing only that a number of her mother's
letters were in a stranger's hands, and having no certainty what they
might be, to whom addressed, or how little of a private matter, could
not but earnestly desire to obtain them, and readily paid the price
demanded--five hundred pounds. In a few months she saw them appear in
print. Such was the fact, and how it came about nobody at this time of
day need either care or inquire."
With regard to other correspondence of Lady Mary, Sir Robert Walpole
returned to her the letters she had written to his second wife, Molly
Skerritt, after the death of that lady; and when Lord Hervey died, his
eldest son sealed up and sent her her letters, with an assurance that he
had read none of them. To Lord Hervey's heir, Lady Louisa Stuart has
mentioned, Lady Mary wrote a letter of thanks for his honourable
conduct, adding that she could almost regret he had not glanced his eye
over a correspondence which would have shown him what so young a man
might perhaps be inclined to doubt--the possibility of a long and steady
friendship subsisting between two persons of different sexes without the
least mixture of love. Much pleased with this letter, he preserved it;
and, when Lady Mary came to England, showed it to Lady Bute desiring
she would ask leave for him to visit her mother.
It is to be presumed that Lady Mary, or her daughter, Lady Bute,
destroyed these collections. For her part, Lady Mary returned letters
that she had received from Lord Hervey, but only those that belonged to
the last fourteen years of an acquaintance that had endured twice so
long. These are for the greater number platonic in character, although
there are a few phrases of a freer kind. Croker, who edited Lord
Hervey's _Memoirs_, mentions that Hervey, answering one of her letters
in 1737, in which she had complained that she was too old to inspire
passion, after paying a compliment to her charms more gallant than
decorous, said: "I should think anybody a great fool that said he liked
spring better than summer merely because it is further from autumn, or
that they loved green fruit better than ripe only because it was further
from being rotten. I ever did, and believe ever shall, like women best--
"Just in the noon of life--those golden days,
When the mind ripens as the form decays."
Lady Mary was then in her forty-ninth year, being six years Hervey's
senior.
Lady Louisa Stuart, writing in 1837--that is, seventy-five years after
the death of her grandmother, Lady Mary--wrote indignantly of the
attacks that had been made upon her ancestress. "The multitude of
stories circulated about her--as about all people who were objects of
note in their day--increase, instead of lessening, the difficulty," she
said. "Some of these may be confidently pronounced inventions, simple
and purely false; some, if true, concerned a different person; some were
grounded upon egregious blunders; and not a few upon jests, mistaken by
the dull and literal for earnest. Others, again, where a little truth
and a great deal of falsehood were probably intermingled, nobody now
living can pretend to confirm, or contradict, or unravel. Nothing is so
readily believed, yet nothing is usually so unworthy of credit, as tales
learned from report, or caught up in casual conversation. A circumstance
carelessly told, carelessly listened to, half comprehended, and
imperfectly remembered, has a poor chance of being repeated accurately
by the first hearer; but when, after passing through the moulding of
countless hands, it comes, with time, place, and person, gloriously
confounded, into those of a bookmaker ignorant of all its bearings, it
will be lucky indeed if any trace of the original groundwork remains
distinguishable."
Lady Mary's most redoubtable assailants were Pope and Horace Walpole,
and both were biassed. The story of Pope's quarrel with her is told in
the following pages. Walpole, it has been suggested, disliked her much
because she had championed his father's mistress, Molly Skerritt,
against the mother to whom he was devoted. Pope, of course, knew her
well; but Walpole, who was twenty-eight years her junior, only met her
in her late middle age. Walpole's prejudice was so great what when Lady
Mary said, "People wish their enemies dead--but I do not. I say, give
them the gout, give them the stone," he reported it solemnly.
Of course, it is not to be assumed that Lady Mary had not her full share
of malice--she was undoubtedly well equipped with that useful
quality--and she did not turn the other cheek when she was assailed. She
could even stand up to the vitriolic Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and
stand up so effectively that they tacitly agreed to an armed neutrality
that verged perilously upon friendship. The young Duke of Wharton
sometimes beat her in open fight, but she harboured no very angry
feelings towards him. As regards Pope, if it was not tit-for-tat with
him, at least she gave him hard knocks. Pope, great poet as he was,
never played fair in war.
"Lady Mary, quite contrary," she might have been dubbed, for she was
frequently in trouble. The Rémond scandal, that will presently be
unfolded, was a thing apart; but her witty tongue made her many enemies
and cost her many friends. Had the contents of her letters about London
society become known at the time, nearly every man's and all women's
hands would have been against her. She had, in fact, little that was
kind to say about people; when she had, she usually refrained from
mentioning it.
In this work Lady Mary's letters, either whole or in part, are given
only in so far as they have biographical or historical value. At the
same time I have, wherever possible, allowed Lady Mary to tell her
story, or to give her impressions, in her own words. The quotations have
been taken, by kind permission of Messrs. J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., from
the edition of the letters in their "Everyman Library" (edited by Mr.
Ernest Rhys), with an introduction by Mr. R. Brimley Johnson.
The first edition of the letters appeared in three volumes in 1763,
believed to have been edited by John Cleland. A fourth volume, issued in
1763, is regarded by Sir Leslie Stephen as of doubtful authenticity.
James Dallaway, in 1803, brought out an enlarged collection and added to
it the poems, and a second edition, with some new letters, appeared
fourteen years later. Lady Mary's great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe,
edited the correspondence in 1837, and this, revised by Mr. Moy Thomas,
was reprinted in 1861 and again in 1887.
There have been published selections from the correspondence by Mr. A.R.
Ropes (1892) and by Mr. Hannaford Bennett (1923).
The principal authorities for the life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu are
the Memoirs of James Dallaway prefixed to an edition of the _Works_
(1803) and the _Introductory Anecdotes_ in a new edition (1837) by Lady
Louisa Stuart, the daughter of Lady Bute and the granddaughter of Lady
Mary. There is another account of Lady Mary by the late Moy Thomas in
revised editions of the letters and writings (1861 and 1887). Sir Leslie
Stephen was responsible for the memoir in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_. In 1907 appeared _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Times_,
by that sound authority on the eighteenth century, "George Paston," who
was so fortunate as to discover many scores of letters hitherto
unpublished.
Other sources of information are to be found in Pope's Correspondence,
Spence's _Anecdotes_, Dilke's _Papers of a Critic,_ Cobbetts _Memorials
of Twickenham_, the Stuart MSS. at Windsor Castle, the MSS. of the Duke
of Beaufort, and the Lindsay MSS.
My thanks--though not, perhaps, the thanks of my readers--are especially
due to that ripe scholar Mr. Hannaford Bennett, who suggested this work
to me. I am indebted to Mr. M.H. Spielmann and other friends and
correspondents for information and suggestions. Finally, I must
acknowledge the valuable assistance of Mrs. E. Constance Monfrino in the
preparation of this biography.
LEWIS MELVILLE.
_London,
March, 1925_.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD (1689-1703)
Birth of Mary Pierrepont, after Lady Mary Wortley Montagu--Account of
the Pierrepont family--Lady Mary's immediate ancestors--Her father,
Evelyn Pierrepont, succeeds to the Earldom of Kingston in 1790--The
extinct marquisate of Dorchester revived in his favour--His
marriage--Issue of the marriage--Death of his wife--Lady Mary stays with
her grandmother, Mrs. Elizabeth Pierrepont--Her early taste for
reading--She learns Latin, and, presently, Italian--Encouraged in her
literary ambitions by her uncle, William Feilding, and Bishop
Burnet--Submits to the Bishop a translation of "Encheiridion" of
Epictetus--An attractive child--A "toast" at the Kit-Cat Club--Acts as
hostess to her father
CHAPTER II
GIRLHOOD (1703-1710)
Lady Mary makes the acquaintance of Edward Wortley Montagu--Montagu
attracted by her looks and her literary gifts. Assists her in her
studies--Montagu a friend of the leading men of letters of the
day--Addison, Steele, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and others--The second volume
of the _Tatler_ dedicated to him by Steele--Montagu a staunch Whig--His
paternal interest for Lady Mary does not endure--He becomes a suitor for
her hand--Lady Mary's devotion and respect for him--Her flirtations--She
and Montagu correspond through the medium of his sister, Anne--Lady
Mary's mordant humour--Her delight in retailing society scandal--The
death of Anne Wortley--Lady Mary and Montagu henceforth communicate
direct--Her first letter to him
CHAPTER III
COURTSHIP, ELOPEMENT, AND MARRIAGE (1710-1712)
A lengthy courtship--Montagu a laggard lover--Lady Mary and Montagu
exchange views on married life--Montagu proposes for her to Lord
Dorchester--Dorchester refuses, since Montagu will not make
settlements--Montagu's views on settlements expressed (by Steele) in the
_Tatler_--Although not engaged, the young people continue to
correspond--Lord Dorchester produces another suitor of his daughter--She
consents to an engagement--The preparations for the wedding--She
confides the whole story to Montagu--She breaks off the engagement--She
and Montagu decide to elope--She runs up to London--Marriage--Lady
Mary's diary destroyed by her sister, Lady Frances Pierrepont
CHAPTER IV
EARLY MARRIED LIFE (1712-1714)
An uneventful existence--Montagu's Parliamentary duties take him to
London--Lady Mary stays mostly in the country--Correspondence--Montagu a
careless husband, but very careful of his money--Later he becomes a
miser--Lady Mary does not disguise the tedium of her existence--
Concerning a possible reconciliation with her father--Lord
Pierrepont of Hanslope--Lord Halifax--Birth of a son, christened after
his father, Edward Wortley Montagu--The mother's anxiety about his
health--Family events--Lady Evelyn Pierrepont marries Baron (afterwards
Earl) Gower--Lady Frances Pierrepont marries the Earl of Mar--Lord
Dorchester marries again--Has issue, two daughters--The death of Lady
Mary's brother, William. His son, Evelyn, in due course succeeds to the
Dukedom of Kingston--Elizabeth Chudleigh--The political situation in
1714--The death of Queen Anne--The accession of George I--The unrest in
the country--Lady Mary's alarm for her son
CHAPTER V
THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE I (1714)
Lady Mary shows an increasing interest in politics--She tries to incite
her husband to be ambitious--Montagu not returned to the new
Parliament--His lack of energy--Correspondence--The Council of
Regency--The King commands Lord Townshend to form a Government--The
Cabinet--Lord Halifax, First Lord of the Treasury--Montagu appointed a
Lord Commissioner of the Treasury--Correspondence--The unsatisfactory
relations between Lady Mary and Montagu
CHAPTER VI
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU'S ACCOUNT OF THE COURT OF GEORGE I
CHAPTER VII
AT HERRENHAUSEN AND ST. JAMES (1714-1716)
The Elector George Lewis not delighted at his accession to the British
throne--A greater man in Hanover than in London--Lady Mary modifies her
first impression of the King--She is in high favour at Court--An amusing
incident at St. James's--The early unpopularity of George I in England
generally, and especially in the capital--The Hanoverians in the Royal
Household--The Duchess of Kendal--The Countess of Darlington--Lady
Mary's description of the Hanoverian ladies--The Duchess of Kendal's
passion for money--Her influence with the King in political matters--
Count de Broglie--The scandal about Lady Darlington refuted--Lady Mary
and the Prince of Wales--The King and the Prince of Wales--The poets
and wits of the day--Gray's tribute to Lady Mary--Pope's verses on
her--"Court Poems"
CHAPTER VIII
THE EMBASSY TO THE PORTE (1716-1718)--I
Montagu loses his place at the Treasury--His antagonism against
Walpole--Lady Mary, "Dolly" Walpole, and Molly Skerritt--The Earl and
Countess of Mar leave England--Montagu appointed Ambassador to the
Porte--Leaves England for Constantinople, accompanied by his wife--
Letters during the Embassy to Constantinople--Rotterdam--Vienna--Lady
Mary at Court--Her gown--Her interest in clothes--Viennese society--
Gallantry--Lady Mary's experience--Court Tarrocco--Precedence at
Vienna--A nunnery--The Montagus visit the German Courts--A dangerous
drive--Prince Frederick (afterwards Prince of Wales)--Herrenhausen
CHAPTER IX
THE EMBASSY TO THE PORTS (1716-1718)--II
Adrianople--Turkish baths--Lady Mary wears Turkish dress--Her
description of the costume--Her views on Turkish women--She becomes
acquainted with the practice of inoculation--Her son engrafted--Her
belief in the operation--She later introduces it into England--Dr.
Richard Mead--Richard Steele supports her campaign--Constantinople--Lady
Mary homesick--Exposes the British ignorance of Turkish life--Montagu
recalled--Addison's private letter to him--Lady Mary gives birth to a
daughter--The return journey--The Montagus at Paris--Lady Mary sees her
sister, Lady Mar
CHAPTER X
A SCANDAL
Montagu re-enters the House of Commons--His miserliness--Pope refers to
it--Comments on Society--Lady Mary and a first-class scandal--Rémond--
His admiration for her--Her imprudent letters to him--The South Sea
Bubble--Lady Mary speculates for Remond--She loses money for him--He
demands to be re-imbursed--He threatens to publish her letters--She
states the case in letters to Lady Mar--Lady Mary meets Pope--His letters
to her when she was abroad--He affects to be in love with her--Her
matter-of-fact replies--Her parody of his verses, "On John Hughes and
Sarah Drew"
CHAPTER XI
AT TWICKENHAM
The Montagus take a house at Twickenham--Lady Mary's liking for country
life--Neighbours and visitors--Pope--Bononcini, Anastasia Robinson,
Senesino--Lord Peterborough--Sir Geoffrey Kneller--Henrietta
Howard--Lord Bathurst--The Duke of Wharton--His early history--He comes
to Twickenham--His relations with Lady Mary--Horace Walpole's reference
to them--Pope's bitter onsaught on the Duke--An Epilogue by Lady
Mary--"On the Death of Mrs. Bowes"--The Duke quarrels with Lady Mary
CHAPTER XII
A FAMOUS QUARREL
Pope and Lady Mary--He pays her compliments--His jealousy of her other
admirers--The cause of his quarrel with her--His malicious attacks on
her thereafter--Writer of her as "Sappho"--Lady Mary asks Arbuthnot to
protect her--Molly Skerritt--Lady Stafford--Lady Mar's malicious tongue
and pen--Mrs. Murray--"An Epistle from Arthur Grey"--Lady Mary, Lord
Hervey, and Molly Lepell--Death of the Earl of Kingston--Lady
Gower--Lady Mar--Marriage of Lady Mary's daughter
CHAPTER XIII
ON THE CONTINENT (1739-1744)
Lady Mary leaves England--She does not return for twenty years Montagu
supposed to join her--The domestic relations of the Montagus--A
septennial act for marriage--Lady Mary corresponds with her
husband--Dijon--Turin--Venice--Bologna--Florence--The Monastery of La
Trappe--Horace Walpole at Florence--His comments on Lady Mary and her
friends--Reasons for his dislike of her--Rome--The Young Pretender and
Henry, Cardinal York--Wanderings--Cheapness of life in Italy--Lady
Mary's son, Edward--He is a great trouble to his parents--His absurd
marriage--His extravagance and folly--Account of his early years--He
visits Lady Mary at Valence--Her account of the interviews
CHAPTER XIV
LADY MARY AS A READER
Her fondness for reading--Her difficulty to get enough books while
abroad--Lady Bute keeps her supplied--Lady Mary's catholic taste in
literature--Samuel Richardson--The vogue of _Clarissa Harlowe_--Lady Mary
tells a story of the Richardson type--Henry Fielding--_Joseph
Andrews--Tom Jones--_Her high opinion of Fielding and Steele--Tobias
Smollett--_Peregrins Pickle_--Lady Vare's _Memoirs of a Lady of
Quality_--Sarah Fielding--Minor writers--Lord Orrery's _Remarks on
Swift_--Bolingbroke's works--Addison and Pope--Dr. Johnson
CHAPTER XV
LADY MARY ON EDUCATION AND WOMAN'S RIGHTS
The choice of books for children's reading--The dangers of a narrow
education--Lady Mary advocates the higher education of women--Girls
should be taught languages--Lady Mary's theories of education for
girls--Women writers in Italy--A "rumpus" made by ladies in the House of
Lords--Woman's Rights--Lady Mary's views on religion
CHAPTER XVI
ON THE CONTINENT (1745-1760)
Lady Mary stays at Avignon--She removes to Brescia--And then to
Lovere--She abandons all idea of Montagu joining her abroad--Her house
at Lovere--Her daily round--Her health--Her anxiety about her son--An
amazing incident--A serious illness--A novel in a letter--Her
correspondence attracts the attention of the Italian authorities--Sir
James and Lady Frances Steuart--Politics--She is in the bad books of the
British Resident at Venice--Lord Bute--The philosophy of Lady
Mary--Letters to Lady Bute and Sir James Steuart
CHAPTER XVII
LAST YEARS (1760-1762)
Lady Mary writes the history of her own times--Her health--Death of
Edward Wortley Montagu--His will--Lady Mary ponders the idea of
returning to England--She leaves Italy--She is held up at Rotterdam--She
reaches London--Horace Walpole visits her--Her last illness--Her
fortitude--Her death--She leaves one guinea to her son
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (age 8) at the Kit-Cat Club--_Frontispiece_
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Lady Mary Pierrepont
Evelyn Pierrepont, first Duke of Kingston
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1720
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Frances, Countess of Mar
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Alexander Pope
Joseph Addison
Henrietta Louisa, Countess of Pomfret
Horace Walpole
John, Lord Hervey of Ickworth
Mary, Countess of Bute
Edward Wortley Montagu, Junior
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:
Her Life and Letters
(1689-1762)
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD (1689-1703)
Birth of Mary Pierrepont, after Lady Mary Wortley Montagu--Account of
the Pierrepont family--Lady Mary's immediate ancestors--Her father,
Evelyn Pierrepont, succeeds to the Earldom of Kingston in 1690--The
extinct marquisate of Dorchester revived in his favour--His
marriage--Issue of the marriage--Death of his wife--Lady Mary stays with
her grandmother, Mrs. Elizabeth Pierrepont--Her early taste for
reading--She learns Latin, and, presently, Italian--Encouraged in her
literary ambitions by her uncle, William Feilding, and Bishop
Bumet--Submits to the Bishop a translation of "Encheiridion" of
Epictetus--An attractve child--A "toast" at the Kit-Cat Club--Acts as
hostess to her father.
Mary Pierrepont, afterwards Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was born in May,
1689, and was baptised on the twenty-sixth day of that month at St.
Paul's, Covent Garden. In the register is the entry: "Mary, daughter of
Evelyn Pierrepoint, Esquire, and Lady Mary, his wife."
The event, it may be remarked, was not one of any considerable social
interest, for the Hon. Evelyn Pierrepont was merely a younger son and
remote from the succession to the Earldom of Kingston.
The Pierreponts of Holme Pierrepont were a Nottinghamshire family of
considerable antiquity, though of no particular distinction. One Robert
Pierrepont, who was born in 1584, the son of Sir Henry by Frances,
sister of William, first Earl of Devonshire, was the first of the family
upon whom a peerage was bestowed. He was created in 1627 Baron
Pierrepont of Holme Pierrepont and Viscount Newark, and in the following
year was elevated to the dignity of Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, Co.
York. A zealous royalist, he was in 1643 appointed Lieutenant-General of
the King's forces in the counties of Lincoln, Rutland, Huntingdon,
Cambridge, and Norfolk, and soon after taking up this command was
accidentally shot near Gainsborough, when being carried off in a pinnace
as a prisoner to Hull by the Parliamentary Army. He married in 1601
Gertrude, eldest daughter and co-heir of Sir William Reyner, of Orton
Longueville, Co. Huntingdon. She survived her husband six years.
The second Earl was Henry Pierrepont, who was born in 1607. From 1628,
when his father was given the earldom, he was known under the style of
Viscount Newark. In that year he was elected Member of Parliament for
Nottingham, and he represented that constituency until 1641, when he was
summoned to the House of Lords in his father's barony as Lord
Pierrepont. He, too, was an ardent supporter of the King, and was a
member of His Majesty's Council of War at Oxford. He was created
Marquess of Dorchester in 1645. After the Restoration he was in high
favour at Whitehall. He was Commissioner of Claims at the Coronation of
Charles II, and in 1662 and again in 1673 he acted as Joint Commissioner
of the office of Earl Marshal. He was twice married, but had no direct
heirs, and on his death in 1680 the marquessate became extinct.
The earldom passed to the family of the younger brother of the last
holder. This was the great grandfather of Lady Mary, William Pierrepont,
who deservedly earned the title of "Wise William." He sided with the
Parliament, and during the Long Parliament, in the proceedings of which
he took an active part, he sat for Great Wenlock. He was one of the
Commissioners selected to treat with Charles in 1642, and after the
failure to open negotiations he was anxious to retire from public
affairs. However, he was persuaded not to resign, and in 1644 was
appointed one of the Committee of both Kingdoms. He became a leader of
the independent party, and did not always see eye to eye with Cromwell.
He quarrelled with his party, disapproving of its attitude towards
Purge's Pride and the trial of the King. After this he took little part
in politics, though the Protector sought, and he gave on occasions, his
advice. In February, 1660, he was elected to the new Council of State at
the head of the list, and in the Convention Parliament represented
Nottingham. In the negotiations with Charles II he was a moderating
influence. Afterwards, he retired into private life. He died in 1678 or
1679. His eldest son, Robert, who married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir
John Evelyn, pre-deceased his father, dying in 1666, and the earldom
passed to his eldest son, Robert, who died unmarried in 1682. The title
then went to his next brother, William, who died without issue eight
years later.
A younger brother of Robert and William, Evelyn Pierrepont, now
succeeded as (fifth) earl. He was the father of Lady Mary. Born in 1665,
he was returned to Parliament for East Retford in 1689, but his stay in
the House of Commons was brief, for in the following year the peerage
descended to him. In December, 1706, the higher dignity that had once
been in his family was revived in his favour, and he was created Earl of
Dorchester, with a special remainder, failing heirs male of his body, to
his uncle Gervase Pierrepont, who had himself been raised to the peerage
as Lord Pierrepont of Ardglass in Ireland and later was given the
dignity of Lord Pierrepont of Hanslope in Buckinghamshire. Lord
Pierrepont died in 1715, and both his titles became extinct.
The Marquess married Mary, daughter of William Feilding, third Earl of
Denbigh, by his first wife, Mary, sister of John, first Baron of
Kingston, in the peerage of Ireland. Lady Mary was, therefore, a
relation of the novelist, Henry Fielding, whose surname was spelt
differently because, he explained, his branch of the family was the only
one that could spell correctly.
Of this marriage, there was issue:
(i.) William, who took the style of Viscount Newark until 1706, and then
was known as Earl of Kingston until his death in 1713, at the age of
twenty-one. He had married before 1711 Rachel, daughter of Thomas
Baynton, of Little Charfield, Wilts, who outlived her husband eight
years. There was a son, Evelyn, who succeeded to the peerage.
(ii.) Lady Mary, the subject of this memoir.
(iii.) Lady Frances, who in 1714 became the second wife of John Erskine,
sixth or eleventh Earl of Mar; and
(iv.) Lady Evelyn, who married John, second Baron, and afterwards first
Earl Gower, and died in June, 1727.
In the winter of 1697, when Lady Mary was eight years old, her mother
died. After this, the little girl was allowed to run rather wild. Lord
Kingston was very much a man about town and a gallant, and was too
greatly occupied with his affairs and his parliamentary duties, which
took him often from home, to concern himself about her education. In
fact, before her mother's death, it would seem that Lady Mary spent
months at her grandmother's, Mrs. Elizabeth Pierrepont, at her house at
West Dean. When she was in her ninth year she returned to Holme
Pierrepont, where, as she later complained, she was left "to the care of
an old governess, who, though perfectly good and pious, wanted
capacity."
Lady Mary early had a taste for books, and enjoyed to the full the
library, where she no doubt read much that was good for her, and a good
deal that was not. She read everything that she could lay her hands on,
the old romances, poetry, and plays. One account has it that she was
taught Greek and Latin by her brother's tutor; but Sir Leslie Stephen
was doubtful about the Greek and inclined to the belief that she taught
herself Latin. Later, certainly, she taught herself Italian, and quoted
Tasso in her letters. In her studies she was encouraged by her uncle,
William Feilding, and also by Bishop Burnet, of whom she said many
years later: "I knew him in my very early youth, and his condescension
in directing a girl in her studies is an obligation I can never forget."
She had literary aspirations, and just after her twenty-first birthday
she submitted to Burnet, with the following letter, a translation of
"Encheiridion" of Epictetus from the Latin version. This will be found
in the collected works.
"July 20, 1710.
"My Lord,
"Your hours are so well employed, I hardly dare offer you this trifle to
look over; but then, so well am I acquainted with the sweetness of
temper which accompanies your learning, I dare ever assure myself of a
pardon. You have already forgiven me greater impertinencies, and
condescended yet further in giving me instructions and bestowing some of
your minutes in teaching me. This surprising humility has all the effect
it ought to have on my heart; I am sensible of the gratitude I owe to so
much goodness, and how much I am ever bound to be your servant. Here is
the work of one week of my solitude--by the many faults in it your
lordship will easily believe I spent no more time upon it; it was hardly
finished when I was obliged to begin my journey, and I had not leisure
to write it over again. You have it here without any corrections, with
all its blots and errors: I endeavoured at no beauty of style, but to
keep as literally as I could to the sense of the author. My only
intention in presenting it, is to ask your lordship whether I have
understood Epictetus? The fourth chapter, particularly, I am afraid I
have mistaken. Piety and greatness of soul set you above all misfortunes
that can happen to yourself, and the calumnies of false tongues; but
that same piety which renders what happens to yourself indifferent to
you, yet softens the natural compassion in your temper to the greatest
degree of tenderness for the interests of the Church, and the liberty
and welfare of your country: the steps that are now made towards the
destruction of both, the apparent danger we are in, the manifest growth
of injustice, oppression, and hypocrisy, cannot do otherwise than give
your lordship those hours of sorrow, which, did not your fortitude of
soul, and reflections from religion and philosophy, shorten, would add
to the national misfortunes, by injuring the health of so great a
supporter of our sinking liberties. I ought to ask pardon for this
digression; it is more proper for me in this place to say something to
excuse an address that looks so very presuming. My sex is usually forbid
studies of this nature, and folly reckoned so much our proper sphere, we
are sooner pardoned any excesses of that, than the least pretensions to
reading or good sense. We are permitted no books but such as tend to the
weakening and effeminating of the mind. Our natural defects are every
way indulged, and it is looked upon as in a degree criminal to improve
our reason, or fancy we have any. We are taught to place all our art in
adorning our outward forms, and permitted, without reproach, to carry
that custom even to extravagancy, while our minds are entirely
neglected, and, by disuse of reflections, filled with nothing but the
trifling objects our eyes are daily entertained with. This custom, so
long established and industriously upheld, makes it even ridiculous to
go out of the common road, and forces one to find as many excuses, as if
it were a thing altogether criminal not to play the fool in concert with
other women of quality, whose birth and leisure only serve to render
them the most useless and most worthless part of the creation. There is
hardly a character in the world more despicable, or more liable to
universal ridicule, than that of a learned woman; those words imply,
according to the received sense, a talking, impertinent, vain, and
conceited creature. I believe nobody will deny that learning may have
this effect, but it must be a very superficial degree of it. Erasmus was
certainly a man of great learning, and good sense, and he seems to have
my opinion of it, when he says _Foemina qui_ [sic] _vere sapit, non
videtur sibi sapere; contra, quae cum nihil sapiat sibi videtur sapere,
ea demum bis stulta est_. The Abbé Bellegarde gives a right reason for
women's talking overmuch: they know nothing, and every outward object
strikes their imagination, and produces a multitude of thoughts, which,
if they knew more, they would know not worth their thinking of. I am not
now arguing for an equality of the two sexes. I do not doubt God and
nature have thrown us into an inferior rank, we are a lower part of the
creation, we owe obedience and submission to the superior sex, and any
woman who suffers her vanity and folly to deny this, rebels against the
law of the Creator, and indisputable order of nature; but there is a
worse effect than this, which follows the careless education given to
women of quality, its being so easy for any man of sense, that finds it
either his interest or his pleasure, to corrupt them. The common method
is, to begin by attacking their religion: they bring them a thousand
fallacious arguments, which their excessive ignorance hinders them from
refuting: and I speak now from my own knowledge and conversation among
them, there are more atheists among the fine ladies than the loosest
sort of rakes; and the same ignorance that generally works out into
excess of superstition, exposes them to the snares of any who have a
fancy to carry them to t'other extreme. I have made my excuses already
too long, and will conclude in the words of Erasmus:--_Vulgus sentit
quod lingua Latina, non convenit foeminis, quia parum facit ad tuendam
illarum pundicitiam, quoniam rarum et insolitum est foeminam scire
Latinam; attamen consuetudo omnium malarum rerum magistra. Decorum est
foeminam in Germania nata_ [sic] _discere Gallice, ut loquatur_ _cum his
qui sciunt Gallice; cur igitur habetur indecorum discere Latine, ut
quotidie confabuletur cum tot autoribus tam facundis, tam eruditis, tam
sapientibus, tam fides consultoribus. Certe mihi quantulumcunque cerebri
est, malim in bonis studiis consumere, quam in precibus sine mente
dictis, in pernoctibus conviviis, in exhauriendis, capacibus pateris,
&c."_
This was not the sort of letter that in the opening years of the
eighteenth century even Bishops received from young ladies of rank, who
usually took their pleasure in other and lighter ways. Lady Mary,
however, loved to exercise her pen. She later composed some imitations of
Ovid, and tried her hand at one or two romances in the French manner.
She thus acquired a facility of expression that stood her in good stead
when she came to write those letters that constitute her principal claim
to fame.
Lady Mary was an attractive child, and her father was very proud of her,
especially when she was in what may be called the kitten stage. The
story is told that, when she was about eight years old, he named her as
a "toast" at the Kit-Cat Club, and as she was not known to the majority
of the members he sent for her, where, on her arrival, she was received
with acclamation by the Whig wits there assembled.
Sometimes Lady Mary in her girlhood stayed at Thoresby, and occasionally
came up to her father's London house, which was in Arlington Street,
which visits, accepting the story told by her granddaughter, Lady Louisa
Stuart, cannot have been an unmixed delight. "Some particulars, in
themselves too insignificant to be worth recording, may yet interest the
curious, by setting before them the manners of our ancestors," Lady
Louisa says. "Lord Dorchester, having no wife to do the honours of his
table at Thoresby, imposed that task upon his eldest daughter, as soon
as she had bodily strength for the office: which in those days required
no small share. For this mistress of a country mansion was not only to
invite--that is urge and tease--her company to eat more than human
throats could conveniently swallow, but to carve every dish, when
chosen, with her own hands. The greater the lady, the more indispensable
the duty. Each joint was carried up in its turn, to be operated upon by
her, and her alone; since the peers and knights on either hand were so
far from being bound to offer their assistance, that the very master of
the house, posted opposite her, might not act as her croupier, his
department was to push the bottle after dinner. As for the crowd of
guests, the most inconsiderable among them--the curate, or subaltern, or
squire's younger brother--if suffered through her neglect to help
himself to a slice of the mutton placed before him, would have chewed
it in bitterness and gone home an affronted man, half inclined to give a
wrong vote at the next election. There were then professed
carving-masters, who taught young ladies the art scientifically; from
one of whom Lady Mary said she took lessons three times a week that she
might be perfect on her father's public days, when, in order to perform
her functions without interruption, she was forced to eat her own dinner
alone an hour or two beforehand."