LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU HAS A WORD
TO SAY ABOUT SMILINDA
From Worcester Nicholas Wogan made his way to Bristol, and, taking
passage there on a brigantine bound for Havre-de-Grace with a cargo of
linen, got safely over into France. He travelled forthwith to Paris
that he might put himself at the disposition of General Dillon, and,
being commanded to supper some few days after his arrival by the Duke
of Mar, saw a familiar swarthy face nodding cheerily at him across the
table. The lady was embrowned with the Eastern sun, and, having lost
her eye-lashes by that disease which she fought so manfully to
conquer, her eyes were fierce and martial. It was indeed the face of
the redoubtable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, sister to the Duchess of
Mar, who chanced to be passing through Paris on her travels from
Constantinople. Wogan remembered that Mr. Kelly's rustic friend at
Brampton Bryan had spoken of Lady Mary with considerable spleen. And
since he began to harbour doubts of her rusticity, he determined to
seek some certain information from Lady Mary.
Lady Mary was for a wonder in a most amiable mood, and had more than
one question to put concerning 'Kelly as the Bishop that was to be
when your King came to his own.'
'Why, madam, he has a new friend,' said Wogan.
Lady Mary maybe caught a suspicion of uneasiness in Wogan's tone. She
cocked her head whimsically.
'A woman?'
'Yes.'
'Who?'
'My Lady Oxford.'
Lady Mary made a round O of her lips, drew in a breath, and blew it
out again.
'There go the lawn-sleeves.'
Wogan took a seat by her side.
'Why?'
Lady Mary shrugged her shoulders.
'In what esteem is she held?' continued Wogan, 'of what character is
she?'
'I could never hear,' returned Lady Mary carelessly. 'For her friends
always stopped abruptly when they chanced upon her character, and the
rest was merely pursed lips and screwed-up eyes, which it would be the
unfairest thing in the world to translate in her disfavour. Her
character, Mr. Wogan, is a tender and delicate plant. It will not grow
under glass, but in a dark room, where I believe it flourishes most
invisibly.'
Lady Mary seemed ill-disposed to pursue the topic, and began to talk
of her journey and the great things she had seen at Constantinople.
Wogan waited until she came to a pause, and then stepped in with
another question.
'Is Lady Oxford political?'
'Lady Oxford! Lady Oxford!' she repeated almost pettishly. 'Upon my
word, the woman has infected you. You can speak of nothing else.
Political?' and she laughed maliciously. 'That she is, and on both
sides. She changes her party more often than an ambitious statesman.
For politics to my Lady Oxford are just pawns in the great game of
Love.'
'Oh, Love,' exclaimed Wogan, with a recollection of Mr. Scrope. 'Is
Love her quarry?'
'She will play cat to any man's mouse,' returned Lady Mary
indifferently.
'And there are many mice?'
Lady Mary shrugged her shoulders and made no reply. However, Wogan's
appetite for information was only whetted, and to provoke Lady Mary to
speak more freely he made an inventory of Lady Oxford's charms. He
dwelt on her attractions. Lady Mary played with her fan, pulled
savagely at the feathers, opened it, shut it up, while Wogan
discoursed serenely on item--a dark eye, big, with a glint of light in
it like sunshine through a thundercloud. Lady Mary laughed scornfully.
Wogan went on to item--a profusion of blackish-brown hair, very silky,
with a gloss, and here and there a gold thread in the brown; item--a
Barbary shape; item--an admirable instep and a most engaging ankle.
'It would look very pretty in the stocks,' Lady Mary snapped out.
Wogan shook his head with a knowing air.
''Twould slip out.'
'Not if I had the locking of it in,' she exclaimed with a vicious
stamp of the foot, and rose, as though to cross the room.
'I have omitted the lady's most adorable merit,' said Wogan
thoughtfully. Lady Mary was altogether human, and did not cross the
room.
'She has the greatest affection for your ladyship. She spoke of your
ladyship indeed in quite unmeasured terms, and while praising your
ladyship's wit would not have it that one single spark was due to the
cleverness of your ladyship's friends. Upon that point she was most
strenuous.'
Lady Mary sat down again. The stroke had evidently told.
'I am most grateful to her,' she said, 'and when did Lady Oxford show
such a sweet condescension towards me?'
'But a few weeks ago at Brampton Bryan, where she was nursing her
husband with an assiduous devotion.'
'I have known her show the like devotion before, when her losses at
cards have driven her from London.'
'So she gambles?' inquired Wogan. 'Altogether, then, a dangerous
friend for George.'
Lady Mary nodded.
'Particularly for George,' said she with a smile. 'For observe, she is
compact of wiles, and so is most dangerous to an honest man. She is at
once insatiable in her desires, and implacable if they are not
fulfilled. She is always in love, and knows nothing of what the word
means. She is tender at times, but only through caprice; she is never
faithful except for profit or lack of occasion to be anything else.
Coquetry is the abiding principle of her nature, and her virtue merely
a habit of hiding her coquetry. Her mind is larded with affectations
as is her face with paint, and once or twice she has been known to
weep--when tears were likely to deceive a man. There, Mr. Wogan, you
have her likeness, and I trust you are satisfied.'
It was not a character very much to Wogan's liking (Lady Mary, he
learned later, was quoting from a manuscript 'portrait' of her own
designing), though he drew a spice of comfort from the thought that
Lady Mary might have coloured the effigy with her unmistakable enmity.
But events proved that she had not over-coloured it, and even at that
time Lady Oxford had no better reputation than Lady Mary Wortley
attributed to her. The ballad-makers called her gallant, and they did
her no wrong--the ballad-makers of the _ruelles_, be it understood,
not they of the streets, but such poets as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
herself and his Grace Sophia of Wharton.[1] The street-singers knew
not Lady Oxford, who, indeed, was on the top of the fashion, and could
hold her own in the war of written verses. It was in truth to her
ability to give as good as she took in the matter of ballads that she
owed Lady Mary's hostility, who had no taste for the counter-stroke.
There were many such daring Penthesileas of the pen who never gave
each other quarter; but neither Wogan nor the Parson were at this time
in their secrets, although subsequently a ballad, not from Lady Mary's
pen, was to have an astonishing effect upon their fortunes.
---------------------
Footnote 1: Sophia, a nickname of the _Duke_ of Wharton.
---------------------
'Your ladyship can help me to make the best of it, at all events,'
said Wogan. 'Since you have told me so much, will you tell me this one
thing more? Have you ever heard of Mr. Scrope?'
'Scrope? Scrope?' said she casting about in her recollections. Wogan
told her the story of Mr. Scrope's appearance at Brampton Bryan, and
the explanation which Lady Oxford had given to account for it. Lady
Mary laughed heartily.
'Secretary to Mr. Walpole?' she said. 'And how, then, did he come to
hear that mad sermon of Mr. Kelly's at Dublin?'
'Sure I have been puzzled to account for that myself,' says Wogan.
'But who is he? Where does he come from? What brought him to Brampton
Bryan? What took him away in such a mighty hurry? For upon my word I
find it difficult to believe the man's a coward.'
'And you are in the right,' replied her ladyship. 'I know something of
Mr. Scrope, and I will wager it was no cowardice made him run. I doubt
you have not seen the last of Mr. Scrope. It is a passionate,
determined sort of creature. He came to London a year or so agone. It
was understood that he was a country gentleman with a comfortable
estate in Leicestershire. He had laid his estate at Lady Oxford's
feet, before she was as yet her ladyship. Lady Oxford would have it,
and then would have none of it, and married the Earl. Well, he had
been her valet for a season, and, I have no doubt, thought the service
worth any price. She gave him her fan to hold, her gloves to caress,
and what more can a man want? He spent much of his money, and some
whisper that he turned informer afterwards.'
'Oh, did he?' asked Wogan, who was now yet more concerned that he had
let the informer slip through his fingers.
'Yes. An informer for conscience' sake--a gentleman spy. His father
died for Monmouth's affair. He has ever hated the Pretender and his
cause. He is a Protestant and a fanatic.'
Then she looked at Wogan and began to laugh.
'I would have given much to have seen you bouncing down the road after
Mr. Scrope's chaise,' and she added seriously, 'But I doubt you have
not heard the last of Mr. Scrope.'
That also was Wogan's thought. For Lady Mary's story, though vague
enough, was sufficiently clear to deepen his disquietude. Well, Mr.
Wogan would get no comfort by the mere addling his brains with
thinking of the matter, and he thrust it forth of his mind and went
upon his way, that led him clean out of the path of this story for a
while. He was despatched to Cadiz to take charge of a ship, and, in
company with Captain Galloway of the _Resolution_, who was afterwards
seized at Genoa, and Morgan, of the _Lady Mary_, he spent much
fruitless time in cruising on and off the coasts of France, Spain, and
Sweden. It was given out that they carried snuff, or were engaged in
the Madagascar trade. But they took no cargoes aboard but barrels of
powder and stands of arms, and waited on the Rising, which never came.
There were weeks idled away at Morlaix, at Roscoff in Brittany, at
Lisbon in Portugal, at Alicant Bay in Spain, until Wogan's heart grew
sick with impatience. At rare times, when the venture wore a face of
promise, the little fleet would run the hazard of the Channel and
creep along the English coast, from Dartmouth, across the West Bay to
Portland, from Portland on to the Isle of Wight. Mr. Wogan would pace
the deck of his little ketch, _Fortune_, of a night, and as he looked
at the quiet fields lying dark beneath the sky, would wonder how the
world wagged for his friend the Parson, and whether my Lady Oxford was
shaping it or no, until a longing would seize on him to drop a boat
into the water and himself into the boat, and row ashore and see. But
it was not for more than a full twelve months that his longing was
fulfilled, and during those twelve months the harm was done.