age. The House of Commons was then a part of society. This separate,
isolated, aristocratic world, of which we have spoken, had an almost
undisputed command of both Houses in the Legislature. The letter of the
constitution did not give it them, and no law appointed that it should
be so. But the aristocratic class were by far the most educated, by
far the most respected, by far the most _eligible_ part of the nation.
Even in the boroughs, where there was universal suffrage, or something
near it, they were the favourites. Accordingly, they gave the tone to
the House of Commons; they required the small community of members who
did not belong to their order to conform as far as they could to their
usages, and to guide themselves by their code of morality and of taste.
In the main the House of Commons obeyed these injunctions, and it was
repaid by being incorporated within the aristocratic world: it became
not only the council of the nation, but the debating-club of fashion.
That which was ‘received’ modified the recipient. The remains of the
aristocratic society, wherever we find them, are penetrated not only
with an aristocratic but with a political spirit. They breathe a sort
of atmosphere of politics. In the London of the present day, the vast
miscellaneous _bourgeois_ London, we all know that this is not so. ‘In
the country,’ said a splenetic observer, ‘people talk politics; at London
dinners you talk nothing; between two pillars of crinoline you eat and
are resigned.’ A hundred and fifty years ago, as far as our rather ample
materials inform us, people in London talked politics just as they now
talk politics in Worcestershire; and being on the spot, and cooped up
with politicians in a small social world, their talk was commonly better.
They knew the people of whom they spoke, even if they did not know the
subjects with which they were concerned.
No element is better fitted to counteract the characteristic evil of an
aristocratic society. The defect of such societies in all times has been
frivolity. All talk has tended to become gossip; it has ceased to deal
with important subjects, and has devoted itself entirely to unimportant
incidents. Whether the Duc de —— has more or less prevailed with the
Marquise de —— is a sort of common form into which any details may be
fitted, and any names inserted. The frivolities of gallantry—never very
important save to some woman who has long been dead—fill the records
of all aristocracies who lived under a despotism, who had no political
authority, no daily political cares. The aristocracy of England in the
last century was, at any rate, exempt from _this_ reproach. There is
in the records of it not only an intellectuality, which would prove
little,—for every clever describer, by the subtleties of his language
and the arrangement of his composition, gives a sort of intellectuality
even to matters which have no pretension to it themselves,—but likewise
a pervading medium of political discussion. The very language in which
they are written is the language of political business. Horace Walpole
was certainly by nature no politician and no orator; yet no discerning
critic can read a page of his voluminous remains without feeling that
the writer has through life lived with politicians and talked with
politicians. A keen observant mind, not naturally political, but capable
of comprehending and viewing any subject which was brought before it, has
chanced to have this particular subject—politics—presented to it for a
lifetime; and all its delineations, all its efforts, all its thoughts,
reflect it, and are coloured by it. In all the records of the eighteenth
century the tonic of business is seen to combat the relaxing effect of
habitual luxury.
This element, too, is favourable to a clever woman. The more you can
put before such a person the greater she will be; the less her world,
the less she is. If you place the most keen-sighted lady in the midst
of the pure futilities and unmitigated flirtations of an aristocracy,
she will sink to the level of those elements, and will scarcely seem to
wish for anything more, or to be competent for anything higher. But if
she is placed in an intellectual atmosphere, in which political or other
important subjects are currently passing, you will probably find that
she can talk better upon them than you can, without your being able to
explain whence she derived either her information or her talent.
The subjects, too, which were discussed in the political society of the
last age were not so inscrutable to women as our present subjects; and
even when there were great difficulties they were more on a level with
men in the discussion of them than they now are. It was no disgrace to
be destitute of preliminary information at a time in which there were
no accumulated stores from which such information could be derived. A
lightening element of female influence is therefore to be found through
much of the politics of the eighteenth century.
Lady Mary entered easily into all this world, both social and political.
She had beauty for the fashionable, satire for the witty, knowledge for
the learned, and intelligence for the politician. She was not too refined
to shrink from what we now consider the coarseness of that time. Many
of her verses themselves are scarcely adapted for our decorous pages.
Perhaps the following give no unfair idea of her ordinary state of mind:
‘TOWN ECLOGUES.
‘ROXANA; OR, THE DRAWING-ROOM.
‘Roxana, from the Court retiring late,
Sigh’d her soft sorrows at St. James’s gate.
Such heavy thoughts lay brooding in her breast,
Not her own chairmen with more weight oppress’d;
They groan the cruel load they’re doom’d to bear;
She in these gentle sounds express’d her care.
“Was it for this that I these roses wear?
For this new-set the jewels for my hair?
Ah! Princess! with what zeal have I pursued!
Almost forgot the duty of a prude.
Thinking I never could attend too soon,
I’ve miss’d my prayers, to get me dress’d by noon.
For thee, ah! what for thee did I resign!
My pleasures, passions, all that e’er was mine.
I sacrific’d both modesty and ease,
Left operas and went to filthy plays;
Double-entendres shock my tender ear;
Yet even this for thee I choose to bear.
In glowing youth, when nature bids be gay,
And every joy of life before me lay,
By honour prompted, and by pride restrain’d,
The pleasures of the young my soul disdain’d:
Sermons I sought, and with a mien severe
Censur’d my neighbours, and said daily prayer.
“Alas! how chang’d—with the same sermon-mien
That once I pray’d, the _What d’ye call’t_ I’ve seen.
Ah! cruel Princess, for thy sake I’ve lost
That reputation which so dear had cost:
I, who avoided every public place,
When bloom and beauty bade me show my face,
Now near thee constant every night abide
With never-failing duty by thy side;
Myself and daughters standing on a row,
To all the foreigners a goodly show!
Oft had your drawing-room been sadly thin,
And merchants’ wives close by the chair been seen,
Had not I amply filled the empty space,
And saved your highness from the dire disgrace.
“Yet Coquetilla’s artifice prevails,
When all my merit and my duty fails;
That Coquetilla, whose deluding airs
Corrupt our virgins, still our youth ensnares;
So sunk her character, so lost her fame,
Scarce visited before your highness came:
Yet for the bed-chamber ’tis her you choose,
When zeal and fame and virtue you refuse.
Ah! worthy choice! not one of all your train
Whom censure blasts not, and dishonours stain!
Let the nice hind now suckle dirty pigs,
And the proud pea-hen hatch the cuckoo’s eggs!
Let Iris leave her paint and own her age,
And grave Suffolka wed a giddy page!
A greater miracle is daily view’d,
A virtuous Princess with a Court so lewd.
“I know thee, Court! with all thy treach’rous wiles,
Thy false caresses and undoing smiles!
Ah! Princess, learn’d in all the courtly arts,
To cheat our hopes, and yet to gain our hearts!
“Large lovely bribes are the great statesman’s aim;
And the neglected patriot follows fame.
The Prince is ogled; some the king pursue;
But your Roxana only follows you.
Despis’d Roxana, cease, and try to find
Some other, since the Princess proves unkind:
Perhaps it is not hard to find at Court,
If not a greater, a more firm support.”’
There was every kind of rumour as to Lady Mary’s own conduct, and we
have no means of saying whether any of these rumours were true. There
is no evidence against her which is worthy of the name. So far as can
be proved, she was simply a gay, witty, bold-spoken, handsome woman,
who made many enemies by unscrupulous speech, and many friends by
unscrupulous flirtation. We may believe, but we cannot prove, that
she found her husband tedious, and was dissatisfied that his slow,
methodical, _borné_ mind made so little progress in the political world,
and understood so little of what really passed there. Unquestionably
she must have much preferred talking to Lord Hervey to talking with Mr.
Montagu. But we must not credit the idle scandals of a hundred years
since, because they may have been true, or because they appear not
inconsistent with the characters of those to whom they relate. There were
legends against every attractive and fashionable woman in that age,
and most of the legends were doubtless exaggerations and inventions. We
cannot know the truth of such matters now, and it would hardly be worth
searching into if we could; but the important fact is certain, Lady Mary
lived in a world in which the worst rumours were greedily told, and often
believed, about her and others; and the moral refinement of a woman must
always be impaired by such a contact.
Lady Mary was so unfortunate as to incur the partial dislike of one of
the great recorders of that age, and the bitter hostility of the other.
She was no favourite with Horace Walpole, and the bitter enemy of Pope.
The first is easily explicable. Horace Walpole never loved his father,
but recompensed himself by hating his father’s enemies. No one connected
with the opposition to Sir Robert is spared by his son, if there be a
fair opportunity for unfavourable insinuation. Mr. Wortley Montagu was
the very man for a grave mistake. He made the very worst that could be
made in that age. He joined the party of constitutional exiles on the
Opposition bench, who had no real objection to the policy of Sir Robert
Walpole; who, when they had a chance, adopted that policy themselves;
who were discontented because they had no power, and he had all the
power. Probably too, being a man eminently respectable, Mr. Montagu was
frightened at Sir Robert’s unscrupulous talk and not very scrupulous
actions. At any rate, he opposed Sir Robert; and thence many a little
observation of Horace Walpole’s against Lady Mary.
Why Pope and Lady Mary quarrelled is a question on which much discussion
has been expended, and on which a judicious German professor might even
now compose an interesting and exhaustive monograph. A curt English
critic will be more apt to ask, ‘Why they should _not_ have quarrelled?’
We know that Pope quarrelled with almost every one; we know that Lady
Mary quarrelled or half quarrelled with most of her acquaintances. Why,
then, should they not have quarrelled with one another?
It is certain that they were very intimate at one time; for Pope wrote
to her some of the most pompous letters of compliment in the language.
And the more intimate they were to begin with, the more sure they were
to be enemies in the end. Human nature will not endure that sort of
proximity. An irritable, vain poet, who always fancies that people are
trying to hurt him, whom no argument could convince that every one is
not perpetually thinking about him, cannot long be friendly with a witty
woman of unscrupulous tongue, who spares no one, who could sacrifice
a good friend for a bad _bon-mot_, who thinks of the person whom she
is addressing, not of those about whom she is speaking. The natural
relation of the two is that of victim and torturer, and no other will
long continue. There appear also to have been some money matters (of
all things in the world) between the two. Lady Mary was intrusted by
Pope with some money to use in speculation during the highly fashionable
panic which derives its name from the South-Sea Bubble,—and as of course
it was lost, Pope was very angry. Another story goes, that Pope made
serious love to Lady Mary, and that she laughed at him; upon which a
very personal, and not always very correct, controversy has arisen as to
the probability or improbability of Pope’s exciting a lady’s feelings.
Lord Byron took part in it with his usual acuteness and incisiveness,
and did not leave the discussion more decent than he found it. Pope
doubtless was deformed, and had not the large red health that uncivilised
women admire; yet a clever lady might have taken a fancy to him, for the
little creature knew what he was saying. There is, however, no evidence
that Lady Mary did so. We only know that there was a sudden coolness or
quarrel between them, and that it was the beginning of a long and bitter
hatred.
In their own times Pope’s sensitive disposition probably gave Lady
Mary a great advantage. Her tongue perhaps gave him more pain than his
pen gave her. But in later times she has fared the worse. What between
Pope’s sarcasms and Horace Walpole’s anecdotes, Lady Mary’s reputation
has suffered very considerably. As we have said, her offences are _non
proven_; there is no evidence to convict her; but she is likely to be
condemned upon the general doctrine that a person who is accused of much
is probably guilty of something.
During many years Lady Mary continued to live a distinguished fashionable
and social life, with a single remarkable break. This interval was her
journey to Constantinople. The powers that then were, thought fit to send
Mr. Wortley as ambassador to Constantinople, and his wife accompanied
him. During that visit she kept a journal, and wrote sundry real letters,
out of which, after her return, she composed a series of unreal letters
as to all she saw and did in Turkey, and on the journey there and back,
which were published, and which are still amusing, if not always select,
reading. The Sultan was not then the ‘dying man’; he was the ‘Grand
Turk.’ He was not simply a potentate to be counted with, but a power to
be feared. The appearance of a Turkish army on the Danube had in that
age much the same effect as the appearance of a Russian army now. It
was an object of terror and dread. A mission at Constantinople was not
then a _bureau_ for interference in Turkey, but a serious office for
transacting business with a great European power. A European ambassador
at Constantinople now presses on the Government there impracticable
reforms; he then asked for useful aid. Lady Mary was evidently impressed
by the power of the country in which she sojourned; and we observe in
her letters evident traces of the notion that the Turk was the dread of
Christendom,—which is singular now, when the Turk is its _protégé_.
Lady Mary had another advantage too. Many sorts of books make steady
progress; a scientific treatise published now is sure to be fuller and
better than one on the same subject written long ago. But with books of
travel in a stationary country the presumption is the contrary. In that
case the old book is probably the better book. The first traveller writes
out a plain, straightforward description of the most striking objects
with which he meets; he believes that his readers know nothing of the
country of which he is writing, for till he visited it he probably knew
nothing himself; and, if he is sensible, he describes simply and clearly
all which most impresses him. He has no motive for not dwelling upon the
principal things, and most likely will do so, as they are probably the
most conspicuous. The second traveller is not so fortunate. He is always
in terror of the traveller who went before. He fears the criticism,—‘this
is all very well, _but_ we knew the whole of it before. No. 1 said
that at page 103.’ In consequence he is timid. He picks and skips. He
fancies that you are acquainted with all which is great and important,
and he dwells, for your good and to your pain, upon that which is small
and unimportant. For ordinary readers no result can be more fatal.
They perhaps never read,—they certainly do not remember anything upon
the subject. The curious _minutiæ_ so elaborately set forth, are quite
useless, for they have not the general framework in which to store them.
Not knowing much of the first traveller’s work, that of the second is a
supplement to a treatise with which they are unacquainted. In consequence
they do not read it. Lady Mary made good use of her position in the front
of the herd of tourists. She told us what she saw in Turkey,—all the best
of what she saw, and all the most remarkable things,—and told it very
well.
Nor was this work the only fruit of her Turkish travels; she brought home
the notion of inoculation. Like most improvers, she was roughly spoken
to. Medical men were angry because the practice was not in their books,
and conservative men were cross at the agony of a new idea. Religious
people considered it wicked to have a disease which Providence did not
think fit to send you; and simple people ‘did not like to make themselves
ill of their own accord.’ She triumphed, however, over all obstacles;
inoculation, being really found to lengthen life and save complexions,
before long became general.
One of the first patients upon whom Lady Mary tried the novelty was her
own son, and many considerate people thought it ‘worthy of observation’
that he turned out a scamp. When he ran away from school, the mark of
inoculation, then rare, was used to describe him, and after he was
recovered, he never did anything which was good. His case seems to have
been the common one in which nature (as we speak) requites herself for
the strongheadedness of several generations by the weakness of one.
His father’s and his mother’s family had been rather able for some
generations; the latter remarkably so. But this boy had always a sort of
practical imbecility. He was not stupid, but he never did anything right.
He exemplified another curious trait of nature’s practice. Mr. Montagu
was obstinate, though sensible; Lady Mary was flighty, though clever.
Nature combined the defects. Young Edward Montagu was both obstinate and
flighty. The only pleasure he can ever have given his parents was the
pleasure of _feeling_ their own wisdom. He showed that they were right
before marriage in not settling the paternal property upon him, for he
ran through every shilling he possessed. He was not sensible enough to
keep his property, and just not fool enough for the law to take it from
him.
After her return from Constantinople, Lady Mary continued to lead the
same half-gay and half-literary life as before; but at last she did
not like it. Various ingenious inquirers into antiquated minutiæ have
endeavoured, without success, to discover reasons of detail which might
explain her dissatisfaction. They have suggested that some irregular
love-affair was unprosperous, and hinted that she and her husband were
not on good terms. The love-affair, however, when looked for, cannot
be found; and though she and her husband would appear to have been but
distantly related, they never had any great quarrel which we know of.
Neither seems to have been fitted to give the other much pleasure, and
each had the fault of which the other was most impatient. Before marriage
Lady Mary had charmed Mr. Montagu, but she had also frightened him;
after marriage she frightened, but did not charm him. He was formal and
composed; she was flighty and _outrée_. ‘What _will_ she do next?’ was
doubtless the poor man’s daily feeling; and ‘Will he ever do anything?’
was probably also hers. Torpid business, which is always going on, but
which never seems to come to anything, is simply aggravating to a clever
woman. Even the least impatient lady can hardly endure a perpetual
process for which there is little visible and nothing theatrical to
show; and Lady Mary was by no means the least impatient. But there was
no abrupt quarrel between the two; and a husband and wife who have lived
together more than twenty years can generally manage to continue to
live together during a second twenty years. These reasons of detail are
scarcely the reasons for Lady Mary’s wishing to break away from the life
to which she had so long been used. Yet there was clearly some reason,
for Lady Mary went abroad, and stayed there during many years.
We believe that the cause was not special and peculiar to the case, but
general, and due to the invariable principles of human nature, at all
times and everywhere. If historical experience proves anything, it proves
that the earth is not adapted for a life of mere intellectual pleasure.
The life of a brute on earth, though bad, is possible. It is not even
difficult to many persons to destroy the higher part of their nature by a
continual excess in sensual pleasure. It is even more easy and possible
to dull all the soul and most of the mind by a vapid accumulation of
torpid comfort. Many of the middle classes spend their whole lives in a
constant series of petty pleasures, and an undeviating pursuit of small
material objects. The gross pursuit of pleasure, and the tiresome pursuit
of petty comfort, are quite suitable to such ‘a being as man in such
a world as the present one.’ What is not possible is, to combine the
pursuit of pleasure and the enjoyment of comfort with the characteristic
pleasures of a strong mind. If you wish for luxury, you must not nourish
the inquisitive instinct. The great problems of human life are in the
air; they are without us in the life we see, within us in the life we
feel. A quick intellect feels them in a moment. It says, ‘Why am I here?
What is pleasure, that I desire it? What is comfort, that I seek it? What
are carpets and tables? What is the lust of the eye? What is the pride
of life, that they should satisfy _me_? I was not made for such things.
I hate them, because I have liked them; I loathe them, because it seems
that there is nothing else for me.’ An impatient woman’s intellect comes
to this point in a moment; it says, ‘Society is good, but I have seen
society. What is the use of talking, or hearing _bon-mots_? I have done
both till I am tired of doing either. I have laughed till I have no wish
to laugh again, and made others laugh till I have hated them for being
such fools. As for instruction, I have seen the men of genius of my
time; and they tell me nothing,—nothing of what I want to know. They are
choked with intellectual frivolities. They cannot say “whence I came, and
whither I go.” What do they know of themselves? It is not from literary
people that we can learn anything; more likely, they will copy, or try to
copy, the manners of lords, and make ugly love, in bad imitation of those
who despise them.’ Lady Mary felt this, as we believe. She had seen all
the world of England, and it did not _satisfy_. She turned abroad, not in
pursuit of definite good, nor from fear of particular evil, but from a
vague wish for some great change—from a wish to escape from a life which
harassed the soul, but did not calm it; which awakened the intellect
without answering its questions.
She lived abroad for more than twenty years, at Avignon and Venice
and elsewhere; and, during that absence, she wrote the letters which
compose the greater part of her works. And there is no denying that they
are good letters. The art of note-writing may become classical—it is
for the present age to provide models of that sort of composition—but
letters have perished. Nobody but a bore now takes pains enough to make
them pleasant; and the only result of a bore’s pains is to make them
unpleasant. The correspondence of the present day is a continual labour
without any visible achievement. The dying penny-a-liner said with
emphasis, ‘That which I have written has perished.’ We might all say so
of the mass of petty letters we write. They are a heap of small atoms,
each with some interest individually, but with no interest as a whole;
all the items concern us, but they all add up to nothing. In the last
century, cultivated people who sat down to write a letter took pains to
have something to say, and took pains to say it. The postage was perhaps
ninepence; and it would be impudent to make a correspondent pay ninepence
for nothing. Still more impudent was it, _after_ having made him pay
ninepence, to give him the additional pain of making out what was half
expressed. People, too, wrote to one another then, not unfrequently,
who had long been separated, and who required much explanation and
many details to make the life of each intelligible to the other. The
correspondence of the nineteenth century is like a series of telegrams
with amplified headings. There is not more than one idea; and that idea
comes soon, and is soon over. The best correspondence of the last age
is rather like a good light article,—in which the points are studiously
made,—in which the effort to make them is studiously concealed,—in which
a series of selected circumstances is set forth,—in which you feel, but
are not told, that the principle of the writer’s selection was to make
his composition pleasant.