AFTER THE REBELLION.
[Sidenote: 1715--Conflicts of parties]
All this time the Jacobite demonstrations were still going on in London
and in various parts of England with as much energy as ever. Green
boughs and oak apples were worn, and even flaunted, about the streets, by
groups of persons on May 29th, the anniversary of Charles the Second's
restoration. We read of the riots in London, of Whigs of the "Loyal
Society" going about with little warming-pans as emblems of their
hostility to the Stuart cause, and being met by other mobs bearing white
roses as badges of the Stuart cause. There was a continual battle of
pamphleteers and of ballad-writers. "High-Church and Ormond!" were
shouted for and sung on one side of the political field, and the "Pope
and Perkin," that is to say, James Stuart, were as liberally denounced on
the other. The scandals about King George's mistresses were freely
alluded to in the Jacobite songs. The public of all parties seem to have
very cordially detested the ill-favored ladies whom George had brought
over from Hanover. The coarsest and grossest abuse was poured forth in
ballads and in pamphlets against the King's favorites and courtiers, and
was sung and shouted day and night in the public streets.
Then, and for long after, these public streets were battle-grounds on
which Whigs and Tories, Hanoverians and Jacobites, fought out their
quarrel. Men carried turnips in their hats in mockery of the German
elector who had threatened to make St. James's Park a turnip-field, and
were prepared to fight lustily for their bucolic emblem. Women fanned
the strife, wore white roses for the King {136} over the water, or Sweet
William in compliment to the "immortal memory" of William of Nassau.
Sometimes even women were roughly treated. On one occasion we read of a
serving-girl, who had made known the hiding-place of a Jacobite, being
attacked and nearly murdered by a Jacobite mob, and rescued by some Whig
gentlemen. On another occasion a Whig gentleman seeing a young lady in
the street with a white rose in her bosom, jumped from his coach, tore
out the disloyal blossom, lashed the young lady with his whip, and handed
her over to a gang of Whigs, who would have stripped and scourged her but
for the timely appearance of some Jacobite gentry, by whom she was
carried home in safety. The "Flying Post" warns all "he-Jacobites" and
"she-Jacobites" that if they are not careful they will meet with more
severe treatment than hitherto, and then alludes to some pretty severe
treatment the poor "she-Jacobites" had already received.
[Sidenote: 1715--"All for our rightful King"]
To do the King and his family justice, they behaved with courage and
composure through this long season of popular excitement. They went
everywhere as they pleased, braving the dangers that certainly existed.
Once a man named Moor spat in the face of the Princess of Wales as she
was going through the streets, and he was scourged till he cried "God
bless King George!" In 1718 a youth named Sheppard was hanged for
planning King George's death. This led a Hanoverian fanatic named Bowes
to suggest to the ministry that in return he should go to Italy and kill
King James. His proffer of political retaliation only resulted in his
being shut up as a madman. At last the temper of the times and the
frequent threats of assassination compelled the King to take more care of
himself. Though he walked in Kensington Gardens every day, the gardens
were first searched, and then carefully watched by soldiers.
When the rebellion was over, the Government found they had a large number
of prisoners on their hands, many of them of high rank. Several officers
taken on {137} the field had already been treated as deserters and shot,
after a trial by drum-head court-martial. Some of the prisoners of
higher rank were brought into London in a manner like that of captives
dragged along in an old Roman triumph, or like that of actual convicts
taken to Tyburn. They were marched in procession from Highgate through
London, each man sitting on a horse, having his arms tied with cords
behind his back, the horses led by soldiers, with a military escort
drumming and fifing a march of triumph. The men of noble rank were
confined in the Tower; others, many of them men of position, such as Mr.
Thomas Forster, a Northumberland gentleman, and member for his county,
were thrust into Newgate, whose horrors have been so well described in
Scott's "Rob Roy." The Rev. Robert Patten, who had been a conspicuous
Jacobite, played a Titus Oates part in betraying his companions, and his
name figures for King's evidence incessantly in the political trials.
When he tired of treachery he retired to the obscurity of his parish of
Allendale, in Northumberland, and gave the world his history of the
rebellion in which he had played so base a part.
Among the chief prisoners were Lord Widdrington, the Earl of Nithisdale,
the Earl of Wintoun, the Earl of Carnwath, the Earl of Derwentwater,
Viscount Kenmure, and Lord Nairn. These noblemen were impeached before
the House of Lords, and all, except Lord Wintoun, pleaded guilty, and
prayed for the mercy of the King. Every effort was made to obtain a
pardon for some of the condemned noblemen. Women of rank and beauty
implored the King's mercy. Audacious attempts were made to bribe the
ministers. Some eminent members of the Whig party in the House of
Commons spoke up manfully and courageously in favor of a policy of mercy.
It is something pleasant to recollect that Sir Richard Steele, who had
got into Parliament again, was conspicuous among these. In the House of
Lords the friends of the condemned men succeeded in carrying, despite the
strong {138} resistance of the Government, a motion for an address to the
King, beseeching him to extend mercy to the noblemen in prison. Walpole
himself had spoken very harshly in the House of Commons, and condemned in
unmeasured terms those of his party--the Whig party--who could be so
unworthy as, without blushing, to open their mouths in favor of rebels
and parricides, and he had carried an adjournment of the House of Commons
from the 22d of February to the 1st of March, in order to prevent any
further petitions in favor of the rebel lords from being presented before
the day fixed for their execution. One of these petitions, it is worth
while recollecting, was presented by the kindly hand and supported by the
manly voice of Sir Richard Steele. The ministers returned a merely
formal answer on the King's behalf to the address, but they thought it
wise to recommend a respite to be given to Lord Nairn, the Earl of
Carnwath, and Lord Widdrington; and in order to get rid of any further
appeals for mercy, they resolved that the execution of Lord Nithisdale,
Lord Derwentwater, and Lord Kenmure should take place the very next day.
Lord Nithisdale, however, was lucky enough to make his escape, somewhat
after the fashion in which Lavalette, at a much later date, contrived to
get out of prison, by the courage, devotion, and ingenuity of his wife.
It is a curious fact that most of the contemporaries of Nithisdale who
tell the story of his escape have represented his mother, and not his
wife, as the woman who took his place in prison, and to whose energy and
adroitness he owed his life. Smollett is one of those who give this
version as if there were no doubt about it. Lord Stanhope, in the first
edition of his "History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the
Peace of Versailles," accepted the story on authorities which seemed so
trustworthy. Lord Stanhope knew that many modern writers had described
the escape as being effected by Lord Nithisdale's wife, but he assumed
that "the name of the wife was substituted in later tradition as being
more romantic." A letter from Lady Nithisdale herself, {139} written to
her sister, settles the whole question, and of course Lord Stanhope
immediately adopted this genuine version. Lady Nithisdale tells how at
first she endeavored to present a petition to the King. The first day
she heard that the King was to go to the drawing-room, she dressed
herself in black, as if in mourning, and had a lady to accompany her,
because she did not know the King personally, and might have mistaken
some other man for him. This lady and another came with her, and the
three remained in the room between the King's apartments and the
drawing-room. When George was passing through, "I threw myself at his
feet, and told him in French that I was the unfortunate Countess of
Nithisdale. . . . Perceiving that he wanted to go off without receiving
my petition, I caught hold of the skirt of his coat that he might stop
and hear me. He endeavored to escape out of my hands, but I kept such
strong hold that he dragged me upon my knees from the middle of the room
to the very door of the drawing-room." One of the attendants of the King
caught the unfortunate lady round the waist, while another dragged the
King's coat-skirt out of her hands. "The petition, which I had
endeavored to thrust into his pocket, fell down in the scuffle, and I
almost fainted away through grief and disappointment." Seldom, perhaps,
in the history of royalty is there a description of so ungracious,
unkingly, and even brutal reception of a petition presented by a
distracted wife praying for a pardon to her husband.
[Sidenote: 1716--This most constant wife]
Then Lady Nithisdale determined to effect her husband's escape. She
communicated her design to a Mrs. Mills, and took another lady with her
also. This lady was of tall and slender make, and she carried under her
own riding-hood one that Lady Nithisdale had prepared for Mrs. Mills, as
Mrs. Mills was to lend hers to Lord Nithisdale, so that in going out he
might be taken for her. Mrs. Mills was also "not only of the same
height, but nearly of the same size as my lord." On their arrival at the
Tower, Mrs. Morgan was allowed to go in with {140} Lady Nithisdale.
[Sidenote: 1716--Lord Nithisdale's escape] Only one at a time could be
introduced by the lady. She left the riding-hood and other things behind
her. Then Lady Nithisdale went downstairs to meet Mrs. Mills, who held
her handkerchief to her face, "as was very natural for a woman to do when
she was going to bid her last farewell to a friend on the eve of his
execution. I had indeed desired her to do it, that my lord might go out
in the same manner." Mrs. Mills's eyebrows were a light color, and Lord
Nithisdale's were dark and thick. "So," says Lady Nithisdale, "I had
prepared some paint of the color of hers to disguise his with. I also
bought an artificial head-dress of the same color as hers, and I painted
his face with white, and his cheeks with rouge to hide his long beard,
which he had not time to shave. All this provision I had before left in
the Tower. The poor guards, whom my slight liberality the day before had
endeared me to, let me go quietly with my company, and were not so
strictly on the watch as they usually had been, and the more so as they
were persuaded, from what I had told them the day before, that the
prisoners would obtain their pardon." Then Mrs. Mills was taken into the
room with Lord Nithisdale, and rather ostentatiously led by Lady
Nithisdale past several sentinels, and through a group of soldiers, and
of the guards' wives and daughters. When she got into Lord Nithisdale's
presence she took off her riding-hood, and put on that which Mrs. Morgan
had brought for her. Then Lady Nithisdale dismissed her, and took care
that she should not go out weeping as she had come in, in order, of
course, that Lord Nithisdale, when he wont out, "might the better pass
for the lady who came in crying and afflicted." When Mrs. Mills was
gone, Lady Nithisdale dressed up her husband "in all my petticoats
excepting one." Then she found that it was growing dark, and was afraid
that the light of the candles might betray her. She therefore went out,
leading the disguised nobleman by the hand, he holding his handkerchief
pressed to his eyes, as Mrs. Mills had done when she came in. The {141}
guards opened the doors, and Lady Nithisdale went down-stairs with him.
"As soon as he had cleared the door I made him walk before me for fear
the sentinels should take notice of his walk." Some friends received
Lord Nithisdale, and conducted him to a place of security. Lady
Nithisdale went back to her husband's prison, and "When I was in the room
I talked to him as if he had been really present, and answered my own
questions in my lord's voice as nearly as I could imitate it. I walked
up and down, as if we were conversing together, till I thought they had
time enough to clear themselves of the guards. I then thought proper to
make off also. I opened the door, and stood half in it, that those in
the outward chamber might hear what I said, but held it so close that
they could not look in. I bid my lord a formal farewell for that night,"
and she added some words about the petition for his pardon, and told him,
"I flattered myself that I should bring favorable news." Then she closed
the door with some force behind her, and "I said to the servant as I
passed by"--who was ignorant of the whole transaction--"that he need not
carry any candles to his master till my lord sent for him, as he desired
to finish some prayers first. I went down-stairs and called a coach, as
there were several on the stand. I drove home to my lodgings." Soon
after Lady Nithisdale was taken to the place of security where her
husband was remaining. They took refuge at the Venetian ambassador's two
or three days after. Lord Nithisdale put on a livery, and went in the
retinue of the ambassador to Dover. The ambassador, it should be said,
knew nothing about the matter, but his coach-and-six went to Dover to
meet his brother; and it was one of the servants of the embassy who acted
in combination with Lord and Lady Nithisdale. A small vessel was hired
at Dover, and Lord Nithisdale escaped to Calais, where his wife shortly
after joined him. It is said by nearly all contemporary writers that
King George, when he heard of the escape, took it very good-humoredly,
and even {142} expressed entire satisfaction with it. Lady Nithisdale
does not seem to have believed this story of George's generosity. The
statement made to her was that "when the news was brought to the King, he
flew into an excess of passion and said he was betrayed, for it could not
have been done without some confederacy. He instantly despatched two
persons to the Tower to see that the other prisoners were well secured."
[Sidenote: 1716--Anti-Catholic legislation]
Lord Derwentwater and Lord Kenmure were executed on Tower Hill on the
24th of February. The young and gallant Derwentwater declared on the
scaffold that he withdrew his plea of guilty, and that he acknowledged no
one but James Stuart as his king. Kenmure, too, protested his repentance
at having, even formally, pleaded guilty, and declared that he died with
a prayer for James Stuart. Lord Wintoun was not tried until the next
month. He was a poor and feeble creature, hardly sound in his mind.
"Not perfect in his intellectuals," a writer in a journal of the day
observed of him. He was found guilty, but afterwards succeeded in making
his escape from the Tower. Like Lord Nithisdale, he made his way to the
Continent; and, like Lord Nithisdale, he died long after at Rome.
Humbler Jacobites could escape too. Forster escaped from Newgate through
the aid of a clever servant, and got off to France, while the angry Whigs
hinted at connivance on the part of persons in high places. The
redoubted Brigadier Mackintosh, who figures in descriptions of the time
as a "beetle-browed, gray-eyed" man of sixty, speaking "broad Scotch,"
succeeded in escaping, together with his son and seven others, in a rush
of prisoners from the Newgate press-yard. Mr. Charles Radcliffe had an
even stranger escape; for one day, growing tired, as well he might, of
prison life, he simply walked out of Newgate under the eyes of his
jailers, in the easy disguise of a morning suit and a brown tie-wig.
Once some Jacobite prisoners, who were being sent to the West Indian
plantations, rose against the crew, seized the ship, steered it to
France, and quietly settled down {143} there. Later still some prisoners
got out even more easily. Brigadier Mackintosh's brother was discharged
from Newgate on his own prayer, and on showing that "he was very old, and
altogether friendless."
Immediately after the execution of the rebel noblemen the ministry set to
work to take some steps which might render political intrigue and
conspiracy less dangerous in the future. One idea which especially
commended itself to the statesmen of that time was to make the laws more
rigorous against Roman Catholics. Law and popular feeling were already
strongly set against the Catholics. On the death of Queen Anne, officers
in the army, when informing their companies of the accession of the
Elector of Hanover, carried their loyal and religious enthusiasm so far
as to call upon any of their hearers who might be Catholics to fall
forthwith out of the ranks. The writers who supported the Hanoverian
succession, and were in the service of the Whig ministry, were not
ashamed to declare that the ceremony of the Paternoster would infallibly
cure a stranger of the spleen, and that any man in his senses would find
excellent comedy in the recital of an Ave Mary. "How common it is," says
the writer of the _Patriot_, "to find a wretch of this persuasion to be
deluded to such a degree that he shall imagine himself engaged in the
solemnity of devotion, while in reality he is exceeding the fopperies of
a Jack-pudding!" So great was the distrust of Catholics that it was
often the practice to seize upon the horses of Catholic gentlemen in
order to impede them in the risings which they were always supposed to be
meditating. But the condition of the Catholics in England was not bad
enough to content the ministry. An Act was passed, in fact what would
now be called "rushed," through Parliament, to "strengthen the Protestant
interest in Great Britain," by making more severe "the laws now in being
against Papists," and by providing a more effective and exemplary
punishment for persons who, being Papists, should venture to enlist in
the service of his Majesty.
{144}
The spirit of political freedom, as we now understand it, had not yet
even begun to glimmer upon the counsels of statesmen. The idea had not
yet arisen in the minds of Englishmen--even of men as able as
Walpole--that liberty meant anything more than liberty for the expression
of one's own opinions, and for the carrying into action of one's own
policy. Those who were in power immediately made it their business to
strengthen their own hands, and to prevent as far as possible the growth
of opinions, the expression of ideas, unfavorable to themselves. Yet at
such a time there were not wanting advocates of the administration to
write that it was "indeed the peculiar happiness and glory of an
Englishman that he must first quit these kingdoms before he can
experimentally know the want of public liberty." Most people, even
still, read history by the light of ideas which prevailed up to the close
of George the First's reign. We are all ready enough to admit that in
our time it would not be a free system which suppressed or prevented the
expression of other men's opinions, or which attached any manner of penal
consequence to the profession of one creed or the adhesion to one party.
But most of us are, nevertheless, ready enough to describe one period of
English history, the reign perhaps of one sovereign, as a period of
religious liberty, and another season, or reign, as a time when liberty
was suppressed. Some Englishmen talk with enthusiasm of the spirit of
Elizabeth's reign, or the spirit of the reign of William the Third, and
condemn in unmeasured terms the spirit which influenced James the Second,
and which would no doubt have influenced James the Second's son if he had
come to the throne. But any one who will put aside for the moment his
own particular opinions will see that in both cases the guiding principle
was exactly the same. Never were there greater acts of political and
religious intolerance committed than during the reign of Elizabeth and
during the reign of William the Third. The truth is that the modern idea
of constitutional and political liberty did not {145} exist among English
statesmen even so recently as the reign of William the Third. At the
period with which we are now dealing it would not have occurred to any
statesman that there could be a wiser course to take than to follow up
the suppression of the insurrection of 1715 by making more stringent than
ever the laws already in existence against the religion to which most of
the rebels belonged.
[Sidenote: 1716--The Triennial Bill]
The Government made another change of a different kind, and for which
there was better political justification. They passed a measure altering
the period of the duration of parliaments. At this time the limit of the
existence of a parliament was three years. An Act was passed in 1641
directing that Parliament should meet once at least in every three years.
This Act was repealed in 1664. Another, and a different kind of
Triennial Parliament Bill, passed in 1694. This Act declared that no
parliament should last for a longer period than three years. But the
system of short parliaments had not apparently been found to work with
much satisfaction. The impression that a House of Commons with so
limited a period of life before it would be more anxious to conciliate
the confidence and respect of the constituencies had not been justified
in practice. Indeed, the constituencies themselves at that time were not
sufficiently awake to the meaning and the value of Parliamentary
representation to think of keeping any effective control over those whom
they sent to speak for them in Parliament. Bribery and corruption were
as rife and as extravagant under the triennial system as ever they had
been before, or as they ever were since. But no doubt the immediate
object of repealing the Triennial Bill was to obtain a better chance for
the new condition of things by giving it a certain time to work in
security. If the new dynasty was to have any chance of success at all,
it was necessary that ministers should not have to come almost
immediately before the country again.
Shippen in the Commons and Atterbury in the Lords {146} were among the
most strenuous opponents of the new measure. Both staunch Jacobites,
they had everything to gain just then by frequent appeals to the country.
Shippen urged that it was unconstitutional in a Parliament elected for
three years to elect itself for seven years without an appeal to the
constituencies. Steele defended the Bill on the ground that all the
mischiefs which could be brought under the Septennial Act could be
perpetrated under the Triennial, but that the good which might be
compassed under the Septennial could not be hoped for under the
Triennial. Not a few persons in both Houses seemed to be of one mind
with the bewildered Bishop of London, who declared that he did not know
which way to vote, for "he was confounded between dangers and
inconveniences on one side and destruction on the other." It is not out
of place to mention here that when a Bill was unsuccessfully brought in
nearly twenty years after for the Repeal of the Septennial Act, many of
those who had voted in favor of parliaments of seven years in 1716 voted
the other way, while opponents in 1716 were turned into allies in 1734.
[Sidenote: 1716--Death of Lord Somers]
The system of short parliaments has ardent admirers in our own day.
"Annual Parliaments" formed one of the points of the People's Charter.
Many who would not accept the Chartist idea of annual parliaments would
still regard as one of the articles of the true creed of Liberalism the
principle of the triennial parliament. But even if that creed were true
in the politics of the present day, it would not have been true in the
early days of King George. One of the great constitutional changes which
the times were then making, and which Walpole welcomed and helped to
carry out, was the change which gave to the House of Commons the real
ruling power in the Constitution. No representative chamber could then
have held its own against the House of Lords, or the Court, or the Court
and the House of Lords combined, if it had been subject to the necessity
of frequent re-elections. Short parliaments have even in our own days
been made {147} in Europe the most effective weapons of despotic power.
No test more trying can be found for a party of men sincerely anxious to
maintain constitutional rights at a season of danger than to subject them
to frequent and close electoral struggles. Much more important in the
historical and constitutional sense was it at the opening of King
George's reign that the House of Commons should be strengthened than that
any particular party should have unlimited opportunities of trying its
chances at a general election. It mattered little, when once the
position of the representative body had been made secure, whether George
or James sat on the throne. With the representative body an
inconsiderable factor in the State system, Brunswick would soon have been
as unconstitutional as Stuart.
One of the last acts of the life of Lord Somers was to express to Lord
Townshend his approval of the principle of the Septennial Bill. He did
not live to see it actually passed into law. He was but sixty-six years
old at the time of his death. Disease and not age had weakened his fine
intellect, and had kept him for many years from playing any important
part in the affairs of the State. The day when Somers died was the very
day when the Septennial Bill passed its third reading in the House of
Commons. It had come down from the House of Lords, and had to go back to
that House, in consequence of some alterations made in the Commons.
Somers lived just long enough to be assured of its safety. Born in 1650,
the son of a Worcester attorney, he had won for himself the proudest
honors of the law, and had written his name high up in the roll of
English statesmen. Steele wrote of him that he was "as much admired for
his universal knowledge of men and things as for his eloquence, courage,
and integrity in the exerting of such extraordinary talents." The
_Spectator_, in dedicating its earliest papers to him, spoke of him as
one who brought into the service of his sovereign the arts and policies
of ancient Greece and Rome, and praised him for a certain dignity in
{148} himself which made him appear as great in private life as in the
most important offices he had borne. It was in allusion to Somers,
indeed, that Swift said Bolingbroke wanted for success "a small infusion
of the alderman." This was a sneer at Somers, as well as a sort of
rebuke to Bolingbroke. If the "small infusion of the alderman" was
another term for order and method in public business, then it may be
freely admitted by his greatest admirers that Somers had more of the
alderman in his nature than Bolingbroke. Perhaps the only thing, except
great capacity, which he had in common with Bolingbroke was an ungoverned
admiration of the charms of women. His fame was first established by the
ability with which he conducted his part of the defence of the seven
bishops in James the Second's reign. His consistent devotion to the Whig
party, and his just and almost prescient appreciation of the true
principles of that party, set him in sharp contrast to other statesmen of
the time--to men like Marlborough and Shrewsbury and Bolingbroke. His is
a noble figure, even in its decay, and the historian of such a time parts
from him with regret, feeling that the average of public manhood and
virtue is lowered when Somers is gone.
[Sidenote: 1716--Mary Wortley Montagu]
While Jacobites were lingering in prison and dying on Tower Hill, Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu was writing from abroad imperishable letters to her
friends. We may turn away from politics for a moment to observe her and
her career. Mr. Wortley Montagu had been appointed Ambassador to
Constantinople, and had set out for his post, accompanied by the witty
and beautiful wife for whom he cared so little. Ever since he first met
her and presented her with a copy of "Quintus Curtius," in honor of her
Latinity, and some original verses of his own, in earnest of his
admiration, he had been an exacting, impatient lover. After his marriage
he seems to have grown absolutely indifferent to her, leaving her alone
for months together while he remained in town, and pleading as his excuse
his Parliamentary duties. {149} She who, on the contrary, had made no
unreasonable display of affection for the lover, appears to have become
deeply attached to the husband, and to have been bitterly pained by his
careless indifference, an indifference which at last, and it would appear
most unwillingly, she learned to return. When this life had been lived
for a year or two Queen Anne died, and with Walpole's accession to power
Mr. Wortley got office, and brought his beautiful wife up from Yorkshire
to be the wonder and admiration of the English Court and the Hanoverian
monarch. For two bright years Lady Mary shone like a star in the
brilliant constellation of women, of wits, of politicians, and men of
letters, who thronged St. James's Palace and peopled St. James's parish.
Then came the Constantinople embassy. Lady Mary had always a longing for
foreign travel, and now that her desires were gratified she enjoyed
herself with all the delight of a child and all the intelligence of a
gifted woman. Travel was a rare pleasure for women then. A young
English gentleman made the grand tour, and brought back, if he were
foolish, nothing better than a few receipts for strange dishes, and some
newer notions of vice than he had set out with; if he were wise he became
"possessed of the tongues," and bore home spoils of voyage in the shape
of Titians and Correggios and Raphaels--genuine or the reverse--to stock
a picture-gallery in the family mansion. But women very seldom travelled
much in those days. Certainly no man or woman could then write of
travels as Mary Wortley Montagu could and did. We may well imagine the
delight with which Mistress Skerret and Lady Rich and the Countess of
Bristol, languid Lord Hervey's mother, and adoring Mr. Pope received
these marvellous letters, which were destined to rank with the epistles
of the younger Pliny and of Madame de Sévigné. Mr. Pope--whose
translation of the "Odyssey" had not yet made its appearance--may well
have thought that Ulysses himself had not seen men and cities to greater
advantage than the beautiful wanderer whom he was destined first {150} to
love and then to hate. As we read her letters we seem to live with her
in the great, gay, gloomy life of Vienna, to hear once more the foolish
squabbles of Ratisbon society as to who should and should not be styled
Excellency, and to smile at the loyal crowds of English thronging the
wretched inns of Hanover. But the fidelity of her descriptions may best
be judged from her accounts of life in Constantinople. The Vienna of
to-day is very different from the ill-built, high-storied city of Maria
Theresa; but the condition of Constantinople has scarcely changed with
the century and a half that has gone by since Lady Mary was English
Ambassadress there. She seems, indeed, to have seen the heads upon the
famous monument of bronze twisted serpents in the Hippodrome; and perhaps
she did, for Spon and Wheler's sketch of it in 1675 gives it with the
triple heads still perfect, though these serpent heads, and all traces of
them, have long since disappeared. In Constantinople Lady Mary first
became acquainted with that principle of inoculation for the small-pox
which she so enthusiastically advocated, which she introduced into
England in spite of so much hostility and disfavor, and which, now
accepted by almost all the civilized world, is still wrangled fiercely
over in England.
[Sidenote: 1716--Lady Mary's career]
Perhaps we may anticipate by some half-century to tell of Lady Mary's
further career. She came back to London again, and shone as brilliantly
as before, and was made love to by Pope, and laughed at her lover, and
was savagely scourged by him in return with whips of stinging and
shameful satire. One can understand better the story of the daughters of
Lycambes hanging themselves under the pain of the iambics of Archilochus
when one reads the merciless cruelty with which the great English
satirist treated the woman he had loved. When Lady Mary grew old she
went away abroad to live, without any opposition on her husband's part.
They parted with mutual indifference and mutual esteem. She lived for
many years in Italy, chiefly in Venice. Then she came back to London for
a short time to live in lodgings off Hanover Square, and be the curiosity
of the town; and then she died. Lady Mary always had a dread of growing
old; and she grew old and ill-favored, as Horace Walpole was spiteful
enough to put on record. When Pope was laughed at by the beauty, he
might have said to her in the words that Clarendon used to the fair
Castlemaine, "Woman, you will grow old," and have felt that in those
words he had almost repaid the bitterness of her scorn. Horace Walpole
indeed avenged the offended poet, long dead and famous, when he wrote
thus of Lady Mary: "Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze
any one that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob that does not
cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an
old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas
petticoat. Her face . . . partly covered . . . with white paint, which
for cheapness she has bought so coarse that you would not use it to wash
a chimney." Such is one of the latest portraits of the woman who had
been a poet's idol and the cherished beauty of a Court. Lady Mary, who
had outlived her husband, left an exemplary daughter, who married Lord
Bute, and a most unexemplary son, to whom she bequeathed one guinea, and
who spent the greater part of his life drifting about the East, and
acquiring all kinds of strange and useless knowledge.
{152}