fashionable, in town; but at Sandleford Mrs. Montagu kept the farm
accounts, and rattled away glibly about agriculture. Then again at
Denton, her husband’s place in Northumberland, where he owned extensive
coal-mines, it was she, not he, who visited the pits with the overseer,
and discussed the prospects of trade. Her husband’s apathy to what
went on around him, and disinclination to move, irritated her, as is
evident from the slightly petulant remarks she lets drop thereupon
in her letters. She lost all patience with her brother William, the
clergyman, who preferred a life of easy retirement to going ahead in
his profession. “He leads,” she writes, “a life of such privacy and
seriousness as looks to the beholders like wisdom; but for my part, no
life of inaction deserves that name.” In 1774, her husband’s health was
visibly failing. He scarcely left the house, sought his bed at five
o’clock in the evening, and did not leave it till near noon. He died
the following year, bequeathing all his property, real and personal,
to his widow. She, after an interval of seclusion at Sandleford,
proceeded to the North, and busied herself in visiting her coal-mines,
and feasting her tenants on a liberal scale. Her colliery people she
blew out with boiled beef and rice-pudding. “It is very pleasant,”
she remarks, “to see how the poor things cram themselves, and the
expense is not great. We buy rice cheap, and skimmed milk and coarse
beef serve the occasion.” Having projected various schemes of charity
and usefulness among her vassals in Northumberland, she proceeded to
Yorkshire, and with the state of affairs on her property there she was
equally pleased. A prolonged drought, it is true, had this summer burnt
the country to a brown crust; not a blade of grass was visible; cattle
had to be driven miles to water. Yet her tenants asked no indulgence
nor favor, but paid their rents like men, hoping philosophically that
the next season would be better.
The following year, she was moving in a different scene. She was
in Paris, where her reputation as a _bel esprit_ of the first rank
was established. The doors of the greatest houses were thrown open
to receive her, and she was hurried hither and thither in a manner
bewildering.
Voltaire was prevented by age and decrepitude from appearing in public;
but he heard of her arrival, and took the opportunity of addressing
a letter to the Academy renewing his attack on Shakespeare. She was
present when this letter (intended as a crushing response to her
essay) was read. The meeting over, the president observed to her
apologetically, “I fear, Madam, you must be annoyed at what you have
just heard.” She at once answered, “I, sir! Not at all. I am not one of
M. Voltaire’s friends!”
She had already named as her heir her nephew Matthew Robinson (the
younger of the two sons of her third brother Morris), who assumed, by
royal licence, the surname and arms of Montagu. In young Matthew, now
a boy of fourteen, her hopes and affections were accordingly centred.
His education was her first care. She sent him to Harrow, where he
did dwell. In the holidays, she had him taught to ride and to dance,
the latter exercise being essential, in her opinion, for giving young
people a graceful deportment. She was indeed shocked at observing, on
one of her later visits to Tunbridge Wells, that owing to there being
a camp hard by at Coxheath, young ladies had adopted a military air,
strutting about with their arms akimbo, humming marches, and refusing
to figure in the courtly minuet.
When he was seventeen, Matthew Montagu was entered at Trinity College,
Cambridge. Here again, without doing anything remarkable, he acquitted
himself creditably, and never got into a single scrape. While he was
thus progressing, his aunt was preparing to leave her residence in
Hill Street, and move into a far finer mansion which she had purchased
in Portman Square. This edifice, considerably altered and modernised,
fills up the north-west angle of the square. It is conspicuous for its
size, and the spacious enclosure surrounding it. Much building and
decorating had to be got through before the fortunate owner could
migrate thither. In the following extract from a letter written at the
time, she proves herself a sharp woman of business:
“My new house is almost ready. I propose to move all my
furniture from Hill Street thither, and to let my house
unfurnished till a good purchaser offers. Then, should
I get a bad tenant, I can seize his goods for rent; and
such security becomes necessary in these extravagant
times.”
Meantime, extensive improvements were being carried on at Sandleford.
Within the house, various Gothicisms, in imitation of Strawberry Hill,
were contrived. Without, what with widening of streams, levelling of
mounds, planting in and planting out, our good lady’s purse-strings
were kept perpetually untied. Yet she managed to keep well within
her income. The celebrated landscape-gardener, “Capability” Brown,
superintended matters.
“He adapts his scheme,” she says, “to the character of
the place and my purse. We shall not erect temples to
heathen gods, build proud bridges over humble rivulets,
or do any of the marvellous things suggested by caprice,
and indulged by the wantonness of wealth.”
The winter of 1782 found Mrs. Montagu established at her palace,
for so her foreign friends called it, in Portman Square. Everything
about it delighted her—the healthy open situation, the space and
the magnificence. We hear of one room with pillars of old Italian
green marble, and a ceiling painted by Angelica Kauffmann. At a later
date, she further adorned it with those wondrous feather hangings, to
form which, feathers were sought from every quarter, all kinds being
acceptable, from the flaring plumage of the peacock and the parrot to
the dingier garb of our native birds. It was with reference to this
feathering of her London nest that the poet Cowper wrote:
“The birds put off their every hue,
To dress a room for Montagu.”
When Matthew Montagu left Cambridge, there was a talk of his making the
grand tour. His aunt, however, decided that the atmosphere of home was
less likely to be corrupting. The scheme was therefore abandoned, and
he was sent forth instead into London society. The impression he made
was such as to satisfy her. She was of course anxious that, if he did
marry, he should exercise judgment in his choice. When therefore he
fixed his affections on a charming girl with fifty thousand pounds,
she could raise no objections. He entered Parliament as member for
Bossiney,[45] and in 1787 he seconded the Address to the Throne in a
maiden speech which appears to have attracted some attention; members
of both Houses called to congratulate his aunt upon his successful
start in public life: “indeed, for several mornings,” says she, “I had
a levée like a Minister.”
In process of time a grand-nephew made his appearance, and then Mrs.
Montagu’s cup of joy seemed to be full. From this point her life flowed
smoothly onward to its close. Death had made sad havoc among those who
had assembled around her once, yet the gaps were quickly filled. She
entertained more splendidly than ever. Her parties differed from the
old gatherings in Hill Street. Royalty honored her with its presence.
Titles, stars, and decorations abounded: she herself had never been
more sparkling: yet the witty aroma being more diffused, smelt fainter.
While welcoming the rich, she did not forget the poor. Every May
Day, the courtyard before her house was thronged by a multitude of
chimney-sweeps, with faces washed for the occasion, and for these a
banquet of roast beef and plum pudding was provided.
It surprised her friends that one so fragile in appearance, who looked
as though a breath of wind might blow her away, should be equal to
the fatigues of a worldly existence. Hannah More, when first she knew
her, had described her as “hastening to insensible decay by a slow but
sure hectic.” Twenty years after, on one of her brief visits to town,
she found her hectic patient (aged seventy-six) “well, bright, and in
full song,” The excitement afforded by mixing with the giddy world had
long since wearied and sickened the worthy Hannah, but to the mistress
of Montagu House it had become a necessity. Without it she would
have moped. She resigned her sceptre gradually and reluctantly. Sir
Nathaniel Wraxall alludes in a rather malicious tone to the splendor of
her attire, when in extreme old age, and especially to the quantity
of diamonds that flashed on head, neck, arms, and fingers. “I used
to think,” he says, “that these glittering appendages of opulence
sometimes helped to dazzle the disputant whom her arguments might not
always convince, or her literary reputation intimidate.” At length
failing strength obliged her to retire from a scene in which she had
long shone the brightest star, and we hear of her less and less. She
died in 1800, aged eighty.
The gap left by her in society has never been exactly filled—except
possibly by Lady Blessington, who was a far shallower person than her
predecessor, with sympathies less exclusively literary. The kindness
Mrs. Montagu showed to struggling authors, and the assistance she lent
them in time of need, are pleasant to remember. It was to her influence
in a great measure, that Beattie owed the success of his “Minstrel,”
and Hannah More that of her windy play “Percy.” She condescended to
notice the humblest efforts—like those, for instance, of Mrs.
Yearsley, the ungrateful milk-woman of Bristol, in whose poetical
effusions she discovered a surprising “force of imagination and harmony
of numbers.”
The literary _salon_, properly so called, appears to be a thing of the
past. Society is now too large, and time too precious, to admit of its
revival. Besides, workers in literature appeal to a discerning public,
and not to individual patrons and patronesses, for support. Even if
such a revival were possible, a leader like Mrs. Montagu could hardly
be found. It was Johnson himself who said of her:
“She exerts more mind in conversation than any
person I ever met with; she displays such powers
of ratiocination, such radiations of intellectual
excellence, as are amazing.”
This is strong praise, and it agrees with the opinions of others hardly
less celebrated. There are few, it would seem, at the present day, of
whom the same could, with truth, be said.—_Temple Bar._
GENERAL GORDON AND THE SLAVE TRADE.
In an article in the _Fortnightly Review_ for the month of October,[46]
under the heading of “The Future of the Soudan,” grave charges are made
against General Gordon.
It is alleged in that article that General Gordon’s proclamation
at Khartoum, of the 18th or 19th of February last, will have a
very injurious effect upon the condition of thousands of unhappy
negroes from the upper regions of the Nile, who are, or will become,
slaves. That General Gordon has undone by his own hands the work he
devoted years of his life to accomplish. That his proclamation to
the slaveholders showed that he was inclined to temporize with an
injustice, and that the English Government have confirmed the right
of man to sell man. It is further asserted that the issue of the
proclamation secured General Gordon’s safe arrival at Khartoum.
The writer advocates the total abolition of slavery in Egypt at once,
without any compensation. He is of opinion that General Gordon should
not have accepted a commission from the Khedive. He thinks that if
an equitable administration, under the British Government, cannot be
established, it would be better to abandon the Soudan absolutely, and
leave the native chiefs to themselves, even at the risk of there being
a period of anarchy; but further on he says there is no reason why we
should allow the Soudan to sink into barbarism. And then he goes on to
assume that some form of government might be established, separate from
Egypt, and that the railway from Suakim to Berber ought to be made,
if we wish to keep open the road to Khartoum, and our access to the
heart of Africa. The writer considers that the garrisons of Kassala
and Sennaar should have been relieved through Abyssinia, and that
General Gordon was most unwisely empowered to settle the nomination of
the future native administration of the country, in place of frankly
withdrawing from the Soudan, and leaving the tribes to settle their
government among themselves. The writer then makes a direct charge
against General Gordon to the effect that he, in a proclamation of
February 26, said he had been compelled to send for British troops, who
were then on the road, and would arrive in a few days. In conclusion,
the writer of the article states that the despatch of the present
expedition is a sufficient proof that General Gordon overrated his
powers.
Now what are the facts?
According to the terms of the Convention[47] between the British and
Egyptian Governments for the suppression of the slave trade, dated
August 4, 1877, it was agreed that slave-hunting should cease, and that
any persons engaged therein should be treated as murderers, and it
was further arranged that after certain dates—viz., August 4, 1884,
in lower Egypt, and August 4, 1889, in the Soudan, all trafficking in
slaves between family and family, should be illegal, and be punished
with imprisonment. It was further resolved that a special ordinance
should be published throughout the land of Egypt, in order to prepare
the people for the change determined upon.
General Gordon, during the time that he was Governor-General of the
Soudan, rigidly adhered to this Convention, and annually published a
proclamation to the effect that the sale of slaves between family and
family would determine in 1889. In Lower Egypt, where, by the terms
of the Convention, the sale of slaves has already become illegal, no
such proclamations have been promulgated, nor have any steps whatever
been taken to put the terms of the Convention into force. Although
General Gordon faithfully carried out the provisions of this article
of the Convention, he was adverse to the conditions. He saw that they
could not be carried out; and suggested that the only effectual way of
abolishing slavery would be the following:—
1. The registration of all existing slaves.
2. Registers to be kept in each Government office of the names of
slaves and their owners, with a description of each.
3. Every slave not registered within six months from a certain date
to be free.
4. All slaves born after a certain date to be free.
And he suggested that the Convention should be cancelled, and that the
foregoing proposals should take its place.
Prior to General Gordon’s arrival in the Soudan in February last, it
was rumored throughout that country by the emissaries of the Mahdi,
that General Gordon would proclaim the freedom of all slaves, which
form seven-eighths of the population of that province. In order to
counteract this baneful influence, General Gordon, on his arrival at
Khartoum, issued the proclamation[48] complained of. What are its terms?
It simply tells the people what they are by law entitled to—viz.,
“That whoever has slaves shall have full right to their services,
and full control over them, and that no one shall interfere with
their property.” General Gordon had no power to cancel the Convention
and abolish slavery. What he did was in accordance with a solemn
convention entered into by the Governments of Great Britain and Egypt,
and in no way referred to the making of new slaves, and still less to
slave-hunting, against which nefarious traffic, as is well known, all
his energies have been exercised.
It is not the case that the issue of the proclamation procured the safe
arrival of General Gordon at Khartoum. The proclamation was not issued
until after his arrival at Berber—most probably not until after his
arrival at Khartoum itself.
With regard to the total abolition of slavery, without compensation,
at once—the writer can hardly have considered the question. For a
powerful nation like Great Britain to confiscate the personal property
of a people, with whom slavery dates from the time of the Pharaohs,
would be as impolitic as it would be unjust. We have no right, human
or divine, to so deal with property that is not our own. We did not
dare to act in this manner when we gave our slaves their freedom, we
began by proposing a loan of £15,000,000, and we ended by a gift of
£20,000,000.
With respect to General Gordon’s commission as Governor-General which
is objected to—how could he have derived any power without it? The
number of Egyptian employés and troops could be counted by thousands,
each province being under the government of an Egyptian Pasha. How
could he have issued any orders unless he derived his authority from
the firman of the Khedive.
The writer advocates the evacuation of the Soudan upon any terms, even
if such withdrawal would result in anarchy—always provided that Great
Britain is not prepared to exercise a protectorate over it—and then he
goes on to recommend the construction of the Suakim and Berber railway
under any circumstances, with the view of opening the road to Khartoum,
and giving us access to the heart of Africa. He seems to consider
that the people of the Soudan would, after a time of anarchy, form
good governments. It is asserted, on the contrary, that the country,
at present a productive one, would revert into barbarism, and, after
a scene of murder, rapine, and plunder, would become the resort of
slave-hunters,[49] who would carry on raids into all the surrounding
provinces.
The writer does not say where the money is to come from for the
construction of the railway, or how it is to be maintained. When
he speaks of the garrisons of Sennaar and Kassala being withdrawn
through Abyssinia, he apparently forgets the extreme hatred that
exists between the natives of the Soudan and the Abyssinians. He
seems to have forgotten the thousands of people whom General Gordon
was sent to remove. Putting on one side the Egyptian garrisons in
the Bahr-el-Gazelle, and at the equator, and other places, Colonel
Coetlogen states[50] that the people to be removed from Khartoum and
Sennaar alone consists of from 40,000 to 50,000 persons, and is of
opinion that the evacuation would take two years to carry out, and
could only be carried out at great risk, and with much bloodshed.
It is very difficult to explain the meaning of the proclamation of
February 26,[51] wherein General Gordon speaks of having sent for
British troops who would in a few days be in Khartoum. It would seem as
if the proclamation had been promulgated under some misapprehension or
misunderstanding open to explanation. General Gordon is not an Arabic
scholar, and his interpreter may have inserted words that he did not
use. Again, General Gordon may have intended to allude to Graham’s
force proceeding to Suakim,[52] since the proclamation is addressed to
the inhabitants of the Soudan generally, of which Suakim is an integral
part; or he may refer to the 200 Indian troops that on the same day
(February 26) he requests[53] may be sent to Wadi-Halfa.
As this incident has nothing to do with the future of the Soudan, nor
with the slave proclamation, it would seem quite unnecessary for the
writer of the article in the _Fortnightly Review_ to go out of his way
to charge General Gordon, an absent officer, with having proclaimed an
untruth.
As to the statement that “the dispatch of the present expedition is
a sufficient proof that General Gordon overrates his powers,” it is
not to be believed that the people of England will endorse any such
unfair statement. On the contrary, they will be of opinion that General
Gordon’s prestige has never stood so high as it does at this time. It
has certainly carried him through the perils of a terrible ordeal out
of which it seems probable that he and his companions will emerge with
undiminished reputation. Few persons will ever know the fearful anxiety
which he has undergone during this time of trial—not on account of
himself, but on account of those who were with him, and for whose lives
he considered himself responsible. General Gordon never asked for any
expedition to Khartoum. After Graham’s victories, he requested that
two squadrons of British cavalry should be sent to Berber, and 200 men
to Wadi-Halfa. He himself remarked, he made these requests solely on
account of the moral effect they would produce if acceded to.
It is difficult to know for what purpose the present expedition is
sent, except it be to carry out the evacuation of this fertile country.
It is to be hoped, however, in the interests of humanity, that the
country may be retained under Egyptian rule, the more especially as
Khartoum is as essential to Egypt as our frontier position at Quetta
is to India. Under Egyptian rule it returned a surplus revenue of over
£100,000.
The question of Zebehr requires no comment, and it is too long a
subject to go into.
In conclusion, it may be observed that, while General Gordon would
perhaps deprecate any notice being taken of the article referred to,
yet in his absence his friends do not consider it should be allowed to
pass unobserved.—_Contemporary Review._
WÜRZBURG AND VIENNA.
SCRAPS FROM A DIARY.
BY EMILE DE LAVELEYE.
Going to Vienna to collect books and documents, with the intention of
studying the results of Bosnia’s occupation by Austro-Hungary, I take
the Rhine route, and stop two days at Würzburg to see Ludwig Noiré and
have a talk on Schopenhauer. The _Vater Rhein_ is now changed beyond
recognition: _quantum mutatus ab illo_. How different all is to when
I visited it for the first time, years ago on foot, stopping at the
stages mentioned in Victor Hugo’s “Rhin,” which had just appeared.
All those grand peeps of Nature to be got on the old river, as it
forced its majestic way through barriers of riven rocks and volcanic
upheavals, have now almost wholly disappeared. The wine-grower has
planted his vineyards even in the most secluded nooks, and built stone
terraces where the rocks were too steep for cultivation. All along
the banks, these giant staircases climb to the summits of peaks and
ravines. The vines have stormed the position, and their aspect is
uniform. The Burgs, built on heaps of lava, “the Maus” and “the Katze,”
those sombre retreats of the Burgraves of old, now covered with the
green leaves of the vine, have lost their former wild aspect. The
Lorelei manufactures white wine, and the syren no longer intoxicates
sailors with the songs of her harp, but with the juice of the grape.
There is nothing here now to inspire Victor Hugo’s “Burgraves,” or
Heine’s
“Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten,
Dass ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.”
Below, engineering skill has dammed in the waters of the river, and
the basaltic blocks form a black wall with white lines between the
stones. Black and white! Even the old God of the Rhine has adopted
the Prussian colors. Embankments have been constructed at the wide
points of the river, for the purpose of increasing its depth, and of
reconquering meadows, by the slow but natural process of raising the
level by mud deposits. Between Mannheim and Cologne, the current has
gained ten hours, and the dangers of navigation of legendary celebrity
have disappeared. All along the embankments immense white figures
inform navigators at what distance from them it is safe to pass. On
each bank, too, runs a railway, and on the river itself pass steamers
of every shape, form, and description—steamers with three decks, for
tourists, as in the United States, little pleasure-boats, iron barges
from Rotterdam, steam-tugs worked by paddle or screw, and dredgers of
various proportions; all these hundreds of chimneys vomit a continuance
of black smoke, which darkens the whole atmosphere. The carriage roads
are in admirable order; not a rut is visible, and they are lined with
fruit-trees, and with the same black and white basaltic blocks as the
river. The Prussian colors again; but the aim is to point out the road
for carriages on dark nights. When the way turns either to the right
or the left, the trees on each side of it are painted white, so as to
be distinctly visible. I have never anywhere seen a great river so
thoroughly tamed, subdued, and utilized, so completely bent to man’s
necessities. The free Rhine of Arminius and of the Burgraves is as well
disciplined as any grenadier of Brandenburg, The economist and the
engineer admire, but painters and poets bewail.