Edward Montagu was the son of Charles, who was the fifth son of the first
Earl of Sandwich. He was a well-endowed gentleman, both intellectually
and materially, and he adopted the Socratic maxim, that a wise man keeps
out of public business. He is described as being “of a different turn
from his wife, fond of the severer studies, particularly mathematics.”
Under his influence, the bounding Iambe from Horton gradually grew into
the “Minerva,” as she was called by friends as well as epigrammatists.
Mr. Montagu was a mathematician of great eminence; and a coal-owner of
great wealth. He was a man of very retired habits and great amiability.
He loved to puzzle fellow mathematicians with problems, and he did not
dislike coals to be high in price; but he urged other owners to incur the
odium of “making the advance.”
Mr. and Mrs. Montagu were married in London, and did not immediately
leave it. Mr. Freind officiated at the marriage ceremony. The bride, in a
note to Mrs. Freind, expressed her infinite obligation to him, “for not
letting the knot be tied by the hands of an ordinary bungler.” On Friday,
August 6th, the day after her marriage, the bride wrote to the Duchess
of Portland: “If you will be at home to-morrow, at two o’clock, I will
pass an hour with you; but pray send me word to Jermyn Street at eleven,
whether I can come to you without meeting any person at Whitehall but the
duke; to every one else pray deny your dressing-room. Mr. Freind will
tell your Grace I really behaved magnanimously; not one cowardly tear, I
assure you, did I shed at the solemn altar; my mind was in no mirthful
mood indeed. I have a great hope of happiness. The world, as you say,
speaks well of Mr. Montagu, and I have many obligations to him which must
gain my particular esteem; but such a change of life must furnish one
with a thousand anxious thoughts.”
Shortly after, the newly wedded pair travelled to one of Mr. Montagu’s
estates in the north; but not alone. They were accompanied by the bride’s
sister. The custom of sending a chaperon with a young married couple
prevailed. Indeed, down to a comparatively recent period, some husbands
and wives, who were married in Yorkshire, may remember that to have
started on their wedding trip, or their journey home, without a third
person, would have been considered lamentable indecorum.
The bride thus speaks of the journey and the new home. To Mrs. Freind,
she writes:
“We arrived at this place (Allerthorpe, Yorkshire), after a journey of
six days through fine countries. Mr. Montagu has the pleasure of calling
many hundred pounds a year about his house his own, without any person’s
property interfering with it. I think it is the prettiest estate and in
the best order I ever saw: large and beautiful meadows for riding or
walking in, and all as neat as a garden, with a pretty river (the Swale)
winding about them, on which we shall sometimes go in boats. I propose
to visit the almshouse very soon. I saw the old women, with the bucks
upon their sleeves, at church, and the sight gave me pleasure. Heraldry
does not always descend with such honour as when charity leads her by the
hand.” A little later, Mrs. Montagu writes thus to the duchess:
“The sun gilds every object, but I assure you, it is the only fine
thing we have had; for the house is old and not handsome: it is very
convenient, and the situation extremely pleasant. We found the finest
peaches, nectarines, and apricots that I have ever eat.” Then comes a
dash of the old sauciness. She rejoices at the news the duchess had
communicated to her, that Lord Dupplin, who once wrote verses on her
taking a header into the Mary-le-bone plunging-baths, was the father of
an heir to his title and estate. “I think no man better deserves a child.
The end justifies the means; else, what should one say for his extreme,
surprising, amazing fondness for the lady?... I am glad Lord Dupp enjoys
his liberty and leisure. The repose a gentleman takes after the honour of
sending a son into the world, may be called ease with dignity.”
Further evidences of the course of her married life are thus afforded by
herself. On the 24th of August, Mrs. Montagu tells the duchess:
“It must be irksome to submit to a fool. The service of a man of sense is
perfect freedom. Where the will is reasonable, obedience is a pleasure;
but to run of a fool’s errand all one’s life is terrible.” And three days
later, she writes to Mrs. Freind: “I think we increase in esteem, without
decaying in complaisance; and I hope we shall always remember Mr. Freind
and the 5th with thankfulness.”
Early in October, Mr. Montagu left his wife, parliamentary business
calling him to town. She dreaded the invasion of condoling neighbours,
and not without reason. “We have not been troubled with any visitors
since Mr. Montagu went away; and could you see how ignorant, how
awkward, how absurd, and how uncouth the generality of people are
in this country, you would look upon this as no small piece of good
fortune. For the most part, they are drunken and vicious, and worse than
hypocrites—profligates. I am very happy that drinking is not within our
walls. We have not had one person disordered by liquor since we came
down, though most of the poor ladies in the neighbourhood have had more
hogs in their drawing-room than ever they had in their hog-sty.” One
visitor was unwelcomely assiduous. She thus hits him off to the duchess,
as a portrait of a country beau and wit: “Had you seen the pains this
animal has been taking to imitate the cringe of a beau, you would have
pitied him. He walks like a tortoise and chatters like a magpie.... He
was first a clown, then he was sent to the Inns of Court, where first
he fell into a red waistcoat and velvet breeches, then into vanity.
His light companions led him to the playhouse, where he ostentatiously
coquetted with the orange wenches, who cured him of the bad air of taking
snuff.... He then fell into the company of the jovial, till want of money
and want of taste led this prodigal son, if not to eat, to drink with
swine.... At last ... he returned to the country, where ... people treat
him civilly ... and one gentleman in the neighbourhood is so fond of him
as, I believe, to spend a great deal of money and most of his time upon
him.”
There are parts in the letter, from which the above is an extract, which
show a knowledge of London life, and of the consequences of leading it,
which is marvellous. In more lively strain, this Lady of the Last Century
moralised on marriage, under all its aspects, to the duchess; and she
joked upon and handled the same subject, in her letters to Mrs. Donellan,
with an astounding audacity, which was, however, not unnatural, in the
days when mothers read Aphra Behn aloud, and sons and daughters listened
to that arch-hussy’s highly flavoured comedies. Mrs. Montagu alludes
to similar reading when drawing an “interior” for the duchess’s good
pleasure, while Mr. Montagu was away. “I cannot boast of the numbers that
adorn our fireside. My sister and I are the principal figures; besides,
there is a round table, a square skreen, some books, and a work-basket,
with a smelling-bottle, when morality grows musty, or a maxim smells too
strong, as sometimes they will in ancient books.” She loved such books,
nevertheless, much better than she did the neighbours that would be
friendly.
“I do hourly thank my stars,” she says, “that I am not married to a
country squire or a beau; for in the country, all my pleasure is in my
own fireside, and that only when it is not littered with queer creatures.
One must receive visits and return them ... and if you are not more
happy in it in Nottinghamshire than I am in Yorkshire, I pity you most
feelingly.... Could you but see all the good folks that visit my poor
tabernacle, oh, your Grace would pity and admire!”
There was neither “squire” nor “beau” in the quiet, refined gentleman
she had married. The wife might well be sorry for the absence of such a
companion. He had left her, as she expressed it, to her mortification,
but with her approbation. She desired him to go, yet half-wished him to
stay; but at last “got out honour’s boots, and helped him to draw them
on.” “Since I married,” she writes to Mrs. Freind, “I have never heard
him say an ill word to any one; nor have I received one matrimonial
frown.” For a matrimonial life begun in August, clouds and showers in
October would have been an early prodigy indeed. To the duchess, who
asked more as to her characteristic doings than her feelings, Mrs.
Montagu replied:
_December 1742_—“Your Grace asks me if I have left off footing and
tumbling down-stairs. As to the first, my fidgetations are much spoiled;
sometimes I have cut a thoughtless caper, which has gone to the heart of
an old steward of Mr. Montagu’s, who is as honest as Trusty in the play
of ‘Grief à la Mode.’ I am told that he has never heard a hop that he has
not echoed with a groan.”
At another of Mr. Montagu’s houses, Sandleford, near Newbury, Berks,
his wife found more genial neighbours than in the north. She especially
disliked the rough Yorkshire folk, and she did not conceal the little
sympathy she had with “agreeable company.” She felt it a misfortune that
she found in few people the qualities that pleased her. Like him who
thanked God that he had not a heart that had room for many, she was
thankful that she could love only the chosen few; but she could bear with
twenty disagreeable people at once, while a tête-à-tête with a single one
she disliked made her sick. At Sandleford, she played the farmer’s wife’s
part without laying aside that of the lady, or, indeed, of the student.
She could rattle off the gayest description of a country fair, losing no
one of its characteristic features, and next write a long and thoughtful
dissertation over Gastrell, Bishop of Chester’s “Moral Proof of the
Certainty of a Future State.” The spirit of this dissertation, contained
in a long letter to her friend the duchess, is that of what would now be
called a Free Inquirer. She will not bow her intellect to any authority
of mortal man. She has hope, but lacks knowledge,—except that God is the
loving father of all,—and beyond that she evidently thinks the bishop
knows no more than she does.
The ladies around her, at Sandleford, were neither so well endowed
intellectually as herself, nor seemingly cared to be. Grottos and
shellwork showed the bias of their tastes. Mrs. Montagu speaks of
visiting one in Berkshire, which was the work of nine sisters (Leah),
who in disposition, as well as number, bore “some resemblance to the
Muses.” Lord Fane’s grotto at Basildon was one of the mild wonders of the
county. When she goes thence to London, depreciation of the latter shows
a growing love for rural life. She describes life in London as being—all
the morning at the senate, all the night at play. Party politics were
her aversion. They were “pursued for the benefit of individuals, not for
the good of the country.” The factious heads in London she described as
being very full of powder and very empty of thought. Happy in her own
home, she could mingle jesting with sympathy when referring to sorrows
which other people had to bear. “I pity Miss Anstey,” she wrote, “for
the loss of her agreeable cousin and incomparable lover. For my part, I
would rather have a merry sinner for a lover than so serious a saint!”
Her own husband, however, was not mirthful. He stuck to his mathematics,
understood his business as a coal-owner, loved his wife, and found life a
pleasant thing, particularly where his lines had fallen.
With the birth of a boy came new occupations, fresh delights, and
hitherto unknown anxieties. The nursing mother, remembering her old gay
time, declared that “for amusement there is no puppet-show like the
pleasant humour of my own Punch at Sandleford.” She fancied a bright
futurity for the boy; but her passing ecstasy was damped by the thought
of the perils and temptations by which life is beset. “Pity,” she wrote,
“that a man thinks it no more necessary to be as innocent as woman than
to be as fair.”
In March, 1744, when Mrs. Montagu and her sister thought it a remarkable
fear to travel from Sandleford, near Newbury, to Dover Street, London,
in one day, with only two breakdowns, Mrs. Montagu left her boy in the
Berkshire house. “It was no such easy matter,” she said, “to part with
little Punch, with whom we played and pleased ourselves as long as we
could afford time.” On her return to Sandleford, in July, the natural
beauty of the place seemed centred in little Punch’s person. “He is
now an admirable tumbler. I lay him down on a blanket on the ground
every morning, before he is dressed, and at night when he is stripped,
and there he rolls and tumbles about, to his great delight. If my
goddaughter,” adds the Last Century Lady to Doctor Freind, referring to
his daughter, “be not a prude, I should recommend the same practice to
her.”
The mother’s dreams and duties were soon brought to a melancholy close.
In September, 1744, the little heir had his first severe experience
of life, and, perhaps happily, it was too much for him. He died of
convulsions while cutting his teeth. A few joyous tumbles on the blanket,
a few kisses, a few honeyed words, and much pain at last, made up all
that he knew of life. Mrs. Montagu tempered her heavy grief with much
active occupation and study. She meekly attributed the loss of her son to
God’s visitation on her confidence in her own care and watchfulness. She
may be said to have lost with him her hopes, her joys, and her health for
a considerable period. In September, 1744, she wrote to the duchess:
“Poor Mr. Montagu shows me an example of patience and fortitude, and
endeavours to comfort me, though undoubtedly he feels as much sorrow
as I can do; for he loved his child as much as ever parent could do.”
She discovered all the virtues in Mr. Montagu that adversity needs, and
adversity only can show. “I never saw such resignation and fortitude
in any one; and in the midst of affliction there is comfort in having
such a friend and assistant. It was once my greatest happiness to see
him in possession of the dearest of blessings. It is now my greatest
comfort to see he knows how to resign it, and yet preserve the virtue and
dignity of his temper.” They never had another child; and, if they were
not altogether as happy as before, they were, at least, as cheerfully
resigned as heirless rich people could persuade themselves to be.
Occasionally, however, she envied happier mothers. Referring to one of
these, nearly twenty years later, who was then stricken by a profounder
grief, Mrs. Montagu wrote to Lord Lyttelon: “Poor Mrs. Stone, between
illness and affliction, is a melancholy object. I remember that after my
son was dead, I used to envy her her fine boy; but not being of a wicked
disposition, did earnestly wish she might not lose him. Poor woman! her
felicity lasted longer than mine, and so her grief must be greater: but
time is a sure comforter.”
Mrs. Montagu found relief for her sorrows, as well as for indisposition,
from which she suffered greatly at intervals, at Tunbridge Wells and in
small country gaieties. Thus, in 1745, at a country fair (ladies went to
such sports in those days), Mrs. Montagu was not more surprised to see
a gingerbread Admiral Vernon lying undisturbed on a basket of Spanish
nuts, than she was at Tunbridge Wells to behold grave Doctor Young and
old Colley Cibber on the most intimate terms. Mrs. Montagu, on the
Pantiles, asked the doctor how long he intended to stay, and his answer
was, “As long as your rival stays.” When this riddle was explained, the
“rival” proved to be the sun. People from all ends of the world then
congregated at the Wells, and Mrs. Montagu sketched them smartly, and
grouped them cleverly, in pen and ink. One of the best of these outline
sketches is that of a country parson, the vicar of Tunbridge, to whom
she paid a visit in company with Doctor Young and Mrs. Rolt. “The good
parson offered to show us the inside of his church, but made some
apology for his undress, which was a true canonical dishabille. He had
on a gray striped calamanco nightgown; a wig that once was white, but,
by the influence of an uncertain climate, turned to a pale orange; a
brown hat encompassed by a black hatband; a band somewhat dirty, that
decently retired under the shadow of his chin; a pair of gray stockings,
well mended with blue worsted, strong symptoms of the conjugal care and
affection of his wife, who had mended his hose with the very worsted she
had bought for her own.” The lively lady and her companions declined to
take refreshment at the parsonage, where, she made no doubt, they would
have been “welcomed by madam, in her muslin pinners and sarsnet hood;
who would have given us some mead and a piece of cake that she had made
in the Whitsun holidays, to treat her cousins.” After dinner at the
inn, the vicar joined them, “in hopes of smoking a pipe, but our doctor
hinted to him, that it would not be proper to offer any incense but sweet
praise to such goddesses as Mrs. Rolt and your humble servant. I saw a
large horn tobacco-box, with Queen Anne’s head upon it, peeping out of
his pocket.” Wherever Mrs. Montagu wended during this autumn of 1745,
she filled her letters with these pen-and-ink sketches of what she saw.
But that eventful year brought more serious duties. In 1745, when the
Jacobites were about to invade England, Mr. Montagu went from London to
York, to aid in raising and arming the people. The Yorkshire gentlemen
acted with great spirit, and stood by their homesteads instead of flying
to London. “Though it gives me uneasiness and anxiety,” wrote the young
wife, “I cannot wish those I love to act otherwise than consistently with
those principles of honour that have always directed their actions.” The
rebellion spoiled the London gaieties. Drums and routs had no longer a
fashionable meaning. “I have not heard of any assemblies since I came to
town; and, indeed, I think people frighten each other so much when they
meet, that there is little pleasure arising from society.... There is
not a woman in England, except Lady Brown, that has a song or tune in
her head, but, indeed, her ladyship is very unhappy at the suspension of
operas.”
The death of Mrs. Montagu’s mother, in the following year, drew from her
a tender and well-deserved tribute of affection in a touching and simple
letter to Mrs. Freind. In 1747, her friend, Mr. Lyttelton, lost his first
wife, and wrote a monody on her, for the public ear. The monody walks on
very high stilts, and occasionally falls and struggles on the ground.
Mrs. Montagu thought it had great merit, and that her friend would be
inconsolable; but Lyttelton brought out, the same year, his “Observations
on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul,” of which Mrs. Montagu was
a diligent reader and a constant eulogist. In less than two years, the
widower left unfinished a prettily begun epitaph to his Lucy, with whom
he had enjoyed six years of conjugal felicity, and married a daughter of
Sir Robert Rich. With her came a life of warfare, followed by a treaty
by which each party agreed to live at peace with, and wide apart from,
the other.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Montagu made friendly progresses to princely mansions in
various parts of the country. She had hearty welcome at all, from lay and
ecclesiastical nobles alike. This did not influence her critical eye. At
Wilton, then and now one of the best examples of an English nobleman’s
residence, she writes: “As to the statues and bustos, they certainly
are very fine, but I think too many. Heroes should not have so many
competitors, nor philosophers so much company; a respectable society may
be increased into a mob. I should, if they were mine, sell half of their
figures to purchase their works, which are, indeed, the images of wise
men.”
A cloud now came, and long rested, between her and the sun of her
happiness. The death, in 1748, of her brother “Tom,” a man of wit, taste,
and judgment, after her own heart; “the man in England for a point of
law,” as Chief Justice Lee remarked; a man who had accomplished much, and
who might have reasonably looked to the highest position, which could be
attained in his branch of the profession, as his own,—the death of such
a man, good, bright, aspiring, and qualified for success, was a loss to
his brilliant sister for which she never found compensation. “As for
this good young man,” she wrote, “I hoped it would rather have been his
business to have grieved for me. Mr. Montagu is most careful of us, and
I cannot, amidst my sorrow, help thanking Heaven for such a friend.” A
letter from her husband in London confirms this statement: “I long to
leave this place, and to be with you now, rather than at a time when you
have less occasion for a friend. Be sure that you are constantly in my
thoughts, and that no accidents of sickness or any other matter can work
any change in me, or make me be with less affection than I have been, my
dearest life, your most obliged and affectionate E. M.”
Compelled, subsequently, to repair to Bath for her health, she despised
no innocent amusement. “I want mechanic helps,” she said, “for my real
happiness, God knows, is lessened; and, though I have many relations
left, I reflect that even this circumstance makes me more liable to
have the same affliction repeated.” Then, after a week or two of
omnivorous reading and friendly intercourse, she writes to the duchess:
“Mrs. Trevanion, Lord Berkley of Stratton’s sister, goes away from us
to-morrow, which I am sorry for; she seems very agreeable and well-bred,
and has a thousand other good qualities that do not abound at our
morning coffee-house, where I meet her. Whist and the noble game of E.
O. employ the evening; three glasses of water, a toasted roll, a Bath
cake, and a cold walk, the mornings.... My physician says three months
will be necessary for me to drink the waters.... I am forced to dine by
myself, not yet being able to bear the smell of what common mortals call
a dinner. As yet I live with the fairies.... But here is another Mrs.
Montagu, who is like me, hath a long nose, pale face, thin cheeks, and
also, I believe, diets with fairies, and she is much better than when she
came, and many people give me the honour of her recovery.”
After returning to Sandleford, she began again to need, or to fancy she
needed, the restoring waters of Tunbridge. To Mrs. Anstey she wrote:
“I may, perhaps, trouble you to seek me some house about Mount
Elphinstone; for, to tell you the truth, I get as far from the busy
haunts of the place as I can; for it agrees neither with my inclination
nor health to be in the midst of what are called the diversions of the
place. An evening assembly in July is rather too warm; and, tell it not
in the regions of politeness, I had rather see a few glowworms on a green
in a warm summer’s evening than belles adorned with brilliants or beaux
bright with clinquant. I cannot be at Tunbridge before the beginning of
July. I am engaged to the nightingale and cuckoo for this month.”
Although continued ill-health kept Mrs. Montagu much in retirement after
she first went to Tunbridge, the Wells had their usual effect. She was
the centre of a circle of admiring friends; and when established for
months together at Tunbridge Wells, her coterie was a thing apart from
those of the Jews, Christians, and Heathens of all classes who crowded
the Pantiles or the assembly-rooms. Her letters sparkle with the figures
that flit through them. Some contemporary ladies of the last century
are thus sharply crayoned: “I think the Miss Allens sensible, and I
believe them good; but I do not think the Graces assisted Lucina at
their birth.... Lady Parker and her two daughters make a very remarkable
figure, and will ruin the poor mad woman of Tunbridge by outdoing her in
dress. Such hats, capuchins, and short sacks as were never seen! One of
the ladies looks like a state bed running upon castors. She has robbed
the valance and tester of a bed for a trimming. They have each of them a
lover. Indeed, as to the dowager, she seems to have no greater joys than
E. O. and a toad-eater can give her.” That word “toad-eater” was still in
its novelty as a slang term. In 1742, Walpole calls Harry Vane, afterward
Earl of Darlington, “Pulteney’s toad-eater.” In 1744, Sarah Fielding, in
“David Simple,” speaks of it as “a new word.” To Mr. Montagu, his wife
thus wrote:
“MY DEAREST:—I had, this morning, the pleasure of your letter,
which was in every respect agreeable, and in none more so than
your having fixed your time for going to Sandleford, as I shall
the sooner hope to see my best and dearest friend here.... I
shall wish I could procure wings to bring me to you on the
terrace at Sandleford, where I have passed so many happy hours
in the conversation of the best of companions and kindest of
friends; and I hope you will there recollect one who followed
your steps as constantly as your shadow. I am still following
them, for there are few moments in which my thoughts are not
employed in you, and ever in the best and tenderest manner....
The charms of Sandleford are strongly in my remembrance, but
still I would have you find that they want your little friend.”
From the gaieties of Tunbridge Mrs. Montagu went to the residence of a
sage, Mr. Gilbert West. She found less pleasure among the sculpture and
paintings of Wilton than under Gilbert West’s modest roof at Wickham,
in whose master she saw “that miracle of the moral world, a Christian
poet;” and in Mrs. West, something more than a tenth Muse or a fourth
Grace. To conversations with West are attributed the deeper convictions
of the truth of revealed religion which Mrs. Montagu entertained
henceforward. She did not cease to be cheerful because on one point she
was more serious. In a cottage which she hired near West’s house, she
playfully offered to her lady visitors wholesome brown bread, sincerity,
and red cow’s milk. With tastes that could find gratification wherever
she might be, Mrs. Montagu was one of the happiest of women. Most happy,
not when she was queen, or one of the queens, of society, but when she
was among her books. She was an indefatigable reader. She reflected as
deeply as she read carefully. The literature of the world was known to
her, in the original text, or in translations, of which she would read
three or four of the same work; and, if she had a preference, she would
give an excellent reason for it. Her criticisms on the works she read are
always admirable, whether she treats of a Thucydides in a French dress,
of Cowley’s imperfections as an amatory poet, of Melmoth’s “Pliny’s
Letters,” or of writers like Richardson, whose “Clarissa Harlowe” is
analysed in one of the printed letters with a skill and insight that
might be envied by the best writers of the times that have succeeded to
her own. Fictitious and real personages, she dissects both with the hand
of an operator who loves the work in which he excels. She is equally
great when treating of the heroes of antiquity, or of the notorious Mrs.
Pilkington, whose fie! fie! ways seem to warrant her slapping her with
her fan; but whose talent, pleasant audacity, and suffering, soften Mrs.
Montagu’s heart and lead her to gently kiss both cheeks of the erring
Lætitia.
At the close of 1750, her brother Robert went in search of fortune to
China, where, however, he found a grave. In the following year, she
writes to her husband, who was on private business in the north: “I have
sat so constantly in Lady Sandwich’s chimney-corner, I can give you
little account of the world.” She playfully says to her absent lord:
“I am glad you are so far tired of your monastic life as to think of
returning to the secular state of a husband and member of Parliament.”
She adds: “You have too many virtues for the contracted life of a monk,
and, I thank my stars, are bound in another vow, one more fit for you, as
it is social, and not selfish.” From Lady Sandwich’s chimney-corner, and
from much study, mixed with every-day duties, it is pleasant to see her
surrounded by the Ladies Stanhope and Mrs. Trevor, who were adjusting her
dress when she went as the “queen-mother” to the subscription masquerade.
The dress was “white satin, with fine new point for tuckers, kerchief
and ruffles; pearl necklace and earrings, and pearls and diamonds on the
head, and my hair curled after the Vandyke picture.” Mr. Montagu was so
pleased with her appearance that, said the lady, “he has made me lay by
my dress, to be painted in when I see Mr. Hoare again.” Better than her
own presentment is her picture of the too famous Miss Chudleigh at this
masquerade: “Miss Chudleigh’s dress, or rather undress, was remarkable.
She was Iphigenia for the sacrifice; but so naked, the high priest might
easily inspect the entrails of the victim. The maids of honour (not of
maids the strictest) were so offended, they would not speak to her.”
It was with happy facility Mrs. Montagu turned from the studies she
loved and the duties which she came to consider as her privilege, to
the gayest scenes of life. “Though,” say she, “the education of women
is always too frivolous, I am glad mine had such a qualification of the
serious as to fit me for the relish of the _belles bagatelles_.” No one
better understood the uses of money. When her husband was in the north
furthering his coal interests, she wrote to him: “Though the coldness
of our climate may set coals in a favourable light, I shall be glad to
see as many of them turned to the precious metal as possible.... I have
a very good opinion of Mr. Montagu and his wife. I like the prospect of
these golden showers, and so I congratulate you upon them; but, most
of all, I congratulate you upon the disposition of mind which made you
put the account of them in a postscript.” The last words of her own
letters to her husband were invariably affectionate, with a sentiment of
submission that has a very old-fashioned air about it. For example:
“Every tender wish and grateful thought wait on you, and may you ever as
kindly accept the only gift in my power, the faithful love and sincere
affection of your most grateful and obedient wife, E. M.” Again, in
September, 1751, from Tunbridge Wells: “To your prayer that we may never
be so long separated, I can, with much zealous fervour, say Amen!”