Mrs. Montagu respected her gentle husband’s memory in the way he would
have approved—by attending to the business which his death left on her
hands. She withdrew to Sandleford, not to cover her face, but to woo
the fresh air. She then travelled to Denton Castle, to plunge into
occupation, and to show her steward that her recent grief had not
rendered her insensible to her interests. From the castle, or hall (it is
called by both names), she wrote on July the 10th, 1775, the following,
not at all woebegone, but sensible, letter to her sister-in-law:
“... I know your good-nature will have suggested to you, and accepted as
an excuse for my long delay of writing, the various business which my
present situation occasions. My long and very melancholy confinement much
affected my health and spirits. The fresh air and constant exercise at
Sandleford proved of great service to me, and encouraged me to venture on
a much longer journey. On the 30th of June, I set out on my expedition
to Northumberland, and, on the 3d of July, at noon, I got as far as my
estate at Burniston. Exactly opposite to some of my land, there is a
tolerable inn. I eat a hasty dinner, and taking my steward with me, went
over as many of the farms as I could that night, and sent invitations to
my tenants to dine with me the next day.
“Mine Host, by sending to the neighbouring markets, assembled together
sirloins of beef, legs of mutton, loins of veal, chickens, ducks, and
green peas, which, with ham, pigeon-pie, tarts, and custard, fill’d up
every chink of table, and, I believe, of stomach. Unfortunately, there
was not a room large enough to contain all my good friends, so the women
and the young lasses dined with me, and the men with the steward.
“As Mr. Montagu had been always a very good landlord, I thought it right
to show the good people they would have a kind landlady, and therefore I
would not pass by without taking notice of them. Several of them enquired
after the young gentlemen that came from Horton to Allerthorpe. I assured
them Mr. William Robinson was a profound divine, and Mr. Charles a sage
counsellor at law. They rejoyced that Master Willie was happy in a good
and rich wife, and had three fine Bairns. In the evening I went on to
Darlington, where part of my estates come down to the turnpike road. I
stopped at a tenant’s who has a pretty large house, desired them to dress
a dinner the next day for me and my tenants.... Darlington was rather
too far for the women to reach. I lay at Darlington, and early ye next
day went over to this Estate, and passed the whole day there with great
pleasure. A fine, rapid river, woody bank, and some of the most stately
oaks and beech in Yorkshire, would recommend it sufficiently to the eye
that does not behold it with the complacency of a proprietor, and you
will believe it loses nothing of its charms by that circumstance. After
dinner I wandered again about the place, visited most of my tenants’
houses, and did not take leave of Eryholme (?) till night drew her sable
curtain, which gave me occasion to recollect that the day of my life must
soon close, and all these things be hid from me; but if I make a proper
use of them while they are mine, it is all I ought to be solicitous for,
as I am not amongst those unhappy Persons whose views are bounded to the
short day of human life.
“I was much pleased with all my tenants in Yorkshire. They are a very
different sort of people from the farmers in ye south. They are alert in
their business and interests, and far from the stupid state of savage.
At the same time, they do not ape the manners nor imitate the dress of
the fine folks. The farmer’s wife spins her husband’s shirts, and the
daughters make butter and cheese at the hours our southern women work
catgut and dress wire caps. Some of my tenants have been about fifty
years on the estate; have married their sons to girls worth many hundred
pounds, and have got their sons into their farms, and they are retired
on a decent subsistance, gained by many years of frugal industry. They
all pay duely on their rent-days. No complaint, on the part of the
tenants, of poverty; or, on the landlord, of arrears. The land is in
good condition, and by having been long settled, they have acquired an
affection for the farm they are placed upon, and will always give as
good a rent as it deserves; and they know the nature of the undertaking
too well to give more. It is a folly to let farms too cheap; and it is
both wickedness and folly to let them too dear. This year has been
particularly unfavourable to my tenants, as the estates are chiefly
meadow and pasture; and yet, though these estates had been lately raised,
they did not ask any indulgence or favour. They said there had not been
such a dry season these fifty years; and, with great good-humour, said
they hoped the next would be better. Indeed, the drought is terrible for
the dairy-farms. Hay here will be at an excessive price. The coal-owners
who are not provident with stocks of it will be at vast expenses. I have
always two years’ stock in hand. The further north, the greater the
drought. I believe there has not been any material rain since the 18th
of March. Cows there (and here) are obliged to be driven to the rivers
to drink. Our little streams are all dry’d. My cows go every day to the
Tyne to get drink. The Tyne Vale, where I live, used to look green and
pleasant. The whole country is now a brown crust, with here and there a
black hole of a coal-pit, so that I cannot boast of the beauty of our
prospects. As to Denton, it has mightily the air of an ant-hill: a vast
many black animals for ever busy. Near fourscore families are employ’d
on my concerns here. Boys work in the colliery from seven years of age.
I used to give my colliery people a feast when I came hither, but as the
good souls (men and women) are very apt to get drunk, and, when drunk,
very joyful, and sing, and dance, and hollow, and whoop, I dare not, on
this occasion, trust their discretion to behave with proper gravity; so I
content myself with killing a fat beast once a week, and sending to each
family, once, a piece of meat. It will take time to get round to all my
black friends. I had fifty-nine boys and girls to sup in the courtyard
last night on rice pudding and boil’d beef; to-morrow night I shall have
as many. It is very pleasant 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. Some have more children than their labour
will cloathe, and on such I shall bestow some apparel. Some benefits of
this sort, and a general kind behaviour, gives to the coal-owner, as well
as to them, a good deal of advantage. Our pitmen are afraid of being
turned off, and that fear keeps an order and regularity amongst them that
is very uncommon.
“The general coal trade and my concerns in it are, at present, in a
thriving way, and if all goes on so well two years longer, and I live
till then, I will establish a spinning, knitting, and sewing-school for
ye girls. When I say establish, I mean for my life, for one cannot be
charitable longer. When the night cometh, no man can work. Charitable
institutions soon fall into neglect and abuse. I made a visit at
Burniston to my Uncle Robinson’s almshouses. I gave each of the old
people a guinea. I have sometimes sent them money; for what my uncle
appointed near a hundred years ago is hardly a subsistence. Indeed, they
would starve if they had not some helps.
“I have not been one moment ill since I set out on my journey. I walk
about my farms, and down to my colliery, like a country gentlewoman of
the last century. I rejoyce in the great improvement of my land here
by good cultivation, but I do not like my tenants so well as those in
Yorkshire. We are here a little too rustick, and speak a dialect that
is dreadful to the auditor’s nerves; and as to the colliery, I cannot
yet reconcile myself to seeing my fellow creatures descend into the dark
regions of the earth; tho’, to my great comfort, I hear them singing in
the pits.... If I did not think you kindly interested yourself, I would
not trouble you with this long history of myself.
“I had the pleasure of seeing my neice in great good-humour, beauty, and
health; and these are the fairest features of youth. Long may they dimple
and bloom on her cheek. I approve much of my little nephews going to a
school of a private sort at first. I think boys of a gentle and bashful
disposition are discouraged at being thrust at once into the prodigious
racket of a great school....
“I think my sister Scott greatly mended by James’s powders. I was very
uneasy about her before she went to Bath, but Doctor Moisy has done great
things for her.... I have not seen her look so well for some years.... I
expect Doctor Beattie and his wife every day. I propose to return to the
south the end of this month, in order to take some weeks at Tunbridge....
I believe I shall pass the winter in the south of France, but have not
yet determined, as all human projects are uncertain; but it is my wish to
do so.”
Illness delayed the realisation of this wish. Mrs. Montagu was in Hill
Street in November, receiving only a few of her most intimate friends.
“I called on Mrs. Montagu,” writes Mrs. Boscawen to Mrs. Delany, in the
above month; “only Lady Townshend was there, and in her best way, very
chatty.”
In 1775-76, among the visitors at Bath occasionally seen by Mrs. Scott,
was a little lame Scottish boy, between four and five years old. When
he had bathed in the morning, got through a reading-lesson at an old
dame’s near his lodging on the Parade, and had a drive over the Downs
with the author of “Douglas” and Mrs. Home, the boy was sometimes to be
seen in the boxes of the old theatre. On one such occasion, witnessing
“As You Like It,” his interest was so great that, in the middle of the
wrestling-scene in the first act, he called out, “A’n’t they brothers?”
The boy, when he had become a man, said in his autobiography, “A few
weeks’ residence at home convinced me, who had till then been an only
child in the house of my grandfather, that a quarrel between brothers
was a very natural event.” This boy’s name was Walter Scott. Much of the
other company at Bath was then about to withdraw from the stage which the
boy was to occupy with such glory to himself, and to the lasting delight
of his countrymen.
The year 1778 opens with the following letter to Mrs. Robinson: “... I
wish I could thank you for your letter in as fair characters as my neice
returned hers for the books. I have ostentatiously shewed her letter to
many of my friends. My sister and I have not let my brother share in
the honour; for we confess no Robinson ever wrote so well; so that she
inherits this, with many other good things, from her Mama. If she can
compose a sermon as well as her brother, and writes it in her own hand,
it will retrieve the honour of manuscript-sermons, which of late years
have sold cheaper than even any other goods....
“The town is very empty, and I know not how we who are here contrive to
be as much engaged as at other seasons. The Bath has been very full of
persons of distinction.
“Lord Villiers (the prince of maccaronies) gave, a few days ago, a play
in a Barn. He acted Lord Townley; Miss Hodges, Lady Townley. I suppose
the merit of this entertainment was, that people were to go many miles,
in frost and snow, to see in a barn what would have been every way better
at the theatre in Drury Lane or Covent Garden. There was a ball also
prepared after the play, but the barn had so benumbed the vivacity of the
company, and the beaux’ feet were so cold, and the noses of the belles
were so blue, many retired to a warm bed at the inn at Henley, instead of
partaking of the dance. M. Texier acted M. Pigmaleon, and Miss Hodges the
Statue. Modern nymphs are so warm and yielding, that less art than that
of M. Texier might have animated the nymph. My neice will never stand
still to be made love to before a numerous audience. Miss Hodges’ father
is lately dead; her mother is dying. How many indecorums the girl has
brought together into one petite peice!
“I dare not send you any publick news, as my brothers are engaged to the
Congress and American Independency.
“I think the fine world goes on as usual at this time of the year.
‘Caractacus’ has succeeded very well on the stage, tho’ it is more
calculated for the study than the theatre.
“Our French ambassador pleases all people, of course, by his conversation
and manners. By his splendour of living and polite attentions at table,
he charms the great vulgar; so that he is in general esteem, and, indeed,
deserves to be so. He dined with us ye other day, and I am to dine with
him on Sunday. Mme. de Noailles cannot come to me till she is brought to
bed. She is extremely sensible and agreable.
“Lord Granby very thoughtlessly carried his lady to Brussels, on a jaunt
of amusement, soon after she was brought to bed, and, by getting cold,
she is most dangerously ill. She is much better; but the duchess dowager
is so uneasy about her, I am afraid we shall not be able to dissuade her
from going to Brussels, tho’ this weather makes sea voyages and, indeed,
land journeys very terrible.
“... My brother Charles told me the good folks in Kent were angry with me
or your consort for making a justice of peace of Doctor Pennington; but,
indeed, I never heard the doctor had an ambition to be of the worshipful
quorum till my brother mentioned it. As it is not Greek and Hebrew, but
lands and tenements and such solid property, which give a title to be
justice of peace, I should not in any way have assisted the doctor’s
project, if I had had it in my power. I am so far from being a favourer
of the Alliance of Church and State, I think the further they keep
asunder the better—a two-edged sword is a terrible weapon.”
In the summer of 1776, Mrs. Montagu was to be seen in Paris, welcomed
to the first circles as a happy sample of an accomplished English lady.
Voltaire, then in his dotage, took the opportunity of her presence to
send to the Academy a furious paper against Shakespeare. The lady had a
seat of honour among the audience while the vituperative paper was read.
When the reading came to an end, Suard remarked to her, “I think, madam,
you must be rather sorry at what you have just heard!” The English lady,
Voltaire’s old adversary, promptly replied, “I, sir! not at all. I am not
one of M. Voltaire’s friends!” She subsequently wrote: “I felt the same
indignation and scorn, at the reading of Voltaire’s paper, as I should
have done if I had seen harlequin cutting capers and striking his wooden
sword on the monument of a Cæsar or Alexander the Great.”
In October, after her return to Hill Street, she thus described to
Garrick the influence exercised over her by French tragedy and French
tragedians:
“... Mrs. M—— cannot help intimating that she never felt such pity and
terror, which it is the business of tragedy to excite, as at the French
theatre, where M. le Kain roars like a mad bull, and Molé rolls his eyes,
and has all the appearance of a man in a phrensy ... persons of real
taste seem convinced of the false taste prevalent in their tragedies.”
The “flutter of Paris” was almost more than her strength could bear. The
idea of its being succeeded by the “racket of London” alarmed her. She
avoided the “racket,” and recovered from the “flutter,” by spending a
season of rest at Sandleford, where she dreamed over Voltaire’s address
against Shakespeare, became a rural cottager, feeder of pigs, cultivator
of potatoes, or pretended to be so, and “did idleness.” “There is as much
an idleness to be done,” she wrote to Garrick, “as there is a darkness
that may be visible, and is, like the other, a state and a condition, and
a very pleasant and gentle one, when the working-day of bustle and hurry
is over.... I came to do idleness, and it is not all done.”
The visit to Paris is alluded to among an “infinite deal” of other
subjects, in a letter to her brother William, dated Sandleford, June 9,
1777.
“It would be with much greater pleasure I should take up my pen to tell
you I am at Sandleford, if I could flatter myself with the hope of
alluring you to it: you would find me in the character of a housewife.
The meagre condition of the soil forbids me to live in the state of a
shepherdess-queen, which I look upon as the highest rural dignity. The
plough, the harrow, and the spade remind us that the golden age is past,
and subsistence depends on labour; prosperity on industrious application.
A little of the clay of which you complain, would do us a great deal
of good. I should be glad to take my dominions here from the goddess
Ceres to give them to the god Pan, and I think you will agree with me
in that taste; for wherever he presides, there Nature’s republick is
establish’d. The ox in his pasture is as free and as much at his ease
as the proprietor of the soil, and the days of the first are not more
shorten’d to feed the intemperance of others, than the rich landlord’s by
the indulgence of his own. I look upon the goddess Ceres as a much less
impartial and universally kind deity. The antients thought they did her
honour by ascribing to her the invention of laws. We must consider her
also as the mother of lawsuits and all the divisions, dissentions, and
distinctions among mankind. Naturalists tell us all the oaks that have
ever been, were contain’d in the first acorn. I believe we may affirm,
by the same mode of reasoning, that all arts and sciences were contain’d
in the first ear of corn. To possess lasting treasure and exclusive
prosperity, has been the great business and aim of man. At Sandleford you
will find us busy in the care of arable land. By two little purchases
Mr. Montagu made here, my farm contains six hundred acres. As I now
consider it an amazonian land, I affect to consider the women as capable
of assisting in agriculture as much as the men. They weed my corn, hoe my
turnips, and set my Pottatoes; and by these means promote the prosperity
of their families. A landlord, where the _droit du seigneur_ prevailed,
would not expose the complexions of his female vassals to the sun. I must
confess my amazons hardly deserve to be accounted of the fair sex; and
they have not the resources of pearl-powder and rouge when the natural
lilies and roses have faded.
“You are very polite in supposing my looks not so homely as I described
them; but tho’ my health is good, the faded roses do not revive, and I
assure you I am always of the colour of _la feuille-morte_. My complexion
has long fallen into the sere and yellow leaf; and I assure you one is
as much warned against using art, by seeing the ladies of Paris, as the
Spartan youths by observing the effects of intoxicating liquors on the
Helots. The vast quantity of rouge worn there by the fine ladies makes
them hideous. As I always imagine one is less looked at by wearing the
uniform of the society one lives in, I allowed my frizeuse to put on
whatever rouge was usually worn. But a few years ago, I believe, my
vanity could not have submitted to such a disfiguration. As soon as I
got to Dover, I return’d to my former complexion. I own I think I could
make that complexion a little better by putting on a little rouge; but
at my age, any appearance of solicitude about complexion is absurd, and
therefore I remain where age and former ill health have brought me;
and rejoice that I enjoy the comforts of health, tho’ depriv’d of its
pleasing looks.
[Illustration: “I allowed my frizeuse to put on whatever rouge was
usually worn”
_Photogravure after the painting by Girardet_]
“I am very glad to find my neice has recovered her health. I was much
afraid of a consumption for her.... It has given me great pleasure to
hear your health is pretty good, ... but if St. Anthony’s fire should
menace, remember that his distemper, as well as his temptation, is most
dangerous in a desart or wilderness, and repair to the city of Bath. Tho’
I say this, I was never in my life more sensible of the charms of rural
life and the blessings of tranquility, but at the same time I am sensible
that my relish of them is much quickened by having been for a twelvemonth
past in a very different mode of life. I regret very much that the
emperor did not come to Paris last summer, tho’ I suppose, among the
French nobility, I met with men as polite; among the academicians, with
men more learned, ingenious, and witty; yet, as I am a Virtuoso in what
relates to the human character, and love to see how it appears in various
situations, I should have seen an emperor, as an emperor is an unique
in human society at present; and the Austrian family has always had a
strongly-marked personal character. All my French correspondents assure
me that his Imperial Majesty veils his dignity on all occasions under
the character of Count de Falkenstein. He sleeps at his ambassador’s,
but dines with the two noblemen of his Court who attend him at an _Hôtel
garnie_. When he goes to Versailles to visit his sister, he refuses
to lodge in the palace, and lodges at a bagnio. He goes sometimes to
Versailles in his coach; at others, in a fiacre, or walks. The French,
who are much struck with everything that is new, are full of wonder
and respect at the publick spectacles. They give a thunder of applause
whenever he appears. In private society, his Majesty is easy and affable,
and, by what I can understand, glad to show he is more conversant in
the common affairs of common life than princes usually are. The objects
of his curiosity and the subjects of his discourse are such as seem to
indicate he is a man of sense. Whether he has talents for empire, time
must show. Without understanding the doctrine of chances as well as
Demeri (?), one may pronounce the chances are nearly infinite he has not.
I am glad, however, princes begin to travel. One has a chance of meeting
these itinerant monarchs somewhere; and they amuse, at least, as well as
stuff’d eagles or lions in a museum. I was in great hopes that you would
have come to town to hear Lord Chatham, in support of his motion, the
other day.”
In the following month, the letter below was written at Sandleford, July
the 9th, 1777:
“... As she” (one of Mrs. Montagu’s nieces) “was not the worse for the
ball, I am glad she partook of the pleasure of it. If she resembles a
certain Miss Robinson who lived in the neighbourhood some years ago,
she will reckon a ball amongst the first enjoyments of human life.
Considering her state of health, I do not know whether it was very
prudent in her brother to carry her there, but I am sure it was very
amiable; the error should always be rather on the side of indulgence. We
should consider that, though there will be dancing as long as the world
endures, it is but a short time that an individual will dance.
“... The warmth of the weather prevented my seeing the ‘School for
Scandal,’ but every one agrees with you to commend it. Of all the vices
of the human disposition, a love of scandal and detraction is the most
contemptible. It is now got from the gossips’ tea-table to the press. The
scriblers weekly let fly their pop-guns at the Duchess of Devonshire’s
feathers. Her grace is innocent, good-humoured, and beautifull; but these
adders are blind and deaf, and cannot be charmed. However, the scriblers
are all of them hungry; but the circulators of scandal, who have neither
hunger for their excuse, nor wit to give it a seasoning, are sad vermin,
and I am glad Mr. Sheridan has so well exposed them.
“The uncertainty of human life is certainly a discouragement to every
enterprize, but to none less, I think, than to building a house. If it is
a good one, there will be somebody to live in it and enjoy its comforts;
if otherwise, its inconveniences will not make one uneasy in the tomb. To
undertake a trust which, by not fulfilling, may be detrimental to some
person; to bring children into the world when it is too late in life
to hope to see them educated and established, are things about which a
prudent person may hesitate; but even in this case, we can never do
wrong when we follow the general principles by which the author of our
nature has intended we should be directed. The shortness and uncertainty
of life would discourage all great undertakings; and, as the human race
is to continue, providence has ordered we should act as if we were to
live for ever.
“We have had a series of the worst weather I ever knew since I came
here, at this time of year. Sir William Temple says, the three greatest
blessings are health, peace, and fine weather. The first two are the
most important and I have enjoyed them in so perfect a degree, that I
have well endured the want of the third. Doctor Robinson’s ‘History of
America’ has amused me by my fireside, when wind and rain have combined
against my amusements abroad. A long deprivation of the quiet joys of
rural life gave me a quick relish for them. If I had staid in town, the
great numbers of foreigners who have lately arrived there, who have all
brought letters of recommendation to me, or who would have been naturally
introduced by my previous acquaintance with them abroad, must have taken
up much of my time and attention.
“Lord Shelburne called here the other day to invite me to Bowood, to
meet l’Abbé Raynal, who I knew at Paris, and two French countesses who
brought letters to me from some of the _beaux esprits_ there; so to them
I shall have an opportunity of expressing my regret at being out of
town. But there is a Spanish Baron de Castile and some others who were
also recommended to me, who I fear will depart with a bad opinion of
my hospitality; for, twenty to one, my English porter in Hill Street
could not make them understand, when they delivered their letters, that
I was in the country. At present my scheme is to go to London for the
melancholy pleasure of taking leave of the Lord Primate and my friend
Mrs. Vesey.... When these friends leave London, I believe I shall set
out for Mount Edgecumbe, having long promised Lady Edgecumbe a visit,
and shall carry Montagu with me, who is a schoolfellow of Mr. Edgecumbe,
and is much invited.... Mr. and Mrs. Vesey are going to Mr. Burke’s, at
Beaconsfield, who has kindly asked me to be of the party; but I shall
be a good while absent from Sandleford, and have many domestick matters
to settle before I depart. I had a most polite, entertaining letter the
other day from my Brother Robinson. I wish we two honest farmers lived
nearer together with brotherly love and rural sincerity. I flatter myself
we should be very happy; but in this short life, how short a time does
one enjoy the friends one loves.
“... In spite of my cure and Doctor Fothergill’s skill, I have made but
a poor progress towards health.... My nerves mend, but I cannot better
bear the noise of a cannon now than I could the report of a pistol when I
first return’d to Hill Street. My doctor keeps me very quiet. He will not
allow me to see the wise, the witty, or the fashionable world. I have not
dined below stairs these four or five days. The doctor has to-day begun
to try a new medicine; but I have as little faith in doctors of physick
as some of my family have in doctors of divinity. I imagine my fever at
Canterbury was the influenza, which has lately raged so much. It leaves
people very weak, and much affects the nerves. Some have lost their
speech for a few days; others their hearing. My Northumberland steward
and my brother who left London when I did, were both taken ill on the
road. I believe fatigue of preparation for my foreign journey did me some
harm; but I believe my principal illness was owing to contagion in the
air. My servants have all been sick. None of my family have escaped but
Miss Gregory and Matt.
“The patriots are rather in despair of changing the ministry. This may
damp their ambition, but will keep their patriotism in its vigour. There
is something so mortal to patriotism in a place, that one can never wish
those who have assumed that character to sacrifice it to the emoluments
of an employment....
“Mr. Burke is kept from the House of Commons by the death of his
father-in-law. Lady Mary Somerset has recovered her health, and her
nuptials will soon be celebrated. Hymen may exult, for the pair are
lovely. Miss Gregory often spends the evening with Lady Mary and Lady
Betty. As Lord Granby is of the party, you may suppose Lady Betty and
Miss Gregory attend most to each other.... Tell my neice I have not
forgotten her doll, but have not been well enough to accomplish an affair
of such importance as dressing a lady. My nephews both shall come with
the doll, thus teaching by allegory, that men are to be learned, and
ladies elegant.”
In Mrs. Scott’s letter which now follows, the details refer to the death
of the brother most dearly loved by both his sisters—Morris Robinson,
who married Jane, daughter of John Greenland, of Lovelace. His two sons,
Morris and Matthew, succeeded, in the order indicated, to the barony of
Rokeby. Matthew was at this time domiciled with Mrs. Montagu, whose name
he had taken as her acknowledged heir.
Mrs. Scott to Mrs. Robinson. “_November 16, 1777._ ... The world has
indeed become a very different scene to me since we parted. It has lost
the greatest charm it had for me. The loss is not only a brother, but, as
Solomon expresses it, that friend that was more than a brother, one with
whom I had lived full forty years in the tenderest affection, in the most
perfect harmony; never interrupted even by a mere dispute, except on his
first connexion with his present widow. It is totally irreparable. I own
I loved nothing so well; and though I am not so new to misfortune as not
to have learnt to bear patiently, and to see, while I lament the loss of
a blessing, that I ought to be grateful for having so long enjoyed one so
uncommon; yet the sense of it must ever lie a sorrow at my heart. There
was a loveliness of nature in him that I never saw equalled.... I do not
think he had a fault, except the weakness of complying with one who was
not satisfied with that degree of expense which was proper for them; and
for that he might make the same excuse that the great Duke of Marlborough
did when told he was too complying a husband: ‘Friend, can a man live
without sleep?’ His own disposition did not lead him either to vanity or
extravagance. I confess, therefore, he was guilty of a weakness, but it
was one founded on the extreme sweetness of his temper; an unfortunate
effect of a most amiable cause. However, she to whom it is owing is now
much to be pitied. She would not believe what he frequently told her,
but is now sadly awakened to the truth of it.”
In the subjoined fragment of a letter from Mrs. Montagu, reference is
made to the Scotch thief and deserter, John Aitkin, the incendiary,
otherwise known as Jack the painter, who was hanged, in 1777, for
attempting to set fire to Portsmouth Dockyard and shipping.
“... I was mortified to hear the dreadful box which was intended to
destroy Portsmouth was made at the respectable city of Canterbury. Mr.
Silas Deane will make no very respectable figure when John Painter’s
story is produced in public. If Doctor Franklin had been an incendiary,
he would have been a more dangerous man than Mr. Deane; for you know
he can bottle up lightning; but philosophers are honester men than
politicians.... Lord Temple has been very useful in getting this horrid
affair of John the painter brought to light.... Doctor Dodd’s affair
is almost forgot. Some suppose that for want of some formality on his
trial, he will escape hanging. Lord Chesterfield has behaved with great
kindness to the doctor’s brother, who is a worthy man, and to Mrs. Dodd’s
nephew....
“The match between Lord Powis and Miss Warren is not to take place, the
young lady having expressed a predilection for Lord Bulkely, who is to
have her.
“Lady Strathmore’s conduct at Newcastle, in the election, is, perhaps,
not generally known. Her ladyship sits all day in the window at a
public-house, from whence she sometimes lets fall some jewels or
trinkets, which voters pick up, and then she gives them money for
restoring them—a new kind of offering bribes. What little interest I
have I gave to Sir John Trevelyan, who, we hope, will carry the election
by a good majority. My steward tells me he is very weary of the bustle
and treating the voters; and that the town is in a wild uproar. Mr.
Stoney Bowes has sold £5,000 a year of his lady’s income for her life
to procure himself £40,000. I believe this gentleman will revenge the
wrongs Lord Strathmore suffered from her ladyship. It is said Sir Thomas
Robinson died worth above £10,000, but it is supposed he has left it to
his natural daughter.”
Lady Strathmore had the misfortune to be an heiress, Mary Eleanor Bowes.
Lord Strathmore took her, her money, and her name, in 1767. In nine
years he was removed by death; his widow soon after married Mr. Stoney,
an Irish heiress-hunter, who adopted the name of Bowes, and thoroughly
avenged the wrongs and sufferings of the first husband. But Stoney
Bowes was sorely mauled in the cruel and scandalous struggle. It is a
disgraceful story, from which the reader may well turn to a few plain
lines from Mrs. Scott, in a fragment of a letter of this date: “I shall
be very glad of my niece’s company on her way to Whitelands, and if I can
find out any amusement for her, she shall have it. Plays, which I think
are the best, it is so difficult for those to get places at, who do not
give largely to the box-keepers, that I am discouraged from attempting,
by having no hopes of success (but I shall try when my niece comes), tho’
I feel no degradation to my dignity from sitting in a front box, and like
it just as well as the side, if not further back than the second row. I
went with my sister to ‘Percy,’ and that is the only one I have seen.”
The side boxes ranked then as the orchestra stalls do now—the most
fashionable, but among the very worst seats in the house. Mrs. Montagu,
in the letter opening the next chapter, takes her correspondent to houses
of a more agreeable quality.