Part 17

“I am forced to go back to former ages for my companions; Cicero and Plutarch’s heroes are my only company. I cannot extract the least grain of entertainment out of the good family I am with; my best friends among the living are a colony of rooks who have settled themselves in a grove by my window. They wake me early in the morning, for which I am obliged to them for some hours of reading, and some moments of reflection, of which they are the subject. I have not yet discovered the form of their government, but I imagine it is democratical. There seems an equality of power and property, and a wonderful agreement of opinion. I am apt to fancy them wise for the same reason I have thought some men and some books so, because they are solemn, and because I do not understand them. If I continue here long, I shall grow a good naturalist. I have applied myself to nursing chickens, and have been forming the manners of a young calf, but I find it a very dull scholar.”

At last, Sarah Robinson was pronounced convalescent; and the sisters, who were devoted to one another, were permitted to have an interview, in the open air, at a distance of six feet apart. Soon after, all fear of infection being gone, Elizabeth bid adieu to Hayton and its inmates (not forgetting the rook republic) and returned home.

Miss Robinson was not of a susceptible nature. There is reason to believe that, during her stay in London, she had several sighing swains at her feet. There is mention too, in one of her letters, of a certain clownish squire, a visitor at Hayton, who complimented her “with all the force of rural gallantry.” But this gentleman she could only liken to a calf, and his attentions were received with polite indifference. Indeed, on the subject of marriage, she had decided opinions.

“When I marry,” was her written declaration, “I do not intend to enlist entirely under the banner of Cupid or Plutus, but take prudent consideration, and decent inclination, for my advisers. I like a coach and six extremely; but a strong apprehension of repentance would not suffer me to accept it from many that possess it.”

A suitor of an approved type soon presented himself. In the person of Edward Montagu, Esquire, the main requirements seemed combined. He was of good birth, being a grandson of the first Lord Sandwich: he was rich, and had prospects of increased wealth some day. He had a place in Yorkshire, another in Berkshire, and a house in town. He represented Huntingdon in Parliament. _Au reste_, he was a courteous gentleman, grave in aspect and demeanor, and some thirty years her senior. It may be added that he was a mathematician of distinction, happiest when alone pursuing his studies.

In August 1742, being then twenty-two, Elizabeth Robinson became Mrs. Montagu. It was not without a flutter of anxiety that she took even this prudent step, but the sequel showed that she had chosen wisely. A more generous, indulgent husband she could not have found. “He has no desire of power but to do good,” was her report, after some experience of his temper, “and no use of it but to make happy.” She suffered a heavy bereavement, two years afterwards, in the loss of an infant boy, her only child. This affected her health, and we hear of frequent visits paid by her to Tunbridge Wells to drink the waters. Here is a picture of the folks she encountered on the Pantiles:

“Tunbridge seems the parliament of the world, where every country and every rank has its representative; we have Jews of every tribe, and Christian people of all nations and conditions. Next to some German, whose noble blood might entitle him to be Grand Master of Malta, sits a pin-maker’s wife from Smock Alley; pickpockets, who are come to the top of their profession, play with noble dukes at brag.”

The letters of Mrs. Montagu have been compared with those of her kinswoman by marriage, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to the disadvantage of the latter. Of the two, Lady Mary is the livelier and wittier on paper, but her writings are disfigured by a coarseness which, with the other’s taste, she might have avoided. Mrs. Montagu is seen at her best when addressing intimate friends. Her style is then easy and natural, and the good things that drop from her pen are worth picking up; but it is another affair when she writes to a stranger, especially one whom she intends to dazzle with her learning. She then drags in gods and goddesses to adorn her pages, uses metaphor to straining, and moralises at wearisome length.

The Montagus, though living in perfect harmony, afforded each other little companionship. When at Sandleford, their favorite residence near Newbury, in Berkshire, Mr. Montagu was all day long shut up in his study. His wife was thrown on her own resources for amusement. With country neighbors often stupid, and oftener rough, she had nothing in common. It is just possible that she felt the winged fiend _Ennui_ hovering over her. Some remarks addressed to a correspondent on the necessity of occupation give that impression:

“It is better to pass one’s life _à faire des riens, qu’ à rien faire_. Do but do something; the application to it will make it appear important, and the being the doer of it laudable, so that one is sure to be pleased one’s self. To please others is a task so difficult, one may never attain it, and perhaps not so necessary that one is obliged to attempt it.”

To please others was no such difficult task for her, and she must have known it. Cultivated society was the element in which she was made to move. She was always glad when the time arrived to get into her postchaise, and roll over the fifty-six miles that lay between Sandleford and her house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square. This habitation was at once stately and convenient; one room was furnished in the Chinese style: the walls were lively with pagodas, willow-trees, and simpering celestials. Here she collected around her the witty and the wise. Her _salon_ quickly became the fashion. We find her on one occasion apologizing to a lady for not answering her letter, and explaining that, on the previous day, “the Chinese room was filled by a succession of people from eleven in the morning till eleven at night.” She is said to have introduced the custom—which did not however take permanent root—of giving mid-day breakfasts. Madame du Boccage, a lady of eminence in the French literary world, who happened to be in England in 1750, gives a description of one of them in a letter to her sister Madame Duperron. It appears that bread-and-butter, cakes hot and cold, biscuits of every shape and flavor, formed the solid portion of the feast. Tea, coffee, and chocolate were the beverages provided. The hostess, wearing a white apron, and a straw hat (like those with which porcelain shepherdesses are crowned), stood at the table pouring out the tea. Madame du Boccage was much impressed by the fine table-linen, the gleaming cups and saucers, and the excellence of the tea, which in those days cost about sixteen shillings a pound. But especially did she admire the lady of the house, who deserved, she considered, “to be served at the table of the gods.“

Mrs. Montagu had, all her life, been a student of Shakespeare, and an ardent admirer of his works. Her indignation may be imagined therefore when Voltaire dared to condemn what he was pleased to call _les farces monstrueuses_ of the bard of Avon.[44] It was contended by Voltaire that Corneille was immeasurably superior to Shakespeare as a dramatist, inasmuch as the latter set at nought Aristotle’s unities of time and place, and otherwise violated accepted rules of dramatic composition. That the vigor and freedom which characterise Shakespeare’s genius should be depreciated, and the stilted artificialities of the French school held up to admiration, was more than Mrs. Montagu could stand. She thus denounces the philosopher of Ferney, and his opinions, in a letter to Gilbert West:

“Foolish coxcomb! Rules can no more make a poet than receipts a cook. There must be taste, there must be skill. Oh, that we were as sure our fleets and armies could drive the French out of America as that our poets and tragedians can drive them out of Parnassus. I hate to see these tame creatures, taught to pace by art, attack fancy’s sweetest child.”

There was nothing for it but to enter the lists herself, and measure swords with the assailant. She accordingly set to work at her “Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare,” and very well she acquitted herself of the task. Her essay, though heavy, did credit to her taste and erudition. It was published in 1769, and had no small success. From first to last, six editions appeared. She treated Voltaire in it with surprising forbearance; yet he is said to have been extremely nettled at his sovereign dictum being called in question—and by a woman too! This was not her only literary performance. To the “Dialogues of the Dead,” of which her friend Lord Lyttleton was the author, she contributed three, the brightest being that in which Mercury and Mrs. Modish are made to converse. Mrs. Modish is a typical woman of fashion of the day. Mercury summons her to cross the Styx with him, and she—surprised and unprepared—pleads in excuse divers trumpery engagements (balls, plays, card-assemblies, and the like), to meet which she neglects all her home duties. As several fine ladies tossed their heads on reading the dialogue, and declared the Modish utterances to be “abominably satirical,” we may presume that the cap fitted.

In 1770, Mrs. Montagu had completely established her empire in the world of literature. A list of the remarkable people who assembled beneath her roof would fill a page. She was on terms of friendly intimacy with Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Hume, Reynolds, Walpole, Garrick, Dr. Burney, Dr. Young, Bishop Percy, Lords Lyttleton, Bath, Monboddo, and a host more. Of the other sex may be named Mesdames Carter, Chapone, Barbauld, Boscawen, Thrale, Vesey, Ord, and Miss Burney. Dr. Doran, in his memoir of Mrs. Montagu, explains how her parties, and those given by Mrs. Vesey and Mrs. Ord, came to be called _Bluestocking_ Assemblies. It seems that Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, who was always a welcome guest at them, wore stockings of a bluish grey; and this peculiarity was fixed upon, by those disposed to deride such gatherings, as affording a good stamp wherewith to brand them. A _Bluestocking Club_ never existed. There was a _Literary Club_, of which Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Johnson were the promoters, and to this the so-called bluestockings of both sexes belonged.

It was in 1774 that Hannah More was first introduced to Mrs. Montagu. Hannah was the daughter of a schoolmaster in Gloucestershire, and had come up to town at the invitation of Garrick. Her ambition from her earliest childhood had been to mix in intellectual society, and win for herself, if possible, a place therein. This she succeeded in doing with a swiftness that will surprise those who have tried to read the plays and ballads by which she made her name. Her cleverness, sound sense, and fresh enthusiasm, attracted the “female Mecænas of Hill Street” (so she styles Mrs. Montagu), who invited her to dinner, Johnson, Reynolds, and Mrs. Boscawen, being of the party.

“I feel myself a worm,” she tells her sister, “the more a worm from the consequence which was given me by mixing with such a society. Mrs. Montagu received me with the most encouraging kindness. She is not only the finest genius, but the finest lady I ever saw. Her countenance is the most animated in the world—the sprightly vivacity of fifteen, with the judgment and experience of a Nestor. But I fear she is hastening to decay very fast; her spirits are so active that they must soon wear out the little frail receptacle that holds them.”

Cards were discountenanced in Hill Street. After dinner, the company, augmented by fresh arrivals, divided itself into little groups, and much animated conversation went on. The hostess was especially brilliant, holding her own in a brisk argument against four clever men. Hannah was amused at observing how “the fine ladies and pretty gentlemen” who could only talk twaddle, herded together.

Mrs. Montagu was generally happy in her friendships, which she made with caution, and only abandoned for good reason. It is hard to say what first caused a breach between her and Johnson, who sometimes smothered her with compliments, and as often, in chatting with Boswell, spoke of her with harshness and disrespect. She, it is stated, once pronounced his “Rasselas” an opiate, and the remark of course was not allowed to lie where it fell. In return, he fastened on her “Essay on Shakespeare,” declaring that there was not one sentence of true criticism in the whole book. There is reason to suppose also that he was jealous of the respectful deference she showed to Garrick and Lyttleton. He certainly caused her pain later on, by the sneers he bestowed on the latter (then dead) in his “Lives of the Poets.” He had shown her the manuscript of the Life in question, and the expressions in it which offended her she had marked for omission. He, however, thought fit to disregard her wishes, and sent it to press as originally written. On opening the book, and finding her idol alluded to as “poor Lyttleton,” and accused of vanity and a cringing fear of criticism, she was naturally incensed. As it was not convenient to seek out the offender in Bolt Court, she asked him to dinner, and he had the temerity to go. The repast over, he attempted to engage her in conversation, but her icy manner repelled him. Retiring discomfited, he seated himself next General Paoli, to whom he remarked, “Mrs. Montagu, sir, has dropped me. Now, sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.” After this, open war was declared on both sides. Malicious onlookers, for sport’s sake, fomented the disagreement. Foremost among these was Horace Walpole. He relates with infinite glee that, at a bluestocking assembly at Lady Lucan’s, “Mrs. Montagu and Johnson kept at different ends of the chamber, and set up altar against altar.” Johnson had many reasons for feeling grateful to Mrs. Montagu; it is therefore satisfactory to know that, at the time of his death, he and she were on cordial terms again.

Not only could she dispute with the learned, and frolic with the 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.