Part 7

His friends in Sweden, by whom he was much beloved, were greatly afflicted at the news of his death; and to add to their sorrow, they learned at the same time, that having during his residence in the East contracted a debt of one hundred and fifty pounds, his collections and papers had been seized by his creditors, who refused to give them up until the debt should be paid; and that thus his name and reputation seemed likely to perish with his body. Neither Linnæus nor any other of Hasselquist’s friends in Sweden were able to raise this small sum; when the queen, being informed of the circumstance, generously advanced the money from her own private purse; and therefore it is to the munificence of this lady that we owe one of the most curious books of travels of its kind that have ever appeared. In about a year after this the collections and papers arrived at the palace of Drottningholm; and Linnæus, who was no novice in these matters, declares that he was exceedingly surprised at the number and variety of the curiosities, among which were the rarer plants of Anatolia, Egypt, Palestine, and Cyprus; stones and earths from the most remarkable places in Egypt and Palestine; the rarer fishes of the Nile; the serpents of Egypt, together with its more curious insects, drugs, mummies, Arabic manuscripts, &c.

The editing of Hasselquist’s manuscripts was confided to Linnæus himself, and unquestionably it could not have been intrusted to better hands. The work, in fact, remains, and will remain, a lasting monument of the superior talents of the traveller, and of the taste, munificence, and affection of his friends.

LADY WORTLEY MONTAGUE.

Born 1690.—Died 1762.

THIS lady, whose claims to be ranked among distinguished travellers none, I think, will be disposed to contest, was born in 1690 at Thoresby, in Nottinghamshire. Her maiden name was Mary Pierre-pont, and she was the eldest daughter of Evelyn, Duke of Kingston, and Lady Mary Fielding, daughter of William Earl of Denbigh. Having had the misfortune to lose her mother while yet only four years old, she was thrown at once among the other sex, and thus acquired from her earliest years those masculine tastes and habits which distinguished her during life, and infused into her writings that coarse, unfeminine energy, that cynical contempt of decorum, and bearded license, if I may so express myself, which constitute her literary characteristics, and render her compositions different from those of every other woman. It was not the mere study of Latin, which the virtuous and judicious Fenelon considered highly beneficial to women, and which at all events may be regarded as a circumstance perfectly indifferent, that produced this undesirable effect; but an improper or careless choice of authors, operating upon a temperament peculiarly inflammable and inclining to voluptuousness. She acquired, we are told, the elements of the Greek, Latin, and French languages under the same preceptors as Viscount Newark, her brother; but preceptors who might, perhaps, be safely intrusted with the direction of a boy’s mind are not always adequate to the task of guiding that of a young woman through the perilous mazes of ancient literature. In fact, among her favourite classical authors Ovid seems to have been the chief at a very early period of her life; for among her poems there is one written in imitation of this author at twelve years of age, containing passages which it has not been thought decent to publish. At a later period her studies were directed by Bishop Burnet, who would seem to have recommended to her the Manual of the ungracious and austere Epictetus, a work which, although she laboured through a translation of it, now included among her works, could have possessed but few charms for her ardent, erratic fancy.

During this early part of her career she lived wholly in retirement at Thoresby or at Acton, near London, where she acquired what by a license of speech may be termed the friendship of Mrs. Anne Wortley, the mother of her future husband. With this lady she maintained an epistolary correspondence, from the published portions of which we discover that both the young lady and the matron were exceedingly addicted to flattery, and that at nineteen the former had already begun to entertain those unfavourable notions of her own sex which in a woman are so justly regarded as ominous of evil. “I have never,” says she, “had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex; and my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them.”

Her friendship with Mrs. Wortley paved the way to an acquaintance with that lady’s son, which, after much negotiation and many quarrels, the causes of which are rather alluded to than explained in the published correspondence, ended in a private marriage, which took place August 12, 1712. Lady Mary now resided chiefly at Wharncliffe Lodge, near Sheffield, where her son Edward was born, while her husband was detained by his parliamentary duties and political connexions in London. It would appear from various circumstances that Mr. Wortley Montague was a quiet, unambitious man, endowed with very moderate abilities; but his philosophic indifference or timid mode of wooing honours by no means answered the views of his wife, who was haunted in an incredible manner by the desire of celebrity, and who, possessing a caustic wit, a vivacious style, and splendid personal attractions, was conscious, that if once fairly launched upon the tide of the great world she could not fail of effecting her purpose. In the letters which emanated from her solitude we discover, amid a world of affected indifference, her extreme passion for exciting admiration. Now literary projects engross her thoughts; and now she aims, by goading her husband up “the steep of fame,” to open herself a wide field for the exhibition of her Circean powers.

In 1714 Mr. Montague was appointed one of the lords of the treasury; upon which Lady Mary quitted her retirement and appeared at court, where her beauty, her wit, and the ingenuous levity of her manners (a commendable quality in those days) commanded universal admiration. Her genius now moved in its proper sphere. Surrounded, flattered, caressed by the most distinguished characters of the age, she tasted of all those gratifications which the peculiarities of her temperament required; and being in the very flower of her age, looked forward with well-founded hopes to numerous years of the same kind of enjoyments. It was at this period that her intimacy with Pope, who was just two years older than herself, commenced; and as her latest biographer with a pardonable partiality observes, both he and Addison “contemplated her _uncommon genius_ at that time without envy!” From which one might infer that it was literary jealousy, and not the rage of a neglected lover, that afterward rendered Pope the inveterate enemy of Lady Mary.

However this may be, upon Mr. Montague’s being appointed ambassador to the Porte in 1716, our traveller, smitten with the desire of tasting the pleasures of other lands, resolved to desert all her admirers, and visit with her husband the shores of the Hellespont. They commenced their journey in August; and having crossed the channel, proceeded by Helvoetsluys and the Brill to Rotterdam, where she greatly admired the thronged streets, neat pavements, and extreme cleanliness of the place, which at present would scarcely strike a traveller arriving from London as any thing extraordinary. In travelling from Holland, the whole country appeared like a garden, while the roads were well paved, shaded on both sides with rows of trees, and bordered with canals, through which great numbers of boats were perpetually passing and repassing. The eye, moreover, was every minute alighting upon some villa; while numerous towns and villages, all remarkable for their neatness, dotted the plains, and enlivened the mind of the traveller by exciting ideas of plenty and prosperity.

At Cologne, whither she had proceeded by way of the Hague and Nimeguen, she was greatly amused at the Jesuits’ church by the free raillery of a young Jesuit, who, not knowing, or pretending not to know, her rank, allowed himself considerable liberties in his conversation. Our traveller herself fell in love with St. Ursula’s pearl necklaces; and, as the saint was of silver, her profane wishes would fain have converted her into dressing-plate. These were the only relics of all that were shown her for which she had any veneration; but she very shortly afterward learned, that, at least as far as the pearls and other precious stones were concerned, the holy fathers had been very much of her opinion; for, judging that false jewels would satisfy a saint as well as true ones, they sold the real pearls, &c., and supplied their places with imitations. Our lady-traveller, though exceedingly aristocratical in her notions, and possessed of but small respect for mere untitled human beings, was compelled by her natural good sense to remark, what other observers have frequently repeated since her time, the extreme superiority of the free towns of Germany over those under the government of absolute princes. “I cannot help fancying one,” she says, “under the figure of a clean Dutch citizen’s wife, and the other like a poor town lady of pleasure, painted and ribanded out in her headdress, with tarnished silver-laced shoes, a ragged under-petticoat; a miserable mixture of vice and poverty.”

At Ratisbon the principal objects of curiosity were the envoys from various states, who constituted the whole nobility of the place; and having no taste for ordinary amusements, contrived to divert themselves and their wives by keeping up eternal contests respecting precedents and points of etiquette. Next to these the thing most worthy of notice, from its extreme impiety, was a group of the Trinity, in which the Father was represented as a decrepit old man, with a beard descending to his knees, with the Son upon the cross in his arms, while the Holy Ghost, in the form of a dove, hovered over his head.

From Ratisbon she descended the Danube to Vienna, delighted, as the vessel shot with incredible velocity down the stream, by the amazing variety and rapid changes in the scenery, where rich cultivated plains, vineyards, and populous cities alternated rapidly with landscapes of savage magnificence; woods, mountains, precipices, and rocky pinnacles, with castellated ruins perched upon their summits. In Vienna she was disappointed. Its grandeur by no means came up to the ideas which she had formed of it from the descriptions of others. Palaces crowded together in narrow lanes; splendour on one hand, dirt and poverty on the other, and vice everywhere: such, in few words, is the sum of her account of the Austrian capital. The Faubourg, however, was truly magnificent, consisting almost wholly of stately palaces.

Here Pope’s first letter written during her residence abroad reached her. It is marked by every effort which wit could imagine, being gay and amusing; but betrays the fact, which, indeed, he did not wish to conceal, that he was seriously in love, and deeply afflicted at her absence. Conscious, however, of the criminality of his passion, he labours to clothe it with an air of philosophical sentimentality, feigning, but awkwardly and ineffectually, to be merely enamoured of her soul. This circumstance compelled him to shadow forth his meaning somewhat obscurely and quaintly for a lover, and deprived him of the advantage of conveying his feelings from his own heart to hers through those glowing trains of words which kindle the souls of the absent almost as effectually as the corporeal presence of the persons beloved. The reply of Lady Mary is conceived with consummate skill: pretending to be in doubt whether she ought to understand him to have been in jest or earnest, she nevertheless confesses, that in her present mood of mind she is more inclined towards the latter interpretation; and then, feeling that her footsteps were straying

per ignes Suppositos cineri doloso,

she starts suddenly out of the dangerous track, and plunges into the description of an opera and a German comedy. Here she is perfectly at her ease; and the coarseness of the subject, which she affects to condemn, so evidently delights her, that she describes in the broadest terms an action the most outrageously gross, perhaps, that was ever endured on the stage.

It has often been remarked, that the interest of a book of travels arises not so much from the newness and strangeness of the objects described, as from the peculiar light which is reflected upon them from the mind of the traveller. This fact is strikingly exemplified in the case of Lady Mary, who, though journeying through places often visited, throws so much of energy and vivacity, and frequently of novelty, into her concise yet minute sketches, that we never pause to inquire whether the objects delineated now come before us for the first time or not. Besides, her sex and the advantages she enjoyed brought many peculiarities both of costume and manners within the range of her observation, of which ordinary travellers can know nothing, except from hearsay, or from points of view too distant to admit of accurate observation. Upon her being presented at court she was struck—as who would not?—by the extravagant appearance of the ladies, who stalked about with fabrics of gauze and ribands a yard high upon their heads, and whalebone petticoats, which with pleasant exaggeration she describes as covering whole acres of ground. The reigning empress perfectly enraptured her with her beauty; and her admiration supplies her with so much eloquence, that a complete picture is wrought out. In other respects the court of Vienna was very much like other contemporary courts—that is, overflowing with every variety of moral turpitude, except that the Viennais had not the hypocrisy to pretend to be virtuous.

From this city our traveller made an excursion into Bohemia, the most desert part of Germany, where the characteristics of the villages were filth and poverty, scarcely furnishing clean straw and pure water, and where the inns were so wretched that she preferred travelling all night in the month of November to the idea of encountering the many unsavoury smells which they abounded with. In this country, however, she made but a short stay, but proceeded across the Erz Gebirge mountains into Saxony. This part of the journey was performed by night. The moonlight was sufficiently brilliant to discover the nature of the frightful precipices over which the road lay, and which in many places was so narrow that she could not discover an inch of space between the wheel and the precipice, while the waters of the Elbe rolled along among the rocks at an immeasurable depth below. Mr. Wortley, who possessed none of the restless sensibility or curiosity of his wife, and preferred a comfortable doze to the pleasure of gazing at moonlit crags throwing their giant shadows over fathomless abysses, or of discussing the chances of their being hurled into some of these gulfs, composed himself to sleep, and left our traveller to her reflections. For some time she resisted all temptation to disturb him; but observing that the postillions had begun to follow his example, while the horses were proceeding at full gallop, she thought it high time to make the whole party sensible of their danger, and by calling out to the drivers, awakened her husband. He was now alarmed at their critical situation, and assured her that he had five times crossed the Alps by different routes, without having ever seen so dangerous a road; but perhaps he had not been awakened by his companions.

Escaping from the terrors of these mountain scenes, she was extremely disposed to be pleased with even roads and the security of cities, and in this mood of mind found Dresden, which is really an agreeable city, wonderfully pleasing. She here picked up a story which, as it is exceedingly illustrative of kingly notions of love, may be worth repeating. The King of Poland (Elector of Saxony) having discovered that the Count de Cozelle had a very beautiful wife, and understanding the taste of his countrywomen, paid the lady a visit, “bringing in one hand a bag of a hundred thousand crowns, and in the other a horse-shoe, which he snapped asunder before her face, leaving her to draw the consequences of such remarkable proofs of strength and liberality.” I know not, adds our fair traveller, which charmed her most, but she consented to leave her husband, and give herself up to him entirely.

From Dresden she proceeded to Leipzig, to Brunswick, to Hanover,—where the ladies, wearing artificial faces, were handsome to the hour of their death,—and thence back again to Vienna. Here she observes that no women were at that period permitted to act upon the stage, though certainly the regulation did not emanate from motives of delicacy. To show their sympathy for physical as well as moral deformity, the emperor and empress had two dwarfs as ugly as devils, especially the female, but loaded with diamonds, and privileged to stand at her majesty’s elbow at all public places. All the other princes of Germany exhibited similar proofs of a taste for the ugly, which was so far improved by the King of Denmark that he made his dwarf his prime minister. “I can assign no reason,” says Lady Montague, “for their fondness for these pieces of deformity, but the opinion all the absolute princes have that it is below them to converse with the rest of mankind; and not to be quite alone, they are forced to seek their companions among the refuse of human nature, these creatures being the only part of their court privileged to talk freely with them.”

Though it was now the depth of winter, Mr. Wortley, who apparently was thoroughly tired of the stupid gayeties of Vienna, determined to escape from them, notwithstanding that all the fashionable world, Prince Eugene among the rest, endeavoured to divert him from his purpose by drawing the most frightful picture of Hungary, the country through which their road lay. The life led by Prince Eugene at the modern Sybaris seems to have inspired our traveller with a generous regret, the only one perhaps she ever felt for a stranger, and gave rise in her mind to that sort of mortification which reflections upon the imperfections of human nature are calculated to give birth to.

The ambassador commenced his journey on the 15th of January, 1717; and the snow lying deep upon the ground, their carriages were fixed upon _traneaus_, which moved over the slippery surface with astonishing rapidity. In two days they arrived at Raab, where the governor and the Bishop of Temeswar, an old man of a noble family, with a flowing white beard hanging down to his girdle, waited upon them with polite attentions and invitations, which their desire to continue their journey compelled them to reject. The plains lying between this city and Buda, level as the sea, and of amazing natural fertility, but now through the ravages of war deserted and uncultivated, presented nothing but one unbroken sheet of snow to the eye; nor, excepting its curious hovels, half above and half below the surface of the earth, forming the summer and winter apartments of the inhabitants, did Buda afford any thing worthy of observation. The scene which stretched itself out before them upon leaving Buda was rude, woody, and solitary, but abounding in game of various kinds, which appeared to be the undisturbed lords of the soil. The peasants of Hungary at that period were scanty and poor, dressed in a coat, cap, and boots of sheepskin, and subsisting entirely upon the wild animals afforded by their plains and woods.

On the 26th they crossed the frozen Danube, pushed on through woods infested by wolves, and arrived in the evening at Essek. Three days more brought them to Peterwaradin, whence, having remained there a few days to refresh themselves after their long journey, they departed for Belgrade. On their way to this city they passed over the fields of Carlowitz, the scene of Prince Eugene’s last great victory over the Turks, and beheld scattered around them on all sides the broken fragments of those instruments with which heroes open themselves a path to glory: sculls and carcasses of men, mingled and trodden together with those of the horse and the camel, the noble, patient brutes which are made to participate in their madness.

During their pretty long stay at Belgrade, Lady Mary, whose free and easy disposition admirably adapted her for a traveller, contracted an acquaintance with Achmet Bey, a Turkish _effendi_, or literary man, whom she understood to be an accomplished Arabic and Persian scholar, and who, delighted with the novelty of the thing, undertook to initiate our female _effendi_ in the mysteries of oriental poetry, judiciously selecting such pieces as treated of love. In conversation with this gentleman she learned with surprise that the Persian Tales, which at that time were in Europe supposed to be forgeries, and consequently of no authority or value, except as novels, were genuine oriental compositions, like the Arabian Nights, and therefore to be regarded as admirable illustrations of manners.

Leaving Belgrade and the agreeable effendi, they proceeded through the woody wilds of Servia, where the scanty peasantry were ground to the earth by oppression, to Nissa, the ancient capital; and passing thence into Bulgaria, our fair traveller was amused at Sophia with one of those little incidents which, from her _naïve_ mode of describing them, constitute the principal charm of her travels. This was a visit to the baths. Arriving about ten o’clock in the morning, she found the place already crowded with women, and having cast a glance or two at the form and structure of the edifice, which consisted of fine apartments covered with domes, floored with marble, and adorned with a low divan of the same materials, she proceeded into the principal bathing-room, where there were about two hundred ladies, in the state of nature, seated upon cushions or rich carpets, with their slaves standing behind them, equally unencumbered with dress. The behaviour of both mistresses and maids, however, was characterized by equal modesty. But their beauty and the exquisite symmetry of their forms, which, in the opinion of Lady Mary, at least equalled the most perfect creations of Guido or Titian, defied the powers of language, and compelled the astonished observer, in default of accurate expressions, to have recourse to poetical comparisons, and descriptions of the effects produced upon the mind. It is well known that Homer, despairing of presenting his hearers or readers with a complete picture of Helen’s beauty, has recourse to the same artifice, representing the old statesman exclaiming, as she approaches them veiled upon the ramparts,

Oὐ νέμεσις Τρῶας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Ἀχαιοὺς Tοιῇδ᾽ ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν· Aἰνῶς ἀθανάτῃσι θεῇς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν. ^{TN}