Lady Mary Wortley Montague Part 16

The Duke had never really forgiven Lady Mary for eloping. Her defiance of him hurt his pride inordinately. Everyone else to some degree at least he could control; his young daughter not at all. Only so far were they ever reconciled that he would occasionally visit the Montagus at their London house and play with the children.

In his later years the Duke's health was unsatisfactory, but it was not thought that the end was so near. "I have now to tell you of the surprising death of my father, and a great deal of surprising management of the people about him, which I leave informing you until another time, being now under some spirit of hurry myself," Lady Mary wrote to Lady Mar in March, 1726. "I am unfeignedly sorry that I cannot send you word of a considerable legacy for yourself." On April 15 she supplemented this account; but not to a degree to make it very intelligible:

"To be sure, the shock must be very great to you whenever you heard it; as indeed it was to us all here, being so sudden. It is to no purpose now to relate particulars, but only renewing our grief. I can't forbear telling you the d.u.c.h.ess has behaved very oddly in endeavouring to get the guardianship of the young Duke and his sister, contrary to her husband's will; but the boy, when he was fourteen, confirmed the trustees his grandfather left; so that ended all disputes; and Lady f.a.n.n.y is to live with my aunt Cheyne. There is a vast number of things that have happened, and some people's behaviour so extraordinary in this melancholy business, that it would be great ease of mind if I could tell it you; but I must not venture to speak too freely in a letter."

A week or so later, some further details were forthcoming:

"I received yours, dear sister, this minute, and am very sorry both for your past illness and affliction; though _au bout du compte_, I don't know why filial piety should exceed fatherly fondness. So much by way of consolation. As to the management at that time--I do verily believe, if my good aunt and sister had been less fools, and my dear mother-in-law less mercenary, things might have had a turn more to your advantage and mine too; when we meet, I will tell you many circ.u.mstances which would be tedious in a letter. I could not get my sister Gower to join to act with me, and mamma and I were in an actual scold when my poor father expired; she has shewn a hardness of heart upon this occasion that would appear incredible to any body not capable of it themselves. The addition to her jointure is, one way or other, 2000 per annum; so her good Grace remains a pa.s.sable rich widow, and is already presented by the town with a variety of young husbands; but I believe her const.i.tution is not good enough to let her amorous inclinations get the better of her covetous."

Lady Mary was very angry, because she heard that at the end her father had really expressed a great deal of kindness to her, and even a desire of talking to her, which the d.u.c.h.ess would not permit. However, he left her in his will, she having married without a settlement, 6,000 for her separate use during her life, with reversion to her daughter.

As regards the heir, she wrote: "The Duke of Kingston has. .h.i.therto had so ill an education, 'tis hard to make any judgment of him; he has spirit, but I fear he will never have his father's good sense. As young n.o.blemen go, 'tis possible he may make a good figure among them."

The young Duke was sent to France, and there was much discussion as to what should be done with his sister, Lady Frances Pierrepont. Her having 400 per annum for maintenance, has, Lady Mary remarked ironically, "awakened the consciences of half her relations to take care of her education, and (excepting myself) they have all been squabbling about her. My sister Gower carries her off to-morrow morning to Staffordshire.

The lies, twaddles, and contrivances about this affair are innumerable.

I should pity the poor girl if I saw she pitied herself."

Lady Gower did not long enjoy her victory over her friends and her fond relations, for she died in June, 1727.

In May, 1732, Lord Mar died at Aix-la-Chapelle. Lady Mary's sister, Lady Mar, in later years suffered from mental irregularity. Her brother-in-law, James Erskine, Lord Grange, endeavoured to secure possession of her person by some process of law, but was thwarted by Lady Mary, who obtained a warrant from the King's Bench. For years Lady Mar remained in her sister's custody. She survived until 1761. There was a rumour that Lady Mary treated her badly, but there is no reason to believe that there was any substantial ground for the accusation.

Lady Mary's daughter, Mary, married in 1736, John Stuart, third Earl of Bute, the favourite of the Princess of Wales, and afterwards Prime Minister.

CHAPTER XIII

ON THE CONTINENT (1739-1744)

Lady Mary leaves England--She does not return for twenty years--Montagu supposed to join her--The domestic relations of the Montagus--A septennial act for marriage--Lady Mary corresponds with her husband--Dijon--Turin--Venice--Bologna--Florence--The Monastery of La Trappe--Horace Walpole at Florence--His comments on Lady Mary and her friends--Reasons for his dislike of her--Rome--The Young Pretender and Henry, Cardinal York--Wanderings--Cheapness of life in Italy--Lady Mary's son, Edward--He is a great trouble to his parents--His absurd marriage--His extravagance and folly--Account of his early years--He visits Lady Mary at Valence--Her account of the interviews.

In July, 1739, Lady Mary went abroad. She did not return until the beginning of 1762, a few months before her death.

She went abroad without her husband, and, indeed, they never met again.

At first, apparently, he had intended to join her--at least so she gave Lady Pomfret to understand:

"You have put me to a very difficult choice, yet, when I consider we are both in Italy, and yet do not see one another, I am astonished at the capriciousness of my fortune" (she wrote from Venice late in 1739). "My affairs are so uncertain, I can answer for nothing that is future. I have taken some pains to put the inclination for travelling into Mr.

Wortley's head, and was so much afraid he would change his mind, that I hastened before him in order (at least) to secure my journey. He proposed following me in six weeks, his business requiring his presence at Newcastle. Since that, the change of scene that has happened in England has made his friends persuade him to attend parliament this session: so that what his inclinations, which must govern mine, will be next spring I cannot absolutely foresee. For my own part, I like my own situation so well that it will be a displeasure to me to change it. To postpone such a conversation as yours a whole twelvemonth is a terrible appearance; on the other hand, I would not follow the example of the first of our s.e.x, and sacrifice for a present pleasure a more lasting happiness. In short, I can determine nothing on this subject. When you are at Florence, we may debate it over again."

So little is known of the domestic relations of the Montagus that it is hazardous to advance a conjecture. One writer has suggested that there was a quarrel over money, but there are no grounds to support this.

Another has it that Lady Mary's flirtations or intrigues did not meet with her husband's approval. Yet another thinks that Montagu found his wife with her sharp tongue, very ill to live with.

The Montagus had been married for seven-and-twenty years; their younger child was now twenty-one. Since Montagu a.s.sisted Lady Mary as a girl with her Latin studies, they do not seem to have had much in common.

Lady Mary cut a figure in the social world; Montagu was a nonent.i.ty in political life and seemed content so to be. Perhaps they were tired of each other, and welcomed a separation that at the outset was intended only to be temporary. "It was from the customs of the Turks that I first had the thought of a septennial bill for the benefit of married persons," Lady Mary once said to Joseph Spence; and it is more than likely that she would have taken advantage of such an Act of Parliament had it been in existence.

That there was no definite breach is evident from the fact that husband and wife corresponded, though it must be confessed that her letters to her husband are almost uniformly dull, except when the topic is their son. On the other hand, there was certainly no especial degree of friendship between them, and in one of her letters Lady Mary said pointedly: "You do not seem desirous to hear news, which makes me not trouble you with any." For the rest there are descriptions of the places which Lady Mary visited and an account of the people she met.

Lady Mary proceeded from Dover to Calais, and thence to Dijon, where she arrived in the middle of August. Wherever she went she found herself among friends. "There is not any town in France where there is not English, Scotch or Irish families established; and I have met with people who have seen me (though often such as I do not remember to have seen) in every town I have pa.s.sed through; and I think the farther I go, the more acquaintance I meet," she told her husband. At Dijon there were no less than sixteen families of fashion. Lord Mansel had lodgings in the house with her at Dijon, and Mrs. Whitsted, a daughter of Lord Bathurst, resided in the same street. She met Lady Peterborough, and just missed the Duke of Rutland, at St. Omer. At Port Beauvoisin she ran across Lord Carlisle.

From Turin, she travelled, on the advice of Lord Carlisle, to Vienna, which he declared was the best place in Italy in which to stay. The fact that it was the intention of Lady Pomfret to remove from Sienna to Vienna was the deciding factor. She liked the latter city so well that she remained there until August of the following year (1740). It had one great merit in Lady Mary's eyes, that it was cheap. Next to that, she derived pleasure from the consideration with which she was treated. "I like this place extremely, and am of opinion you would do so too: as to cheapness, I think 'tis impossible to find any part of Europe where both the laws and customs are so contrived purposely to avoid expenses of all sorts; and here is a universal liberty that is certainly one of the greatest _agrements_ in life. We have foreign amba.s.sadors from all parts of the world, who have all visited me. I have received visits from many of the n.o.ble Venetian ladies; and upon the whole I am very much at my ease here. If I was writing to Lady Sophia, I would tell her of the comedies and operas which are every night, at very low prices; but I believe even you will agree with me that they are ordered to be as convenient as possible, every mortal going in a mask, and consequently no trouble in dressing, or forms of any kind." So Lady Mary wrote to Lady Pomfret on October 10; and a few days later she supplemented the information in a letter to her husband:

"I find myself very well here. I am visited by the most considerable people of the town, and all the foreign ministers, who have most of them made great entertainments for me. I dined yesterday at the Spanish amba.s.sador's, who even surpa.s.sed the French in magnificence. He met me at the hall-door, and the lady at the stair-head, to conduct me through the long apartment; in short, they could not have shown me more honours, if I had been an amba.s.sadress. She desired me to think myself patrona del casa, and offered me all the services in her power, to wait on me where I pleased, &c. They have the finest palace in Venice. What is very convenient, I hear it is not at all expected I should make any dinners, it not being the fashion for anybody to do it here but the foreign ministers; and I find I can live here very genteelly on my allowance. I have already a very agreeable general acquaintance; though when I came, here was no one I had ever seen in my life, but the Cavaliere Grimani and the Abbe Conti. I must do them [the] justice to say they have taken pains to be obliging to me. The Procurator brought his niece (who is at the head of his family) to wait on me; and they invited me to reside with them at their palace on the Brent, but I did not think it proper to accept of it. He also introduced me to the Signora Pisani Mocenigo, who is the most considerable lady here. The Nuncio is particularly civil to me; he has been several times to see me, and has offered me the use of his box at the opera. I have many others at my service, and, in short it, is impossible for a stranger to be better received than I am. Here are no English, except a Mr. Bertie and his governor, who arrived two days ago, and who intends but a short stay."

Lady Mary thoroughly enjoyed herself at Venice, where she found a variety of occupations to occupy her time. In the mornings she was "wrapt up among my books with antiquarians and virtuosi"; in the afternoons there were visits to pay and receive; in the evenings dinners (at other people's expense--which fact did not detract from her pleasure), a.s.semblies, and the theatre and the opera. In fact, she found there every delight except scandal, but that she did not miss, because she said, she "never found any pleasure in malice." So strange a thing is human nature that perhaps she believed it!

"Upon my word, I have spoken my real thoughts in relation to Venice; but I will be more particular in my description, lest you should find the same reason of complaint you have hitherto experienced" (she wrote in November to Lady Pomfret). "It is impossible to give any rule for the agreeableness of conversation; but here is so great a variety, I think 'tis impossible not to find some to suit every taste. Here are foreign ministers from all parts of the world, who, as they have no Court to employ their hours, are overjoyed to enter into commerce with any stranger of distinction. As I am the only lady here at present, I can a.s.sure you I am courted, as if I was the only one in the world. As to all the conveniences of life, they are to be had at very easy rates; and for those that love public places, here are two playhouses and two operas constantly performed every night, at exceeding low prices. But you will have no reason to examine that article, no more than myself; all the amba.s.sadors having boxes appointed them; and I have every one of their keys at my service, not only for my own person, but whoever I please to carry or send. I do not make much use of this privilege, to their great astonishment. It is the fashion for the greatest ladies to walk the streets, which are admirably paved; and a mask, price sixpence, with a little cloak, and the head of a domino, the genteel dress to carry you everywhere. The greatest equipage is a gondola, that holds eight persons, and is the price of an English chair. And it is so much the established fashion for everybody to live their own way, that nothing is more ridiculous than censuring the actions of another. This would be terrible in London, where we have little other diversion; but for me, who never found any pleasure in malice, I bless my destiny that has conducted me to a part where people are better employed than in talking of the affairs of their acquaintance. It is at present excessive cold (which is the only thing I have to find fault with), but in recompense we have a clear bright sun, and fogs and factions things unheard of in this climate."

Certainly everybody did the utmost to make Venice agreeable to Lady Mary. With all her good opinion of herself and of her position, she found herself treated with more distinction than she "could possibly expect." When, on Christmas Eve, she went to see the ceremony of High Ma.s.s celebrated by the Doge, she was surprised to find that he had set aside for her and the Prince of Wolfenb.u.t.tel a gallery, to which none were admitted but their parties. "A greater compliment could not have been paid me if I had been a sovereign Princess." To her husband she wrote: "It is impossible to be better treated, I may even say more courted, than I am here."

All the English who came to Venice, as a matter of course paid their respects to Lady Mary.

"Lord Fitzwilliam arrived here three days ago; he came to see me the next day, as all the English do, who are much surprised at the civilities and familiarity which I am with the n.o.ble ladies. Everybody tells me 'tis what never was done but to myself; and I own I have a little vanity in it, because the French amba.s.sador told me when I first came, that though the Procurator Grimani might persuade them to visit me, he defied me to enter into any sort of intimacy with them: instead of which they call me out almost every day on some diversion or other, and are desirous to have me in all their parties of pleasure. I am invited to-morrow to the Foscarini to dinner, which is to be followed by a concert and a ball, where I shall be the only stranger, though here are at present a great number come to see the regatta, which is fixed for the 29th of this month, N.S. I shall see it at the Procurator Grimani's, where there will be a great entertainment that day. My own house is very well situated to see it, being on the Grand Ca.n.a.l; but I would not refuse him and his niece, since they seem desirous of my company, and I shall oblige some other ladies with my windows. They are hired at a great rate to see the show."

There was just one fly in the ointment. "I am impatient to hear good sense p.r.o.nounced in my native tongue; having only heard my language out of the mouths of boys and governors for these five months" (she complained to Lady Pomfret). "Here are inundations of them broke in upon us this carnival, and my apartment must be their refuge; the greater part of them having kept an inviolable fidelity to the languages their nurses taught them; their whole business abroad (as far as I can perceive) being to buy new clothes, in which they shine in some obscure coffee-house, where they are sure of meeting only one another; and after the important conquest of some waiting gentlewoman of an opera queen, whom perhaps they remember as long as they live, return to England excellent judges of men and manners. I find the spirit of patriotism so strong in me every time I see them, that I look on them as the greatest blockheads in nature; and, to say truth, the compound of b.o.o.by and _pet.i.t maitre_ makes up a very odd sort of animal."

It was not until the middle of August (1740) that Lady Mary left Venice, going first to Bologna, where she stayed a day or two "to prepare for the dreadful pa.s.sage of the Apennines." On her way to Florence, she visited the monastery of La Trappe--her account of which may be given as a companion portrait to that of the nunnery printed in an earlier chapter.

"The monastery of La Trappe, is of French origin, and one of the most austere and self-denying orders I have met with. In this gloomy retreat it gave me pain to observe the infatuation of men, who have devoutly reduced themselves to a much worse condition than that of the beasts.

Folly, you see, is the lot of humanity, whether it arises in the flowery paths of pleasure, or the th.o.r.n.y ones of an ill-judged devotion. But of the two sorts of fools, I shall always think that the merry one has the most eligible fate; and I cannot well form a notion of that spiritual and ecstatic joy, that is mixed with sighs, groans, hunger, and thirst, and the other complicated miseries of monastic discipline. It is a strange way of going to work for happiness to excite an enmity between soul and body, which Nature and Providence have designed to live together in union and friendship, and which we cannot separate like man and wife when they happen to disagree. The profound silence that is enjoined upon the monks of La Trappe is a singular circ.u.mstance of their unsociable and unnatural discipline, and were this injunction never to be dispensed with, it would be needless to visit them in any other character than as a collection of statues; but the superior of the convent suspended in our favour that rigorous law, and allowed one of the mutes to converse with me, and answer a few discreet questions. He told me that the monks of this order in France are still more austere than those of Italy, as they never taste wine, flesh, fish, or eggs; but live entirely upon vegetables. The story that is told of the inst.i.tution of this order is remarkable, and is well attested, if my information is good. Its founder was a French n.o.bleman whose name was Bouthillior de Rance, a man of pleasure and gallantry, which were converted into the deepest gloom of devotion by the following incident. His affairs obliged him to absent himself, for some time, from a lady with whom he had lived in the most intimate and tender connexions of successful love. At his return to Paris he proposed to surprise her agreeably, and, at the same time, to satisfy his own impatient desire of seeing her, by going directly and without ceremony to her apartment by a back stair, which he was well acquainted with--but think of the spectacle that presented itself to him at his entrance into the chamber that had so often been the scene of love's highest raptures! his mistress dead--dead of the small-pox--disfigured beyond expression--a loathsome ma.s.s of putrified matter--and the surgeon separating the head from the body, because the coffin had been made too short! He stood for a moment motionless in amazement, and filled with horror--and then retired from the world, shut himself up in the convent of La Trappe, where he pa.s.sed the remainder of his days in the most cruel and disconsolate devotion.--Let us quit this sad subject."

The news that Lady Mary was coming to Florence came to the ears of Horace Walpole, who was staying there. If he had not yet made her acquaintance, he certainly knew much about her. "On Wednesday we expect a third she-meteor," he wrote to Richard West, July 31, 1740. "Those learned luminaries the Ladies Pomfret and Walpole[9] are to be joined by the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. You have not been witness to the rhapsody of mystic nonsense which these two fair ones debate incessantly, and consequently cannot figure what must be the issue of this triple alliance: we have some idea of it. Only figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment, history, Greek, Latin, French, Italian and metaphysics; all, except the second, understood by halves, by quarters, or not at all. You shall have the journals of this notable academy."

Walpole sent, some seven weeks later, an account of the lady to the Hon.

Henry Seymour Conway: "Did I tell you Lady Mary Wortley is here? She laughs at my Lady Walpole, scolds my Lady Pomfret, and is laughed at by the whole town. Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled, mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat.

Her face swollen violently on one side is partly covered with a plaister, and partly with white paint, which for cheapness she has bought so coa.r.s.e, that you would not use it to wash a chimney."

[Footnote 9: The wife of the eldest son of Sir Robert Walpole, who in 1723 was created Baron Walpole. He later succeeded as (second) Earl of Orford.]

In another letter, to Richard West (October 2, 1740), Walpole gives an account of the "Academy." "But for the Academy, I am not of it; but frequently in company with it," he wrote. "Tis all disjointed. Madame ----,[10] who, though a learned lady, has not lost her modesty and character, is extremely scandalised with the two other dames, especially with Moll Worthless,[11] who knows no bounds. She is at rivalry with Lady W---- [12] for a certain Mr.----, whom perhaps you knew at Oxford.... He fell into sentiments with my Lady W., and was happy to catch her at platonic love; but as she seldom stops there, the poor man will be frightened out of his senses when she shall break the matter to him, for he never dreamt that her purposes were so naught. Lady Mary is so far gone that to get him from the mouth of her antagonist, she literally took him out to dance country dances at a formal ball, where there was no measure kept in laughing at her.... She played at Pharaoh two or three times at Princess Craon's, where she cheats horse and foot.

She is really entertaining: I have been reading her works, which she lends out in ma.n.u.script; but they are too womanish: I like few of her performances."

[Footnote 10: Lady Pomfret.]

[Footnote 11: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.]

[Footnote 12: Lady Walpole.]