Lady Mary Wortley Montague.
by Lewis Melville.
PREFACE
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has her niche in the history of medicine as having introduced inoculation from the Near East into England; but her princ.i.p.al fame is as a letter-writer.
Of her gifts as a correspondent she was proud, and with reason. It was in all sincerity that in June, 1726, she wrote to her sister, Lady Mar: "The last pleasures that fell in my way was Madame Sevigne"s letters: very pretty they are, but I a.s.sert, without the least vanity, that mine will be full as entertaining forty years hence. I advise you, therefore, to put none of them to the use of waste paper." And again, later in the year, she said half-humorously to the same correspondent: "I writ to you some time ago a long letter, which I perceive never came to your hands: very provoking; it was certainly a _chef d"oeuvre_ of a letter, and worthy any of the Sevigne"s or Grignan"s, crammed with news." That Lady Mary"s belief in herself was well founded no one has disputed. Even Horace Walpole, who detested her and made attacks on her whenever possible, said that "in most of her letters the wit and style are superior to any letters I have ever read but Madame de Sevigne"s." A very pleasant tribute from one who had a goodly conceit of himself as a letter-writer.
Walpole, as a correspondent, was perhaps more sarcastic and more witty; Cowper undoubtedly more tender and more gentle; but Lady Mary had qualities all her own. She had powers of observation and the gift of description, which qualities are especially to be remarked in the letters she wrote when abroad with her husband on his Mission to the Porte. She had an ironic wit which gave point to the many society scandals she narrated, a happy knack of gossip, and a style so easy as to make reading a pleasure.
Some of the incidents which Lady Mary retails with so much humour may be accepted as not outraging the conventions of the early eighteenth century when it was customary to call a spade a spade; when gallantry was gallantry indeed, and the pursuit of it openly conducted. What is not mentioned by those who have written about her is that she was possessed of a particularly unsavoury strain of impropriety which outraged even the canons of her age. Some twenty years after her death, it was mentioned in the _Gentleman"s Magazine_ that Dr. Young, the author of _Night Thoughts_, had a little before his death destroyed a great number of her letters, a.s.signing as a reason of his doing so that they were too indecent for public inspection. Only the other day I had confirmation of this from a distinguished man of letters who wrote to me: "I have somewhere hidden away a copy of a letter by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, which was sent to me by a well-known collector about thirty-five years ago, because he couldn"t destroy it and wouldn"t for worlds be found dead with it in his possession--so terrific is it in character. I"ll tell you about it some day when we meet: I can"t write it. In any case you couldn"t use it or even refer to it.... I suppose that my friend quite felt that the doc.u.ment, however objectionable, should not, on literary grounds, be destroyed. What my executors will think of me for having it in my possession, the Devil only knows."
Whether this strain permeated the diary which Lady Mary left behind her when she eloped in 1712, and which was destroyed by one of her sisters, no one can say; but it is a curious fact that the diary she kept in later years was destroyed by her devoted daughter, Lady Bute. "Though Lady Bute always spoke of Lady Mary with great respect," wrote Lady Louisa Stuart, "yet it might be perceived that she knew it had been too much her custom to note down and enlarge upon all the scandalous rumours of the day, without weighing their truth or even their probability; to record as certain facts stories that perhaps sprang up like mushrooms from the dirt, and had as brief an existence, but tended to defame persons of the most spotless character. In this age, she said everything got into print sooner or later; the name of Lady Mary Wortley would be sure to attract curiosity; and were such details ever made public, they would neither edify the world, nor do honour to her memory."
Lady Bute heard that her mother"s letters were in existence, and, fearful of what they might contain, purchased them. "It is known that when on her way to die, as it proved, in her own country, Lady Mary gave a copy of the letters to Mr. Snowden, minister of the English church at Rotterdam, attesting the gift by her signature," Lady Louisa Stuart has written. "This showed it was her wish that they should eventually be published; but Lady Bute, hearing only that a number of her mother"s letters were in a stranger"s hands, and having no certainty what they might be, to whom addressed, or how little of a private matter, could not but earnestly desire to obtain them, and readily paid the price demanded--five hundred pounds. In a few months she saw them appear in print. Such was the fact, and how it came about n.o.body at this time of day need either care or inquire."
With regard to other correspondence of Lady Mary, Sir Robert Walpole returned to her the letters she had written to his second wife, Molly Skerritt, after the death of that lady; and when Lord Hervey died, his eldest son sealed up and sent her her letters, with an a.s.surance that he had read none of them. To Lord Hervey"s heir, Lady Louisa Stuart has mentioned, Lady Mary wrote a letter of thanks for his honourable conduct, adding that she could almost regret he had not glanced his eye over a correspondence which would have shown him what so young a man might perhaps be inclined to doubt--the possibility of a long and steady friendship subsisting between two persons of different s.e.xes without the least mixture of love. Much pleased with this letter, he preserved it; and, when Lady Mary came to England, showed it to Lady Bute desiring she would ask leave for him to visit her mother.
It is to be presumed that Lady Mary, or her daughter, Lady Bute, destroyed these collections. For her part, Lady Mary returned letters that she had received from Lord Hervey, but only those that belonged to the last fourteen years of an acquaintance that had endured twice so long. These are for the greater number platonic in character, although there are a few phrases of a freer kind. Croker, who edited Lord Hervey"s _Memoirs_, mentions that Hervey, answering one of her letters in 1737, in which she had complained that she was too old to inspire pa.s.sion, after paying a compliment to her charms more gallant than decorous, said: "I should think anybody a great fool that said he liked spring better than summer merely because it is further from autumn, or that they loved green fruit better than ripe only because it was further from being rotten. I ever did, and believe ever shall, like women best--
"Just in the noon of life--those golden days, When the mind ripens as the form decays."
Lady Mary was then in her forty-ninth year, being six years Hervey"s senior.
Lady Louisa Stuart, writing in 1837--that is, seventy-five years after the death of her grandmother, Lady Mary--wrote indignantly of the attacks that had been made upon her ancestress. "The mult.i.tude of stories circulated about her--as about all people who were objects of note in their day--increase, instead of lessening, the difficulty," she said. "Some of these may be confidently p.r.o.nounced inventions, simple and purely false; some, if true, concerned a different person; some were grounded upon egregious blunders; and not a few upon jests, mistaken by the dull and literal for earnest. Others, again, where a little truth and a great deal of falsehood were probably intermingled, n.o.body now living can pretend to confirm, or contradict, or unravel. Nothing is so readily believed, yet nothing is usually so unworthy of credit, as tales learned from report, or caught up in casual conversation. A circ.u.mstance carelessly told, carelessly listened to, half comprehended, and imperfectly remembered, has a poor chance of being repeated accurately by the first hearer; but when, after pa.s.sing through the moulding of countless hands, it comes, with time, place, and person, gloriously confounded, into those of a bookmaker ignorant of all its bearings, it will be lucky indeed if any trace of the original groundwork remains distinguishable."
Lady Mary"s most redoubtable a.s.sailants were Pope and Horace Walpole, and both were bia.s.sed. The story of Pope"s quarrel with her is told in the following pages. Walpole, it has been suggested, disliked her much because she had championed his father"s mistress, Molly Skerritt, against the mother to whom he was devoted. Pope, of course, knew her well; but Walpole, who was twenty-eight years her junior, only met her in her late middle age. Walpole"s prejudice was so great what when Lady Mary said, "People wish their enemies dead--but I do not. I say, give them the gout, give them the stone," he reported it solemnly.
Of course, it is not to be a.s.sumed that Lady Mary had not her full share of malice--she was undoubtedly well equipped with that useful quality--and she did not turn the other cheek when she was a.s.sailed. She could even stand up to the vitriolic Sarah, d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, and stand up so effectively that they tacitly agreed to an armed neutrality that verged perilously upon friendship. The young Duke of Wharton sometimes beat her in open fight, but she harboured no very angry feelings towards him. As regards Pope, if it was not t.i.t-for-tat with him, at least she gave him hard knocks. Pope, great poet as he was, never played fair in war.
"Lady Mary, quite contrary," she might have been dubbed, for she was frequently in trouble. The Remond scandal, that will presently be unfolded, was a thing apart; but her witty tongue made her many enemies and cost her many friends. Had the contents of her letters about London society become known at the time, nearly every man"s and all women"s hands would have been against her. She had, in fact, little that was kind to say about people; when she had, she usually refrained from mentioning it.
In this work Lady Mary"s letters, either whole or in part, are given only in so far as they have biographical or historical value. At the same time I have, wherever possible, allowed Lady Mary to tell her story, or to give her impressions, in her own words. The quotations have been taken, by kind permission of Messrs. J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., from the edition of the letters in their "Everyman Library" (edited by Mr.
Ernest Rhys), with an introduction by Mr. R. Brimley Johnson.
The first edition of the letters appeared in three volumes in 1763, believed to have been edited by John Cleland. A fourth volume, issued in 1763, is regarded by Sir Leslie Stephen as of doubtful authenticity.
James Dallaway, in 1803, brought out an enlarged collection and added to it the poems, and a second edition, with some new letters, appeared fourteen years later. Lady Mary"s great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe, edited the correspondence in 1837, and this, revised by Mr. Moy Thomas, was reprinted in 1861 and again in 1887.
There have been published selections from the correspondence by Mr. A.R.
Ropes (1892) and by Mr. Hannaford Bennett (1923).
The princ.i.p.al authorities for the life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu are the Memoirs of James Dallaway prefixed to an edition of the _Works_ (1803) and the _Introductory Anecdotes_ in a new edition (1837) by Lady Louisa Stuart, the daughter of Lady Bute and the granddaughter of Lady Mary. There is another account of Lady Mary by the late Moy Thomas in revised editions of the letters and writings (1861 and 1887). Sir Leslie Stephen was responsible for the memoir in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. In 1907 appeared _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Times_, by that sound authority on the eighteenth century, "George Paston," who was so fortunate as to discover many scores of letters. .h.i.therto unpublished.
Other sources of information are to be found in Pope"s Correspondence, Spence"s _Anecdotes_, Dilke"s _Papers of a Critic,_ Cobbetts _Memorials of Twickenham_, the Stuart MSS. at Windsor Castle, the MSS. of the Duke of Beaufort, and the Lindsay MSS.
My thanks--though not, perhaps, the thanks of my readers--are especially due to that ripe scholar Mr. Hannaford Bennett, who suggested this work to me. I am indebted to Mr. M.H. Spielmann and other friends and correspondents for information and suggestions. Finally, I must acknowledge the valuable a.s.sistance of Mrs. E. Constance Monfrino in the preparation of this biography.
LEWIS MELVILLE.
_London, March, 1925_.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:
Her Life and Letters
(1689-1762)
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD (1689-1703)
Birth of Mary Pierrepont, after Lady Mary Wortley Montagu--Account of the Pierrepont family--Lady Mary"s immediate ancestors--Her father, Evelyn Pierrepont, succeeds to the Earldom of Kingston in 1690--The extinct marquisate of Dorchester revived in his favour--His marriage--Issue of the marriage--Death of his wife--Lady Mary stays with her grandmother, Mrs. Elizabeth Pierrepont--Her early taste for reading--She learns Latin, and, presently, Italian--Encouraged in her literary ambitions by her uncle, William Feilding, and Bishop b.u.met--Submits to the Bishop a translation of "Encheiridion" of Epictetus--An attractve child--A "toast" at the Kit-Cat Club--Acts as hostess to her father.
Mary Pierrepont, afterwards Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was born in May, 1689, and was baptised on the twenty-sixth day of that month at St.
Paul"s, Covent Garden. In the register is the entry: "Mary, daughter of Evelyn Pierrepoint, Esquire, and Lady Mary, his wife."
The event, it may be remarked, was not one of any considerable social interest, for the Hon. Evelyn Pierrepont was merely a younger son and remote from the succession to the Earldom of Kingston.
The Pierreponts of Holme Pierrepont were a Nottinghamshire family of considerable antiquity, though of no particular distinction. One Robert Pierrepont, who was born in 1584, the son of Sir Henry by Frances, sister of William, first Earl of Devonshire, was the first of the family upon whom a peerage was bestowed. He was created in 1627 Baron Pierrepont of Holme Pierrepont and Viscount Newark, and in the following year was elevated to the dignity of Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, Co.
York. A zealous royalist, he was in 1643 appointed Lieutenant-General of the King"s forces in the counties of Lincoln, Rutland, Huntingdon, Cambridge, and Norfolk, and soon after taking up this command was accidentally shot near Gainsborough, when being carried off in a pinnace as a prisoner to Hull by the Parliamentary Army. He married in 1601 Gertrude, eldest daughter and co-heir of Sir William Reyner, of Orton Longueville, Co. Huntingdon. She survived her husband six years.
The second Earl was Henry Pierrepont, who was born in 1607. From 1628, when his father was given the earldom, he was known under the style of Viscount Newark. In that year he was elected Member of Parliament for Nottingham, and he represented that const.i.tuency until 1641, when he was summoned to the House of Lords in his father"s barony as Lord Pierrepont. He, too, was an ardent supporter of the King, and was a member of His Majesty"s Council of War at Oxford. He was created Marquess of Dorchester in 1645. After the Restoration he was in high favour at Whitehall. He was Commissioner of Claims at the Coronation of Charles II, and in 1662 and again in 1673 he acted as Joint Commissioner of the office of Earl Marshal. He was twice married, but had no direct heirs, and on his death in 1680 the marquessate became extinct.
The earldom pa.s.sed to the family of the younger brother of the last holder. This was the great grandfather of Lady Mary, William Pierrepont, who deservedly earned the t.i.tle of "Wise William." He sided with the Parliament, and during the Long Parliament, in the proceedings of which he took an active part, he sat for Great Wenlock. He was one of the Commissioners selected to treat with Charles in 1642, and after the failure to open negotiations he was anxious to retire from public affairs. However, he was persuaded not to resign, and in 1644 was appointed one of the Committee of both Kingdoms. He became a leader of the independent party, and did not always see eye to eye with Cromwell.
He quarrelled with his party, disapproving of its att.i.tude towards Purge"s Pride and the trial of the King. After this he took little part in politics, though the Protector sought, and he gave on occasions, his advice. In February, 1660, he was elected to the new Council of State at the head of the list, and in the Convention Parliament represented Nottingham. In the negotiations with Charles II he was a moderating influence. Afterwards, he retired into private life. He died in 1678 or 1679. His eldest son, Robert, who married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Evelyn, pre-deceased his father, dying in 1666, and the earldom pa.s.sed to his eldest son, Robert, who died unmarried in 1682. The t.i.tle then went to his next brother, William, who died without issue eight years later.
A younger brother of Robert and William, Evelyn Pierrepont, now succeeded as (fifth) earl. He was the father of Lady Mary. Born in 1665, he was returned to Parliament for East Retford in 1689, but his stay in the House of Commons was brief, for in the following year the peerage descended to him. In December, 1706, the higher dignity that had once been in his family was revived in his favour, and he was created Earl of Dorchester, with a special remainder, failing heirs male of his body, to his uncle Gervase Pierrepont, who had himself been raised to the peerage as Lord Pierrepont of Ardgla.s.s in Ireland and later was given the dignity of Lord Pierrepont of Hanslope in Buckinghamshire. Lord Pierrepont died in 1715, and both his t.i.tles became extinct.
The Marquess married Mary, daughter of William Feilding, third Earl of Denbigh, by his first wife, Mary, sister of John, first Baron of Kingston, in the peerage of Ireland. Lady Mary was, therefore, a relation of the novelist, Henry Fielding, whose surname was spelt differently because, he explained, his branch of the family was the only one that could spell correctly.
Of this marriage, there was issue:
(i.) William, who took the style of Viscount Newark until 1706, and then was known as Earl of Kingston until his death in 1713, at the age of twenty-one. He had married before 1711 Rachel, daughter of Thomas Baynton, of Little Charfield, Wilts, who outlived her husband eight years. There was a son, Evelyn, who succeeded to the peerage.
(ii.) Lady Mary, the subject of this memoir.
(iii.) Lady Frances, who in 1714 became the second wife of John Erskine, sixth or eleventh Earl of Mar; and
(iv.) Lady Evelyn, who married John, second Baron, and afterwards first Earl Gower, and died in June, 1727.
In the winter of 1697, when Lady Mary was eight years old, her mother died. After this, the little girl was allowed to run rather wild. Lord Kingston was very much a man about town and a gallant, and was too greatly occupied with his affairs and his parliamentary duties, which took him often from home, to concern himself about her education. In fact, before her mother"s death, it would seem that Lady Mary spent months at her grandmother"s, Mrs. Elizabeth Pierrepont, at her house at West Dean. When she was in her ninth year she returned to Holme Pierrepont, where, as she later complained, she was left "to the care of an old governess, who, though perfectly good and pious, wanted capacity."