Mary Wortley Montagu

“ Quelle vie!--'Tis what I say daily.
Adieu, my dearest Madam--may it not be long before we meet.
Inviolably yours,
M. W. M.
(The son of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was the misery of her life, and it is the historic truth that he made much such a marriage as I have described. It is said he turned Mohammedan after the death of his parents. A portrait of him in a most aggressive turban is in existence. The reason for Lady Mary's leaving England in 1739, and returning only to die in 1762, has never been known.) ”

“ While fully sharing Swift's disapproval of the actual condition of women, she felt more inclined to follow Defoe in blaming the other half of mankind for refusing them every opportunity to show their possibilities. The tyranny of the male sex aroused the burning indignation of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose feelings found vent both in her voluminous correspondence and in her, mostly occasional, poetry. ”

“ Her manuscript was printed verbatim, and that was, indeed, the only course to pursue. Any attempt to correct or methodize, or modernize it, would result almost in rewriting it. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a generation later, was a keen observer of affairs in Turkey, but Miss Fiennes surpasses her in fullness of detail. Nothing escapes her quick, accurate eye, her sharply retentive memory, and her unwearied pen. The facts crowd in upon each other with breathless haste. There is no such thing as grace or melody or beauty of style. There is hardly anything so tranquilizing as order and clearness. ”

“ The dedication is addressed to the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whom he flatters without reserve, and, to confess the truth, with very little art. The same observation may be extended to all his dedications: his compliments are constrained and violent, heaped together without the grace of order, or the decency of introduction. He seems to have written his panegyrics for the perusal only of his patrons, and to imagine that he had no other task than to pamper them with praises, however gross, and that flattery would make its way to the heart, without the assistance of elegance or invention. ”

“ I pass some days with the Duchess of Montagu, who might be a reigning beauty if she pleased. I see the whole town every Sunday, and select a few that I retain to supper. In short, if life could be always what it is, I believe I have so much humility in my temper I could be contented without anything better than this two or three hundred years but, alas!
'Dulness, and wrinkles, and disease, must come,
And age, and death's irrevocable doom.'"
Lady Mary, who had some two-score years still to live, began at this time to deplore her increasing age. ”

“ Believe me, 'tis far the wiser course,
Superior art should meet superior force:
Hear, but be faithful to your int'rest still:
Secure your hearts—then fool with whom you will."
At Twickenham the Duke seems in some degree to have relied for his entertainment upon his pen. There he wrote his articles for the True Briton, and also indited various trifles in verse. Never neglecting an opportunity to indulge his humour, when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote a poem on the untimely death of a friend, he could not refrain from presenting her with a parody. ”

“ In May, 1713, Lady Mary was delivered of a boy, who was christened after his father, Edward Wortley Montagu. Some account of his unsatisfactory career will be given in a later chapter. As an infant, he suffered from ill-health.
"I am in abundance of pain about our dear child: though I am convinced in my reason 'tis both silly and wicked to set one's heart too fondly on anything in this world, yet I cannot overcome myself so far as to think of parting with him with the resignation that I ought to do," the mother wrote from Middlethorpe at the end of July. ”

“ "No entertainment is so cheap as reading," says Mary Wortley Montagu; "nor any pleasure so lasting." Good books elevate the character, purify the taste, take the attractiveness out of low pleasures, and lift us upon a higher plane of thinking and living. It is not easy to be mean directly after reading a noble and inspiring book. The conversation of a man who reads for improvement or pleasure will be flavored by his reading; but it will not be about his reading. ”

“ On Friday night, August 15, 1712, she wrote to Montagu:
"I tremble for what we are doing.—Are you sure you will love me for ever? Shall we never repent? I fear and I hope. I forsee all that will happen on this occasion. I shall incense my family in the highest degree. The generality of the world will blame my conduct, and the relations and friends of —— will invent a thousand stories of me; yet, 'tis possible, you may recompense everything to me. ”

“ She, at the age of twenty, on the other hand, was full of the joy of life and liked the various social pleasures that came her way. Naturally, she tried the effect of her good looks and wit on men. In fact, she was fond of flirting, and as it must probably have been impossible to flirt with Montagu, she indulged herself in that agreeable pastime with more than one other—to the great annoyance of that pompous prig of an admirer of hers. The following letter, dated September 5, 1709, written to Anne Wortley for her brother's perusal, was clearly an endeavour to sooth away the man's jealousy. ”

“ Lady Mary, of course, often stayed in London, and in her correspondence are many references to her friends and her doings.
"Operas flourish more than ever, and I have been in a tract of going every time," she wrote to her sister in April, 1723. "The people I live most with are none of your acquaintance; the Duchess of Montagu excepted, whom I continue to see often. Her daughter Belle is at this instant in the paradisal state of receiving visits every day from a passionate lover, who is her first love; whom she thinks the finest gentleman in Europe, and is, besides that, Duke of Manchester. ”

“ In her youth she combined the attractions of a reigning beauty and a wit. Her early studies were encouraged and assisted by Bishop Burnet, and she was the friend of Pope, Addison, and Swift. In 1712 she m., against the wishes of her family, Edward Wortley-Montagu, a cousin of the celebrated Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax. Her husband having been appointed Ambassador to the Porte, she accompanied him, and wrote the sparkling Letters from the East which have given her a place high among the great letter-writers of the world. ”

“ The correspondence, of course, continued. The lovers, if so they can be called, now indulged in a slightly acid academic discussion, or rather a number of slightly acid academic discussions, about marriage. It is evident that Montagu held strong views as to the duty of a wife; so undoubtedly did Lady Mary—only, the trouble was, the views were by no means identical. If he were determined to set himself up as the strong loquacious man, his fiancée was certainly not prepared meekly to obey his behests in silence. ”

“ It would appear that Montagu, tentatively at least, had put the question, because Lady Mary gives her views as to the life they should lead after marriage. She is not averse from travelling; she has no objection to leaving London; in fact, she would be willing to spend a few months in the country, if it so pleased him. It is all so extraordinarily unloverlike. There is too much philosophy about it. Love does not see so clearly.
"Where people are tied for life, 'tis their mutual interest not to grow weary of one another," she wrote on April 25, 1710. ”

“ Certainly the position must have been almost unbearable to a young woman of spirit. Here was Lady Mary, in her twenty-second or twenty-third year, for all practical purposes betrothed, and her father and her lover quarrelling over settlements. Her friends were all getting married and having establishments of their own, and she more or less in disgrace, living at one or other of her father's houses.
Nothing came of her announcement that she desired no further relation with Montagu. She could not bring herself definitely to break with Montagu, and he would neither wed her nor give her up. ”

“ You should remember I want to know you are safe at Durham. I shall imagine you have had some fall from your horse, or ill accident by the way, without regard to probability; there is nothing too extravagant for a woman's and a lover's fears. Did you receive my last letter? if you did not, the direction is wrong, you won't receive this, and my question is in vain. I find I begin to talk nonsense, and 'tis time to leave off. Pray, my dear, write to me, or I shall be very mad."
Montagu was, not to put too fine a point on it, a careless husband. ”

“ Montagu may have found some comfort in the lady's assurance that if she had a choice between two thousand a year or twenty thousand a year she would choose the smaller income.
An apartment in London would satisfy Lady Mary. She would not choose to live in a crowd, but would like to have a small circle of agreeable people—she was very precise as to her desires: actually she wants to see eight or nine pleasant folk. She does not believe that she can find entire happiness in solitude, not even (or perhaps especially not) in a solitude of two ”

“ Lady Mary, however, thought that certain precautions should be taken in the event of his securing a commission. "It is my opinion," she wrote to Montagu in January, 1744, "he should have no distinction, in equipage, from any other cornet; everything of that sort will only serve to blow his vanity and consequently heighten his folly. Your indulgence has always been greater to him than any other parent's would have been in the same circumstances. ”

“ If you do agree, I shall endeavour to contribute, as much as lies in my power, to your happiness. I so heartily despise a great figure, I have no notion of spending money so foolishly; though one had a great deal to throw away. If this breaks off, I shall not complain of you: and as, whatever happens, I shall still preserve the opinion you have behaved yourself well. Let me entreat you, if I have committed any follies, to forgive them; and be so just to think I would not do an ill thing."
Shortly afterwards, Lady Mary wrote again to Montagu. ”

“ The only sure remedy is to fix a certain rate on every woman's fortune, one price for that of a maid, and another for that of a widow: for it is of infinite advantage, that there should be no frauds or uncertainties in the sale of our women."
Unless Montagu were tactless beyond the general, the position as regards himself and Lord Dorchester must indeed have been hopeless before he inspired the paper in the Tatler on settlements. ”

“ What sort of a man must Montagu have been at the age of thirty-six that his wife should deem it necessary to give him such first-aid advice?
Montagu was evidently of a procrastinating turn of mind. He had, as has been said, sat for Huntingdon in the House of Commons from 1705 until 1713. In the latter year Parliament was dissolved on August 8, but Montagu had made no definite plans as regards his future political career—for some reason or other his father reserved for himself the seat for Huntingdon. ”

“ Wortley Montagu would make no settlement on his wife. Lady Mary’s father would not hear of a marriage without one, and hunted up another suitor, rich—and unacceptable. There was doubt, debate, delay—and then an elopement. Lady Mary eloping! What elements of comedy! And her letters make it so.
That she loved her lover as much as she could love is [8] evident. “My protestations of friendship are not like other people’s, I never speak but what I mean, and when I say I love, ’tis for ever.” “I am willing to abandon all conversation but yours. If you please I will never see another man. ”

“ Lady Mary, indeed, spent most of the time in the country. Sometimes she stayed at the seat of her father-in-law, Wharncliffe Lodge, near Sheffield; occasionally she visited Lord Sandwich at Hinchinbrooke; for a while they stayed at Middlethorpe, in the neighbourhood of Bishopthorpe and York. From time to time they hired houses in other parts of Yorkshire. The honeymoon lasted from August until October, 1712, when Montagu had to go to Westminster. ”

“ She seemed a very good woman, near fifty years old. I was surprised to observe so little magnificence in her house, the furniture being all very moderate; and, except the habits and number of her slaves, nothing about her appeared expensive. She guessed at my thoughts, and told me she was no longer of an age to spend either her time or money in superfluities; that her whole expence was in charity, and her whole employment praying to God. There was no affectation in this speech; both she and her husband are entirely given up to devotion. He never looks upon any other woman ”

“ This estate cost but £10,000, and so is a small part of his fortune, so that the children are entirely dependent on her. I hear old Mr. Wortley can last but a very short time. It is supposed Lady Mary will come to England.”
DEATH OF OLD MR. WORTLEY MONTAGU
Writing to her husband, still at Newcastle, at the end of January, Mrs. Montagu says—
“I believe it will be agreeable to you to hear that Lord Sandwich called on me this morning to desire me to write you word that he hopes that the second week in February you will be ready for Huntingdon ”

“ How curious, in so keen a wit, the failure to foresee that just this English social elasticity would avert the terrible disaster which was to befall the neat gradations of French order and system!
Lady Mary was not only practical in her household, but in all the other common concerns of life. Few women have pushed their husbands on in the world with more vigorous energy than is shown in the letters she writes to Mr. Wortley Montagu, urging him to drop his diffidence and claim what he deserves. “No modest man ever did, or ever will, make his fortune.” ”