Montagu

“ Montagu has been studiously disposed ever since we came to Sandleford, so that I pass seven or eight hours every day entirely alone. Five months are to pass before I return to the Land of the Living, but [72] I can amuse myself in the regions of the dead: if it rains so that I cannot walk in the garden, Virgil will carry me into the Elysian fields, or Milton into Paradise. ”

“ At noon we were east and west of the northern part of Cape Montagu, distant about five leagues, and Freezeland Peak bore S. 16° east, distant twelve leagues; latitude observed 58° 25' S. In the morning the variation was 10° 11' east. At two in the afternoon, as we were standing to the north, with a light breeze at S.W., we saw land bearing N. 25' east, distant fourteen leagues. Cape Montagu bore at this time, S. 66° east; at eight it bore S. 40° east; Cape Bristol, S. by E.; the new land extending from N. 40° to 52° east; and we thought we saw land still more to the east, and beyond it. ”

“ Montagu writes to the Duchess of Portland—
“I am now in the highest content: my little brothers are to go to Westminster, as soon as the holidays are over, and what adds still to my pleasure in this, is that Jacky’s going is owing to Mr. Montagu’s intercession for him with my Father, who did not design his going to Westminster till next year: our youngest, [253] I believe, is to go out with our new Captain....
“I am pretty well, but I do not like to sit still like Puss in the corner all the winter to watch what may prove a mouse, though I am no mountain. ”

“ Montagu by James Wyatt at the end of the eighteenth century, and the adjoining Montagu Street and Montagu Square derive their names from her. Somehow Mrs. Montagu's only son got kidnapped, and all attempts to recover the child failed. Time went on, and he was regarded as dead. On a certain 1st of May the sweeps arrived to clean Mrs. Montagu's chimneys, and a climbing-boy was sent up to his horrible task. Like Tom in the Water-Babies, he lost his way in the network of flues and emerged in a different room to the one he had started from. ”

“ There is a picture of Mount Morris in Harris’ ‘History of Kent,’ 1719, a large square house with a cupola surmounted by a big ball and weathercock. In front of the house and round it are the small walled gardens, formally planted, the fashion of the period. These were eventually pulled down by Matthew Robinson, the hedges grubbed and all thrown into one large park, [19] in which his numerous horses and cattle roamed [15] at large. Mr. Montagu seemed to have enjoyed some fine partridge shooting whilst at Horton. ”

“ In the same letter it appears that the good old Yorkshire steward, Mr. Carter, had had a bad fall, and the house in Dover Street not being large enough, Morris Robinson was trying to secure them one in Bruton Street. Mrs. Montagu, having suffered from weakness and hysterical fits, was recommended to ride daily—a pastime which was agreeably varied by the cutting of new walks through the Sandleford woods, and the continual amusement afforded to her and Mr. Montagu by the contemplation of their child’s too precocious ways. ”

“ Mrs. Montagu was much distressed by the poor boy employed in her garden at Sandleford having accidentally fallen into a pond there and been drowned, an account of which she writes to the duchess on August 7. In this letter she begs the duchess to send the “Little Père,” as he was fondly called (Dr. Courayer) , to stay with her, from Bullstrode, where he had been domiciled some time. At the same time she asks for two peacocks, “After asking for Dr. Courayer to beg your two peacocks, are there in Nature things that differ like this Philosopher and the bird of noise, vanity, and ostentation?” ”

“ Here we are situated in a fine country, and Mr. Montagu has the pleasure of calling many hundred pounds a year about his house his own, without any person’s property interfering with it: I think it is the prettiest estate, and in the best order I ever saw; large and beautiful meadows for riding or walking in, with a pretty river [237] winding about them, upon which we shall sometimes go out in boats.
“In this parish Dr. Robinson, [238] our general Uncle, has founded a school and an Alms House where the young are taught industry, the old, content: I propose to visit the Alms House very soon. ”

“ Mrs. Montagu and her sister now joined Mr. Montagu in Dover Street, leaving little “Punch” at Sandleford with regret. On the way their coachman, who had met them at Hounslow with their own chaise, ran a race with a coach and four, and overturned them, but they were none the worse; in fact, being upset in a carriage in those days seems to have been little thought of!
A letter of March 4 of Mrs. Robinson from Mount Morris says—
“Sir John Norris is returned into the Downs, and all our fears are over. ”

“ They carried Montagu to a scaffold erected in the market place, where, having made him strip to his shirt, they cut off his head, and fixed it to the end of a pike, and hung his body by the shoulders to the highest gibbet at Montfaucon. ”

“ In his 300 acres you have the finest lawns, a serpentine river playing in the sweetest valley, hills finely planted, which command charming prospects, winding walks made gay with flowers and flowering Shrubs, part of a rude forest, sombre woods, a river deep and still, gliding round the woods and shaded by trees that hang over the bank, while the serpentine river open and exposed to the sun, adorn’d with little Islands and enlivened by waterfowls, gladdens the vallies. ”

“ We went to a farm abounding in wonders, a high hill with some hanging wood before it, behind it a large and rapid river with the prospect of [126] a huge cascade, an old Castle and a Church. Some houses in view take from it the honour of absolute solitude: a range of rocks appears like the ruins of an old town on the other side of the river. In a cottage built in this charming place, lives an old woman, who has attained to an hundred and four years, and for this long lease of life, has not exchanged the best comfort. ”

“ Her spirits reviving, Mrs. Montagu, writing to the duchess, says, “Whisk and the noble game of E. O. employ the evening; three glasses of water, a toasted [256] roll, a Bath cake, and a cold walk the mornings,” but the regimen agreed with her, and she accompanied Mr. Montagu to Sandleford on May 1, leaving Sarah Robinson, who was suffering from headache, with her friend, Miss Grinfield, at Bath. ”

“ Montagu and Sarah set out on their journey to London, and a letter to the duchess from Northampton, November 17, shows the state of the roads then—
“I am here in a whole skin, thanks to the care of our coachman, and the stuffing of our coach seats, but never [196] was poor mortal so jumbled, jolted and dragged through such roads. I never saw such roads in my life as between Harborough and this place. We were obliged to come a nameless pace that is slower than a walk. Mr. ”

“ Sarah Scott and Lady Bab Montagu had taken a house at Bath Easton for use in the summer, and desiring plants for the garden there, Mrs. Montagu sends on November 6 to them a vast number of pinks, roses and honeysuckles, together with a home-cured ham. In the accompanying letter she mentions Ealing being
“two hundred pounds a year, his house a very pretty one, a good garden with a great deal of wall fruit, and there is a neighbourhood of genteel people, who have all shown him great civility.... ”

“ Montagu presents her compliments to my Lord Bath, and has the pleasure to send him the Bishop of London’s letter to the King, which she had never been able to get till yesterday; she begs of his Lordship not to give any copy of the letter. If the Bishop should have any human vanity still subsisting, it must be of such a kind as will be gratified by the approbation of Lord Bath, but would disdain common and ordinary applause. Mrs. Montagu hopes my Lord Bath remembers he was so good as to promise her the honour [221] and pleasure of his company at dinner on Sunday next. ”

“ Captain Robinson returned from his Chinese expedition in the Saint George the middle of June, and Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Scott met him from Sandleford at her villa at Hayes. “He has brought me two beautiful gowns and a fine Chinese lanthorn. We are to go on board the St. George to-morrow,” she writes to her husband. He also brought a gown apiece for Lady Sandwich and her sister, Miss Fane. The greater part of the Robinson family went to dine on the Saint George, but on a stormy day, and Mrs. Montagu was very terrified at the tossing of the small boat they went in. ”

“ Bishop of Gloucester.
[27] Duc de Sully, favourite minister of Henry IV. of France.
[28] Lord Coventry, married March 5, 1782, to Maria Gunning.
“HISTORY OF THE POPES”
Gilbert West was busied at this time planting his garden at Wickham with firs and laurels, and Mrs. Montagu teased him by letter about his “evergreen-nevergreen garden,” as she called it. She says—
“Remember that while you avoid winter, you exclude Spring, and forbid the glad return of the vernal season, as well as the sad approach of autumn. ”

“ And who’s best man the Devil himself can’t tell.
Things are by both into confusion hurled,
Montagu speaks, and she subdues the world.”
[308] Frederick “the Great.”
[309] The battle of Torgau, fought on November 3, 1760.
Lord Bath had been most anxious about his son, Lord Pulteney, who had been appointed to the secret [226] expedition which Mr. Pitt designed to send to France. This scheme was given up, and Mrs. Montagu wrote to congratulate Lord Bath upon this. ”

“ Montagu she applied to their common connection, John, Duke of Montagu, to get him a commission in the Army, buying it “as an ensign in a marching regiment.” The duke’s reply to this is singularly indifferent in expression, and his spelling terrible.
On August 6, writing from Bath Easton to her [114] husband, Mrs. Montagu alludes to the defeat of Frederick the Great at Kollin in Bohemia, on June 18, by General Daun. Emin had written to her, saying—
“The French seem afraid of us, tho’ so much inferior in numbers.... ”

“ The leafless trees and barren soil of my landscape will very ill bear comparison with the shady oaks and beautiful verdure of South Lodge, and the grinning Mandarins still worse supply the place of a British Statesman: but as you can improve every society and place into which you enter, I expect such hints from you as will set off the figures, and enliven the landscape with rural beauty. ”

“ I had been three days upon an expedition to a wild part of the country called the Dales, where Nature’s works are not delicate, pretty and mignonne, but grand, sublime and magnificent. Vast mountains, rocks and cascades, and rapid rivers make the country beautiful and surprising. ”

“ The estates were very large; besides Denton, with its coal-mines, houses in Newcastle, and in Bramston, Lamesley, Harburn, Parkhead, and Jarrow, in the county of Durham; lands at Hindley, Sugley, Throckley, Newbiggin, Scotswood, etc., etc.; collieries and saltpans in Cullercoats, Monkseaton, Whitley, and Hartley, etc., etc. Mrs. Montagu was at Ealing with the Bothams when the express came. She writes to her husband, “It gives me pleasure to think I shall see you with unblemished integrity and unsoiled with unjust gain, enjoying that affluence many purchase with the loss of honesty and honour.” ”

“ Mrs. Montagu had written to ask for a pair of horses and a coachman to be sent to Bath Easton, in order to convey herself and sister to stay at King’s Weston with Mrs. Southwell, “a man at Bath Easton will feed each horse at 6d. a day!” Mr. Montagu sends them, but says, “They may possibly serve to carry you to King’s Weston, and bring you part of the way home, but for any expeditions out of the Turnpike roads I fear they will not endure it.”
MRS. MARY DELANY.
MR. STEVENS
In replying to her husband, the following character of Mr. Stevens is given:—
“I look upon Mr. ”

“ Mr. Montagu set out on October 2 to Horton, and arrived at Canterbury, where he ascended the Cathedral tower for the view, his first sight of that place. His first letter crossed one of his wife’s, in which she laments her inability to accompany him, and says—
“I suppose you will see the place with great veneration, where your consort’s virtues, charms and accomplishments were ripened to their present perfection, besides the pleasure of seeing my brothers, which would have been great. ”

“ Montagu sends her kind regards and condolences on his health. Amongst other people mentioned at Bath by Sarah were the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Berkeley, Mr. Powlett, and Mr. Bathurst, son of Lady Selina, the two Offleys, Mr. Greville, and Lord Robert Carr, said to be very handsome.
“Last night in the middle of the dancing we drank tea with a gentleman who had invited about twenty of us some days before. They give tea now almost as much of common days as they used to do on Sundays.” ”

“ They have a very pretty house at Bath for the winter, and one at Bath Easton for the summer; their houses are adorned by the ingenuity of the owners, but as their income is small, they deny themselves unnecessary expenses. My sister [99] seems very happy; it has pleased God to lead her to truth, by the road of affliction; but what draws the sting of death and triumphs over the grave, cannot fail to heal the wounds of disappointment. Lady Bab Montagu concurs with her in all these things, and their convent, for by its regularity it resembles one, is really a cheerful place. ”

“ He can not only make a fine dish of the cabbage, but of the snails and caterpillars, and what we call the unprofitable vermin that live upon it! There was not a creature in Noah’s Ark that would not be received into his larder, for a Frenchman is seldom so proud of stomach as to term anything unclean....
“Mr. Montagu desires his compliments to your grace, and my Lord Duke; we talk of you and drink your health as often as you can expect from sober people. ”