Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Lewis Melville
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Much upset, Lady Mary wrote the following letter to Arbuthnot:
January 3 [1735].
"Sir,
"I have perused the last lampoon of your ingenious friend, and am not
surprised you did not find me out under the name of Sappho, because
there is nothing I ever heard in our characters or circumstances to make
a parallel, but as the town (except you, who know better) generally
suppose Pope means me, whenever he mentions that name, I cannot help
taking notice of the horrible malice he bears against the lady signified
by that name, which appears to be irritated by supposing her writer of
the Verses to the Imitator of Horace. Now I can assure him they were
wrote (without my knowledge) by a gentleman of great merit, whom I very
much esteem, who he will never guess, and who, if he did know, he durst
not attack; but I own the design was so well meant, and so excellently
executed, that I cannot be sorry they were written. I wish you would
advise poor Pope to turn to some more honest livelihood than libelling;
I know he will allege in his excuse that he must write to eat, and he
has now grown sensible that nobody will buy his verses except their
curiosity is piqued to it, to see what is said of their acquaintance;
but I think this method of gain so exceeding vile that it admits of no
excuse at all.--Can anything be more detestable than his abusing poor
Moore, scarce cold in his grave, when it is plain he kept back his poem,
while he lived, for fear he should beat him for it? This is shocking to
me, though of a man I never spoke to and hardly knew by sight; but I am
seriously concerned at the worse scandal he has heaped on Mr. Congreve,
who was my friend, and whom I am obliged to justify, because I can do it
on my own knowledge, and, which is yet farther bring witness of it, from
those who were then often with me that he was so far from loving Pope's
rhyme, both that--and his conversation were perpetual jokes to him,
exceeding despicable in his opinion, and he has often made us laugh in
talking of them, being particularly pleasant on that subject. As to
Pope's being born of honest parents, I verily believe it, and will add
one praise to his mother's character, that (though I only knew her very
old) she always appeared to me to have much better sense than himself. I
desire, sir, as a favour, that you would show this letter to Pope, and
you will very much oblige, sir,
"Your humble servant."
Lady Mary was not a person, after severe chastisement, to turn the other
cheek, and Pope was well aware of it. He believed that more than one
social satire upon him came from her pen; and he especially suspected
her of having written, or anyhow of having had a hand in the composition
of _A Pop upon Pope_, in which an account was given of a whipping in Ham
Walk which was said to have been administered to him. The poet was so
furious--he regarded it as an indirect attack on his physical deformity,
of which he was always so conscious--that he actually inserted an
announcement in the papers that no such incident had ever occurred--
thereby drawing yet more attention to the lampoon. "You may be certain I
shall never reply to such a libel as Lady Mary's," he wrote to
Fortescue. "It is a pleasure and comfort at once to find out that with
so much mind as so much malice must have to accuse or blacken my
character, it can fix upon no one ill or immoral thing in my life and
must content itself to say, my poetry is dull and my person ugly."
Lady Mary, in a letter to Arbuthnot, denied the authorship of _A Pop
upon Pope_:
"Sir,
"Since I saw you I have made some inquiries, and heard more, of the
story you was so kind to mention to me. I am told Pope has had the
surprising impudence to assert he can bring the lampoon when he pleases
to produce it, under my own hand; I desire he may be made to keep to
this offer. If he is so skilful in counterfeiting hands, I suppose he
will not confine that great talent to the gratifying his malice, but
take some occasion to increase his fortune by the same method, and I may
hope (by such practices) to see him exalted according to his merit,
which nobody will rejoice at more than myself. I beg of you, sir (as an
act of justice), to endeavour to set the truth in an open light, and
then I leave to your judgment the character of those who have attempted
to hurt mine in so barbarous a manner. I can assure you (in particular)
you named a lady to me (as abused in this libel) whose name I never
heard before, and as I never had any acquaintance with Dr. Swift am an
utter stranger to all his affairs and even his person, which I never saw
to my knowledge, and am now convinced the whole is a contrivance of
Pope's to blast the reputation of one who never injured him. I am not
more sensible of his injustice, than I am, sir, of your [_sic_] candour,
generosity, and good sense I have found in you, which has obliged me to
be with a very uncommon warmth your real friend, and I heartily wish for
an opportunity of showing I am so more effectually than by subscribing
myself your very
"Humble servant."
Whether, in spite of her denial, Lady Mary had a hand in _A Pop upon
Pope_ cannot be said; but it is certainly safe to believe that the
following lines were written by her, in conjunction, the gossip of the
day had it, with Lord Hervey, with some assistance from Mr. Wyndham,
then tutor to the Duke of Cumberland:
"VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE IMITATOR OF THE FIRST SATIRE OF THE
SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.
_By a Lady_
"Nor thou the justice of the world disown.
That leaves thee thus an outcast and alone:
For though in law the murder be to kill,
In equity the murder is the will.
Then while with coward hand you stab a name,
And try at least to assassinate our fame,
Like the first bold assassin be thy lot,
Ne'er be thy guilt forgiven or forgot;
But as thou hat'st by hatred by mankind,
And with the emblem of thy crooked mind
Marked on thy back, like Cain, by God's own hand,
Wander like him accursed through the land."
It was this malignant attack upon his person that inspired Pope's lines
in the _Epistle to Arbuthnot_:
"Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit,
And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit.
Safe, so he thought, though all the prudent chid;
He writ no libels, but my lady did;
Great odds, in amorous or poetic game,
Where woman's is the sin, and man's the shame."
With the following extract from a letter written by Lady Mary from
Florence in 1740 this unpleasing incident may be dismissed:
"The word malignity, and a passage in your letter, call to my mind the
wicked wasp of Twickenham: his lies affect me now no more; they will be
all as much despised as the story of the seraglio and the handkerchief,
of which I am persuaded he was the only inventor. That man has a
malignant and ungenerous heart; and he is base enough to assume the mask
of a moralist, in order to decry human nature, and to give a decent vent
to his hatred of man and woman kind.--But I must quit this contemptible
subject, on which a just indignation would render my pen so fertile,
that after having fatigued you with a long letter, I would surfeit you
with a supplement twice as long."
At Twickenham Lady Mary interested herself in planning alterations in
the house and gardens. "There is a sort of pleasure," she said, "in
shewing one's own fancy on one's own ground." The longer she stayed at
the riverside, the better she liked it. "I am at present at Twickenham,"
she wrote in July, 1723, "which is become so fashionable, and the
neighbourhood so much enlarged, that 'tis more like Tunbridge or the
Bath than a country retreat."
"I am now at the same distance from London that you are from Paris, and
could fall into solitary amusements with a good deal of taste; but I
resist it, as a temptation of Satan, and rather turn my endeavours to
make the world as agreeable to me as I can, which is the true
philosophy; that of despising it is of no use but to hasten wrinkles"
(she wrote to Lady Mar in 1725). "I ride a good deal, and have got a
horse superior to any two-legged animal, he being without a fault. I
work like an angel. I receive visits upon idle days, and I shade my life
as I do my tent-stitch, that is, make as easy transitions as I can from
business to pleasure; the one would be too flaring and gaudy without
some dark shades of t'other; and if I worked altogether in the grave
colours, you know 'twould be quite dismal. Miss Skerritt is in the house
with, me, and Lady Stafford has taken a lodging at Richmond: as their
ages are different, and both agreeable in their kind, I laugh with the
one, or reason with the other, as I happen to be in a gay or serious
humour; and I manage my friends with such a strong yet with a gentle
hand, that they are both willing to do whatever I have a mind to."
"Molly," that is, Maria Skerritt or Skirrett, is best known for her
connection with Sir Robert Walpole. There was nothing clandestine about
the relationship: it was openly avowed. Miss Skerritt, who was the
daughter of a London merchant, had great good looks and an ample
fortune, and Walpole declared that she was indispensable to his
happiness. She was received everywhere, and moved in fashionable
society. It was to Lady Walpole and Molly Skerritt that Gay alluded in
the song that he put in the mouth of Macheath (who was meant for Robert
Walpole):
"How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear Charmer away!"
Lady Walpole survived until the summer of 1738, and after her death the
others married. The second Lady Walpole died of a miscarriage in June,
1739, to the great and enduring sorrow of her husband. For the surviving
child, Walpole, when he accepted a peerage in 1742, secured the rank of
an earl's daughter.
Lady Mary now spent her time between London and Twickenham. At Court,
she was as popular as ever with the King; and she was liked in literary
circles, and on good terms with Young, Arbuthnot, Garth, and the rest of
the set. "I see every body but converse with nobody but _des amies
choisses_; in the first rank of these are Lady Stafford and dear Molly
Skerritt, both of whom have now the additional merit of being old
acquaintances, and never having given me any reason to complain of
either of 'em. 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. "For my own part," she wrote to
Lady Mar, "I have some coteries where wit and pleasure reign, and I
should not fail to amuse myself tolerably enough, but for the d----d
d----d quality of growing older every day, and my present joys are made
imperfect by fears of the future." However, this depression was not
always on her, and later she was writing:
"I think this is the first time in my life that a letter of yours has
lain by me two posts unanswered. You'll wonder to hear that short
silence is occasioned by not having a moment unemployed at Twickenham;
but I pass many hours on horseback, and, I'll assure you, ride
stag-hunting, which I know you'll stare to hear of. I have arrived to
vast courage and skill that way, and am as well pleased with it as with
the acquisition of a new sense: his Royal Highness [the Prince of Wales]
hunts in Richmond Park, and I make one of the _beau monde_ in his train.
I desire you after this account not to name the word old woman to me any
more: I approach to fifteen nearer than I did ten years ago, and am in
hopes to improve every year in health and vivacity."
Lady Mary's tongue made her many enemies in society, and when her tongue
failed her she brought her pen into action. Her love of scandal must
have gone far to make her unpopular, and if her letters to her sister at
Paris had been published she would have found herself with scarcely a
friend in the world.
Correspondence between Lady Mary, from London or Twickenham, to her
sister, the Countess of Mar, at Paris, was a very one-sided affair. This
was, in part, owing to the fact that Lord Mar was, of course, suspect,
and that letters to him or to members of his family and household were
(in all probability) intercepted in this country. Lady Mary, who had
suspected this more than once, became more and more convinced that her
suspicions were justified. "I have writ to you at least five-and-forty
letters, dear sister, without receiving any answer, and resolved not to
confide in post-house fidelity any more, being firmly persuaded that
they never came to your hands, or you would not refuse one line to let
me know how you do, which is and ever will be of great importance to
me." That was written at Christmas, 1722, and though in the meantime
Lady Mary heard from her sister, she realised that if she wanted her
letters to arrive she must be careful as to the topics upon which she
discoursed. "Letters are so surely opened, I dare say nothing to you
either of our intrigues or duels, both of which would afford great
matter of mirth and speculation." The difficulties of communication did
not decrease. "I have writ to you twice since I received yours in answer
to that I sent by Mr. de Caylus," she remarked a little later; "but I
believe none of what I send by the post ever come to your hands, nor
ever will while they are directed to Mr. Waters, for reasons that you
may easily guess. I wish you would give me a safer direction; it is very
seldom I can have the opportunity of a private messenger, and it is very
often that I have a mind to write to my dear sister."
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. Her mamma
and I often laugh and sigh reflecting on her felicity, the consummation
of which will be in a fortnight. In the mean time they are permitted to
be alone together every day and all the day."
Mary's very best vein is the following letter, written about the same
time, and also addressed to her sister:
"I am yet in this wicked town, but purpose to leave it as soon as the
Parliament rises. Mrs. Murray and all her satellites have so seldom
fallen in my way, I can say little about them. Your old friend Mrs.
Lowther is still fair and young, and in pale pink every night in the
Parks; but, after being highly in favour, poor I am in utter disgrace,
without my being able to guess wherefore, except she fancied me the
author or abettor of two vile ballads written on her dying adventure,
which I am so innocent of that I never saw [them]. _A propos_ of
ballads, a most delightful one is said or sung in most houses about our
dear beloved plot, which has been laid firstly to Pope, and secondly to
me, when God knows we have neither of us wit enough to make it. Mrs.
Hervey lies-in of a female child. Lady Rich is happy in dear Sir
Robert's absence, and the polite Mr. Holt's return to his allegiance,
who, though in a treaty of marriage with one of the prettiest girls in
town (Lady Jane Wharton), appears better with her than ever. Lady Betty
Manners is on the brink of matrimony with a Yorkshire Mr. Monckton of
L3,000 per annum: it is a match of the young duchess's making, and she
thinks matter of great triumph over the two coquette beauties, who can
get nobody to have and to hold; they are decayed to a piteous degree and
so neglected that they are grown constant and particular to the two
ugliest fellows in London. Mrs. Pulteney condescends to be publicly kept
by the noble Earl of Cadogan; whether Mr. Pulteney has a pad nag
deducted out of the profits for his share I cannot tell, but he appears
very well satisfied with it. This is, I think, the whole state of love;
as to that of wit, it splits itself into ten thousand branches; poets
increase and multiply to that stupendous degree, you see them at every
turn, even in embroidered coats and pink-coloured top-knots; making
verses is almost as common as taking snuff, and God can tell what
miserable stuff people carry about in their pockets, and offer to
their acquaintances, and you know one cannot refuse reading and taking a
pinch. This is a very great grievance, and so particularly shocking to
me, that I think our wise lawgivers should take it into consideration,
and appoint a fast-day to beseech Heaven to put a stop to this
epidemical disease, as they did last year for the plague with great
success."
Another typical letter from Lady Mary contains a story of the class that
strongly appealed to her:
"The most diverting story about town at present is in relation to
Edgcombe; though your not knowing the people concerned so well as I do,
will, I fear hinder you from being so much entertained by it. I can't
tell whether you know a tall, musical, silly, ugly thing, niece to Lady
Essex Roberts, who is called Miss Leigh. She went a few days ago to
visit Mrs. Betty Tichborne, Lady Sunderland's sister, who lives in the
house with her, and was denied at the door; but, with the true manners
of a great fool, told the porter that if his lady was at home she was
very positive she would be very glad to see her. Upon which she was
shewed up stairs to Miss Tichborne, who was ready to drop down at the
sight of her, and could not help asking her in a grave way how she got
in, being denied to every mortal, intending to pass the evening in
devout preparation. Miss Leigh said she had sent away her chair and
servants, with intent of staying till nine o'clock. There was then no
remedy, and she was asked to sit down; but had not been there a quarter
of an hour when she heard a violent rap at the door, and somebody
vehemently run up stairs. Miss Tichborne seemed much surprised, and said
she believed it was Mr. Edgcombe, and was quite amazed how he took it
into his head to visit her. During these excuses enter Edgcombe, who
appeared frighted at the sight of a third person. Miss Tichborne told
him almost at his entrance that the lady he saw there was perfect
mistress of music, and as he passionately loved it, she thought she
could not oblige him more than by desiring her to play. Miss Leigh very
willingly sat to the harpsichord; upon which her audience decamped to
the adjoining room, and left her to play over three or four lessons to
herself. They returned, and made what excuses they could, but said very
frankly they had not heard her performance, and begged her to begin
again; which she complied with, and gave them the opportunity of a
second retirement. Miss Leigh was by this time all fire and flame to see
her heavenly harmony thus slighted; and when they returned, told them
she did not understand playing to an empty room. Mr. Edgcombe begged ten
thousand pardons, and said, if she would play _Godi_, it was a tune he
died to hear, and it would be an obligation he should never forget. She
made answer she would do him a much greater favour by her absence, which
she supposed was all that was necessary at that time; and ran down
stairs in a great fury to publish as fast as she could; and was so
indefatigable in this pious design, that in four-and-twenty hours all
the people in town had heard the story. My Lady Sunderland could not
avoid hearing this story, and three days after, invited Miss Leigh to
dinner, where, in the presence of her sister and all the servants, she
told her she was very sorry she had been so rudely treated in her house;
that it was very true Mr. Edgcombe had been a perpetual companion of her
sister's these two years, and she thought it high time he should explain
himself, and she expected her sister should act in this matter as
discreetly as Lady K. [Katherine] Pelham had done in the like case; who
had given Mr. Pelham four months to resolve in, and after that he was
either to marry her or to lose her for ever. Sir Robert Sutton
interrupted her by saying, that he never doubted the honour of Mr.
Edgcombe, and was persuaded he could have no ill design in his family.
The affair stands thus, and Mr. Edgcombe has four months to provide
himself elsewhere; during which time he has free egress and regress; and
'tis seriously the opinion of many that a wedding will in good earnest
be brought about by this admirable conduct.
"I send you a novel instead of a letter, but, as it is in your power to
shorten it when you please, by reading no farther than you like, I will
make no excuses for the length of it."
Lady Mary had contracted an intimacy with Griselda Baillie, the wife of
Mr. (afterwards Sir A.) Murray, of Stanhope, after her return from
abroad, and there is frequent mention of her in the correspondence; but
the friendship came to an abrupt end in 1725.
"Among the rest a very odd whim has entered the little head of Mrs.
Murray: do you know she won't visit me this winter?" Lady Mary wrote to
Lady Mar. "I, according to the usual integrity of my heart, and
simplicity of my manners, with great _naivete_ desired to explain with
her on the subject, and she answered that she was convinced that I had
made the ballad upon her, and was resolved never to speak to me again. I
answered (which was true), that I utterly defied her to have any one
single proof of my making it, without being able to get any thing from
her, but repetitions that she knew it. I cannot suppose that any thing
you have said should occasion this rupture, and the reputation of a
quarrel is always so ridiculous on both sides, that you will oblige me
in mentioning it to her, for 'tis now at that pretty pass, she won't
curtsey to me whenever she mets me, which is superlatively silly (if she
really knew it), after a suspension of resentment for two years
together."
Mrs. Murray had had an unpleasant adventure with her footman, Arthur
Grey, who had broken into her bedroom. Lady Mary had written and
circulated _An Epistle from Arthur Grey,_ and later another, and an
improper, ballad had appeared under the title of _Virtue in Danger_.
Mrs. Murray was firmly convinced that both pieces came from the same
pen.
Lady Mar, on receipt of the above letter, proposed to act as peacemaker.
"I give you thanks for the good offices you promise with regard to Mrs.
Murray," Lady Mary wrote to her in reply, "and I shall think myself
sincerely obliged to you, as I already am on many accounts. 'Tis very
disagreeable in her to go about behaving and talking as she does, and
very silly into the bargain."
"Mrs. Murray is in open war with me in such a manner as makes her very
ridiculous without doing me much harm; my moderation having a very
bright pretence of shewing itself" (she wrote to Lady Mar). "Firstly,
she was pleased to attack me in very Billingsgate at a masquerade, where
she was as visible as ever she was in her own clothes. I had the temper
not only to keep silence myself, but enjoined it to the person with me;
who would have been very glad to have shewn his great skill in sousing
upon that occasion. She endeavoured to sweeten him by very exorbitant
praises of his person, which might even have been mistaken for making
love from a woman of less celebrated virtue; and concluded her oration
with pious warnings to him, to avoid the conversation of one so unworthy
his regard as myself, who to her certain knowledge loved another man.
This last article, I own, piqued me more than all her preceding
civilities. The gentleman she addressed herself to had a very slight
acquaintance with me, and might possibly go away in the opinion that she
had been confidante in some very notorious affair of mine. However, I
made her no answer at the time, but you may imagine I laid up these
things in my heart; and the first assembly I had the honour to meet her
at, with a meek tone of voice, asked her how I had deserved so much
abuse at her hands, which I assured her I would never return. She denied
it in the spirit of lying; and in the spirit of folly owned it at
length. I contented myself with telling her she was very ill advised,
and thus we parted. But two days ago, when Sir Geoffrey Kneller's
pictures were to be sold, she went to my sister Gower, and very civily
asked if she intended to bid for your picture; assuring her that, if she
did, she would not offer at purchasing it. You know crimp and quadrille
incapacitate that poor soul from ever buying any thing; but she told me
this circumstance; and I expected the same civility from Mrs. Murray,
having no way provoked her to the contrary. But she not only came to the
auction, but with all possible spite bid up the picture, though I told
her that, if you pleased to have it, I would gladly part with it to you,
though to no other person. This had no effect upon her, nor her malice
any more on me than the loss of ten guineas extraordinary, which I paid
upon her account. The picture is in my possession, and at your service
if you please to have it. She went to the masquerade a few nights
afterwards, and had the good sense to tell people there that she was
very unhappy in not meeting me, being come there on purpose to abuse me.
What profit or pleasure she has in these ways I cannot find out. This I
know, that revenge has so few joys for me, I shall never lose so much
time as to undertake it."