Part 12 (2/2)

The Montagus take a house at Twickenham--Lady Mary's liking for country life--Neighbours and visitors--Pope--Bononcini, Anastasia Robinson, Senesino--Lord Peterborough--Sir Geoffrey Kneller--Henrietta Howard--Lord Bathurst--The Duke of Wharton--His early history--He comes to Twickenham--His relations with Lady Mary--Horace Walpole's reference to them--Pope's bitter onslaught on the Duke--An Epilogue by Lady Mary--”On the death of Mrs. Bowes”--The Duke quarrels with Lady Mary.

Pope went to live at Twickenham in 1718, and it was generally believed that it was by his persuasion that the Montagus rented a house in that little riverside hamlet. It was not until 1722 that they bought ”the small habitation.”

Lady Mary divided her time between London and Twickenham, but apparently enjoyed herself more at her country retreat. ”I live in a sort of solitude that wants very little of being such as I would have it,” she wrote to her sister, Lady Mar, in August, 1721. As a matter of fact, the solitude was more imaginary than real, for round about there was a small colony of friends.

She was, indeed, very rarely lonely. ”My time is melted away in almost perpetual concerts,” she told her sister. ”I do not presume to judge, but I'll a.s.sure you I am a very hearty as well as an humble admirer. I have taken my little thread satin beauty into the house with me; she is allowed by Bononcini to have the finest voice he ever heard in England.

He and Mrs. Robinson and Senesino lodge in this village, and sup often with me: and this easy indolent life would make me the happiest in the world, if I had not this execrable affair [of Remond] still hanging over my head.” To Anastasia Robinson there is more than one allusion in Lady Mary's correspondence, and she gives a most amusing account of an incident in that lady's career.

”Could one believe that Lady Holdernesse is a beauty, and in love? and that Mrs. Robinson is at the same time a prude and a kept mistress? and these things in spite of nature and fortune. The first of these ladies is tenderly attached to the polite Mr. Mildmay, and sunk in all the joys of happy love, notwithstanding she wants the use of her two hands by a rheumatism, and he has an arm that he cannot move. I wish I could send you the particulars of this amour, which seems to me as curious as that between two oysters; and as well worth the serious enquiry of the naturalists. The second heroine has engaged half the town in arms, from the nicety of her virtue, which was not able to bear the too near approach of Senesino in the opera; and her condescension in accepting of Lord Peterborough for her champion, who has signalised both his love and courage upon this occasion in as many instances as ever Don Quixote did for Dulcinea. Poor Senesino, like a vanquished giant, was forced to confess upon his knees that Anastasia was a nonpariel of virtue and beauty. Lord Stanhope, as dwarf to the said giant, joked of his side, and was challenged for his pains. Lord Delawar was Lord Peterborough's second; my lady miscarried--the whole town divided into parties on this important point. Innumerable have been the disorders between the two s.e.xes on so great an account, besides half the house of peers being put under arrest. By the providence of Heaven, and the wise cares of his Majesty, no bloodshed ensued. However, things are now tolerably accommodated; and the fair lady rides through the town in triumph, in the s.h.i.+ning berlin of her hero, not to reckon the essential advantage of 100 a month, which 'tis said he allows her.”

This story is, as a matter of fact, not far removed from the truth. It omits, however, the fact that Lord Peterborough, then about sixty years of age, had married Anastasia Robinson in 1722; but the marriage was secret, although Lady Oxford was present at the ceremony, and it was not made public until thirteen years later, although long before there were many who suspected it. He died in the same year that the announcement was made. His widow survived him by a score of years.

Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller had a house at Twickenham, and, at the instigation of Pope, sat to him for her portrait, upon which the following lines (generally ascribed to Pope) were written:

”The playful smiles around the dimpled mouth.

That happy air of majesty and truth; So would I draw (but oh! 'tis vain to try, My narrow genius does the power deny;) The equal l.u.s.tre of the heav'nly mind, Where ev'ry grace with every virtue's join'd; Learning not vain, and wisdom not severe, With greatness easy, and with wit sincere; With just description show the work divine, And the whole princess in my work should s.h.i.+ne.”

Mrs. Howard, afterwards the Countess of Suffolk, was a neighbour from 1723, when the Prince of Wales, whose mistress she was, provided her with funds for the purchase of Marble Hill. However, though, of course, she and Lady Mary were acquainted, there was at no time any intimacy between them. Lady Mary, in fact, does not appear to have liked Henrietta Howard. At least she on more than one occasion t.i.ttle-tattled about her. ”The most surprising news is Lord Bathurst's a.s.siduous court to their Royal Highnesses, which fills the coffee-houses with profound speculations. But I, who smell a rat at a profound distance, do believe in private that Mrs. Howard and his lords.h.i.+p have a friends.h.i.+p that borders upon 'the tender.'

”And though in histories, learned ignorance Attributes all to cunning or to chance, Love in that grave disguise does often smile, Knowing the cause was kindness all the while.”

So Lady Mary wrote to Lady Mar in 1724, and shortly after returned to the subject in another epistle: ”You may remember I mentioned in my last some suspicions of my own in relation to Lord Bathurst, which I really never mentioned, for fifty reasons, to anyone whatsoever; but, as there is never smoke without some fire, there is very rarely fire without some smoke. These smothered flames, though admirably covered with whole heaps of politics laid over them, were at last seen, felt, heard, and understood; and the fair lady given to understand by her commanding officer, that if she showed under other colours, she must expect to have her pay retrenched. Upon which the good Lord was dismissed, and has not attended the drawing-room since. You know one cannot help laughing, when one sees him next, and I own I long for that pleasurable moment.”

To Twickenham came Philip, Duke of Wharton, and leased a villa, later called The Grove, at the farther end of the hamlet from London. Of all the lads of the village there was none for wildness like unto him. Born in 1698, and therefore nine years younger than Lady Mary, he had at an early age made himself conspicuous by unbridled excesses. Soon after the death of his father, Thomas, first Marquess of Wharton, in 1715, his conduct created so much scandal at home, that his guardians sent him abroad in the custody of a tutor. To the horror of that unfortunate person, his charge enrolled himself as an adherent of the Pretender, and went to pay his respects at Avignon. The Duke had talent beyond the ordinary. He could write fairly well, make an excellent speech, and had a keen sense of wit. When he went to Paris, the British Amba.s.sador, Lord Stair, took it upon himself to give this madcap some sound advice. He extolled the virtues of the late Marquess of Wharton, and, ”I hope,” he said, ”you will follow so ill.u.s.trious an example of fidelity to your Prince and love to your country.” ”I thank your Excellency for your good counsel,” replied the visitor courteously, ”and as your Excellency had also a worthy and discerning father, I hope that you will likewise copy so bright an example, and tread in all his footsteps,”--an effective though a brutal rejoinder, for the first Lord Stair had betrayed his Sovereign. Young Wharton, on his return, however, showed by his conduct that his visit to Avignon had been little more than a prank, for while he had accepted a dukedom from the Pretender, he, in 1718, being still a minor, accepted a dukedom from the British Sovereign--the single instance of such a dignity being conferred upon a minor.

Wharton, who did everything in haste, had in his seventeenth year eloped with Martha, daughter of Major-General Richard Holmes, and married her in the Fleet on March 2, 1715. As was only to be expected from a person so volatile he from the beginning neglected his wife; but, as is put quaintly in that unreliable work, _Memoirs of a Certain Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia_, which was concocted by Mrs. Eliza Haywood, ”after some years of continu'd extravagance, the Duke, either through the natural Inconsistency of his Temper, or the Reflection how much he had been drawn in by his unworthy Companions to embezel his Estate ...

began to think there were Comforts in Retirement; and falling into the Conversation of the sober part of Mankind, more than he had done, was persuaded by them to take home his Dutchess.... He brought her to his House; but Love had no part in his Resolution. He lived with her indeed but she is with him as a Housekeeper, as a Nurse.” The relations were, however, more intimate than Mrs. Haywood believed, for in March, 1719, a son was born to them.

”The Duke of Wharton has brought his d.u.c.h.ess to town, and is fond of her to distraction; in order to break the hearts of all other women that have any claim on him,” Lady Mary wrote to Lady Mar. ”He has public devotions twice a day, and a.s.sists at them in person with exemplary devotion; and there is nothing pleasanter than the remarks of some pious ladies on the conversion of such a sinner.”

The letter from which the above pa.s.sage is an extract must have been written not later than the early spring of 1720, for after that date the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Wharton did not again live together. The immediate cause of the separation was that Wharton had forbidden his wife to come to London where small-pox was raging at the time. She, however, whether irked by the dulness of the country, or thinking by her presence to guard her husband against those temptations to which he was p.r.o.ne, followed him to the town, where the infant sickened of the epidemic and died. After one great scene, they never met again.

There is mention of the Duke in another letter of Lady Mary to Lady Mar, dated February, 1724:

”In general, gallantry never was in so elevated a figure as it is at present. Twenty very pretty fellows (the Duke of Wharton being president and chief director) have formed themselves into a committee of gallantry. They call themselves _Schemers_; and meet regularly three times a week, to consult on gallant schemes for the advantage and advancement of that branch of happiness.... I consider the duty of a true Englishwoman is to do what honour she can to her native country; and that it would be a sin against the pious love I bear the land of my nativity, to confine the renown due to the Schemers within the small extent of this little island, which ought to be spread wherever men can sigh, or women wish. 'Tis true they have the envy and curses of the old and ugly of both s.e.xes, and a general persecution from all old women; but this is no more than all reformations must expect in their beginning.”

More than one writer has a.s.serted that it was the wit and beauty of Lady Mary that drew him thither. At the time the Duke was twenty-four and the lady nine years older. Certainly he paid her marked attention, but as he paid marked attention to all women who had not a hump or a squint-- sometimes, maybe, he even overlooked the squint--it is as impossible to say whether he was in love with her as it is to a.s.sert that she was in love with him. From the little that is known of their intimacy, it would seem that they were merely good comrades--good comrades of the type that might bite or scratch at any moment. Horace Walpole, who was more than usually malicious where Lady Mary was concerned, could scarcely induce himself to allow her any qualities. ”My Lady Stafford,”[5] he wrote to George Montagu in 1751, ”used to live at Twickenham when Lady Mary Wortley and the Duke of Wharton lived there; she had more wit than both of them. What would I give to have had Strawberry Hill twenty years ago!

I think anything but twenty years. Lady Stafford used to say to her sister, 'Well, child, I have come without my wit to-day'; that is, she had not taken her opium, which she was forced to do if she had any appointment, to be in particular spirits.”

[Footnote 5: Claude Charlotte, Countess of Stafford, wife of Henry, Earl of Stafford, and daughter of Philibert, Count of Grammont, and Elizabeth Hamilton, his wife.]

Horace Walpole alluded to Lady Mary and the Duke in ”The Parish Register of Twickenham”:

”Twickenham, where frolic Wharton revelled Where Montagu, with locks dishevelled.

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