POPE AND LADY M. W. MONTAGU.
In the same year with Martha Blount, and about the same age, died Lady Mary W. Montagu. Every body knows that she was one of Pope's early loves. She had, for several years, suspended his attachment to his first favourites, the Blounts; and she really deserved the preference. But the issue of this romantic attachment was the most bitter, the most irreconcilable enmity. The cause did not proceed so much from any one particular offence on either side, but rather from a multitude of trifling causes, arising naturally out of the characters of both.
When they first met, Pope was about six-and-twenty; and from the recent publication of the 'Rape of the Lock,' and 'The Temple of Fame,' &c. had reached the pinnacle of fashion and reputation. Lady Mary was in her twenty-third year, lately married to a man she loved, and had just burst upon the world in all the blaze of her wit and beauty. Her masculine acquirements and powers of mind—her strong good sense—her extensive views—her frankness, decision, and generosity—her vivacity, and her bright eyes, must altogether have rendered her one of the most fascinating, as she really was one of the most extraordinary, women that ever lived.
There stands, in a conspicuous part of this great city, a certain monument, erected, it is said, at the cost of the ladies of Britain; but in a spirit and taste which, I trust, are not those of my countrywomen at large. Is this our patriotism? We may applaud the brave, who go forth to battle to defend us, and preserve inviolate the sanctity of our hearths and homes; but does it become us to lend our voice to exult in victory, always bought at the expense of suffering, and aggravate the din and the clamour of war—we, who ought to be the peace-makers of the world, and plead for man against his own fierce passions? A huge brazen image stands up, an impudent (false) witness of our martial enthusiasm; but who amongst us has thought of raising a public statue to Lady Wortley Montagu! to her who has almost banished from the world that pest which once extinguished families and desolated provinces? To her true patriotic spirit,—to her magnanimity, her generous perseverance, in surmounting all obstacles raised by the outcry of ignorance, and the obstinacy of prejudice, we owe the introduction of inoculation;—she ought to stand in marble beside Howard the good.[129]
I should imagine that a strong impression must have been made on Lady Mary's mind, by an incident which occurred just at the time she left England for Constantinople. Lord Petre,—he who is consecrated to fame in the Rape of the Lock, as the ravisher of Arabella Fermour's hair,—died of the small-pox at the age of three-and-twenty, just after his marriage with a young and beautiful heiress; his death caused a general sympathy, and added to the dread and horror which was inspired by this terrible disease: eighteen persons of his family had died of it within twenty-seven years. In those days it was not even allowable to mention, or allude to it in company.
Mr. Wortley was appointed to the Turkish embassy in 1716, and his wife accompanied him. The letters which passed between her and Pope, during her absence, are well known. In point of style and liveliness, the superiority is on the lady's side; but the tone of feeling in Pope is better, more earnest; his language is not always within the bounds of that sprightly gallantry with which a man naturally addresses a young, beautiful, and virtuous woman, who had condescended to allow his homage.[130]
In one of his letters, written immediately after her departure, he asks her how he had looked? how he had behaved at the last moment? whether he had betrayed any deeper feeling than propriety might warrant? "For if," he says, "my parting looked like that of a common acquaintance, I am the greatest of all hypocrites that ever decency made." And in a subsequent letter he says, very feelingly and significantly, "May that person (her husband) for whom you have left the world, be so just as to prefer you to all the world. I believe his good sense leads him to do so now, as gratitude will hereafter. May you continue to think him worthy of whatever you have done! may you ever look upon him with the eyes of a first lover, nay, if possible, with all the unreasonable happy fondness of an unexperienced one, surrounded with all the enchantments and ideas of romance and poetry! I wish this from my heart; and while I examine what passes there in regard to you, I cannot but glory in my own heart, that it is capable of so much generosity."
This was sufficiently clear. I need scarcely remark en passant, that Pope's generosity and wishes were all en pure perte; his spitefulness must have been gratified by the sequel of Lady Mary's domestic bliss; her marriage ended in disgust and aversion; which, on her separation from Mr. Wortley, subsided into a good-humoured indifference.[131]
After a union of twenty-seven years, she parted from him and went to reside abroad. There were errors on both sides; but I am obliged to admit that Lady Mary, with all her fine qualities, had two faults,—intolerable and unpardonable faults in the eyes of a husband or a lover. She wanted softness of mind, and refinement of feeling, in the first place: and she wanted—how shall I express it?—she wanted neatness and personal delicacy; and was, in short, that odious thing, a female sloven, as well as that dangerous thing, a female wit.
In those days the style of dress was the most hideous imaginable. The women wore a large quantity of artificial hair, in emulation of the tremendous periwigs of the men; and Pope, in one of his letters to Lady Mary, mentions her "full bottomed wig," which, he says, "I did but assert to be a bob" and was answered, "Love is blind!" On her return from Turkey, she sometimes allowed her own fine dark hair to flow loose, and was fond of dressing in her Turkish costume. In this she was imitated by several beautiful women of the day, and particularly by her lovely contemporary, Lady Fanny Shirley, (Chesterfield's "Fanny, blooming fair:" he seems to have admired her as much as he could possibly admire any thing, next to himself and the Graces.) In her picture at Clarendon Park, she too appears in the habit of Fatima. Apropos, to the loves of the poets, Lady Fanny deserves to be mentioned as the theme of all the rhymesters, and "the joy, the wish, the wonder, the despair," of all the beaux of her day.[132]
But it is time to return to Pope. The epistle of Heloïse to Abelard was published during Lady Mary's absence, and sent to her: and it is clear from a passage in one of his letters, that he wished her to consider the last lines,—from
And sure, if fate some future bard shall join,
down to
He best can paint them, who can feel them most,
as applicable to himself and to his feelings towards her.
And yet, whatever might have been his devotion to Lady Mary before she went abroad, it was increased tenfold after her memorable travels. At present, when ladies of fashion make excursions of pleasure to the pyramids of Egypt and the ruins of Babylon, a journey to Constantinople is little more than a trip to Rome or Vienna; but in the last age it was a prodigious and marvellous undertaking; and Lady Mary, on her return, was gazed upon as an object of wonder and curiosity, and sought as the most entertaining person in the world: her sprightliness and her beauty, her oriental stories and her Turkish costume, were the rage of the day. With Pope, she was on the most friendly terms:—by his interference and negociation, a house was procured for her and Mr. Wortley, at Twickenham, so that their intercourse was almost constant. When he finished his translation of the Iliad, in 1720, Gay wrote him a complimentary poem, in which he enumerates the host of friends who welcomed the poet home from Greece; and among them, Lady Mary stands conspicuous.
What lady's that to whom he gently bends?
Who knows not her! Ah, those are Wortley's eyes;
How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends,—
For she distinguishes the good and wise!
To this period we may also refer the composition of the Stanzas to Lady Mary, which begin, "In beauty and wit."[133] The measure is trivial and disagreeable, but the compliments are very sprightly and pointed.
She sat to Kneller for him in her Turkish dress; and we have the following note from him on the subject, which shows how much he felt the condescension.
"The picture dwells really at my heart, and I have made a perfect passion of preferring your present face to your past. I know and thoroughly esteem yourself of this year. I know no more of Lady Mary Pierrepoint than to admire at what I have heard of her, or be pleased with some fragments of hers, as I am with Sappho's. But now—I cannot say what I would say of you now. Only still give me cause to say you are good to me, and allow me as much of your person as Sir Godfrey can help me to. Upon conferring with him yesterday, I find he thinks it absolutely necessary to draw your face first, which, he says, can never be set right on your figure, if the drapery and posture be finished before. To give you as little trouble as possible, he purposes to draw your face with crayons, and finish it up at your own house of a morning; from whence he will transfer it to canvass, so that you need not go to sit at his house. This, I must observe, is a manner they seldom draw any but crowned heads, and I observe it with a secret pride and pleasure. Be so kind as to tell me if you care, he should do this to-morrow at twelve. Though, if I am but assured from you of the thing, let the manner and time be what you best like; let every decorum you please be observed. I should be very unworthy of any favour from your hands, if I desired any at the expense of your quiet or conveniency in any degree."
He was charmed with the picture, and composed an extemporary compliment, beginning
The playful smiles around the dimpled mouth,
That happy air of majesty and truth; &c.
which, considering that they are Pope's, are strangely defective in rhyme, in sense, and in grammar. In a far different strain are the beautiful lines addressed to Gay, during Lady Mary's absence from Twickenham, and which he afterwards endeavoured to suppress. They are curious on this account, as well as for being the solitary example of amatory verse contained in his works.
Ah friend! 'tis true,—this truth you lovers know,
In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow;
In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes,
Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens;
Joy lives not here, to happier seats it flies,
And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes.
What are the gay parterre, the chequer'd shade,
The morning bower, the evening colonnade,
But soft recesses of uneasy minds,
To sigh unheard in to the passing winds?
So the struck deer, in some sequester'd part,
Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart;
There, stretch'd unseen in coverts hid from day,
Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away.
These sweet and musical lines, which fall on the ear with such a lulling harmony, are dashed with discord when we remember that the same woman who inspired them, was afterwards malignantly and coarsely designated as the Sappho of his satires. The generous heart never coolly degraded and insulted what it has once loved; but Pope could not be magnanimous,—it was not in his spiteful nature to forgive. He says of himself,
Whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time
Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.[134]
One of Pope's biographers[135] seems to insinuate, that he had been led on, by the lady's coquetry, to presume too far, and in consequence received a repulse, which he never forgave. This is not probable: Pope was not likely to be so desperate or dangerous an admirer; nor was Lady Mary, who had written with her diamond ring on a window,
Let this great maxim be my virtue's guide:
In part, she is to blame that has been tried,—
He comes too near, that comes to be denied!—
at all likely to expose herself to such ridiculous audacity. The truth is, I rather imagine, that there was a great deal of vanity on both sides; that the lady was amused and flattered, and the poet bewitched and in earnest: that she gave the first offence by some pointed sarcasm or personal ridicule, in which she was an adept, and that Pope, gradually awakened from his dream of adoration, was stung to the quick by her laughing scorn, and mortified and irritated by the consciousness of his wasted attachment. He makes this confession with extreme bitterness,—
Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit.
Prologue to the Satires.
The lines as they stand in a first edition are even more pointed and significant, and have much more asperity.
Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit,
And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit.
Safe as he thought, though all the prudent chid,
He wrote no libels, but my lady did;
Great odds in amorous or poetic game,
Where woman's is the sin, and man's the shame!
The result was a deadly and interminable feud. Lady Mary might possibly have inflicted the first private offence, but Pope gave the first public affront. A man who, under such circumstances, could grossly satirize a female, would, in a less civilized state of society, have revenged himself with a blow. The brutality and cowardice were the same.
The war of words did not, however, proceed at once to such extremity; the first indication of Pope's revolt from his sworn allegiance, and a conscious hint of the secret cause, may be found in some lines addressed to a lady poetess,[136] to whom he pays a compliment at Lady Mary's expense.
Though sprightly Sappho force our love and praise,
A softer wonder my pleased soul surveys,—
The mild Erinna blushing in her bays;
So while the sun's broad beam yet strikes the sight,
All mild appears the moon's more sober light.
Serene in virgin majesty she shines,
And unobserved, the glaring orb declines.
Soon after appeared that ribald and ruffian-like attack on her in the satires. She sent Lord Peterborough to remonstrate with Pope, to whom he denied the intended application; and his disavowal is a proved falsehood. Lady Mary, exasperated, forgot her good sense and her feminine dignity, and made common cause with Lord Hervey (the Lord Fanny and the Sporus of the Satires.) They concocted an attack in verse, addressed to the imitator of Horace; but nothing could be more unequal than such a warfare. Pope, in return, grasped the blasting and vollied lightnings of his wit, and would have annihilated both his adversaries, if more than half a grain of truth had been on his side. But posterity has been just: in his anger, he overcharged his weapon, it recoiled, and the engineer has been "hoisted by his own petard."
Lady Mary's personal negligence afforded grounds for Pope's coarse and severe allusions to the "colour of her linen, &c." His asperity, however, did not reform her in this respect: it was a fault which increased with age and foreign habits. Horace Walpole, who met her at Florence twenty years afterwards, draws a hateful and disgusting picture of her, as "old, dirty, tawdry, painted," and flirting and gambling with all the young men in the place. But Walpole is terribly satirical; he had a personal dislike to Lady Mary Wortley, whom he coarsely designates as Moll Worthless,—and his description is certainly overcharged. How differently the same characters will strike different people! Spence, who also met Lady Mary abroad, about that time, thus writes to his mother: "I always desired to be acquainted with Lady Mary, and could never bring it about, though we were so often together in London. Soon after we came to this place, her ladyship came here, and in five days I was well acquainted with her. She is one of the most shining characters in the world,—but shines like a comet: she is all irregularity, and always wandering: the most wise, most imprudent, loveliest, most disagreeable, best-natured, cruellest woman in the world!" Walpole could see nothing but her dirt and her paint. Those who recollect his coarse description, and do not remember her letters to her daughter, written from Italy about the same time, would do well to refer to them as a corrective: it is always so easy to be satirical and ill-natured, and sometimes so difficult to be just and merciful!
The cold scornful levity with which she treated certain topics, is mingled with touches of tenderness and profound thought, which show her to have been a disappointed, not a heartless woman. The extreme care with which she cultivated pleasurable feelings and ideas, and shrunk from all disagreeable impressions; her determination never to view her own face in a glass, after the approach of age, or to pronounce the name of her mad, profligate son, may be referred to a cause very different from either selfishness or vanity: but I think the principle was mistaken. While she was amusing herself with her silk-worms and her orangerie at Como, her husband Wortley, with whom she kept up a constant correspondence, was hoarding money and drinking tokay to keep himself alive. He died, however, in 1761; and that he was connected with the motives, whatever those were, which induced Lady Mary to reside abroad, is proved by the fact, that the moment she heard of his death she prepared to return to England, and she reached London in January 1762. "Lady Mary is arrived," says Walpole, writing to George Montagu. "I have seen her. I think her avarice, her dirt, and her vivacity, are all increased. Her dress, like her language, is a galimatias of several countries. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, no shoes; an old black-laced hood represents the first; the fur of a horseman's coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second; a dimity petticoat is deputy, and officiates for the fourth; and slippers act the part of the last." About six months after her arrival she died in the arms of her daughter, the Countess of Bute, of a cruel and shocking disease, the agonies of which she had borne with heroism rather than resignation. The present Marquess of Bute, and the present Lord Wharncliffe, are the great-grandsons of this distinguished woman: the latter is the representative of the Wortley family.