A cloud now came, and long rested, between her and the sun of her happiness. The death, in 1748, of her brother “Tom,” a man of wit, taste, and judgment, after her own heart; “the man in England for a point of law,” as Chief Justice Lee remarked; a man who had accomplished much, and who might have reasonably looked to the highest position, which could be attained in his branch of the profession, as his own,—the death of such a man, good, bright, aspiring, and qualified for success, was a loss to his brilliant sister for which she never found compensation. “As for this good young man,” she wrote, “I hoped it would rather have been his business to have grieved for me. Mr. Montagu is most careful of us, and I cannot, amidst my sorrow, help thanking Heaven for such a friend.” A letter from her husband in London confirms this statement: “I long to leave this place, and to be with you now, rather than at a time when you have less occasion for a friend. Be sure that you are constantly in my thoughts, and that no accidents of sickness or any other matter can work any change in me, or make me be with less affection than I have been, my dearest life, your most obliged and affectionate E. M.”
Compelled, subsequently, to repair to Bath for her health, she despised no innocent amusement. “I want mechanic helps,” she said, “for my real happiness, God knows, is lessened; and, though I have many relations left, I reflect that even this circumstance makes me more liable to have the same affliction repeated.” Then, after a week or two of omnivorous reading and friendly intercourse, she writes to the duchess: “Mrs. Trevanion, Lord Berkley of Stratton’s sister, goes away from us to-morrow, which I am sorry for; she seems very agreeable and well-bred, and has a thousand other good qualities that do not abound at our morning coffee-house, where I meet her. Whist and the noble game of E. O. employ the evening; three glasses of water, a toasted roll, a Bath cake, and a cold walk, the mornings.... My physician says three months will be necessary for me to drink the waters.... I am forced to dine by myself, not yet being able to bear the smell of what common mortals call a dinner. As yet I live with the fairies.... But here is another Mrs. Montagu, who is like me, hath a long nose, pale face, thin cheeks, and also, I believe, diets with fairies, and she is much better than when she came, and many people give me the honour of her recovery.”
After returning to Sandleford, she began again to need, or to fancy she needed, the restoring waters of Tunbridge. To Mrs. Anstey she wrote:
“I may, perhaps, trouble you to seek me some house about Mount Elphinstone; for, to tell you the truth, I get as far from the busy haunts of the place as I can; for it agrees neither with my inclination nor health to be in the midst of what are called the diversions of the place. An evening assembly in July is rather too warm; and, tell it not in the regions of politeness, I had rather see a few glowworms on a green in a warm summer’s evening than belles adorned with brilliants or beaux bright with clinquant. I cannot be at Tunbridge before the beginning of July. I am engaged to the nightingale and cuckoo for this month.”
Although continued ill-health kept Mrs. Montagu much in retirement after she first went to Tunbridge, the Wells had their usual effect. She was the centre of a circle of admiring friends; and when established for months together at Tunbridge Wells, her coterie was a thing apart from those of the Jews, Christians, and Heathens of all classes who crowded the Pantiles or the assembly-rooms. Her letters sparkle with the figures that flit through them. Some contemporary ladies of the last century are thus sharply crayoned: “I think the Miss Allens sensible, and I believe them good; but I do not think the Graces assisted Lucina at their birth.... Lady Parker and her two daughters make a very remarkable figure, and will ruin the poor mad woman of Tunbridge by outdoing her in dress. Such hats, capuchins, and short sacks as were never seen! One of the ladies looks like a state bed running upon castors. She has robbed the valance and tester of a bed for a trimming. They have each of them a lover. Indeed, as to the dowager, she seems to have no greater joys than E. O. and a toad-eater can give her.” That word “toad-eater” was still in its novelty as a slang term. In 1742, Walpole calls Harry Vane, afterward Earl of Darlington, “Pulteney’s toad-eater.” In 1744, Sarah Fielding, in “David Simple,” speaks of it as “a new word.” To Mr. Montagu, his wife thus wrote:
“My Dearest:—I had, this morning, the pleasure of your letter, which was in every respect agreeable, and in none more so than your having fixed your time for going to Sandleford, as I shall the sooner hope to see my best and dearest friend here.... I shall wish I could procure wings to bring me to you on the terrace at Sandleford, where I have passed so many happy hours in the conversation of the best of companions and kindest of friends; and I hope you will there recollect one who followed your steps as constantly as your shadow. I am still following them, for there are few moments in which my thoughts are not employed in you, and ever in the best and tenderest manner.... The charms of Sandleford are strongly in my remembrance, but still I would have you find that they want your little friend.”
From the gaieties of Tunbridge Mrs. Montagu went to the residence of a sage, Mr. Gilbert West. She found less pleasure among the sculpture and paintings of Wilton than under Gilbert West’s modest roof at Wickham, in whose master she saw “that miracle of the moral world, a Christian poet;” and in Mrs. West, something more than a tenth Muse or a fourth Grace. To conversations with West are attributed the deeper convictions of the truth of revealed religion which Mrs. Montagu entertained henceforward. She did not cease to be cheerful because on one point she was more serious. In a cottage which she hired near West’s house, she playfully offered to her lady visitors wholesome brown bread, sincerity, and red cow’s milk. With tastes that could find gratification wherever she might be, Mrs. Montagu was one of the happiest of women. Most happy, not when she was queen, or one of the queens, of society, but when she was among her books. She was an indefatigable reader. She reflected as deeply as she read carefully. The literature of the world was known to her, in the original text, or in translations, of which she would read three or four of the same work; and, if she had a preference, she would give an excellent reason for it. Her criticisms on the works she read are always admirable, whether she treats of a Thucydides in a French dress, of Cowley’s imperfections as an amatory poet, of Melmoth’s “Pliny’s Letters,” or of writers like Richardson, whose “Clarissa Harlowe” is analysed in one of the printed letters with a skill and insight that might be envied by the best writers of the times that have succeeded to her own. Fictitious and real personages, she dissects both with the hand of an operator who loves the work in which he excels. She is equally great when treating of the heroes of antiquity, or of the notorious Mrs. Pilkington, whose fie! fie! ways seem to warrant her slapping her with her fan; but whose talent, pleasant audacity, and suffering, soften Mrs. Montagu’s heart and lead her to gently kiss both cheeks of the erring Lætitia.
At the close of 1750, her brother Robert went in search of fortune to China, where, however, he found a grave. In the following year, she writes to her husband, who was on private business in the north: “I have sat so constantly in Lady Sandwich’s chimney-corner, I can give you little account of the world.” She playfully says to her absent lord: “I am glad you are so far tired of your monastic life as to think of returning to the secular state of a husband and member of Parliament.” She adds: “You have too many virtues for the contracted life of a monk, and, I thank my stars, are bound in another vow, one more fit for you, as it is social, and not selfish.” From Lady Sandwich’s chimney-corner, and from much study, mixed with every-day duties, it is pleasant to see her surrounded by the Ladies Stanhope and Mrs. Trevor, who were adjusting her dress when she went as the “queen-mother” to the subscription masquerade. The dress was “white satin, with fine new point for tuckers, kerchief and ruffles; pearl necklace and earrings, and pearls and diamonds on the head, and my hair curled after the Vandyke picture.” Mr. Montagu was so pleased with her appearance that, said the lady, “he has made me lay by my dress, to be painted in when I see Mr. Hoare again.” Better than her own presentment is her picture of the too famous Miss Chudleigh at this masquerade: “Miss Chudleigh’s dress, or rather undress, was remarkable. She was Iphigenia for the sacrifice; but so naked, the high priest might easily inspect the entrails of the victim. The maids of honour (not of maids the strictest) were so offended, they would not speak to her.”
It was with happy facility Mrs. Montagu turned from the studies she loved and the duties which she came to consider as her privilege, to the gayest scenes of life. “Though,” say she, “the education of women is always too frivolous, I am glad mine had such a qualification of the serious as to fit me for the relish of the belles bagatelles.” No one better understood the uses of money. When her husband was in the north furthering his coal interests, she wrote to him: “Though the coldness of our climate may set coals in a favourable light, I shall be glad to see as many of them turned to the precious metal as possible.... I have a very good opinion of Mr. Montagu and his wife. I like the prospect of these golden showers, and so I congratulate you upon them; but, most of all, I congratulate you upon the disposition of mind which made you put the account of them in a postscript.” The last words of her own letters to her husband were invariably affectionate, with a sentiment of submission that has a very old-fashioned air about it. For example:
“Every tender wish and grateful thought wait on you, and may you ever as kindly accept the only gift in my power, the faithful love and sincere affection of your most grateful and obedient wife, E. M.” Again, in September, 1751, from Tunbridge Wells: “To your prayer that we may never be so long separated, I can, with much zealous fervour, say Amen!”