“I beg my best respects and most affectionate compliments to my brother Robinson. Will he never let us have the pleasure of seeing him? I wish he would visit the farmer and farmeress of Sandleford.”
In the course of the above year, 1774, when an invitation to Mrs. Montagu’s house in Hill Street was not lightly sent and was highly esteemed, she despatched a card of invitation to Doctor Johnson. The philosopher neither went to her assembly nor acknowledged the invitation. In a subsequent apologetic note, he said: “Having committed one fault by inadvertency, I will not commit another by sullenness.... The favour of your notice can never miss a suitable return but from ignorance or thoughtlessness; and to be ignorant of your eminence is not easy but to him who lives out of reach of the public voice.” Allegiance could not be more perfect! But Mrs. Montagu was not influenced by it, when, in 1775, she settled a small annuity on Doctor Johnson’s friend, Mrs. Williams, saving her from misery; for which rescue Mrs. Williams expressed her thanks in words almost of divine adoration. Doctor Johnson was moved by the generous act, when he subsequently heard that Mrs. Montagu was in town, ill. He wrote like a gallant. “To have you detained among us by sickness is to enjoy your presence at too dear a rate.” He wishes she may be “so well as to be able to leave us, and so kind as not to be willing.”... Here is more: “All that the esteem and reverence of mankind can give you, are already yours; and the little I can add to the voice of nations will not much exalt. Of that little, however, you are, I hope, very certain.”
The poor lady had now more serious matters claiming her attention than quarrels or compliments with Johnson. Her kind-hearted and now aged husband had long been slowly dying. His last hour seemed now approaching. In May, 1775, Mrs. Chapone, in a letter to Mrs. Delany, described Mrs. Montagu as being “in a most distressful situation.” Mr. Montagu, “instead of sinking easily, as might have been expected from so long and gradual a decline, suffers great struggle, and has a fever attended with deliriums, which are most dreadfully affecting to Mrs. Montagu. If this scene should continue, I tremble for the effects of it on her tender frame; but I think it must very soon have an end, and she will then reconcile herself to a loss so long expected, tho’ I doubt not she will feel it very sincerely. He is entitled to her highest esteem and gratitude, and, I believe, possesses them both.”
The aged philomath might have been the original of the legendary mathematician, who, having been induced to read “Paradise Lost,” asked, on reaching the last line of the poem, “Well, what does it prove?” Mr. Montagu’s wonted fires and ruling passion partook exclusively of a mathematical ardour. His wife, who had, previous to her husband’s fatal illness, passed from the most sincere spirit of free inquiry into the equally sincere acceptance of orthodoxy, was very anxious that her husband should be of the same faith with herself before they were parted for ever. She begged Beattie to effect this desired consummation, if it were possible. The aged mathematician was too much, however, for the minister and his clever wife together. “To her great concern,” says Beattie, in a letter to Doctor Laing, “he set too much value on mathematical evidence, and piqued himself too much on his knowledge in that science. He took it into his head, too, that I was a mathematician, though I was at a great deal of pains to convince him to the contrary.” Mr. Montagu died in May, 1775. The poor gentleman’s death was immediately made the opportunity for speculation on the part of his friends, as to the prospects of his widow. “Mr. Edward Montagu is dead,” wrote Mrs. Delany. “He has left his widow everything, both real and personal: only charging it with a legacy of £3,000. If her heart prove as good as her head, she may do an abundance of good. Her possessions are very great.” Walpole speculated in another fashion on this gentleman’s demise. He wrote to Mason: “The husband of Mrs. Montagu, of Shakespearshire, is dead, and has left her an estate of £7,000 a year in her own power. Will you come and be candidate for her hand? I conclude it will be given to a champion at some Olympic games; and were I she, I would sooner marry you than Pindar!”
Johnson fully illustrated the charitable side of Mrs. Montagu’s character, when he said, in 1776, in reply to a hint that her liberality was pharisaical, “I have seen no beings who do as much good from benevolence as she does from whatever motive.” Johnson subsequently was less charitable and less accurate. Mrs. Montagu’s letters abound with references to her complete ignorance of Greek and her small knowledge of Latin. “But,” said Johnson, “she is willing you should think she knows them, but she does not say she does.” A hundred times she wrote that she did not. Johnson’s were hardly the “respectful sentiments” he professed to have when he begged for a copy of her engraved portrait, as a reward for his love and adoration.
CHAPTER VIII.
Mrs. Montagu respected her gentle husband’s memory in the way he would have approved—by attending to the business which his death left on her hands. She withdrew to Sandleford, not to cover her face, but to woo the fresh air. She then travelled to Denton Castle, to plunge into occupation, and to show her steward that her recent grief had not rendered her insensible to her interests. From the castle, or hall (it is called by both names), she wrote on July the 10th, 1775, the following, not at all woebegone, but sensible, letter to her sister-in-law: