CHAPTER I.
Elizabeth Robinson, who became so well known, subsequently, as Mrs. Montagu, belongs altogether to the eighteenth century. She was born at York, in October, 1720. She died in the last year of that century, 1800. Miss Robinson was of a family, the founder of which, William Robinson, a London merchant, but a descendant of a line of Scottish barons, bought, in 1610, the estate of Rokeby, in Yorkshire, from Sir Thomas Rokeby, whose ancestors had held it from the time of the Conquest. Her father, Matthew Robinson, was an only son of a cadet branch of the Robinsons. He was a member of the University of Cambridge, where he wooed the Muses less ardently than he did Miss Elizabeth Drake, a beautiful heiress, whom he married when he was only eighteen years of age. The very young couple settled at Edgeley, in Yorkshire; but the husband (owner, through his wife, of more than one estate in the country) preferred the shady side of Pall Mall to fields of waving corn or groves vocal with nightingales.
Of the twelve children of this marriage, seven sons and two daughters survived their youth. The daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah, were endowed with the same literary tastes. Sarah wrote the more books, but Elizabeth is the better remembered. The church, the law, politics, and commerce attracted one or other of the sons.
In 1730, the head of the elder branch of the Robinsons, Thomas, was created a baronet. He was that famous Long Tom Robinson of whom so many well-known stories are told. Chesterfield slightly touched him in an epigram, and Walpole seldom referred to him without a sarcasm. At the coronation of George the Third, Sir Thomas was mock Duke of Normandy, who, with an equally English and mock Duke of Aquitaine, was supposed to indicate that the King of England was as much King of France, by the grace of God, as he pretended to be. Long Sir Thomas was so truly an Englishman that he went to France, and into French society, in his hunting-suit. A satirical French abbé, hearing his name and looking at his marvellous attire, gravely asked him if he were Robinson Crusoe.
Long Sir Thomas Robinson sold Rokeby to the Morritts in 1769. When he died, in 1777, his title went to his next surviving brother, Richard. This Richard was an English clergyman, who, in 1731, had commenced a successful career in Ireland, as chaplain to two viceroys, and he was successively Bishop of Killala, of Leighlin and Ferns, and of Kildare. Finally, he was raised to the dignity of Archbishop of Armagh, primate of Ireland. In the year that Sir Thomas died, Richard was created an Irish peer, Baron Rokeby of Armagh, with remainder to Mrs. Montagu’s father, Matthew Robinson. The father did not live to succeed to the title, but his son Matthew did. The present Lord Rokeby is Mrs. Montagu’s great grandnephew, and was born when she was yet living, A. D. 1798. The first lord figures largely in this lady’s letters. His good works made him popular in Ireland, which his Grace found to be a fine country to live out of, as much as was, more or less, consistent with duty. He was one of the best-known characters at Bath during successive seasons; he also suffered much from the gout; but he endured with alacrity all the port and claret that were necessary to keep it out of his archiepiscopal stomach.
Thus much for Mrs. Montagu’s family. She derived from it a certain distinction; but she enjoyed greater advantage, for a time at least, from the marriage of her maternal grandmother, who took for her second husband the learned and celebrated Dr. Conyers Middleton. Doctor Middleton’s home was at Cambridge, where a few of Miss Robinson’s youthful years were profitably and curiously spent.
Curiously—from the method which the biographer of Cicero took with the bright and intelligent girl. Among the divines, scholars, philosophers, travellers, men of the world who were, together or in turn, to be met with at Doctor Middleton’s house, the figure of the silent, listening, and observant little maid was always to be seen. Her presence there was a part of her education. Doctor Middleton trained her to give perfect attention to the conversation, and to repeat to him all that she could retain of it, after the company had dispersed. When she had to speak of what she did not well understand, Doctor Middleton enlightened his little pupil. This process not only filled her young mind with knowledge, but made her eager in the pursuit of more.
How readily she received impressions at an early age, and how indelibly they were stamped on her memory, she has herself recorded. “One of the strongest pictures in my mind,” she wrote to Lord Lyttelton, in 1759, “is the funeral of a Dean of York, which I saw performed with great solemnity in the cathedral, when I was about four years old. Whether the memory of it, added to the present objects, may not have made the place appear the more awful to me, I do not know; but I was never so affected by any edifice.” She loved York, and in her early Yorkshire home the plan of education went far in advance of the views, and perhaps of the powers, of family governesses. Masters, as well as mistresses, were there for the instruction of both sons and daughters; but Elizabeth’s father sharpened and stimulated her intellect by encouraging her to make smart repartees to his own witty or severe judgments. In this cudgelling of brains Matthew had great delight till he found that his daughter was too much for him at his most favourite weapons. Matthew then bit his lips, and ceased to offer challenge or give provocation.