A lady of the last century

by Dr. Doran

“The vanquish’d triple crown to you, (Mrs. Vesey)

Boscawen sage, bright Montagu,

Divided fell. Your cares in haste,

Rescued the ravaged realms of taste.”

Among the genial and the lofty spirits found in the rooms of those ladies, and of Mrs. Ord and others, Hannah More names accomplished Lyttelton, witty Pulteney, polished, sometimes sarcastic, Walpole, with humourists who charmed and never wounded, critics who recorded merits before they looked for defects, Christian poets, skilled physicians, honest lawyers, men of all shades of politics, with princes of the church, ladies of ton, and “reasonable beauties.” Roscius (Garrick), Mars (Mason), Cato (Johnson), and Hortensius (Burke), are recorded amongst those who, at those intellectual gatherings, at various times, led the conversation, and made it as glorious as Hannah More, who shared therein, proceeds to describe it.

The chief incident in Mrs. Montagu’s life in the year 1781, one which threw a shade over several succeeding years, was her quarrel with Doctor Johnson, founded on certain depreciatory passages in Johnson’s “Life of Lyttelton.” When Johnson sent to Mrs. Montagu his MS. of the Life before it went to press, the homage implied that he submitted it to her judgment for approval or correction. Mrs. Montagu disapproved the tone, and Johnson sent his copy to press without altering a word or modifying a sentiment.

Nevertheless, Johnson’s account of Lyttelton seems fair enough to readers of the present day, though it greatly offended the lady who paid Lyttelton a homage of reverential affection. Johnson duly records Lyttelton’s precocity at Eton, and his creditable attempt in his “Blenheim,” to become a poet, at Oxford. His political career, as the opponent of Walpole, by whose fall Lyttelton came into office, is told without passion, and Lyttelton’s honest progress from honest doubt to honest conviction of the truth of Christianity is delicately and sympathetically narrated. His merits as a landlord, his good fortune as a politician, his fidelity as a friend, and his anxiety to be at least accurate as an historian, are chronicled without reserve. The details of Lyttelton’s dignified death might have made his best friend forget and forgive the criticisms on some of his writings. Mrs. Montagu might forget a part, but she could not forgive an expression of compassionate contempt, which was worse than adverse criticism. She might forget that Johnson spoke of “The Progress of Love,” as verses that “cant of shepherds and flocks, and crooks dressed with flowers.” She may have been only momentarily stung by the censurer’s remark that, in the “Persian Letters,” the ardour for liberty which found expression there, was only such “as a man of genius always catches when he enters the world, and always suffers to cool as he passes forward.” She might herself have sneered at Johnson’s praise of the “Advice to Belinda,” on the score of its purity, truth, vigour, elegance, and prudence, whereas, with some merits, it is a poem which no one now would dare to read aloud, where it was meant to be read, to Belindas of the time being. The paragraph in the Life which gave Mrs. Montagu such exquisite pain was the following, in reference to the “Dialogues of the Dead:” “When they were first published, they were kindly commended by the critical reviewers; and poor Lyttelton, with humble gratitude, returned his acknowledgments in a note which I have read; acknowledgments either for flattery or justice.” This paragraph gave the great offence. The words “poor Lyttelton” rendered it almost unpardonable. Notwithstanding the offence, Mrs. Montagu subsequently invited Johnson to dinner; but she could not treat him with her old cordiality, nor would she fall into conversation with him. General Paoli sat next to the doctor. Johnson turned to him and remarked, “You see, sir, I am no longer the man for Mrs. Montagu!” He was not indifferent to this condition of things. “Mrs. Montagu, sir,” he afterward said to a friend, “has dropt me. Now, sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropt by.”

Good-natured friends embittered the quarrel. Mrs. Vesey “sounded the trumpet,” as was remarked by Walpole, who added: “It has not, I believe, produced any altercation; but at a Bluestocking meeting, held by Lady Lucan, Mrs. Montagu and Johnson kept at different ends of the chamber, and set up altar against altar there. She told me, as a mark of her high displeasure, that she would not ask him to dinner again. I took her aside and fomented the quarrel, and wished I could have made Dagon and Ashtaroth scold in Coptic.” Walpole (who in this quarrel was quite as malicious as Mrs. Vesey, whom he affected to laugh at, was indiscreet) called Johnson in another letter referring to this quarrel, “Demagorgon,” and says that the doctor and the lady kept aloof “like the west from the east.” He states that Lady Lucan, whose house was the scene of the comedy, “had assembled a Bluestocking meeting in imitation of Mrs. Vesey’s Babels. It was so blue, it was quite mazarin blue. There were Soame Jenyns, Persian Jones, Mr. Sherlock, the new court, Mr. Courtenay, besides the outpensioners of Parnassus.” And besides those named, every man of whom was a man of intellect, there was Mr. Horace Walpole himself, who certainly was present, because he knew he would not be among fools, though he pretended to go as if he found amusement in their folly. He seems, in the above extract, to recognise the good-natured Irish lady, Mrs. Vesey (whose house in Bolton Row, or subsequently in Clarges Street, was hospitably open to people of merit—proved or promised), as the founder of assemblies to which the slang name of bas-bleu assemblies was given. Referring to Mrs. Montagu, with whom he was very glad to dine, he says (in this year, 1781), “She is one of my principal entertainments at Mrs. Vesey’s, who collects all the graduates and candidates for fame, where they vie with one another till they are as unintelligible as the good folks at Babel.” We should honour any lady of the present century who, like Mrs. Vesey, Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Ord, Lady Lucan, and others in the last century, welcomed to their houses, not only all the graduates, but also the candidates for fame. Johnson himself was annoyed when not invited to those intellectual meetings. In 1780, he writes, “I told Lady Lucan how long it was since she sent to me; but she said, I must consider how the world rolls about her.” From the lips of the guests whom Walpole met at the houses indicated he could not carry away the stories that he loved so well as to insert them, in his most exquisite hand, into folios carefully arranged. These still exist; they illustrate phases of life among high-born women and men of the last century who were graduates, not in fame, but in infamy. Nothing could well be worse, except the infamy of him who must have passed many a night in penning that unutterably horrible and scandalous chronicle. The chronicler, on the other hand, is not to be blamed for noting the little affectations of those whom he encountered, as in the following example, the date of which is 1781: “I met,” he says to Lady Ossory, “Mrs. Montagu the other night at a visit. She told me she had been alone the whole preceding day, quite hermetically sealed. I was very glad she was uncorked, or I might have missed that piece of learned nonsense.” However, “Mrs. Montagu,” writes Mrs. Boscawen to Mrs. Delany, “is in perfect health and spirits in her Château Portman.” But, in Montagu House, Portman Square, the so-called Bluestockings were much less at home than in Hill Street. Nevertheless, there, and at similar houses supposed to be of a Bluestocking class, Walpole was much more amused than when he was at the Princess Amelia’s, at Gunnersbury, with the “cream of the cream” of Europe, and playing commerce with the grandest of them. He never had to say of himself at Mrs. Montagu’s, as he did of his doings at the Princess’s, “Played three pools of commerce till ten. I am afraid I was tired, and gaped!”

There died in this year, 1781, a Provincial Bluestocking,—who has been delicately praised by Miss Seward, and furiously attacked and ridiculed by Horace Walpole,—Mrs. Miller, the neighbour of Mrs. Scott and Lady Bab Montagu at Batheaston. There is an old story that Walpole, declining to recognise a man in London whom he had known at Bath, explained himself by saying, that he would be happy to know the same individual again—at Bath! So, with regard to literary or bas-bleu assemblies, he acknowledged those only of London. Provincial meetings he treated as shams, and covered them with ridicule. Mrs. Miller’s house,—to which she invited a rather mixed assembly of persons distinguished for intellectual merit, or persons who were distinguished only by the accident of birth,—Walpole mis-named the “puppet-show Parnassus at Batheaston” (or Pindus)—“a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels, a myrtle-tree, a weeping willow, and a view of the Avon, which has been new-christened Helicon.” Miss Rich, Lady Lyttelton’s sister, took Walpole to dine there.... He ridiculed his hosts, described Captain Miller as officious, though good-natured, who, with his wife, had caught “taste,” and outlived their income. Having (like wise and honest people) recovered themselves by living economically abroad, they resumed their old home with improved habits. “Alas!” says Walpole, “Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a tenth Muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle de Scuderi, and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. They have introduced bouts-rimés as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux and quality of Bath contend for the prizes. A Roman vase, decked with pink ribbons and myrtle, receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival. Six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle.... The collection is printed, published,—yes, on my faith, there are bouts-rimés on a buttered muffin, by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland, receipts to make them, by Corydon the Venerable, alias George Pitt; others, very pretty, by Lord Palmerston; some by Lord Carlisle; many by Mrs. Miller herself, that have no fault but wanting metre.... There never was anything so entertaining or so dull.” It may be added here, that Lord Palmerston’s lines “On Beauty” are more than “very pretty,” and that the duchess could not avoid the subject laughed at, since two of the rhymes given to her were “puffing” and “muffin,” and she came out of the difficulty with skill and dexterity. There are, perhaps, few people in a mixed company at the present time, who could more pleasantly dance such an intellectual hornpipe in similar fetters.