“... Our brother, the Recorder, has acted in a very friendly and generous manner towards us,—bestow’d without favour or reward much patience and skill on the voluminous settlements, which the mercenary spirit of the lawyers employ’d to draw them had extended over as many acres of parchment as, converted into green land, would make a pretty little farm; and for which, I suppose, they will charge as much as would purchase a tolerably good one. To effect this, they were so tedious in their proceedings; for my proposals were immediately and perfectly approved both by the Lord Chancellor and Master in Chancery.
“... The bride and bridegroom beg you all to accept their proper respect.”
The following descriptive letter, addressed to Mrs. Robinson, Castle Street, Reading, was franked by Mr. Matthew Montagu, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, September 22, 1786:
“... I arrived at Mrs. Garrick’s, at Hampton, the evening of the day on which I visited you at Reading, and spent five days with her; making, indeed, almost every day an excursion to London to visit my poor friend, Mrs. Vesey, whom I found in a very declining state of health. From Hampton, I went to the Dowager Lady Spencer’s, at St. Albans, where I passed two days very agreably, and regretted that my business here would not allow me to prolong my visit. The history of La Fée Bienfaisante is not half so delightful as seeing the manner in which Lady Spencer spends her day. Every moment of it is employed in some act of benevolence and charity. Her ladyship carried me to see the remains of the seat of the great Lord Bacon, at Gorhambury, where remains, but is soon to be pulled down, the gallery in which he passed those hours of study which pointed out the road to science, and investigation of the works of nature. The estate is now in the possession of Lord Grimston, who has built a fine house there; but I could not help sighing at the reflection that the posterity of the ridiculous author of ‘Love in a Hollow Tree,’ should build on the ruins of Lord Bacon’s habitation.
“From St. Albans I struck into the highroad at Welling, not without paying the tribute of a sigh to the memory of my old friend Doctor Young. From that place till I got into Yorkshire, I did not see any interesting objects but the mile-stones.... Here, at my Gothick mansion near Newcastle, the naiads are dirty with the coal-keels, and the dryads’ tresses are torn and dishevelled with the rough blasts of Boreas. My lot has not fallen on a fair ground, but it would be ungrateful not to own it is a goodly heritage, and makes a decent figure when it arrives at ye shop of Hoare and Co., in Fleet Street. A week after me, arrived in perfect health my nephew and neice Montagu. We are always here plagued with high winds, and this season they have raged with great violence; but as this house was built in 1620, I hope it will not now yield to storms it has braved for now two hundred years. The walls are of immense thickness, having been built of strength to resist our Scottish neighbours, who, before the Union, made frequent visits to this part of the world. My Gothick windows admit light, but exclude prospect; so that, when sitting down, I can see only the tops of the trees.
“... I observe with great pleasure that Montagu has a happy turn for business, and applies himself to learning the science of coal-mine-working, of which many coal-owners are ignorant entirely, but none ought to be so. Without working in the mines, the process may be, to a certain extent, understood by any one who possesses any mathematical knowledge. The late Duke of Northumberland was very able in all those matters. Lord Mount-Stewart is now at Newcastle attending the business of the collieries he acquired by his marriage with Lord Windsor’s daughter. Lord Carlisle never comes into Northumberland, but leaves his affairs entirely to his agents. Lord Ravensworth was very attentive to his collieries, but his heir, Sir Henry Liddell, is of a very different character. He amused himself and neighbours with the exhibition of two Lapland women whom he imported. He collects all sorts of wild beasts; and his ale-cellars make beasts of men. It is strange that Lord Ravensworth should prefer such a nephew to his grandsons.
“... I am obliged to you for your kind attention to my feather-work. The neck and breast feathers of the stubble goose are very useful, and I wish your cook would save those of the Michaelmas goose for us. Things homely and vulgar are sometimes more useful than the elegant, and the feathers of the goose may be better adapted to some occasions than the plumes of the phœnix.”
Mrs. Montagu was ever touching and reëmbellishing her famous “feather-hangings.” Cowper has told in song how—
“The birds put off their every hue,
To dress a room for Montagu.”