In 1741, this decided young lady was wooed by a fashionable lover, and also by a noble lover who was her senior by a good many years. The former was dismissed, and the young lady wrote to her sister in the above year: “Poor M. B. takes his misfortune so to heart, that I really pity him; but I have no balsam of heartsease for him. If he should die, I will have him buried in Westminster Abbey, next to the woman who died with the prick of a finger, for it is quite as extraordinary; and he shall have his figure languishing in wax, with ‘Miss Robinson fecit,’ written over his head. I really compassionate his sufferings and pity him; but though I am as compassionate, I am as cold as charity. He pours out his soul in lamentations to his friends, and all—
‘But the nymph that should redress his wrong,
Attend his passion, and approve his song!’
... I am glad he has such a stock of flesh to waste upon.... I am really quite fat; and if there were not some hope that I might get lean again, by raking in town, I should be uneasy at it. I am now the figure of ‘Laugh-and-be-fat,’ and begin to think myself a comely personage. Adieu! Supper is on table.”
And the saucy nymph “really did her errand” before many thought. She declined the offer of the man of fashion, and said “Yes” to the suit of the older scholar and gentleman.
The practical conclusion came in due time. In the Gentleman’s Magazine for August, A. D. 1742, there is the record of eleven marriages. Four of them saucily chronicle the fortunes of the brides. Among the other seven may be read this brief announcement: “August 5, Edward Montagu, Esq., member for Huntingdon, to the eldest daughter of Matthew Robinson, of Horton, in Kent, Esq.”
CHAPTER II.
Edward Montagu was the son of Charles, who was the fifth son of the first Earl of Sandwich. He was a well-endowed gentleman, both intellectually and materially, and he adopted the Socratic maxim, that a wise man keeps out of public business. He is described as being “of a different turn from his wife, fond of the severer studies, particularly mathematics.” Under his influence, the bounding Iambe from Horton gradually grew into the “Minerva,” as she was called by friends as well as epigrammatists. Mr. Montagu was a mathematician of great eminence; and a coal-owner of great wealth. He was a man of very retired habits and great amiability. He loved to puzzle fellow mathematicians with problems, and he did not dislike coals to be high in price; but he urged other owners to incur the odium of “making the advance.”
Mr. and Mrs. Montagu were married in London, and did not immediately leave it. Mr. Freind officiated at the marriage ceremony. The bride, in a note to Mrs. Freind, expressed her infinite obligation to him, “for not letting the knot be tied by the hands of an ordinary bungler.” On Friday, August 6th, the day after her marriage, the bride wrote to the Duchess of Portland: “If you will be at home to-morrow, at two o’clock, I will pass an hour with you; but pray send me word to Jermyn Street at eleven, whether I can come to you without meeting any person at Whitehall but the duke; to every one else pray deny your dressing-room. Mr. Freind will tell your Grace I really behaved magnanimously; not one cowardly tear, I assure you, did I shed at the solemn altar; my mind was in no mirthful mood indeed. I have a great hope of happiness. The world, as you say, speaks well of Mr. Montagu, and I have many obligations to him which must gain my particular esteem; but such a change of life must furnish one with a thousand anxious thoughts.”