For letter writing, although the most natural of literary gifts, is not wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many qualities which need cultivation; the soil that produces such fruit must have been carefully tilled. In our day epistolary correspondence has been in great measure destroyed by the penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the last century postage was costly: and although the burden was frequently and unjustly lightened by franks, the transmission of letters was slow and uncertain. Letters, therefore, were seldom written unless the writer had something definite to say, and had leisure in which to say it. Much time was spent in the occupation, letters were carefully preserved as family heirlooms, and thus it has come to pass that much of our knowledge of the age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from a study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list of them is a striking one, for it includes the names of Swift and Steele, of Pope and Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale, and of the three gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and Cowper.
In the band of authors famous for their correspondence, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place. Reference has been already made to the Pope correspondence, large in bulk and large too in interest. To this Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater portion of her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister, Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute. She was shrewd enough to know their value: 'Keep my letters,' she wrote, 'they will be as good as Madame de Sévigné's forty years hence;' and they are, perhaps, as good as letters can be which are written with a sense of their value, which Madame de Sévigné's were not. Lady Mary, who may be said to have belonged to the wits from her infancy, for in her eighth year she was made the toast of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty, but a woman of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At twenty she translated the Encheiridion of Epictetus. She was a great reader and a good critic, unless, which often happened, political prejudices warped her judgment. She had considerable facility in rhyming, and both with tongue and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes being the poet who was at one time her most ardent admirer. The story of Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes and singularities, may be read in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her Life and Letters. She is a prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her daughter the Countess of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in lively sallies, interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which give a charm to correspondence. The section containing the letters written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople (1716-1718) is perhaps the best known.
Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those addressed to her future husband, whom she requests to settle an annuity upon her in order to propitiate her friends. In one of them she describes her father's purpose to marry her as he thought fit without regarding her inclinations, and observes that having declined to marry 'where it is impossible to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told my intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised at their blaming it to the greatest degree. I was told they were sorry I would ruin myself; but if I was so unreasonable they could not blame my F. [father] whatever he inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They made answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived well with him that was all was required of me; and that if I considered this town I should find very few women in love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It was in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'
This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady Mary's letters to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic of the woman who had her own views of female propriety, and of the right method of love-making. To escape from the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived happily ever afterwards,' it was probably because for more than twenty years they lived apart.
Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has been aptly said that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been more successfully reproduced in prose.'[55]
'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass, and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill-consequences.... The active scenes are over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.'
Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox.
Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).
Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and during his brief administration did all that man could do for the benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.
On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue, practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had been with all the princes in Europe.'