For love indeed was not the cause,
It proves that she was mad.”
She survived her husband twenty-six years, and died at Newcastle House in Clerkenwell, being interred in Westminster Abbey, as became her Imperial dignity.
Ralph, Duke of Montagu was, as his picture shows, of a middle height, inclining to fat, and of a dark complexion. He was a man of pleasure, and self-indulgence, but of refined taste in architecture, and his gardens at Boughton were world famed. On one occasion he was showing them to the Duke of Marlborough, who said he believed the water-works were the finest in the world. “They are not to be compared,” replied the courteous host, “to your Grace’s fireworks.” St. Evremond, who was a constant visitor at Boughton and in London, and who met the Duke frequently at the Duchesse de Mazarin’s little salon in Chelsea, was a pensioner on his bounty, and is never tired of extolling his hospitality and generosity, also the charms of the Saturday and Wednesday receptions, at Montagu House.
“On admire avec raison
Votre superbe maison,
A tous étrangers ouverte;
Les jets d’eau de Boughton,
Les meubles de Ditton, etc.”