To this letter she answers—
“Mr. Montagu has been studiously disposed ever since we came to Sandleford, so that I pass seven or eight hours every day entirely alone. Five months are to pass before I return to the Land of the Living, but I can amuse myself in the regions of the dead: if it rains so that I cannot walk in the garden, Virgil will carry me into the Elysian fields, or Milton into Paradise.”
MR. TORRIANO’S MARRIAGE
Mention is also made of Sam Torriano’s engagement to Miss Scudamore, “who is said to have been handsome, and it was on both sides a marriage of inclination. He has delicacy enough to make him very happy or very miserable, and restlessness enough to be very uneasy in a state too insipid to allow of neither.”
Mrs. Montagu might well make this remark on Torriano’s marriage, as her friend Sir George Lyttelton’s[86] second matrimonial contract had by mutual consent ended in a separation. In a former letter it will be remembered that the haughty tone and unpleasant manners of the lady were commented on. It was a case of incompatibility of temper and thought, and a constant imagination of bad health on her part. Lady Lyttelton was a great friend of the Wests, and from a letter of Lyttelton’s to West of this year it is evident that a little coldness, which did not endure long, had sprung up between West and his friend.
[86] With Miss Rich, daughter of Field-Marshal Sir Robert Rich.
MR. WEST ILL
On July 8 and July 14 Sir George Lyttelton writes to Archibald Bower a complete diary of his tour in North Wales, accompanied by “Parson Durant and Mr. Payne.” These letters Bower gave to Mrs. Montagu. They contain many messages to the “Madonna,” but are, though interesting, too long to insert here. At this period West was at Tunbridge Wells, seeking health, but depressed at the absence of Pitt, Lyttelton, Torriano, and, above all, Mrs. Montagu; and from this letter it appears that 1750 was the year in which they first made friends at Tunbridge. “Where are the happy seasons of 1750, 1751, 1752, and 1753?” he cries. “In the ‘Stone House’ are Mr. Walpole and Lady Rachel, persons with whom I have no concern.” The only people he now consorts with are Mrs. Vesey, to whom he talks of Mrs. Montagu, “we both love and honour you;” and Bishop Gilbert and his daughter.[87] The Bishop of London was expected. West laments “a difficulty of breathing, accompanied with wheezing,” he thought asthma. “The Doctors said Hysterical as only fit for petticoats!” They prescribed assafœtida, valerian, and gum ammoniac. He laments that Torriano “has done the irrevocable deed, and is married on £500 per annum.”
[87] Miss Gilbert became Countess of Mount Edgecumbe.
In Mrs. Montagu’s answer to West of July 13 she laments Torriano’s marriage not only as