“On this day sennight at 4 in the morn I was seized with a fainting fit, in which I lay some time, my maids in their fright let the eau de luce fall into my eye, nostril and mouth, my eyes were enflamed and nostril, the mouth and uvula of the throat excoriated. After a long and cruel struggle for life,[209] a most sharp contention with this medicine, I awaken’d to find myself in this terrible condition. Dr. Askew unhappily lay at Durham that night, so had no assistance till 2 at noon, then I was blooded, which abated the inflammation so far I could articulate. The Doctor told me my safety depended on frequent gargling and drinking, so for, four days, I was never a quarter of an hour without doing so, the spitting was more violent than from a mercurial salivation.... When I came out of my fit, to see blood running from eye, nose and mouth drove Mr. Montagu almost distracted, and I knew not which way my agonies would end.... Mr. Montagu has shown on this occasion the most passionate love imaginable. Dr. Askew has been very careful, and an excellent apothecary has watched me night and day.”
[209] For two days her life was despaired of; for four days she could swallow no solid, and was salivated for a week.
In a second letter she says, “On the fourth day when I was able to look up I was surprized at the impression concern had made on Mr. Montagu, and I should hardly have known him, he looked 20 years older at least.”
In a letter of Monsey’s we learn eau de luce was made of strong sal ammoniac and quicklime.
LADY BURLINGTON
Mr. Montagu’s sister, now Lady Medows, wrote on September 14 to say her brother-in-law, Sir Philip, had been nearly killed in the same way by hartshorn. At the end of the letter she says, “Lady Bath dyed at two this morning of the Palsy.” This was the wife of Pulteney, Earl of Bath, soon after this to become one of Mrs. Montagu’s most intimate friends. Lady Bath’s maiden name was Maria Gumley, daughter and heiress of a great glass manufacturer. She had the character of great penuriousness, and her husband was credited with the same character, but I hope to show later that he could be very generous. When the news of Mrs. Montagu’s accident spread amongst her numerous friends, many were the letters of condolence and rejoicing at her safety from Lord Lyttelton and a host of others. Dr. Monsey had been staying with the Garricks; he was a great admirer of Mrs. Garrick, whom he often quotes in his letters. It was whilst staying with them he heard of it. Both he and Lord Lyttelton were quite frantic at the risk she had run, and distressed at her fainting fit. Monsey was suffering from a bad cough, for which, when staying with Sir John Evelyn at Wooton, he tried bleeding, cathartics, and syrup of white poppies. He returned to St. James’s, where Mrs. Garrick came to sit with him, and cheer him up. In a letter of his to Mrs. Montagu of September 23, mention is made of Lady Burlington’s death. “Lady Burlington is dead. Mrs. G(arrick) gets nothing, but rid of her, and that’s a great deal, I think. She gives the Duke of D. £3000 per annum ... not a farthing to any one servant, she had some lived with her 20 or 25 years.”
MRS. GARRICK
Lady Burlington, widow of the 3rd Earl, the celebrated amateur architect, was the daughter of William, Marquis of Halifax. On Eva Marie Viegel’s[210] arrival in England from Austria, the Empress Queen, Maria Theresa, gave her a recommendation to Lady Burlington, who received her at Burlington House as an inmate. It is said “La Violette,” as she was called from her exquisite dancing in the operas, had attracted the Emperor of Austria’s attention so much as to alarm the Empress, and that she therefore sought to remove her from Austria. Lady Burlington strongly objected to Garrick’s attachment to La Violette, having more ambitious projects for her protégée, but it was a true love affair from the beginning even to the end, and not one word could ever be said against Mrs. Garrick; theirs was indeed a love match, and after fifteen years of married life Garrick presented her with a ring on her birthday, with the most touching love verses. From the letters, I gather it was Dr. Monsey who brought Mrs. Montagu into personal intercourse with the Garricks.
[210] Eva Maria Viegel, or Veilchen, born at Vienna, 1725; married David Garrick on June 22, 1749.
Dr. Monsey was so disturbed at Mrs. Montagu’s accident that he wrote almost daily to her, and no one who reads his letters could imagine, however eccentric he was, that he was a free thinker in religion, as is asserted in the “Dictionary of National Biography.” His letters are so long that it is impossible to print them in full in this book. He had a bad cough and a sort of vertigo at this time, in the midst of which he was called to the Earl of Northumberland, who was desperately ill, whose sufferings Monsey succeeded in alleviating. In a letter of October 8 we learn that his birthday and Mrs. Montagu’s were on the same day, viz. October 2.[211] He promises in joke to marry Mrs. Stuart, a widow lady who had nursed Mrs. Montagu with the greatest attention. To add to Mrs. Montagu’s troubles, her faithful housekeeper, Mrs. Crosby, a lady by birth, but reduced to poverty, died of a quinsy in twelve days.