The reader will remember that Mrs. Montagu was peculiarly afraid of smallpox, but she had determined, if once a mother, she would be inoculated, so that she should be able to attend to her child if it ever had the disease, and to prevent separation from or infection to it if she herself took the disease in the natural manner. When her dread of it is recollected, it will appear a heroic deed on her part. Her mother, Mrs. Robinson, was far from easy at the idea of the inoculation taking place in the summer heat.
Meanwhile the little boy was christened John, though he soon acquired the nickname of “Punch,” their own familiar peep-show, as the fond parents deemed him, and is only twice mentioned in the letters I have as my little “Jack.”
In a letter of June 21, from the Duchess of Portland, who was at Welbeck with Lady Oxford, she mentions—
“The Duke of Kingston[275] has been in the utmost danger, so great Doctor Hickman has refrained sleeping part of a night, not without the assistance of Barbecued Hog, Tokay, etc., etc., etc. to keep up his spirits, to enable him to go through the immense fatigue of waking a few hours with his patron.” She adds, “Thank God the children are all well. I hope your little man is so, my best wishes must ever attend the dear boy.”
[275] He died in 1773, when the title became extinct.
Mrs. Montagu went to recruit at Sandleford with Mr. Montagu, preparatory to removing the child and establishment there, as she writes to her sister Sarah, who, with Mrs. Medows, is left in Dover Street in charge of the son and heir—
BABY CLOTHES
“I really long to have you here. I think I may say you never saw anything so pretty as the view these gardens command, for my part I would not change the situation for any I ever saw; there is nothing in Nature pretty that they have not. The prospect is allegro, and as ‘Mirth with thee I chose to live,’ I am glad it is of that kind, ‘the loathed melancholy of Cerberus and blackest midnight, born in Stygeian cave forlorn,’ dare not appear in this little paradise. There is a charming grove where your reveries may wander at pleasure, you may allegorize like Spenser, or pastoralize like the lesser poets, there are roses and honeysuckles hourly dropping to put you in mind ‘how small a part of time they share, that are so wondrous sweet and fair,’ and this will whisper to you ‘de coglier d’amor la rosa,’ indeed, my dear Sall, these pretty things are mere toys, as are all things in this world, but a true friend. I am thankful for the benefits of fortune, and pleased with them, but really attached only to the person who bestows them. My benefactor bestows favours with more pleasure and more complaisance too, than most people receive them with, and this gives the relish to favour, for as Ophelia says, ‘Gifts grow cheap when givers are unkind.’
“I hope the young plant thrives under your care. Pray write every post, and say all you can about the boy, for as insignificant as he seems in his swaddling cloaths, it is more interesting to his parents to hear of where he went, than to hear of all the feats of Hercules girded in his Lion’s skin.”
Then she orders a dozen bibs to be made for the babe, of “fine damask, the pattern of Lady Betty Bentinck’s pinned to my embroidered quilted petticoat.”