As inoculation is now out of date, I shall extract from the various letters the mode of procedure. Arrived in Dover Street, Mrs. Montagu is told by Elias, the duchess’s porter (then a most important domestic magnate), his mistress was coming to London on Monday. She therefore writes to beg the duchess, the duke, and Mr. Achard to dine with her that day “at 4 or 5 according to their convenience.” Business, however, prevented the duchess leaving Bullstrode for a week, but she is reinvited, as Dr. Mead says Mrs. Montagu will not be infectious till the disease appears. Meanwhile, in preparation for the dreaded operation, she was “dosed, then blooded, another dose or two of physick is all I shall want, and then proceed to meet that distemper I have been running from these four and twenty years: it is at present my misfortune the smallpox is so little stirring they cannot find a subject.” She writes to the duchess also in another letter, “Though Dr. Mead, Dr. Cotes, Mr. Hawkins, and the subaltern of the Physical faculty, the Apothecary, have been smallpox-hunting this week, they have not procured a subject for me.” She urges the duchess to dine, “as I shall be as well till 7 or 9 days after the operation as ever I was in my life.”
The duchess had been out of order with hysterical fits, and states she was ordered to drive in a chaise. Of this vehicle we gain a glimpse from this allusion of Mrs. Montagu’s in answer to the duchess, “A chaise is health, spirits and speed, a lady must lay aside her hoop, her laziness and pride, before she is diminutive enough for a chaise.” A portion of a very beautiful letter, written by Mrs. Montagu to her husband before he joins her, I copy—
“Dover Street, Tuesday, August 30.
“My Dearest,
“The happiest moments I have spent since I parted from you, were those I employed in reading your letter: accept the sincerest thanks a grateful and tender heart can make to the most kind and generous love. While Heaven shall lend me life, I will dedicate it to your service, and I hope our tender engagements shall not be broke by the cruel hand of fate. Notwithstanding the distemper I am going into, I have great hopes of my life, and a certainty of my love to you as long as that life shall last. Your kind behaviour and conversation has made my Being of such value to me that I am taking the best means to preserve and secure it from hazards, but let not the experiment cost you an anxious thought. It would be a reproach to the laws of Nature, if one as virtuous as you are, should not be sure to be happy. I trust you shall ever be so independent of a weak woman, who can serve you in nothing but wishes: could I reflect back the happiness I receive from you, I should tremble at my own importance to think of sinking from happiness to insensibility, and nothing might overcome my little courage, but to imagine I left you a portion of sorrow and regret as a burthen on all your years to come, would not only afflict but even distract me.”
THE REV. CHRISTOPHER DONNELLAN
The same day that she wrote this letter to her husband, she writes a note to Mrs. Donnellan, who had joined her brother, the Rev. Christopher Donnellan, at Tunbridge Wells. He, having been ordered to drink the waters, and having crossed from Ireland for that purpose, Mrs. Montagu says, “Does not your brother think he is in Babel? How does he like English women with French dresses and French manners? In short, what does grave good sense think of Tunbridge?”
By Mr. Montagu’s desire, Dr. Sandys was added to the previous M.D.’s. A day or two after this Mr. Montagu joined her, and she was inoculated on September 3.
WHEATEARS —
ARMY DISCIPLINE
On September 7 Mrs. Montagu writes to Mrs. Donnellan—