“None of his friends, I believe, will remember him longer and very few with equal affection. Indeed, there was something in his conversation and manners more engaging than can be described. With all those talents which had so long rendered him the object of popular admiration, he had not the least tincture of that vanity and importance which is too often the consequence of popular applause. He never took the lead in conversation, or even assumed that superiority to which he had a claim, as he was blessed with an exemption from many of the pains and infirmities of old age; he had none of its defects. In so many months as I was continually in his company last year (1763), I do not recollect a single instance of peevishness the whole time. His temper always appeared equal. There was a perpetual flow of vivacity and good humour in his conversation, and the most attentive politeness in his behaviour, nor was this the constrained effort of external and partial good breeding, but the natural turn of his mind, and operated so uniformly on all occasions that I never heard him use a harsh or even an uncivil expression to any of his servants.”
LORD MANSFIELD
At the end of Mrs. Montagu’s letter she states that Lord Mansfield[274] had shown her
“great civilities the few hours he was here ... an old quaker of four-score, who was reckoned one of the greatest Chymists in Europe, and is a man of witt and learning and who was connected with all the witts of the last age, has taken a great fancy to me because he will believe, in spite of all I can say, that I wrote certain ‘Dialogues,’ and he sits by me so cordially and attends on me so much, that if he was forty and I was twenty years younger it would be scandalous.... Torriano will be kill’d by the Archbishop’s[275] sumptuous fare, who feeds more like a pig of Epicurus than the head of a Christian Church.”
[274] William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, born 1704, died 1793; eminent statesman, Lord Chief Justice, etc.
[275] John Gilbert, Archbishop of York, 1757 to 1761. Torriano seems to have been then his secretary.
WINNING A COAL MINE
Mr. Montagu had been at Sandleford, where Morris, his wife, and little boy were spending some time. The little Morris was a great favourite, and delight to poor Mr. Montagu, who loved children. He was now preparing to set off northwards to Northumberland, having two collieries which he was going to work, or, as the expression was, to “win,” viz. Leamington and “Denton.” The first would cost a £1000, the latter, now called “Montagu’s main,” £5000. He consults his wife about all this, and adds, “I think j shall not while j live get rid of the trouble my succession has brought upon me, and have only one object, who, j hope, will reap the benefit of all my labour.” This meant his wife. At Tunbridge his wife, with “all our fine ladies and gentlemen,” was attending Mr. Ferguson’s lectures on Philosophy. In a letter of Lord Lyttelton’s he mentions his brother Richard. “Sir Richard, or rather ‘Duke Lyttelton’s’[276] Royall villa at Richmond, a finer room I never saw, and he seems made to sitt in it, with all the dignity of a gouty Prince. But though I greatly admired it, I would not have his gout to have his room.”
[276] He had married the Dowager Duchess of Bridgewater in 1745. She was second wife to Scroop, 1st Duke of Bridgewater.
To this letter a long answer is returned by Mrs. Montagu, and she informs Lord Lyttelton that, despite her eyes being very weak, she had been reading