Lady Mary Wortley Montague | Page 2

her custom to note down and enlarge upon all the scandalous
rumours of the day, without weighing their truth or even their
probability; to record as certain facts stories that perhaps sprang up like

mushrooms from the dirt, and had as brief an existence, but tended to
defame persons of the most spotless character. In this age, she said
everything got into print sooner or later; the name of Lady Mary
Wortley would be sure to attract curiosity; and were such details ever
made public, they would neither edify the world, nor do honour to her
memory."
Lady Bute heard that her mother's letters were in existence, and, fearful
of what they might contain, purchased them. "It is known that when on
her way to die, as it proved, in her own country, Lady Mary gave a
copy of the letters to Mr. Snowden, minister of the English church at
Rotterdam, attesting the gift by her signature," Lady Louisa Stuart has
written. "This showed it was her wish that they should eventually be
published; but Lady Bute, hearing only that a number of her mother's
letters were in a stranger's hands, and having no certainty what they
might be, to whom addressed, or how little of a private matter, could
not but earnestly desire to obtain them, and readily paid the price
demanded--five hundred pounds. In a few months she saw them appear
in print. Such was the fact, and how it came about nobody at this time
of day need either care or inquire."
With regard to other correspondence of Lady Mary, Sir Robert Walpole
returned to her the letters she had written to his second wife, Molly
Skerritt, after the death of that lady; and when Lord Hervey died, his
eldest son sealed up and sent her her letters, with an assurance that he
had read none of them. To Lord Hervey's heir, Lady Louisa Stuart has
mentioned, Lady Mary wrote a letter of thanks for his honourable
conduct, adding that she could almost regret he had not glanced his eye
over a correspondence which would have shown him what so young a
man might perhaps be inclined to doubt--the possibility of a long and
steady friendship subsisting between two persons of different sexes
without the least mixture of love. Much pleased with this letter, he
preserved it; and, when Lady Mary came to England, showed it to Lady
Bute desiring she would ask leave for him to visit her mother.
It is to be presumed that Lady Mary, or her daughter, Lady Bute,
destroyed these collections. For her part, Lady Mary returned letters

that she had received from Lord Hervey, but only those that belonged
to the last fourteen years of an acquaintance that had endured twice so
long. These are for the greater number platonic in character, although
there are a few phrases of a freer kind. Croker, who edited Lord
Hervey's Memoirs, mentions that Hervey, answering one of her letters
in 1737, in which she had complained that she was too old to inspire
passion, after paying a compliment to her charms more gallant than
decorous, said: "I should think anybody a great fool that said he liked
spring better than summer merely because it is further from autumn, or
that they loved green fruit better than ripe only because it was further
from being rotten. I ever did, and believe ever shall, like women best--
"Just in the noon of life--those golden days, When the mind ripens as
the form decays."
Lady Mary was then in her forty-ninth year, being six years Hervey's
senior.
Lady Louisa Stuart, writing in 1837--that is, seventy-five years after the
death of her grandmother, Lady Mary--wrote indignantly of the attacks
that had been made upon her ancestress. "The multitude of stories
circulated about her--as about all people who were objects of note in
their day--increase, instead of lessening, the difficulty," she said.
"Some of these may be confidently pronounced inventions, simple and
purely false; some, if true, concerned a different person; some were
grounded upon egregious blunders; and not a few upon jests, mistaken
by the dull and literal for earnest. Others, again, where a little truth and
a great deal of falsehood were probably intermingled, nobody now
living can pretend to confirm, or contradict, or unravel. Nothing is so
readily believed, yet nothing is usually so unworthy of credit, as tales
learned from report, or caught up in casual conversation. A
circumstance carelessly told, carelessly listened to, half comprehended,
and imperfectly remembered, has a poor chance of being repeated
accurately by the first hearer; but when, after passing through the
moulding of countless hands, it comes, with time, place, and person,
gloriously confounded, into those of a bookmaker ignorant of all its
bearings, it will be lucky indeed if any