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Lady of the Last Century

John Doran

In the year 1809, Mr. Matthew Montagu published the first two of four volumes of letters of his aunt, Elizabeth Montagu. He was not only her nephew, he was also her adopted son and her executor. On the 5th of December in that year, the celebrated statesman, William Windham, was reading those volumes, “in the evening, up-stairs;” and he subsequently recorded the following judgment of them in his diary: “I think very highly of them. One of their chief merits is series juncturaque. Nothing can be more easy and natural than the manner in which the thoughts rise one out of the other, even where the thoughts may appear rather forced, nor is the expression ever hard or laboured. I see but little to object to in the thoughts themselves, but nothing can be more natural or graceful than the manner in which they are put together. The flow of her style is not less natural, because it is fully charged with shining particles, and sparkles as it flows.” In 1813, Mr. Matthew Montagu published two more volumes of his aunt’s correspondence. The press generally received them with pleasant testimony of approval. It not only endorsed the judgment of the eminent statesman quoted above, but it especially pointed out that the letters were genuine and authentic, which could not be said of a similar collection of letters then challenging the censure of the town. Mrs. Montagu’s letters were read with great avidity, and readers for the most part came to the same conclusion as the statesman and the critics. The last letter in the series is addressed to Mrs. Elizabeth Carter. The date is September, 1761. The writer lived nearly forty years after that date. During that time, she maintained a lively correspondence; her letters were copied and circulated. After her death, a few, with fragments of others, found their way into various periodicals. The correspondence which Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu kept up with her sister-in-law, Mrs. Robinson, wife of the Rev. William Robinson, and a few other friends, between 1761 and the close of the last century, was long in the possession of the late Mr. Richard Bentley, who purchased them at a sale of autographs. These form the chief portion of the present volume. In a note to the letters published by Mr. Montagu, the editor states that they are “intended to convey in them the biography of the writer, which the editor thinks he could not so well exemplify by any remarks of his own as by the letters themselves.” Mr. Montagu gave to his aunt’s readers every word of every epistle, from the salutation to the signature. From the letters now printed for the first time there have only been omitted vain repetitions, formal compliments, and the nothings that may have once been somethings, but which are now mere dust and ashes, from which little of value is to be sifted. There have been retained all that could further “convey the biography of the writer,” with addition of such anecdotal illustration from the printed letters and from contemporary records as might serve to show more completely the character and surroundings of a Lady of the Last Century. - Summary by LynneT and from the preface