Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/80

 During this early part of her career she lived wholly in retirement at Thoresby or at Acton, near London, where she acquired what by a license of speech may be termed the friendship of Mrs. Anne Wortley, the mother of her future husband. With this lady she maintained an epistolary correspondence, from the published portions of which we discover that both the young lady and the matron were exceedingly addicted to flattery, and that at nineteen the former had already begun to entertain those unfavourable notions of her own sex which in a woman are so justly regarded as ominous of evil. "I have never," says she, "had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex; and my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them."

Her friendship with Mrs. Wortley paved the way to an acquaintance with that lady's son, which, after much negotiation and many quarrels, the causes of which are rather alluded to than explained in the published correspondence, ended in a private marriage, which took place August 12, 1712. Lady Mary now resided chiefly at Wharncliffe Lodge, near Sheffield, where her son Edward was born, while her husband was detained by his parliamentary duties and political connexions in London. It would appear from various circumstances that Mr. Wortley Montague was a quiet, unambitious man, endowed with very moderate abilities; but his philosophic indifference or timid mode of wooing honours by no means answered the views of his wife, who was haunted in an incredible manner by the desire of celebrity, and who, possessing a caustic wit, a vivacious style, and splendid personal attractions, was conscious, that if once fairly launched upon the tide of the great world she could not fail of effecting her purpose. In the letters which emanated from her solitude we discover, amid a world of affected indifference, her extreme passion for exciting admiration.