“... Business will detain me here for a fortnight longer.... I shall then go to Bath for about a month, to enjoy the primate’s society, who generally spends the evening with me. I have not any pretence to drink the waters, being perfectly well. I may take a little of them, perhaps, as I love to fall in with the customs of the place in which I reside. “... My great piece of feather-work is not yet compleated; so, if you have an opportunity of getting me any feathers, they will be very acceptable. The brown tails of partridges are very useful, tho’ not so brilliant as some others.” At sixty-five, Mrs. Montagu did not consider herself too old to figure at court. The poets had not ceased to take interest in her and to make her the subject of their rhymes. “Have you seen Mr. Jerningham’s lines on Mrs. Montagu falling down-stairs at the Drawing-room?” asks little Miss Port of her father, in a letter dated February, 1785, in the Delany correspondence. “In case you should not, I will send them to you.” “Ye valiant Fair! ye Hebes of the day, Who heedless laugh your little hours away! Let caution be your guide, whene’er you sport Within the splendid precincts of the Court. The event of yesterday for prudence calls— ’Tis dangerous treading where Minerva falls!” Minerva’s sympathies were now aroused by a family incident, thus narrated to Mrs. Robinson: “_March ye 15, 1785._ ... I know my brother and you and your daughters will be glad to hear Montagu is going to be married, in a manner which is agreable to himself and to me. The young lady is so form’d and qualified as to please both the fancy and the judgment, and her fortune such as to content any reasonable wishes. She has £45,000 in present; £3,000 more is to remain in the funds to secure an annuity to a very old person during his life, and who has been sometime bedridden; so it will soon come into Miss Charlton. She has also an annuity of £300 a year on the life of a young prodigal; but the regular payment of this is not to be depended upon. She has also some other little contingencies; so that her fortune is not estimated at less than fifty thousand pounds by her guardians.