Voltaire was prevented by age and decrepitude from appearing in public; but he heard of her arrival, and took the opportunity of addressing a letter to the Academy renewing his attack on Shakespeare. She was present when this letter (intended as a crushing response to her essay) was read. The meeting over, the president observed to her apologetically, “I fear, Madam, you must be annoyed at what you have just heard.” She at once answered, “I, sir! Not at all. I am not one of M. Voltaire’s friends!” She had already named as her heir her nephew Matthew Robinson (the younger of the two sons of her third brother Morris), who assumed, by royal licence, the surname and arms of Montagu. In young Matthew, now a boy of fourteen, her hopes and affections were accordingly centred. His education was her first care. She sent him to Harrow, where he did dwell. In the holidays, she had him taught to ride and to dance, the latter exercise being essential, in her opinion, for giving young people a graceful deportment. She was indeed shocked at observing, on one of her later visits to Tunbridge Wells, that owing to there being a camp hard by at Coxheath, young ladies had adopted a military air, strutting about with their arms akimbo, humming marches, and refusing to figure in the courtly minuet. When he was seventeen, Matthew Montagu was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge. Here again, without doing anything remarkable, he acquitted himself creditably, and never got into a single scrape. While he was thus progressing, his aunt was preparing to leave her residence in Hill Street, and move into a far finer mansion which she had purchased in Portman Square. This edifice, considerably altered and modernised, fills up the north-west angle of the square. It is conspicuous for its size, and the spacious enclosure surrounding it. Much building and decorating had to be got through before the fortunate owner could migrate thither. In the following extract from a letter written at the time, she proves herself a sharp woman of business: “My new house is almost ready. I propose to move all my furniture from Hill Street thither, and to let my house unfurnished till a good purchaser offers. Then, should I get a bad tenant, I can seize his goods for rent; and such security becomes necessary in these extravagant times.” Meantime, extensive improvements were being carried on at Sandleford. Within the house, various Gothicisms, in imitation of Strawberry Hill, were contrived. Without, what with widening of streams, levelling of mounds, planting in and planting out, our good lady’s purse-strings were kept perpetually untied. Yet she managed to keep well within her income. The celebrated landscape-gardener, “Capability” Brown, superintended matters.