Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Her Life and Letters (1689-1762)Melville, Lewis
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Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Her Life and Letters (1689-1762)
Melville, Lewis
Montagu, Mary Wortley, Lady 1689-1762; Montagu, Mary Wortley, Lady 1689-1762 -- Correspondence
On the other hand, nothing probably would have overcome the prejudice
against the ladies who followed George to this country. These were the
Countess Ehrengard Melusina von der Schulenburg, who, in 1716, was
created Duchess of Munster in the Irish peerage, and three years after
Duchess of Kendal, by which latter title she is more generally known,
and the Baroness von Kielmansegg (_née_ Platen), who was presently
elevated to the dignity of Countess of Darlington. It was generally
assured that these ladies were the King's mistresses, and they were
accordingly disliked not only at Court but also by the mob. One of them
when driving in London was assailed by terms of abuse--as she understood
scarcely any English, she could only go by the tone of the voices--and
putting her head out of the coach said: "Good people, why abuse us? We
come for all your goods." "Yes, damn you," cried someone, "and for our
chattels, too." The man in the crowd only voiced the general opinion,
and, it must be said, the general opinion was not far removed from the
truth.
Of course, the Jacobites made the most of this, and, as Horace Walpole
has related, "the seraglio was food for all the venom of the Jacobites,
and, indeed, nothing could be grosser that was vomited out in lampoons,
libels, and every channel of abuse against the Sovereign and the new
Court and chanted even in their hearing in the public streets."
It is mentioned in _Walpoliana_ that "this couple of rabbits, the
favourites, as they were called, occasioned much jocularity on their
first importation." Some of the jocularity was aroused by their
appearance. The style of beauty, or what passed for beauty, in each
country was markedly different. Hear Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writing
from Hanover in December, 1716: "I have now got into the regions of
beauty," she told Lady Rich. "All the women have literally rosy cheeks,
snowy foreheads and bosoms, jet eye-brows, and scarlet lips, to which
they generally add coal-black hair. These perfections never leave them
till the hour of their death, and have a very fine effect by candle-light,
but I could wish they were handsome with a little more variety. They
resemble one another as much as Mrs. Salmon's Court of Great Britain,
and are in much danger of melting away by too near approaching the fire
which they for that reason carefully avoid, though it is now such
excessively cold weather, that I believe they suffer extremely by that
piece of self-denial."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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