Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1870-05-06
A HUNDRED AND FIFTY
YEARS AGO.
Graphic Picture of English society
The Autobiography OF n NIisan-

-
The Autobiography of "A Nissan
thrOpe. SOD
| The Autobiography of Edward Wort
ley Montagu has lately been printed. The
writer was the only son of Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, one of the most ia
nous characters of her times, and it will
not be her sons fault if he does not be-
come, through this book, almost or quite
as widely known. 1t has been aptly
characterized as the work of a nissan
thrope, who dipped his caustic pen into
gall and vented his rage by striking, like
a mailman, right and left, at every one
who came within reach of his arm. He
hates every one. He hates his own moth
er, and, lastly, he evidently hates him
self, for the title page starts off with the
ominously dismal Hebrew legend: Gle
the day perish in which / was born"
His own life was romantic enough,
even in its misanthropy. His father, who
was at one time member of the British
Ministry, and afterward ambassador to
Turkey, was man of learning and the
friend of the iterati of his day. His
| mother was equally celebrated for her
beauty and her talent, and will go down
to fame, not only in her own writings,
but in the satlrlcal verse of Pope, whose
suit she rejected. The son was unfortu-
nate in being disliked and il-treated by
both his parents. He was left to the So
ciety of menials, picked up his education
as he could, and spent his life in wander
ing about the world, a soured, disap-
pointed, discontinued man. He has put
the record of that life into these pages,
and sorry record it is. We can best
give an idea of the book by a few extracts
from it, for every page almost is of the
same character.
The very first paragraph of the very
first chapter is devoted to his mother, and
here is the picture he draws of the bril-
liant Lady Mary:
"Her heart, did say? Alasl she had
no heartl What female wit ever had
There was, it is true, a globulsr piece of
flesh somewhere between the right and
left lung, and this performed the merely
animal function of that noble organ, but
resembledits prototype only as an auto
maton might resemble man. 1t was a
saddening thing to look upon so fair an
outside, and reflect how base and black
was all within. The asp lurking under
roses, the gilded chalice filled with poison,
the whited sepulchre covering rOttenness
these are hackneyed images, or would
have likened her to one and all. Yet,
what more appropriate picture of false
man or heartless woman than this last
How fine and smooth and shining is that
marble eXteriorl the carving beautiful,
the devices exquisite, the lines and curves
breathing grace, elegance and perfection;
the inscription eloquent of the angel that
lies beneath! We lifted up the lid.
Pah! an ounce, no, a ton of civet to
sweeten the poisoned atmosphere.
Let US replace the cover, nor scan too
closely that view of hell which is beheld
when human heats or sepulchres are
opened.
This is the fitting prelude to over five
hundred pages of his terrible invective.
He expects to find his grandfather, the
Duke of Kingston, in hell, with some
misshapen, gigantic fox or colossal rat
seated on his ducal back, spurrlng him
through perdition and glaring on him with
vulpine eyes of fraud, cruelty, cunning
and duplicity."
The first suitOr's claims to the hand of
his mother were that che was rotten with
every disorder that unbridled indulgence
in the Court of King Charles IL, of sa-
cred memory, and his congregated vestals,
was sure to entail upon the happy vOtary
of morning, noon and midnight pleasure"
and that she had seen too many bishops
to believe in God, too many patriots to
believe in honesty, and too many court
virgins to believe in chastity" His father,
he says, loved two things with devotion
that never slept. ''The first was his own
dear self; the second was his own darling
money" He mpales Pope in one lineby
saying that he was ''the dirtiest little
dwarf of varlet that ever hoped upon
the earth.n Here are few of his pen
pictures of the celebrated men of his
mothers day. The Duke of Buckingham
was can atheist, ibertine and cheat "
Prior was "vain, sordid and sensual in his
intrigues." Congreve was Connected,
worthless, selfish and utterly protligate in
his private life.n Addison was "a crawl
ing sycophant, full of envy and spleen"
Pope was 'false as Jesuit, tickle as
fool, and mercenary as waiting woman. "
In describing an interview between Pope
and his mother, which he witnessed, he
draws the following picture of the lau-
reate:
Suddenly see small, distorted man,
with lean, haggard, monkey-face, blear-
ing eyes, scarcely any hair, thin, straight
nose and coarse mouth, striding with
long and splay foot up the walk his back
is bent, his body crooked, his fingers long
and like vulture's claws, his smile satiri-
cal, hollow and sardonic, and his whole
appearance that of an obscene bird of Ill
omen. He is dressed in O black velvet
suit and leans on gold-headed cane. This
is Alexander Pope, the great laureate of
the fashionable world, the Horace of the
eighteenth century, the ape-ApollO of the
fair and frivolous"
DR.. Young, the author of ".Night
Thoughts" he says, was "a sneaking,
lying, dirty sycophant, who would any
day have licked the mud off the boots of
any Noble, Lord, or Lady who could get
him a place, or give him purse. All
| sense of self-respect was extinct within
him." OF Cibber and Savage, he writes
''Cibber, (son of Colley) was drowned
crossing the Irish Channel, and Savage
ought to have been hanged, and would
have been, only that Justice Page out
ragged all decency by his charge to the
| Jury, on his trial for the murder of Sin
clair, and that Savage had hafsister-
| Miss B-ett-whO saved him. Old Maude-
| vile, also, the author of the Bees, took
| a sort of liking to me, and often accom-
| panied me home. He described Addison
as parsOn in tye wig, but he was him
self sly rogue, and though he affected
| the austerity of a philosopher, | have
seen him stealing up Drury Lane, at night,
after tawdry bit of finery and paint in
that modest neighborhOOd.
Here is Lord Chesterfield, reputed to be
the finest gentleman of his time.
"We found him surrounded by all the
appliances of splendid and luxurious
wealth. His house was temple of the
arts. He was short, with coarse features
and cadaverous complexion, long -visaged
and ng-necked; but so stunted that he
gave you the notion of grenadier cut
down. There was an appearance of self
conCeit about him that was very sickening;
his eyes showed an immense depth OF
Discrimination, and his forehead was utter
ly deficient in any moral quality. 1t was
the head and body of an orang- outang,
but an orang -outang of great subtlety."
Colley Cibber, he says, was proficient
in every degree of scoundrelism. HC
"was an old man, upward of seventy,
who seemed a walking demon, and was
proud to be considered So"
And thus the writer goes on printing
| I:ro - I o,,Jo,, 1 IN 700 re