am at present in so much uneasiness, my letter is not likely to be
intelligible, if it all resembles the confusion of my head. I sometimes
imagine you not well, and sometimes that you think of it small
importance to write, or that greater matters have taken up your
thoughts. This last imagination is too cruel for me. I will rather fancy
your letter has miscarried, though I find little probability to think
so. I know not what to think, and am very near being distracted, amongst
my variety of dismal apprehensions. I am very ill company to the good
people of the house, who all bid me make you their compliments. Mr.
White begins your health twice every day. You don't deserve all this if
you can be so entirely forgetful of all this part of the world. I am
peevish with you by fits, and divide my time between anger and sorrow,
which are equaly troublesome to me. 'Tis the most cruel thing in the
world, to think one has reason to complain of what one loves. How can
you be so careless?--is it because you don't love writing? You should
remember I want to know you are safe at Durham. I shall imagine you have
had some fall from your horse, or ill accident by the way, without
regard to probability; there is nothing too extravagant for a woman's
and a lover's fears. Did you receive my last letter? if you did not, the
direction is wrong, you won't receive this, and my question is in vain.
I find I begin to talk nonsense, and 'tis time to leave off. Pray, my
dear, write to me, or I shall be very mad."

Montagu was, not to put too fine a point on it, a careless husband. Not
only did he neglect to write to his wife, but he neglected, or forgot,
to keep her adequately supplied with money. She had more than once to
remind him of this. "I wish you would write again to Mr. Phipps, for I
don't hear of any money, and am in the utmost necessity for it," she
told him in November, 1712. Montagu, even at this time a well-to-do man,
found it difficult to part with his money. A couple of years later, Lady
Mary had again to say to him: "Pray order me some money, for I am in
great want, and must run into debt if you don't do it soon." Even in
these days Montagu evidently had begun to be miserly. With all his
riches, he never spent a crown when a smaller sum would suffice, and
during most of his life he, as Sir Leslie Stephen put it, "devoted
himself chiefly to saving money."

In the winter of 1712, Lady Mary, who was with child, suffered much from
i