Edward Wortley Montagu

Edward Wortley Montagu was born on 15 May 1713, the only son of Sir Edward Wortley Montagu, British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. His mother was the famous eccentric writer, traveller and orientalist, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who was a strong influence on the young Edward. She took him, at the age of 3 on a journey across Europe to Constantinople where his father was residing. While there he was inoculated against smallpox, the first British person to have it. His mother was a pioneer of this medical procedure back in England. Edward was educated at Westminster School but ran away frequently. At the age of 13 he enrolled in a course of oriental languages and had an affair with a 20-year-old woman. Another escapade brought him to Portugal where he worked in a vineyard for 2 years. When they at last found him, his parents sent him to the West Indies. He was only 17 when he returned and ran off again, this time he married a washerwoman named Sally, ‘a woman of very low degree’. Once more his parents sorted this out and sent him abroad again, travelling through Europe accompanied by a tutor, John Anderson. But he was uncontrollable, drinking heavily and spending unwisely. His father considered disinheriting him but Edward managed to make a claim on the will of his grandfather the 2nd Earl of Sandwich. After further travels in the Netherlands and Italy he returned to England in 1742 and spent time in the Marshalsea debtor’s prison. On 20 Sep 1743 he joined the British Army and served first as a cornet in the 7th Dragoons and transferring to the Royal Regiment in 1745. He was a Captain-Lieutenant on 29 May and appointed ADC to General James St Clair who was Colonel of the regiment at that time. St Clair was Quartermaster General of the allied army during the War of the Austrian Succession. Montagu assisted the QMG in regulating the movements of troops, establishing camps and organising the order of battle. St Clair also commanded the second line of the British infantry at the Battle of Fontenoy on 11 May 1745, assisted by Montagu. Letters written by Edward Montagu give us valuable information about this and other battles. At the end of the war, in 1748 he resigned his commission and left the army, but while still serving he had entered politics (MP for Huntingdonshire) with the help of the 4th Earl of Sandwich, his cousin, who was Second Sea Lord. After the army he worked for his cousin who was promoted to First Sea Lord. Montagu’s talent for languages came into use at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. But respectable work did not suit Montagu and he soon returned to living disreputably. He belonged to the Divan Club for young men who admired the Turkish way of life. In 1751 he bigamously married Elizabeth Ashe, having not been properly divorced from the washerwoman. They had a son, also called Edward Wortley Montagu, but the marriage only lasted 3 months. He also had illegitimate children by various women. He was not averse to criminal activity. He was involved in a card cheating racket and when a young Jewish man refused to pay up Montagu mugged him. But he was arrested for this and imprisoned for 11 days in the notorious Châtelet before his case was overturned. Apart from his life in London and Paris, Montagu spent time at a house in Boreham Wood where he entertained mistresses and wrote ‘Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Antient [sic] Republicks’ published in 1759. He was still in debt, borrowing against his expected inheritance. However, when his father died in 1761, the 1,300,000 pound fortune was left to his sister, Mary who married John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (Prime Minister 1762 - 63). He was granted an annual income of 1,000 pounds from the will but Montagu was bitterly disappointed and decided to live in self-imposed exile. He re-enrolled at Leiden University in Feb 1761 where he had previously studied Arabic, but was soon travelling again, under the assumed title of The Chevalier de Montagu. He travelled through Armenia and Palestine, accompanied by 21-yr-old Caroline Dormer Feroe who was married to the Danish Consul in Alexandria. Montagu tricked her into marrying him, claiming that her husband had died. Even when she discovered the truth she continued to live with Edward as La Contesse de Montagu. At one time he converted to the Roman Catholic faith, but after travelling extensively in the Middle East he claimed to have converted to Islam and adopted a Turkish lifestyle. In 1773, at the age of 60 he returned to Europe and settled in Italy. In Venice he lived in oriental style, his eccentricity becoming a tourist attraction for the gentry making the Grand Tour, even visited by Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester. He was painted by George Romney around this time, depicted in Armenian dress which Montagu declared to be superior to Turkish. The painting was sold by Sotheby’s in 2014 for more than 4 million pounds. As well as being a philanderer and bon viveur, Montagu was a dedicated scholar and linguist. He was fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and Persian, and an accomplished orator. But his family regarded him as mad and his mother bequeathed him only one guinea in her will. However, he did benefit from her annuity when she died in August 1762. Edward Montagu, himself, died in Padua on 29 April 1776.