[In the following excerpt from a letter to her daughter, Lady Bute, Lady Montagu expresses her appreciation for Pompey the Little and draws parallels between the novel's characters and her contemporaries.]

… Candles came, and my Eyes grown weary I took up the next Book meerly because I suppos'd from the Title it could not engage me long. It was Pompey the Little,² which has realy diverted me more than any of the others, and it was impossible to go to Bed till it was finish'd. It is a real and exact representation of Life as it is now acted in London, as it was in my time, and as it will be (I do not doubt) a Hundred years hence, with some little variation of Dress, and perhaps Government. I found there many of my Acquaintance. Lady T[ownshend] and Lady O[rford] are so well painted, I fancy'd I heard them talk, and have heard them say the very things there repeated. ³

I also saw my selfe (as I now am) in the character of Mrs. Qualmsick. You will be surpriz'd at this, no English Woman being so free from Vapours, having never in my Life complain'd of low spirits or weak nerves, but our ressemblance is very strong in the fancy'd loss of Appetite, which I have been silly enough to be persuaded into by the Physician of this place.⁴…

Notes

…²The History of Pompey the Little: or, The Life and Adventures of a Lap-Dog (1751) by Francis Coventry. LM's copy remains in her library (Sotheby Catalogue, 1 Aug. 1928, p. 84).

³ Lady Tempest has married a foolish man for his money and cuckolded him (or pretended to); she is 'the greatest Female Wit in London' (1751 ed., p. 45). Lady Sophister, full of affected wisdom, is divorced from her husband and has travelled abroad; she has read Hobbes, Malebranche, Shaftesbury, Wollaston, and especially Locke, and argues with her physicians 'at the Expence only of Christianity and the Gospel' (p. 66).

⁴ 'Do you eat, Madam?' Mrs. Qualmsick's physician asks her. 'Not at all, Sir, … not at all; I have neither Stomach, nor Appetite, nor Strength, nor any thing in the World; and I believe verily, I can't live a Week longer—I drank a little Chocolate yesterday Morning, Sir, and got down a little Bason of Broth at Noon, and eat a Pigeon for my Dinner, and made a shift to get down another little Bason of Broth at Night—but I can't eat at all, Sir; my Appetite fails me more and more every Day, and I live upon mere nothing' (p. 226).…