Lady Anne Montagu
By KNELLER.
Three-quarter Length.
(Blue Satin Gown. Rows of Pearls round the Waist. A Scarf over the Shoulder, a long White Glove in Left Hand.)
Born, 1674. Died, 1742.—The only surviving daughter of Ralph, first Duke of Montagu, by his first wife, the Countess of Northumberland. Lady Anne’s delicate health in her childhood, seems to have given great uneasiness, to her mother. Lady Rachel Russell often mentions the little fair, pale girl. She married; first, Alexander Popham, Esq., of Littlecote, in Wiltshire, (by whom she had Elizabeth, Viscountess Hinchingbrook); and secondly, Daniel Harvey, of Combe, in Surrey. The parents were friends, and cousins, and Lady Northumberland often visited at Combe. By her second marriage, she had no children.
St. Evremond constantly corresponded with Lady Anne, who was a friend of the Duchesse de Mazarin, and an habituée of her salon at Chelsea. He writes a poetical epistle complaining of the cold of this miserable bit of a room, where all the doors were left open, and where the beautiful hostess occasionally cheated at cards. All this, however, is couched in most flattering language, extolling the charms, moral (query) and physical, of the lovely gambler. “Prenez garde à Madame,” he goes on to say, after describing his losses at Ombre, for she will cheat you “avec la plus belle main du monde.”
La Fontaine dedicated one of his Fables, to Lady Anne Harvey, who had a great admiration for his talent. St. Evremond says: “L’estime que M. de la Fontaine s’est acquis en Angleterre étoit si grand, que Madame Harvey, et quelques autres personnes d’un très grand mérite, ayant su, qu’il ne vivoit pas commodément à Paris, résolurent de l’attirer auprès d’elles, oû rien ne lui auroit manqué.” La Fontaine was grateful to his English friends, but declined, on the plea of being too old, to seek a strange country. Lady Anne, or Madame Harvey, as the Abbé calls her, is constantly mentioned in the letters of St. Evremond.