Basil Montagu - Family

Family

Montagu married three times:

1. On 4 September 1790, Caroline Matilda Want of Brampton, Huntingdonshire;
2. at Glasgow, in 1801, Laura, eldest daughter of Sir William Beaumaris Rush of Roydon, Suffolk, and Wimbledon, Surrey;
3. the widow of Thomas Skepper, lawyer, of York.

He had by his first wife a son Edward, mentioned in William Wordsworth's lines ‘To my Sister’ and ‘Anecdotes for Fathers’. By his second wife he had three sons; and two sons and a daughter by his third wife. All his children but two (his daughter and one of his sons by his third wife) died in his lifetime. His third wife, whose maiden name was Benson, was the daughter of a wine merchant of York, and in her youth had known Robert Burns (cf. his complimentary letter to her dated Dumfries, 21 March 1793, in his Correspondence). he in middle age fascinated Edward Irving, who gave her the sobriquet of "the noble lady".’ Thomas Carlyle, introduced to her by Irving in 1824, corresponded with her; and during the earlier years of his residence in London was a frequent visitor at 25 Bedford Square. Carlyle was offended by an offer of a clerkship at £200 a year which Montagu made him in 1837. His early letters to her were printed for private circulation by her daughter by her first husband, Mrs. Procter, soon after the publication of the ‘Reminiscences’ (see Bryan Waller Procter).

A portrait of Montagu by Opie was lent by Bryan Waller Procter ("Barry Cornwall") to the third Loan Exhibition (No. 183).