Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)
Isobel Grundy, University of Alberta
August 2023
Mary Pierrepont (later known as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) was almost certainly a Londoner by birth, since she was baptized (on 26 May 1689) at St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden. She became a poet, a writer in many genres of which her letters remain the best known, a traveler, independent-minded proto-feminist, and a one-off medical pioneer. That is, she imported variolation or inoculation against smallpox, which she found as a folk practice around the eastern Mediterranean, into western or scientific medicine: the prototype of every form of what is now called vaccination.
Like other upper-class families, hers lived a double life, in town and on country estates according to the season. Her family owned broad acres in Nottinghamshire and Wiltshire; her father pursued a career in public life which made him familiar with the centres of power in London, and with its vibrant cultural activity. He was a member of the Kit-Kat Club, an association of Whigs which included statesmen, churchmen, writers and artists. Mary, his eldest child, savoured the memory of how he had summoned her, aged eight, to be brought before a Club gathering to prove her worthiness to be a Kit-Cat toast: she was petted, flattered, had her health drunk and her name ceremonially engraved along with those of the famous beauties who had been chosen as toasts before her.
Her early life seems to have been mainly rural, first among the Wiltshire downs, then in parkland where the great trees were remnants of Sherwood Forest. Her mother had died soon after giving birth for the fourth time within three years; Mary (who became Lady Mary before she was two, when her father inherited his first title) had two little sisters and a brother. The London side of their life was very far from Grub Street. Apart from that intoxicating elevation among the Kit-Cats, it meant chatting with the girls next door over a high garden wall; later it meant balls and the opera, dancing and flirting. It was in the country that Lady Mary wrote poetry and “stole” her education for herself in her father’s grand library.
The girls became marriageable, with their father firmly in control. Lady Mary’s confidential letters to a friend, Philippa Mundy, reveal that she was in love with a man she ranked as Paradise (never identified, but hopelessly out of reach) while her father negotiated with a man she regarded as Hell (from a solidly Whig, Irish noble family). In this crisis she found courage to elope with Edward Wortley Montagu, another strong Whig and a suitor who might have been acceptable to her father but for an irreconcilable point of principle. She often expressed her gratitude that Wortley Montagu had taken her with no marriage portion, only the clothes she stood up in.
Comparative lack of funds kept them for a few years in either town or country lodgings. Then Queen Anne died and the Whigs took office, bringing career openings for Wortley Montagu and for Lady Mary the life of a young married woman in London, full of a sense of possibility.
What brought her to Grub Street? She had political ambition herself, actively seeking to become a power behind the throne, but literary ambition too. Her first foray into print was made in a highly respected environment, that of Addison’s Spectator. Addison (a personal friend of Montagu and especially her husband) had written a piece about a club of widows, who conform to stereotype in being parasitic upon men. Montagu responded in the persona of the president of the club, who glories in the predatory marriages she has made after being repeatedly, from the age of fourteen, a marital victim. This is proto-feminism not as complaint but as battle-cry.
She may have met Alexander Pope, a more dangerous literary associate, at the studio of the painter Charles Jervas, and was soon in cahoots with Pope and “Johnny” Gay, satirizing London life in verse. Her “Eclogs” focus on the elite, often identifiable individuals, but they give a glimpse of street women too, the “tatter’d riding hoods” heading for church while “happier sinners” apply their makeup for the evening.
Grub Street first confronted her in the form of Edmund Curll, who got hold of three of the “Eclogs” and printed them as Court Poems in 1716 with a riddling attribution suggesting either Pope, or Gay, or her, as their author. One of these poems has a speaker abusing Caroline, new Princess of Wales, for selecting the wrong (Whig) ladies in waiting, and for enjoying Gay’s allegedly “filthy” farce The What D’Ye Call It. A moderately intelligent reader sees that the speaker is a prejudiced prude whose low opinion is all to Caroline’s credit. But it was gossip, tittle-tattle, a serious infringement of royal status. Montagu the writer found herself the object of scandal, which escalated sharply when Pope in revenge slipped an emetic to Curll, graphically described the copious vomit which ensued, and printed his description.
Lady Mary’s attention must have been at least somewhat distracted from this debacle, first by her near-death experience from smallpox (which had already taken the life of her beloved brother), and then by the unique opportunity to travel overland across Europe to Istanbul (then Constantinople) with her husband, who was appointed British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. These travels occasioned what is still her best-known book, the “Embassy Letters.” For this she transcribed letters actually sent, omitting personal details and removing overlap while fitting the topic to the recipient. She resisted persuasion (from Mary Astell among others) to publish this work, but after keeping it with her throughout many further travels, she entrusted the manuscript in a manner that suggested she intended posthumous publication. In the event its appearance in 1763 took the intervention of illicit copyists: her heirs evidently still felt publishing to be déclassé.
Lady Mary was, unexpectedly, back in England within a couple of years, not because of any failure in diplomatic skill on her husband’s part, but because a change of government demanded a change in personnel. She was quickly embroiled in another scandal, this time involving the South Sea bubble. Lacking funds to invest herself, with shares rocketing in value and increasingly hard to obtain, she undertook to acquire some for a French friend and admirer, Nicolas-François Rémond. Of course the money was lost: prices collapsed completely and all but the very quickest to sell took a severe hit. Rémond, however, believed or professed to believe that she was to blame, and demanded the return of his outlay in increasingly threatening terms. Lady Mary hoped desperately but in vain to keep the story from her husband. Pope must also have found out, since he later used it against her.
But far more powerful scandal was brewing. In Turkey Lady Mary had observed (and written enthusiastically about) the practice of inoculation, that is injecting children with smallpox virus, thereby securing brief and negligible illness followed by immunity. Lady Mary had her five-year-old son treated, but not her daughter, who was still an infant. Word of this practice had reached learned circles in England, but nobody had tried it at home.
In 1721 a smallpox pandemic raged (just as destructively in Boston, Massachusetts, as in London). Lady Mary persuaded Charles Maitland, whom she had known as Embassy surgeon; to inoculate her daughter, on condition that eminent medical men would serve as observers, to vindicate him professionally in case of accident. This of course ensured publicity; the practice spread rapidly, and Lady Mary enlisted Caroline, Princess of Wales (apparently still friendly towards her), first to sponsor public experiments on convicted felons who volunteered for it, then on charity children, and finally, with the king’s permission, on her own daughters. (George I judged her sons too high in the line of succession to risk.)
All this produced the biggest controversy the British print media had ever seen. Medical opinion was uncertain (quite reasonably since the concept was unheard-of and scientifically unexplained). Clerical opinion (on how exactly dying of smallpox was related to the will of God) was even more divided. Montagu’s hand in this innovation made it an issue in gender politics; the royal family’s involvement made it party-political. Newspapers and pamphlets plunged in; half-truths and fake news abounded; Montagu was vilified (identifiably though not by name). In general, pro-inoculators assumed a tone of insistent rationality, while the anti faction used over-heated emotional language.
Her only known contribution to this paper war was a letter purportedly by a “Turkey merchant,” supporting inoculation but warning against its escalation at the hands of a medical profession focussed on profit. Doctors, says the “merchant,” are replacing a surface scratch with a needle by a deep wound with a scalpel, and a tiny amount of smallpox matter with a hugely increased dose. Montagu employs the passionate tone of her opponents to unmask what she takes to be their aim: that this threat to the doctors’ bottom line may be defeated and they may continue undisturbed in their killing of patients.
By now Lady Mary’s name evoked expectation of scandal or eccentricity of one kind or another. She had shed her Court ambitions, but still lived a double life between town and country. From her London houses (in Covent Garden till 1731, then in Cavendish Square) she savoured the social whirl (described in 1720s letters to her sister); at her villa in Twickenham she enjoyed quieter pleasures. She busied herself with her daughter’s education, with her garden, music and embroidery, friendship, and always writing: letters (including those now lost with European philosophes), her diary (destroyed after her death), poetry, and for a while her own periodical. She made this last a vehicle for disparate topics from interest rates and conditions in the textile industry to a proposal to substitute singing robots for overpaid opera singers.
Lady Mary had a talent for friendship, but for making enemies too. Her friendship with Astell—remarkable in bridging a multiple divide of class status, religious belief, and political affiliation—evidently rested on a shared commitment to the exchange of ideas. Its written traces are all of debate and disagreement, yet clearly also of friendship. With John, Lord Hervey, Lady Mary argued too, though they were drawn together by Whig principles, sexual unorthodoxy, and enmity towards Pope. Lady Mary met Maria Skerrett as, she said, “a girl in a village,” but Skerrett was about to become the Prime Minister’s mistress and later (to his credit) his second wife. The trunkful of letters and poems from Montagu that Skerrett burned before her marriage is another grievous loss.
Alliances, enmities, and the practice of writing were closely intertwined. Whatever the earliest roots of Pope’s vendetta against Montagu, his first public accusation was literary: she “father’d her Lampoons upon her Acquaintance.” The unequal duel continued, with Montagu featuring in the line-up of victims in highly successful satire after satire, and responding with attacks in which Pope is sole or leading target. Some of her ripostes were written in collaboration with Hervey or her cousin Henry Fielding; most remained unpublished.
Her practice in lampoon is well represented by The Reasons that Induced Dr S[wift] to write a Poem call’d the Lady’s Dressing room, which reached print with or without her agency in 1734. She adopts the method of her adversary: the outer polish on repellant bodily detail, the elaborate aphoristic digression, the brisk narrative and abrupt ending. The whole effect of airy amusement differs widely from the outraged, declamatory, condemning tone of Verses Address’d to the Imitator of Horace.
The body of Montagu’s poetry now in print is mainly occasional, and is probably the tip of a large, lost iceberg. Most is connected with one personal relationship or another: the latest relationship known to have drawn several poems from her was her painful middle-aged infatuation with Francisco Algarotti, the talented, bisexual, social-climbing young Venetian who caused her to leave England in 1739 with the intention of remaking her life with him. Her life in self-chosen exile, first in various Italian and Alpine towns, then in Papal Avignon, then in the remote province of Brescia, with closing years in Venice and Padua, produced two literary masterpieces, one her late letters and the other her anti-romance or moral tale “La Princesse Docile.” These are less relevant here, being products of leisure and solitude, remote from Grub Street associations of topicality, pressure, alliances or enmities.
Lady Mary made her way back to die in London (of breast cancer on 21 August 1762, after eight months in England), via an undocumented but no doubt grueling journey across a Europe engulfed in the Seven Years War. She was scathing about the house her daughter rented for her: “harpsichord-shaped,” with “two very decent closets and a cupboard on each floor.” She complained about the crowds of curious visitors who came to see her, yet she also went out and about while she could. She was still a Londoner: in Venice, huddled against the cold, she had remarked to a British grand tourist her likeness to “one of the old women that sold roasted Chesnuts at Whitehall and the Bridges in London.”
Her works are mostly collected in Complete Letters, ed. Robert Halsband, 1965–7; Essays and Poems with Simplicity, A Comedy, ed. Halsband and Isobel Grundy, rev. ed. 1993; Romance Writings, ed. Grundy, 1996 (all available online from Intelex Past Masters, with Grundy’s biography, 1999). For a handful more of letters see Selected Letters, ed. Grundy, 1997; her two longest juvenile pieces have Juvenilia Press editions: Indamora to Lindamira, 1994, and The Adventurer, 2000.
Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900)
MONTAGU, Lady MARY WORTLEY (1689–1762), writer of 'Letters,' baptised at Covent Garden, 26 May 1689, was the eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, who in 1690 became fifth Earl of Kingston (created Marquis of Dorchester in 1706, and Duke of Kingston in 1715), by Mary, daughter of William Feilding, earl of Denbigh. Her mother died in 1694, leaving three other children: William, Frances (afterwards Countess of Mar), and Evelyn (afterwards Countess of Gower). Mary showed early abilities, and, according to one account, her father had her taught Greek and Latin by her brother's tutor. The Greek, however, is doubtful, and it seems probable that she taught herself Latin (Spence, Anecdotes, p. 232). Lord Kingston, though a man of pleasure and generally a careless father, was proud of his daughter, and it is said that 'before she was eight' he nominated her as a 'toast' at the Kit-Cat Club (generally said, however, to have been founded in 1702; see under Cat, Christopher). As she was not known to the members, he sent for her to the club, when she was elected by acclamation. She always declared afterwards that this was the happiest day of her life. She became an eager reader, devouring the old romances and the old dramatists, besides more solid literature. She was encouraged by an uncle, William Feilding, and by Bishop Burnet. She submitted to Burnet in 1710 a translation of the 'Encheiridion' of Epictetus from the Latin version (printed in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her 'Works,' i. 225). She became a friend of Mary Astell [q. v.], the defender of woman's rights in her day, who in 1724 wrote a preface to Lady Mary's 'Letters from the East' (first published with the 'Letters' in 1763). Another friend was Anne, daughter of Sidney Wortley Montagu, second son of Edward, first earl of Sandwich [q. v.], who had taken the name of Wortley on his marriage to Anne, daughter of Sir Francis Wortley. Lady Mary was writing enthusiastically about her studies and state of mind to her friend in 1709. Edward Wortley Montagu, brother of Anne, was a man of ability, a good scholar, well known to the whig leaders, and especially attached to Addison. The second volume of the 'Tatler' is dedicated to him. He represented Huntingdon in the House of Commons from 1705 to 1713. He met Lady Mary in his sister's company, was delighted with her knowledge of Latin, as well as with her wit and beauty, sent her at once a copy of verses, wrote letters of warm compliment to be copied and sent to her in his sister's name, and soon became an avowed suitor. His sister died soon after the acquaintance had been formed. A long correspondence followed. Lady Mary's 'Letters' are remarkably well written, and show masculine sense rather than tenderness. She says that she can be a friend, but does not know whether she can love. She probably felt a real passion, although she makes it a point of honour to state fairly every objection to the match. Montagu applied to Lady Mary's father, then Lord Dorchester, but he was finally rejected, upon his refusal to entail his estates upon his eldest son, or to promise his wife a fixed establishment in London. Montagu (see Moy Thomas) gave notes for No. 223 of the 'Tatler' (12 Sept. 1710), which attacks the practice of marriage settlements. The father hereupon ordered Lady Mary to marry another man. Settlements were drawn, and the wedding-day fixed, when Lady Mary left the house and married Montagu privately by special license, dated 12 Aug. 1712. She lived for the next few years in different houses, generally in Yorkshire, her husband's father still occupying Wharncliffe Lodge, near Sheffield. Her husband was often separated from her by his parliamentary duties, and her 'Letters' show occasional discords. Her son, Edward Wortley Montagu (who is separately noticed), was born in 1713. In the same year her sister Frances married John Erskine, sixth or eleventh earl of Mar [q. v.] Her brother, Lord Kingston, died soon afterwards, leaving a son, who became the sixth and last duke. Upon the formation of the first ministry of George I (October 1714), Montagu became one of the commissioners of the treasury, his cousin Charles, lord Halifax [q. v.], being first lord Montagu, it is said, was the only man at the board who could talk French, and who could therefore converse with the king. When after the death of Halifax in 1715 Walpole became first lord, Montagu lost his place, and his remarks on the 'state of party' (published in Lady Mary's 'Works') show that he had a strong dislike to Walpole. Lady Mary was often at court, and was in favour with the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline. 'Dolly' Walpole, Sir Robert's sister, afterwards Lady Townshend, had been an early friend, but Sir Robert's wife was her decided enemy. She became well known to all the wits, and among others to Pope, who professed especial admiration for her. Upon the surreptitious publication of her 'Court Poems'(afterwards called ' Town Eclogues') in 1716, Pope revenged her or himself by administering an emetic to Curll [see under Curll, Edmund]. On 5 June 1716 Montagu was appointed ambassador to the Porte, then at war with Austria. The embassy was intended to reconcile the Turks and the emperor. Montagu left London with his wife and their child at the end of July. They reached Vienna at the beginning of September, and, after visiting other German courts, left Vienna on 17 Jan. 1717, and travelled to Adrianople, where they stayed for two months, reaching Constantinople at the end of May. On 28 Oct. following Montagu received letters of recall, with a private letter from Addison,who had now become secretary of state. Addison's endeavours to assign complimentary reasons for the recall imply a consciousness that Montagu would scarcely see the measure in that light. Montagu was not, as Addison suggested, anxious to return to England, for he remained at Constantinople till 6 June 1718. His daughter Mary (afterwards Lady Bute) was born in February 1718. The Montagus returned by sea to Genoa, and reached England at the end of October. Montagu collected some oriental manuscripts, and presented an inscribed marble to Trinity College, Cambridge. Lady Mary's interest in the manners of the country is shown by her 'Letters,' and she learnt a little Turkish. At Adrianople she had noticed the practice of inoculation for the small-pox (see letter of 1 April 1717). She had her son inoculated, and took much pains to introduce the practice upon her return to England. The physician of the embassy, a Mr. Maitland, inoculated in London under her patronage, and in 1724 Steele celebrated her merits in a paper in the 'Plain Dealer,' 3 July ( Gent. Mag. xxvii. 409; Phil. Trans. 1757, No.lxxi.), and congratulated her upon her 'godlike delight 'of saving' many thousand British lives' every year. For many years after her return to England Lady Mary was a leader in London society. Her 'Letters' show that she was not without a keen appetite for the scandal of the times, and she was one of the greatest sufferers by the same propensity in her neighbours. Her husband again represented Huntingdon in the parliaments elected in 1722 and 1727. He afterwards sat for Peterborough from 1731 to 1747, and from 1754 till 1751. He never took any conspicuous part in politics, and devoted himself chiefly to saving money. Upon returning to England Lady Mary had resumed intercourse with Pope. Pope had celebrated her in the 'Epistle to Jervas' (published 1717), and more than one copy of occasional verses (POPE, Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, iv. 491–3). The thought of her in- spired the 'Epistle of Eloisato Abelard,'and to her during her journey were addressed letters of the most stilted and fine-spun gallantry. She replied, checking his ecstasies with calm good breeding and sense. On 1 Sept. 1718 Pope wrote to her the well-known letter upon the romantic death of two rustic lovers struck by lightning, to which she replied from Dover (1 Nov.), on her way home, by a bit of cynicism, too true to be pleasant. He continued his adoration, and persuaded her and her husband to take a cottage at Twickenham, in order to be his neighbours. The close relation between the keen woman of the world and the querulous and morbidly sensitive poet was dangerous. The friendship continued for a time. Sir Godfrey Kneller painted her picture for the poet in 1719; his last letter, in September 1721, is in the old style; and in the spring of 1722 she says in a letter to her sister that she seldom sees him, but encloses some of his verses containing a compliment to her. A quarrel followed, the causes of which have been much discussed. Various stories are given: Miss Hawkins (Anecdotes, p. 75) reported that the quarrel was due to a pair of sheets lent by Pope to the Montagus and returned unwashed. This was confirmed by Worsdale the painter (Life of Malone, p. 150). Lady Mary herself told Spence (Anecdotes, 1820, p. 233) that Pope told Arbuthnot that he had refused to write a satire upon somebody when requested to do so by Lady Mary and Lord Hervey; Lady Mary implies that this story was false, but speaks as though she did not know the true cause. Mr. Moy Thomas and Dilke think that the quarrel arose out of her ridicule of his story of the lovers killed by lightning. This assumes that the letter to him was not really sent at the date assigned to it, which is possible, but is a mere guess. Mr. Courthope thinks, and with apparent justice, that there is no reason for doubting the account given, according to Lady Louisa Stuart, by Lady Mary herself, that Pope was betrayed into a declaration of love, which Lady Mary received with a fit of laughter. This story is in harmony with all that we know of their relations; and if, as is probable, the declaration was meant to be taken in a poetic sense, the laughter was painfully sincere. The more serious the cause the greater is the excuse for Pope's subsequent malignity, though no excuse can be more than a slight palliation. A coarse lampoon upon Lady Mary by Swift, 'The Capon's Tale,' first published in the 'Miscellany' of 1826, implies that the quarrel had begun, and hints at previous lampoons attributed to her. Pope's references to 'Sappho' are in the 'Dunciad,' bk. ii. 1. 136 (1728, and note added in 1729); the 'Epistle to Lord Bathurst' (1732), 11. 121–2; the 'Imitation of the 1st Satire of the 2nd Book of Horace' (1732–3), 11. 83–4; the 'Epistle to Martha Blount' (1734–5), 11. 25–6; the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot' (1734–5), 11. 368–9; 'Versification of Donne' (1735), i. 6; and the 'Epilogue to the Satires' (1738), i. 113, ii, 19. Pope was apparently the aggressor in this warfare, although it seems that he suspected Lady Mary of being concerned in a previous libel called 'A Pop upon Pope' (1728), a story of his being whipped in revenge for the 'Dunciad' (see Carruthers, Pope, 1857, pp. 258–9, and Pope Works, x. 119). When the atrocious allusion in the 'Imitations of Horace' appeared, Lady Mary asked Peterborough to remonstrate with Pope. Pope made the obvious reply that he wondered that Lady Mary should suppose the lines to apply to any but some notoriously abandoned woman. It is of course impossible to prove who was in Pope's head when he wrote, but he certainly endeavoured to confirm the application to Lady Mary when it was made by the town (see Mr. Courthope's remarks in Pope's Works, iii. 279–84). The 'Verses addressed to an Imitator of Horace by a Lady,' published in 1733, are generally attributed to Lady Mary, in co-operation with her friend and fellow-victim to Pope's satire, Lord Hervey (see Courthope in Pope's Works as above, and v. 259–61). They insult Pope's family and person with a brutality only exceeded by his own. His base insinuations probably injured Lady Mary's reputation in her time. Two of the points to which he refers, that she 'starved a sister' and 'denied a debt' (Epilogue to Satires}, were of importance in her history. A Frenchman named Rémond (who is described in St.-Simon's Memoirs, 1829, xvii. 306) made love to her; and, though she did not encourage his passion, she seems to have written some imprudent letters to him. She thought that she would get rid of him handsomely by making some money for him in the South Sea speculation. He gained something by selling out on her advice, but left the money in her hands to be again invested. In one of his last letters (22 Aug. 1720) Pope had advised her to buy at a time when the stock was rapidly declining in value. Whether she lost on her own account does not appear; but the 900l. which she invested for Rémond soon sank in value to 400l. He then claimed the repayment of the original sum as a debt, and threatened to publish her letters. She was certainly alarmed, and especially anxious to keep the matter from her husband, who was severe in all questions of money. Our knowledge of the affair is derived from her letters upon the subject to Lady Mar. Horace Walpole, who saw them, gave a distorted version of their purport to Sir Horace Mann. But in fact, although they show her to have been imprudent, they refute any worse imputation upon her character or her honesty. Rémond appears to have spread reports which must have reached Pope, who knew something of the South Sea speculation. The story about her sister refers to Lady Mar, who was for a time disordered in mind. Her brother-in-law, James Erskine, lord Grange [q. v.], famous for the violent imprisonment of his wife, tried also to get hold of Lady Mar. Lady Mary obtained a warrant from the king's bench in 1731, and was for some time her sister's guardian. There does not appear to be any ground for a charge of harsh treatment. Lady Mary was on very friendly terms with Lord Hervey, and on hostile terms with his wife. Her favour was courted by Young, of the 'Night Thoughts,' who in 1726 consulted her about his tragedy, 'The Brothers,' and by her second cousin, Fielding, who dedicated his first comedy to her in 1727, and asked her to read his 'Modern Husband.' She managed to be on good terms with the redoubtable Sarah, duchess of Marlborough; but she seems to have made enemies by her satirical wit. In 1739 she went abroad, for reasons which have not been explained. Her letters to her husband imply that they still remained on friendly terms, and she speaks of him to their daughter with apparent affection. She told a correspondent that he had been detained by business till she was tired of waiting, and went abroad, expecting him to follow in six weeks (to Lady Pomfret, from Venice, n.d., probably in 1740). In any case, they did not again meet. She left England in July 1739, and travelled to Venice. In the autumn of 1740 she went to Florence, where she met Horace Walpole, who gives a disgusting account of her slovenly appearance, her 'impudence,' avarice, and absurdity (Walpole, Letters, ed. Cunningham, i. 55, 57). She visited Rome and Naples, and at the end of 1741 crossed the Alps to Geneva and Chambéry. In 1742 she settled at Avignon, where the town gave her a piece of land with an old mill, which she patched up for a house. The 'increase of Scottish and Irish rebels' (to the Countess of Oxford, 29 Nov. 1747) in 1746 made the place unpleasant to her, and she moved to Brescia, where she bought the shell of an old palace, fitted it up, and stayed for some years, spending her summers at Lovere, on the Lago d'Iseo. She thought Lovere 'the most beautifully romantic place' she ever saw, and compares it to Tunbridge Wells (to Lady Bute, 21 July 1747). She made occasional excursions elsewhere, and in 1758 settled at Venice. She corresponded with her daughter, Lady Bute, reporting her impressions of Italian society and of the books which she read. She admired Fielding and Smollett, but despised Richardson, though she could not help crying over him. She wished her granddaughters to acquire some learning, but hoped that they would not marry, and that their mother would 'moderate her fondness' for them. In the last years of her stay she became intimate with Sir James Denham Steuart [q. v.], who dedicated to her the first two books of his 'Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy.' Lady Mary's husband died in January 1761, aged 83. Horace Walpole describes him living at Wharncliffe, the seat of the Wortleys, in 1756, in the most miserly fashion, his only indulgence being tokay (Walpole, Letters, in. 29). He was reported to have left 1,350,000l. (ib. iii. 377; and Gray to Wharton, 31 Jan. 1761). Pope (Horace, bk. ii. sat. ii. 11. 49–60) satirised the pair as 'Avidien and his wife,' fend Montagu appears to have done little beyond saving money in later years. Walpole rightly prophesied that Lady Mary would return to England. Her daughter's husband was now in power (secretary of state 25 March 1761), and Lady Bute begged her mother to come to her. Lady Mary's health was breaking, but she left Venice in the autumn, and reached England in the beginning of 1762. She died on 21 Aug. following. A cenotaph was erected to her memory in Lichfield Cathedral, commemorating her introduction of inoculation. Lady Mary had herself suffered from smallpox, which 'deprived her of very fine eyelashes' and impaired her beauty. The portrait painted by Kneller in 1719, apparently for Pope, came into the possession of Lord Bute. A portrait painted by Charles della Rusca in 1739, and presented by her to the Countess of Oxford, is at Wortley Hall. A third portrait, by Jonathan Richardson, belongs to the Earl of Wharncliffe, and another of Lady Mary by Highmore is in the possession of T. Humphry Ward, esq. An enamel by Zincke (1738), engraved by Vertue, is at Welbeck. A miniature in possession of Lord Harrington is engraved in the editions of her 'Works' by Wharncliffe and Thomas. Lady Mary's 'Town Eclogues' were first published piratically as 'Court Poems' in 1716 (misdated 1706 on title-page). They were republished, with others, by Dodsley in 1747, and again in his 'Miscellany.' They were edited by Isaac Reed in 1768, and are included in his 'Works.' Lady Mary's letters from the East were given by her when at Rotterdam in 1761 to a Mr. Sowden, minister of the English church there, with a note by herself, stating that she authorised him to use them as he pleased. He is said to have sold them to her daughter for 500l. Another copy, given by Lady Mary to Mr. Molesworth, also came into possession of Lord Bute. An edition appeared in 1763, in 3 vols. 12mo, as 'Letters of Lady M——y W———y M———,' said to have been edited by the disreputable John Cleland [q. v.] A fourth volume appeared in 1767, of doubtful authority, and probably forged by Cleland, though reprinted by later editors. A story is told by Dallaway of a device by which the manuscript of the letters was surreptitiously copied while in Sowden's possession; but Mr. Moy Thomas says that this edition follows the Molesworth MS., which differs considerably from the other. It is doubtful how far the letters were sent as they now appear, or made out of a diary kept at the time; they were, previous to 1763, handed about in manuscript. In 1803 an edition of the 'Works,' including the above, with other letters and poems, was published by James Dallaway [q. v.], with materials supplied by Lord Bute, and a memoir. A second edition, with letters to Mrs. Hewitt, appeared in 1817. A new edition, in 3 vols. 8vo, edited by Lady Mary's great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe, was published in 1837. To this were added the very interesting 'Introductory Anecdotes' by Lady Louisa Stuart, Lady Bute's daughter. The last edition, by Mr. Moy Thomas, in 2 vols. 8vo, with a new life, appeared in 1861. The correspondence with Pope is in Pope's 'Works' (Courthope and Elwin, ix. 339–415).
[Lives, as above, prefixed to Works, by Dallaway and Moy Thomas, and Introductory Anecdotes; Spence's Anecdotes, 1820, pp. 224, 230, &c., 292, 371. Pope's Works (Courthope and Elwin) give full discussions of all the disputed points. See also Dilke's Papers of a Critic, i. 343–60.]
L. S.
Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition (1911)
MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY (1680–1762), English letter-writer, eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, afterwards duke of Kingston, was baptized at Covent Garden on the 26th of May 1689. Her mother, who died while her daughter was still a child, was a daughter of William Feilding, earl of Denbigh. Her father was proud of her beauty and wit, and when she was eight years old she is said to have been the toast of the Kit-Kat Club. He took small pains with the education of his children, but Lady Mary was encouraged in her self-imposed studies by her uncle, William Feilding, and by Bishop Burnet. She formed a close friendship with Mary Astell, who was a champion of woman's rights, and with Anne Wortley Montagu, granddaughter of the first earl of Sandwich. With this lady she carried on an animated correspondence. The letters on Anne's side, however, were often copied from drafts written by her brother, Edward Wortley Montagu, and after Anne's death in 1709 the correspondence between him and Lady Mary was prosecuted without an intermediary. Lady Mary's father, now marquess of Dorchester, declined, however, to accept Montagu as a son-in-law because he refused to entail his estate on a possible heir. Negotiations were broken off, and when the marquess insisted on another marriage for his daughter the pair eloped (1712). The early years of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's married life were spent in rigid economy and retirement in the country. Her husband was M.P. for Westminster in 1715, and shortly afterwards was made a commissioner of the treasury. When Lady Mary joined him in London her wit and beauty soon made her a prominent figure at court. Early in 1716 Montagu was appointed ambassador at Constantinople. Lady Mary accompanied him to Vienna, and thence to Adrianople and Constantinople. He was recalled in 1717, but they remained at Constantinople until 1718. The story of this voyage and of her observations of Eastern life is told in a series of lively letters full of graphic description. From Turkey she brought back the practice of inoculation for small-pox. She had her own children inoculated, and encountered a vast amount of prejudice in bringing the matter forward. Before starting for the East she had made the acquaintance of Alexander Pope, and during her absence he addressed to her a series of extravagant letters, which appear to have been chiefly exercises in the art of writing gallant epistles. Very few letters passed after Lady Mary's return, and various reasons have been suggested for the subsequent estrangement and violent quarrel. Mr Moy Thomas suggests that the cause is to be found in the last of the “Letters during the embassy to Constantinople.” It is addressed to Pope and purports to be dated from Dover, the 1st of November 1718. It contains a parody on Pope's “Epitaph on the Lovers struck by Lightning.” The MS. collection of these letters was passed round a considerable circle, and Pope may well have been offended at the circulation of this piece of satire. Jealousy of her friendship with Lord Hervey has also been alleged, but Lady Louisa Stuart says Pope had made Lady Mary a declaration of love, which she had received with an outburst of laughter. In any case Lady Mary always professed complete innocence of all cause of offence in public. She is alluded to in the Dunciad in a passage to which Pope affixed one of his insulting notes. A Pop upon Pope was generally supposed to be from her pen, and Pope thought she was part author of One Epistle to Mr A. Pope (1730). Pope attacked her again and again, but with especial virulence in a gross couplet in the “Imitation of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace,” as Sappho. She asked a third person to remonstrate, and received the obvious answer that Pope could not have foreseen that she or any one else would apply so base an insult to herself. Verses addressed to an Imitator of Horace by a Lady (1733), a scurrilous reply to these attacks, is generally attributed to the joint efforts of Lady Mary and her sworn ally, Lord Hervey. She had a romantic correspondence with a Frenchman named Rémond, who addressed to her a series of excessively gallant letters before ever seeing her. She invested money for him in South Sea stock at his desire, and as was expressly stated, at his own risk. The value fell to half the price, and he tried to extort the original sum as a debt by a threat of exposing the correspondence to her husband. She seems to have been really alarmed, not at the imputation of gallantry, but lest her husband should discover the extent of her own speculations. This disposes of the second half of Pope's line “Who starves a sister, or forswears a debt” (Epilogue to the Satires, i. 113), and the first charge is quite devoid of foundation. She did in fact try to rescue her favourite sister, the countess of Mar, who was mentally deranged, from the custody of her brother-in-law, Lord Grange, who had treated his own wife with notorious cruelty, and the slander originated with him. In 1739 she went abroad, and although she continued to write to her husband in terms of affection and respect they never met again. At Florence in 1740 she visited Horace Walpole, who cherished a great spite against her, and exaggerated her eccentricities into a revolting slovenliness (see Letters, ed. Cunningham, i. 59). She lived at Avignon, at Brescia, and at Lovere, on the Lago d'Iseo. She was disfigured by a painful skin disease, and her sufferings were so acute that she hints at the possibility of madness. She was struck with a terrible “fit of sickness” while visiting the countess Palazzo and her son, and perhaps her mental condition made restraint necessary. As Lady Mary was then in her sixty-third year, the scandalous interpretation put on the matter by Horace Walpole may safely be discarded. Her husband spent his last years in hoarding money, and at his death in 1761 is said to have been a millionaire. His extreme parsimony is satirized in Pope's Imitations of Horace (2nd satire of the 2nd book) in the portrait of Avidieu and his wife. Her daughter Mary, countess of Bute, whose husband was now prime minister, begged her to return to England. She came to London, and died in the year of her return, on the 21st of August 1762. Her son, Edward Wortley Montagu (1713–1776), author and traveller, inherited something of his mother's gift and more than her eccentricity. He twice ran away from Winchester School, and the second time made his way as far as Oporto. He was then sent to travel with a tutor in the West Indies, and afterwards with a keeper to Holland. He made, however, a serious study of Arabic at Leiden (1741), and returned twenty years later to prosecute his studies. His father made him a meagre allowance, and he was heavily encumbered with debt. He was M.P. for Huntingdon in 1747, and was one of the secretaries at the conference of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1751 he was involved in a disreputable gaming quarrel in Paris, and was imprisoned for eleven days in the Châtelet. He continued to sit in parliament, and wrote Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Antient Republics … (1759). His father left him an annuity of £1000, the bulk of the property going to Lady Bute. He set out for extended travel in the East, and George Romney describes him as living in the Turkish manner at Venice. He had great gifts as a linguist, and was an excellent talker. His family thought him mad, and his mother left him a guinea, but her annuity devolved on him at her death. He died at Padua on the 29th of April 1776.
Lady Mary's “Town Eclogues” were published in a pirated edition as Court Poems in 1716. Of her famous Letters from the East she made a copy shortly after her return to England. She gave the MS. to Benjamin Sowden, a clergyman of Rotterdam, in 1761. After Lady Mary's death this was recovered by the earl of Bute but meanwhile an unauthenticated edition, supposed to have been prepared by John Cleland, appeared (1763), and an additional volume, probably spurious, was printed in 1767. The rest of the correspondence printed by Lord Wharncliffe in the edition of her letters is edited from originals in the Wortley collection. This edition (1837) contained “Introductory Anecdotes” by Lady Bute's daughter, Lady Louisa Stuart. A more critical edition of the text, with the “Anecdotes,” and a “Memoir” by W. Moy Thomas, appeared in 1861. A selection of the letters arranged to give a continuous account of her life, by Mr A. R. Ropes, was published in 1892; and another by R. Brimley Johnson in “Everyman’s Library” in 1906. See also George Paston, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Times (1907), which contains some hitherto unpublished letters. Lady Mary's journal was preserved by her daughter, Lady Bute, till shortly before her death, when she burnt it on the ground that it contained much scandal and satire, founded probably on insufficient evidence, about many distinguished persons. There is a full and amusing account of Edward Wortley Montagu in Nichols's Anecdotes of Literature, iv. 625–656.