Lady Mary, Quite Contrary

THE COMPLETE LETTERS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE, VOLUME I (1708-1720), collected and edited by Robert Halsband. 468 pages. Oxford, $13.45.

Lady Who? A reasonable question, for the world has almost forgotten the greatest Englishwoman of the 18th century. Her beauty was the cynosure, her wit the terror, her private life the puzzlement of Hanoverian London. She was the confidante of one Prime Minister (Walpole) and the mother-in-law of another (Bute). She introduced smallpox vaccination to Europe. She rivaled Pope as a satiric versifier, dazzled Addison and Steele as an essayist. Above all she was acclaimed, by Dr. Johnson himself, as the greatest of the great letter writers of 18th century England.

Lady Mary's Letters, last published in 1861 and then only in a scantling collection of 470, have now been assembled by Columbia's Robert Halsband in three handsome volumes (one published now and the other two within the year). They contain some 900 items--every line of authenticated correspondence. In collective effect they startlingly enlarge the human interest as well as the literary stature of this 'haughty soul to woman join'd"--an androgyne of genius who was born with a man's mind in a woman's body and could never reconcile the two.

Royalty & Rest Rooms. Ignored by her family, Lady Mary as a child took refuge in a life of fantasy--she liked to run across the fields in the evening, trying to catch the setting sun. At 19, she had produced several albums of verse and a "handsome bosom" that disputed for attention with dark smoldering eyes. At 24, she married Edward Wortley, coldly handsome grandson of the Earl of Sandwich, who seemed more interested in money than in Mary. Even so, she wrote him hearty letters of political encouragement: "The Ministry is like a play at Court; there's a little door to get in, and a great Croud without, shoveing and thrusting who shall be foremost; people that knock others with their Elbows, disregard a little kick of the shinns, and still thrust forwards are sure of a good place."

In 1716, Wortley was named ambassador to the court of the Sultan. In her celebrated "embassy letters" from Turkey, Lady Mary wrote about everything from royalty to rest rooms, and was particularly happy to find that the custom of the veils reduced "danger of Discovery" and made "the number of faithfull wives very small."

Dirty Smock. Back in England, she induced physicians to attempt the Turkish practice of preventing smallpox by inoculation, and the ensuing controversy made her famous as the Jonas Salk of the 18th century. She also set up a salon frequented by such famous wits as Congreve, Pope, Steele, Fielding, Voltaire--and Lady Mary. Once, when somebody wondered why Prime Minister Robert Walpole had appointed a dolt as his Secretary of State, Lady Mary explained: "Oh, if I came suddenly to a great fortune and set up my coach, I should like to show it to the neighbouring village, but I could not carry you with me, for people might doubt whether it was your coach or mine. But if you would let me carry your cat with me, I would; for nobody would think it was the cat's coach."

The games she played made enemies, among them that ingenious hunchback, Alexander Pope, whose ferociously witty verses proclaimed that Lady Mary was greedy, stingy, adulterous, Lesbian, syphilitic--and on top of that she wore a dirty smock. His attacks were sickeningly effective. In her 40s Lady Mary faced a painful prospect: her name was muck, her marriage a byword, her looks a fading memory. In moving lines she said farewell to the love she never found.

Whilst other Maids a shameless Path pursue,

Neither to Honour, nor to Int'rest true;

And proud to swell the Triumphs of their Eyes,

Exult in Love from Lovers they despise;

Their Maxims all revers'd, I mean to prove,

And tho' I like the Lover quit the Love.

She spoke too soon. In 1736 she ran off to Venice with a dreamily beautiful but coldly ambisextrous adventurer, to whom she wrote 26 stormy love letters that appear for the first time in these volumes. Soon jilted, Lady Mary stayed on in Italy until, at 72, she announced: "I am dragging my ragged remnant of life to England." When she arrived, half of London turned out to inspect the legendary monster. Her vivacity was so great that nobody guessed she was dying of cancer. To Lady Mary herself, death was a matter of indifference. "I have lived long enough," she declared firmly. And she was off to catch the setting sun.

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