Lady Wortley Montagu

OTD in history, Lady Wortley Montagu died! I only learned of her existence relatively recently and immediately fell in love with her! I just bought the new book about her, but I couldn’t wait until I’d finished it to share her with you, so forgive me in advance if I end up doing another post on her when I finally finish the book!

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (née Pierrepont; 1689 – 1762) was an English aristocrat, writer, and poet. Today, she is mainly remembered for her letters, particularly her Turkish Embassy Letters describing her travels to the Ottoman Empire, as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey. These have been described as "the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient". Aside from her writing, Lady Mary is also known for introducing and advocating for smallpox inoculation to Britain after her return from Turkey. She is also notable for her writing achievements, her travels, her scandalous love life, her progressive views on women’s education, slavery, and Islam.

Lady Mary was a bright, ambitious child who dreamed of greatness. She wrote in her diary, "I am going to write a history so uncommon." She was not wrong! As a child, she had a "desire of catching the setting sun" and she would run across the meadow to "catch hold of the great golden ball of fire sinking on the horizon". However, she then realized that this activity "was impossible". However, the pursuit of achieving the impossible became a recurring pattern throughout her life.

When she was seven, members of the newly formed Kit-Cat Club, a group of fashionable men, nominated her as the subject of their toast to the beauty of the season (a bit icky?)

Mary’s life took a tragic turn when her mother, who she hoped would support her aspirations, died. Her paternal grandmother took over the children’s care, but sadly she too died when Mary was just eight. Thus, she was passed back into the custody of her father, who did not believe that girls deserved an education.

Her father reluctantly provided a governess for his children, but according to Lady Mary, the governess gave her "one of the worst [education] in the world" by teaching Lady Mary "superstitious tales and false notions". Instead, Lady Mary used the well-furnished library to "steal" her education by hiding in the library for hours everyday. She taught herself Latin, a language usually reserved for men at the time, and was as fluent as most men by the age of just thirteen. She was also an avid reader, and kept a detailed list of all her reads. By 1705, the 15yo Mary Pierrepont had written two albums entitled "Poems, Songs &c" filled with poetry, a brief epistolary novel, and a prose-and-verse romance. She also corresponded with two bishops, Thomas Tenison and Gilbert Burnet, who supplemented the instruction of the governess. Overall, Mary impressed her father, who was not a scholar, with her progress, despite his disapproval of educated women (imagine!)

Marriage

By 1710, the 21yo Lady Mary had two possible suitors to choose from: Edward Wortley Montagu, and Clotworthy Skeffington (not the sexiest name, it must be said). Mary was a friend of Edward’s sister Anne, but when she died in November 1709, Lady Mary began conversing with Edward instead. Lady Mary often met Edward at "friends’ houses" and "at Court". On 28 March 1710, she wrote her first letter to him, and they corresponded frequently until May 1711, without her father’s knowledge. Her father was incandescent with rage when he discovered their affair and forbid the relationship to continue. The pair often had disagreements, but always rekindled their correspondence in the end despite Mary’s father’s disapproval.

In 1711, Mary’s father decided to find a more agreeable husband for his daughter. He pressured her to marry Clotworthy Skeffington, the heir to the Irish Viscount Massereene. Skeffington's marriage contract included "an allowance of £500 a year as ‘pin-money,’ and £1,200 a year if he died." However, Lady Mary rejected this match, and instead eloped with Montagu. In a letter to Wortley, she wrote, "He [my father] will have a thousand plausible reasons for being irreconcilable, and ‘tis very probable the world will be on his side…I shall come to you with only a night-gown and petticoat, and that is all you will get with me..." The marriage license is dated 17 August 1712, and the marriage probably took place on 23 August 1712. This was highly controversial at a time when high-class ladies hardly ever chose their husband. It was especially remarkable considering that Mary often wrote how she did not believe in love – part of me suspects that she married Edward merely to spite her father.

The newly weds spent their first 5 years of marriage in England, and they had a son also named Edward in 1713. On 13 October 1714, her husband accepted the post of Junior Commissioner of the Treasury. When Lady Mary joined him in London, her wit and beauty soon made her a prominent figure at court, and a popular friend of George I and the Prince of Wales. 

Small pox

In December 1715, aged 26, Lady Mary contracted smallpox, and was badly scarred which put pay to her reputation at court – unfortunately she was valued more for her looks than her talents. Lady Mary's brother had died of smallpox in 1713, so she knew all too well the dangers of the disease.

While visiting local women in Turkey in March 1717, she witnessed the practice of inoculation against smallpox – variolation – which she called engrafting, and wrote home about it in a number of her letters. Variolation used live smallpox virus in the pus taken from a mild smallpox blister and introduced it into scratched skin of a previously uninfected person to promote immunity to the disease. Consequently, the inoculate would develop a milder case of smallpox than they may have contracted.

Lady Montagu defied convention by introducing smallpox inoculation to Western medicine. In March 1718 she had her nearly five-year-old son, Edward, inoculated with the help of Embassy surgeon Charles Maitland. In fact, her son was the "first English person to undergo the operation." In a letter to a friend in England, Montagu wrote, "There is a set of old women [here], who make it their business to perform the operation, every autumn…when then great heat is abated…thousands undergo this operation...[and there] is not one example of anyone that has died in it." Afterwards, she updated the status of Edward to her husband: "The Boy was engrafted last Tuesday, and is at this time singing and playing, and very impatient for his supper." On her return to London, she enthusiastically promoted the procedure, but encountered a great deal of resistance from the medical establishment who regarded it as folk medicine. 

In April 1721, when a smallpox epidemic struck England, she had her daughter inoculated by the same physician who had inoculated her son. This was the first such operation performed in Britain, and she made it a public event. She even persuaded Caroline, the Princess of Wales, to test the treatment. In August 1721, seven death-row prisoners at Newgate Prison were offered the chance to undergo variolation instead of execution: they all survived and were released. Despite such success, controversary intensified. However, Caroline was convinced of its value and the Princess's two daughters Amelia and Caroline were successfully inoculated in April 1722 by French-born surgeon Claudius Amyand. In response to the general fear of inoculation, Lady Mary, under a pseudonym, wrote and published an article describing and advocating in favour of inoculation in September 1722. Later, other royal families soon followed suite - in 1768, Catherine the Great of Russia had herself and her son inoculated.

Nevertheless, inoculation was not without its dangers; inoculates developed a real case of smallpox and could infect others. There were a small number of deaths and serious infections as a result of the procedure. Subsequently, Edward Jenner, who was 13 years old when Lady Mary died in 1762, developed the much safer technique of vaccination using cowpox instead of smallpox. As vaccination gained popularity, variolation gradually fell out of use. In 1967 the World Health Organization embarked on a worldwide campaign to eradicate smallpox, which was certified as having succeeded in 1979.

I grew up learning about Edward Jenner in school and at home (my mum’s family are Jenners!) but I had never once heard of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Yet, without her introduction of smallpox inoculation (and the Turkish women from whom she learnt), we never would have had the vaccine, or eventually eradicated smallpox all together. This is such a classic example of HERstory not being taught or erased, and if covid19 has taught us anything, it’s the importance of medical pioneers like Mary who pave the way for a safer future for us all. 

Religion

Mary’s observations of Eastern life are detailed in Letters from Turkey, a series of spirited letters full of graphic descriptions; Letters is often credited as being an inspiration for subsequent female travelers and writers, as well as for much Orientalist art. An important early letter was published, probably without Montagu's consent, titled "The Genuine Copy of a Letter Written From Constantinople by an English Lady" in 1719. Both in this letter and in the Turkish Embassy Letters more broadly, Montagu joins a wider English debate on Enlightenment ideas about religion, particularly deism, and their overlap with Islamic theology. Montagu shared with other philosophers a celebration of Islam for what they saw as its rational approach to theology, its strict monotheism, and its teaching and practice around religious tolerance. In short, Montagu and other thinkers in this tradition saw Islam as a source of Enlightenment, as evidenced in her calling the Qur'an "the purest morality delivered in the very best language". By comparison, Montagu dedicated large portions of the Turkish Embassy Letters to criticizing Catholic religious practices, particularly Catholic beliefs around sainthood, miracles, and religious relics, which she frequently denounced. In relation to these practices, she wrote, "I cannot fancy there is anything new in letting you know that priests can lie, and the mob believe all over the world." At a time when many Western Christians viewed Islam as the enemy, and its followers as barbarians, her understanding of the religion is astounding and nuanced, and disproves the myth that Christians and Muslims have always been adversaries.

During Montagu's time in the Ottoman Empire, she also saw and wrote extensively concerning the practice of slavery, and the treatment of slaves by the Turks. She wrote frequently and positively about the various enslaved people that she saw in the elite circles of Istanbul, including eunuchs and large collections of serving and dancing girls dressed in expensive outfits. In one of her letters written back home, famously from the interior of a bath house, she dismisses the idea that slaves of the Ottoman elite should be figures to be pitied. In response to her visit to the slave market in Istanbul, she wrote "you will imagine me half a Turk when I don't speak of it with the same horror other Christians have done before me, but I cannot forbear applauding the humanity of the Turks to those creatures. They are never ill-used, and their slavery is in my opinion no worse than servitude all over the world." This again strongly contrasted with the reports of other travelers at the time who presented the Muslims as barbaric savages, and also shows an unusual awareness of the hypocrisy of Christian countries in regards to slavery and morality. 

Women

During her time in the Empire, Mary was sincerely charmed by the beauty, style and hospitality of the Ottoman women she encountered. Montagu constantly praised the "warmth and civility" of Ottoman women. She described the hammam, a Turkish bath, "as a space of urbane homosociality, free of cruel satire and disdain", and said that "hammam are remarkable for their undisguised admiration of the women's beauty and demeanor", which creates a space for female authority. She recorded a particularly amusing incident in which a group of Turkish women at a bath in Sofia, horrified by the sight of the corset she was wearing, exclaimed that "they believed I was so locked up in that machine that it was not in my own power to open it, which contrivance they attributed to my husband."

Lady Mary wrote about the misconceptions that previous travelers, specifically male travelers, had recorded about the religion, traditions and the treatment of women in the Ottoman Empire. Mary’s gender and class status provided her with access to female spaces that were closed off to men, and thus enabled her to provide a more accurate account of the lived reality of Turkish women. This at times was undeniably “more a critique of the Occident than a praise of the Orient.” The title of her published letters is "Sources that Have Been Inaccessible to Other Travellers". The letters themselves frequently draw attention to the fact that they present a different, and Montagu asserts more accurate description than that provided by previous (male) travelers: "You will perhaps be surpriz'd at an Account so different from what you have been entertained with by the common Voyage-writers who are very fond of speaking of what they don't know." In general, Montagu dismisses the quality of European travel literature of the 18th century as nothing more than "trite observations…superficial…[of] boys [who] only remember where they met with the best wine or the prettiest women"(big Lizzo vibes here, no?). Montagu’s intimate description of the women's bathhouse scorns male descriptions of the bathhouse as a site for unnatural sexual practices, instead insisting that it was "the Women's coffee house, where all the news of the Town is told, Scandal invented, etc." Montagu's reference to "women's coffee house" represents the political and social freedom that Ottoman women enjoyed in the 18th century. However, Montagu's detailed descriptions of nude Oriental beauties ironically provided inspiration for male artists such as Ingres, who depicted the explicitly erotic content that Montagu had criticized. Men, missing the point? Never! 

Lover

However, Mary’s sexuality also caused a stir beyond the bathhouses. Montagu carefully constructed Ottoman female spaces, and her own engagement with Ottoman women, as full of homoerotic desire, which is consistent with the gender and sexual fluidity that characterized much of her life and writings (for example, she wrote extensively on the beauty and sensuality of Parisian women too!) Even though Montagu refused to undress for the bath at first, the girls managed to persuade her to "open my shirt, and show them my stays, which satisfied them very well". In one letter to her sister Lady Mar, she wrote, "nothing will surprise you more than the sight of my person, as I am now in my Turkish habit."

In 1736, Mary met and fell in love with Count Francesco Algarotti. She wrote him many letters in English and in French after his departure from England in September 1736. In July 1739, Lady Mary departed England without her husband ostensibly for health reasons, possibly from a disfiguring skin disease, and declared her intentions to winter in the south of France. She never saw her husband again, and it soon became apparent that she left to visit and live with Algarotti in Venice (I would’ve too, tbh). Their relationship ended in 1741 after Lady Mary and Algarotti were both on a diplomatic mission in Turin. Lady Mary stayed abroad and travelled extensively. After travelling to Venice, Florence, Rome, Genoa and Geneva, she finally settled in Avignon in 1742. She left Avignon in 1746 for Brescia, where she fell ill and stayed for nearly a decade, leaving for Lovere in 1754, before travelling around Europe again for the next two years. Throughout the time, Lady Mary exchanged letters with her daughter, Lady Bute, discussing topics such as philosophy, literature, and the education of girls, as well as conveying details of her geographical and social surroundings. 

Children

After returning to England, Lady Mary took less interest in court compared to her earlier years. Instead, she was more focused on the upbringing of her children, reading, writing and editing her travel letters—which she chose not to publish at the time.

Lady Mary went through a series of trials with her children. In 1726 and 1727, Lady Mary's son Edward ran away from Westminster School several times. He was then entrusted to a tutor with strict orders to keep him abroad. In later years, her son managed to return to England without permission and continued to have a strained relationship with both his parents. In the summer of 1736, Lady Mary's daughter fell in love with John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, but he had little fortune; Lady Mary warned her daughter about the disadvantages of living in poverty. In August 1736, their daughter married Bute against her parent’s wishes. Later, Lady Mary wrote to Lord Gower, 1st Earl Gower, complaining about her daughter's disobedience (a little hypocritical, considering she too eloped against her father’s wishes!). In response, Lord Gower tried to console Lady Mary: "I hope by her future conducts she will atone for her past, and that choice will prove more happy than you and Mr. Wortley expect."

Following her mother’s death, Lady Bute was furious about the publication of her mother’s letters, worried about how an unauthorized publication would impact the family's reputation. One of the manuscript volumes that others found was Lady Mary's famous diary, and Lady Bute did not have any knowledge of this existence until a few days before her mother's death. After she received these volumes, Lady Bute "kept it always under lock and key, though she often looked over it herself, and read passages aloud to her daughters and friends.... upon condition that nothing should be transcribed.” Lady Louisa Stuart, the youngest of Lady Bute's daughters, was scolded for reading books and wanting to be like her grandmother. Later, Lady Louisa followed her grandmother's footsteps and became a writer. It seems the genes skipped a generation, but Mary’s strength and spirit certainly lived on! 

Death

On 1 January 1761, Lady Mary received news of her husband Edwards death. She immediately left Venice for England, having self-imposed exile because of her strained relationship with Edward. Now, however, she wanted to be with her children and grandchildren before she too perished.

On 1 September 1761, she began her journey back home; she decided to go through Germany and Holland because France, which was deemed the easier route, was at war. However, the journey was dangerous and exhausting. She recorded her struggles and fatigues: "I am dragging my ragged remnant of life to England. The wind and the tide are against me; how far I have strength to struggle against both, I know not." While detained at Rotterdam, she handed her Embassy Letters to the Reverend Benjamin Sowden of Rotterdam, for safe keeping and "to be dispos'd of as he thinks proper."

Lady Mary eventually  reached London in January 1762. After arriving in London, her daughter and grandchildren often visited her, despite their previous estrangements.

In June 1762, it became apparent that Lady Mary was suffering from cancer, despite her attempts to hide this from her family. She wrote her last letter - with difficulty -  on 2 July to Lady Frances Steuart; "I have been ill a long time, and am now so bad I am little capable of writing, but I would not pass in your opinion as either stupid or ungrateful. My heart is always warm in your service, and I am always told your affairs shall be taken care of." Lady Frances's son was in London, and when he visited Lady Mary's house, he was summoned to her bedroom where he was surrounded by her relatives, including Lord and Lady Bute. Lady Mary then ordered her relatives to leave the room, saying of Lady Frances's son, "My dear young friend has come to see me before I die, and I desire to be left alone with him." She died at home on 21 August 1762, and was buried in Grosvenor Chapel the day after she died. 

Writing legacy

Although Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is now best known for her Turkish Embassy Letters, she wrote poetry and essays as well. A number of Lady Mary's poems and essays were printed in her lifetime, either without or with her permission, in newspapers, in miscellanies, and independently. They covered many topics including politics, science, feminism, religion, philosophy, gossip, love, and everything inbetween.

Before starting for the East, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had met Alexander Pope, and during her Embassy travels with her husband, they wrote each other a series of letters. While Pope may have been fascinated by her wit and elegance, Lady Mary's replies to his letters reveal that she was not equally smitten. Very few letters passed between them after Lady Mary's return to England, and various reasons have been suggested for the subsequent estrangement. In 1728, Pope attacked Lady Mary in his Dunciad, which inaugurated a decade in which most of his publications made some sort of allegation against her.

Although not published during her lifetime, her letters from Turkey were clearly intended for print. The first edition of the book sold out; in fact, the Critical Review newspaper editor, Tobias Smollett, wrote that the letters were "never equaled by any letter-writer of any sex, age or nation" and Voltaire also had high praise of these letters. Four years later in 1767, editor John Cleland added five spurious letters, along with previous printed essays and verses, to the previous edition of the book.

According to O'Quinn, although The Turkish Embassy Letters has been considered one of the best literary works published in the eighteenth century, the work has not been as appreciated as those published by her male peers, such as Alexander Pope and Horace Walpole. She was the "target of vicious attacks" from printing presses and male peers.  To avoid public censure, Montagu used pseudonyms, such as "a Turkey merchant" and "Lady President, in her publications.

Montagu's Turkish letters were frequently cited by Western female travellers, more than a century after her journey. In 1739, a book was printed by an unknown author under the pseudonym "Sophia, a person of quality", titled Woman not Inferior to Man. This book is often attributed to Lady Mary. 

Her Letters and Works were published in 1837. Montagu's granddaughter Lady Louisa Stuart contributed to this, anonymously, an introductory essay titled "Biographical Anecdotes of Lady M. W. Montagu", from which it was clear that Stuart was troubled by her grandmother's focus on sexual intrigues and did not see Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Account of the Court of George I at his Accession as history. However, Montagu's historical observations, both in the "Anecdotes" and the Turkish Embassy Letters, prove quite accurate when put in context. Despite the availability of her work in print and the revival efforts of feminist scholars, the complexity and brilliance of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's extensive body of work has not yet been recognized to the fullest.

Lady Mary is amazing for so many reasons, some of which I hope I have made clear! I am so angry that she is not better known, and there is so much more I could’ve elaborated on here (and will, once I’ve finished Jo Willet’s book! There are so many paralells between Mary’s life and today – the pandemic, the debate about women’s rights in Islam, the way women and men are treated differently by society, the lack of educational opportunities of girls etc. etc. etc.

A pioneering scientist, feminist, explorer, religious scholar, writer, potential queer icon, and all round powerhouse. What’s not to love! Thank you for saving us all from smallpox, Lady M, I hope some day your name is as well known as Dr Jenner’s.