Lady Mary Wortley Montague | Page 8

and he seems to have my opinion of it, when he says Foemina qui [sic] vere sapit, non videtur sibi sapere; contra, quae cum nihil sapiat sibi videtur sapere, ea demum bis stulta est. The Abbé Bellegarde gives a right reason for women's talking overmuch: they know nothing, and every outward object strikes their imagination, and produces a multitude of thoughts, which, if they knew more, they would know not worth their thinking of. I am not now arguing for an equality of the two sexes. I do not doubt God and nature have thrown us into an inferior rank, we are a lower part of the creation, we owe obedience and submission to the superior sex, and any woman who suffers her vanity and folly to deny this, rebels against the law of the Creator, and indisputable order of nature; but there is a worse effect than this, which follows the careless education given to women of quality, its being so easy for any man of sense, that finds it either his interest or his pleasure, to corrupt them. The common method is, to begin by attacking their religion: they bring them a thousand fallacious arguments, which their excessive ignorance hinders them from refuting: and I speak now from my own knowledge and conversation among them, there are more atheists among the fine ladies than the loosest sort of rakes; and the same ignorance that generally works out into excess of superstition, exposes them to the snares of any who have a fancy to carry them to t'other extreme. I have made my excuses already too long, and will conclude in the words of Erasmus:--Vulgus sentit quod lingua Latina, non convenit foeminis, quia parum facit ad tuendam illarum pundicitiam, quoniam rarum et insolitum est foeminam scire Latinam; attamen consuetudo omnium malarum rerum magistra. Decorum est foeminam in Germania nata [sic] discere Gallice, ut loquatur cum his qui sciunt Gallice; cur igitur habetur indecorum discere Latine, ut quotidie confabuletur cum tot autoribus tam facundis, tam eruditis, tam sapientibus, tam fides consultoribus. Certe mihi quantulumcunque cerebri est, malim in bonis studiis consumere, quam in precibus sine mente dictis, in pernoctibus conviviis, in exhauriendis, capacibus pateris, &c."
This was not the sort of letter that in the opening years of the eighteenth century even Bishops received from young ladies of rank, who usually took their pleasure in other and lighter ways. Lady Mary, however, loved to exercise her pen. She later composed some imitations of Ovid, and tried her hand at one or two romances in the French manner. She thus acquired a facility of expression that stood her in good stead when she came to write those letters that constitute her principal claim to fame.
Lady Mary was an attractive child, and her father was very proud of her, especially when she was in what may be called the kitten stage. The story is told that, when she was about eight years old, he named her as a "toast" at the Kit-Cat Club, and as she was not known to the majority of the members he sent for her, where, on her arrival, she was received with acclamation by the Whig wits there assembled.
Sometimes Lady Mary in her girlhood stayed at Thoresby, and occasionally came up to her father's London house, which was in Arlington Street, which visits, accepting the story told by her granddaughter, Lady Louisa Stuart, cannot have been an unmixed delight. "Some particulars, in themselves too insignificant to be worth recording, may yet interest the curious, by setting before them the manners of our ancestors," Lady Louisa says. "Lord Dorchester, having no wife to do the honours of his table at Thoresby, imposed that task upon his eldest daughter, as soon as she had bodily strength for the office: which in those days required no small share. For this mistress of a country mansion was not only to invite--that is urge and tease--her company to eat more than human throats could conveniently swallow, but to carve every dish, when chosen, with her own hands. The greater the lady, the more indispensable the duty. Each joint was carried up in its turn, to be operated upon by her, and her alone; since the peers and knights on either hand were so far from being bound to offer their assistance, that the very master of the house, posted opposite her, might not act as her croupier, his department was to push the bottle after dinner. As for the crowd of guests, the most inconsiderable among them--the curate, or subaltern, or squire's younger brother--if suffered through her neglect to help himself to a slice of the mutton placed before him, would have chewed it in bitterness and gone home an affronted man, half inclined to give a wrong vote at the next election.