Lady Mary Wortley Montague | Page 8

the common road, and forces one to find as
many excuses, as if it were a thing altogether criminal not to play the
fool in concert with other women of quality, whose birth and leisure
only serve to render them the most useless and most worthless part of
the creation. There is hardly a character in the world more despicable,
or more liable to universal ridicule, than that of a learned woman; those
words imply, according to the received sense, a talking, impertinent,
vain, and conceited creature. I believe nobody will deny that learning
may have this effect, but it must be a very superficial degree of it.
Erasmus was certainly a man of great learning, and good sense, 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