MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY English letter-writer, eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, after wards duke of Kingston, was baptized at Covent Garden on May 26, 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, and carried on an animated correspondence with Mary Astell, who was a champion of rights, and with Anne Wortley Montagu, grand-daughter of the first earl of Sandwich. The letters on side, however, were often copied from drafts written by her brother, Edward Wortley Montagu, and after death in 1709 the correspondence between him and Lady Mary was prosecuted without an intermediary. Lady 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 married life were spent in rigid economy and retirement in the country. Her husband was M.P. for Westminster in 1715, and shortly after wards 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 and the Verses addressed to an Imitator of Horace. Lady
Mary always professed complete innocence. The reason was possibly that Pope had made love to her and been received with laughter. In any case, Pope attacked her again and again with the grossest insults, and her chief ally, Lord Hervey, as well. In return she is credited with a hand in A Pop upon Pope. She had a romantic correspondence with a Frenchman named Remond, 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. This disposes of the second half of Pope's line starves a sister, or forswears a (Epilogue to the Satires, i. 113), and the first charge is quite devoid of foundation.
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 eccen tricities into a revolting slovenliness. (See Letters, ed. Cunning ham, 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 of 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 Aug. 21, 1762. The general opinion of her was that as a letter-writer she was second only to Mme. de Sevigne. However that may be, there could hardly be two people more unlike. Lady Mary's letters are vivid, downright and scandalous; their interest lies not so much in the works as in the scenes and incidents of her wandering life.