LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
1690-1762
Horace
Walpole’s
Letters.
“I went last night to visit her. I give you my word of honour, and you who know her will believe me without it, the following is a faithful description: I found her in a little miserable bedchamber of a ready furnished house, with two tallow candles and a bureau covered with pots and pans. On her head, in full of all accounts, she had an old black-laced hood wrapped entirely round so as to conceal all hair, or want of hair; no handkerchief, but instead of it a kind of horseman’s riding-coat, calling itself a pet-en-l’air, made of a dark green brocade, with coloured and silver flowers, and lined with furs; bodice laced; a full dimity petticoat, sprigged; velvet muffetees on her arms; gray stockings and slippers. Her face less changed in twenty years than I would have imagined. I told her so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she should have taken it for flattery, but she did, and literally gave me a box on the ears. She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her language as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater.”
Horace
Walpole’s
Letters.
“Did I tell you that Lady Mary Wortley is here? She laughs at my Lady Walpole, scolds my Lady Pomfret, and is laughed at by the whole town. Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face swelled violently on one side with the remains of a ——, partly covered with a plaister, and partly with white paint, which for cheapness she has bought so coarse that you would not use it to wash a chimney.—In three words I will give you her picture as we drew it in the ‘Sortes Virgilianae’—
‘Insanam vatem aspicies.’
I give you my honour we did not choose it; but Gray, Mr. Coke, Sir Francis Dashwood, and I, and several others, drew it fairly amongst a thousand for different people, most of which did not hit as you may imagine.”—1740.