Lady Mary

REVIEW " Lady Mary" Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's reputation as a wit and, especially, a lette writer has remained high across the two centuries since her death, but he reputation as a person has been ambiguous. Her name has seldom bee introduced without an accompanying smack of scandal. The scandal wa orginally attached to her by Alexander Pope, and her connection with th poet was a singular misfortune from the point of view of her good nam~ .The lines he directed at her, after the collapse of their friendship, state much but insinuated more to her disadvantage; and posterity generally, eve atter making due allowance for the habitual exaggeration of satire, has bee. prepared to take his opinion on trust; especially since it had the backing 0 Horace Walpole's plausible judgment. Professor Robert Halsband is the first scholar to have inquired closel into the true character of the author of the Turkish Embassy letters, of th apparent Fury figuring in Pope's life and verse, and the result is one of th very best of recent biographies. (The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montag/; Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1956, pp. 313, $4.50.) His intention ha been-in spite of the drift of these opening remarks-not to whitewash Lad Mary but to set her free from the imprisonment of traditional opinion by patient and scrupulous examination of the biographical evidence. Every pag carries the marks of his careful search into sources, at hand and abroad, an Lady Mary's character as it emerges from his attention is completely auther ticated. Her character now appears as richer and more attractive than one coul possibly have supposed, and the misinterpretations earlier laid upon her aT shown to have been largely due to the circumstances of her age, forcing he behaviour as they did into patterns susceptible of cruel or scandalous cor struction. She may have been born with every apparent advantage, but 3 those advantages were entirely social they could only benefit a woman cor tent to live safely within the code. Lady Mary was not so content. Gifte with an exceptionally keen mind and an irresistible urge to compete in th masculine world of letters, she quickly found that what she was offered We: unsatisfying to her deepest nature. For a time she fought as well as she caul on the unfair terms proposed, but later she relinquished the unequal conte: by fiying into an eccentricity of conduct and manner which was the ioev table resource of those "writing women" who could afford to retreat frol unresponsive fact. A history of feminism from 1660 to 1760--a cruci, period in the struggle of women for recognition-would show Lady Mary ~ a type; as one of the several pioneers who brought about, though often ur intentionally, a more favourable situation. Mr. Halsband's biography, then fore, is more than a major contribution to our knowledge of Lady Mar~ presenting for the first time an unbiassed judgment on her backed by muc hitherto unpublished material; it also contributes widely to our understandin of the eighteenth century as a whole. DOUGLAS GRAN 116 ...