Lady Mary’s encounter with her father as he arrived unannounced in her dressing room was burned into the memory of her daughter, who was present; she in turn, passed the story on to her children. It was the only time that young Mary (later Lady Bute) recalled laying eyes on her grandfather. In the family tale, the visit stands alone, unconnected to any particular event: I have linked it to his decision to inoculate his heirs. In Lady Bute’s much later memory, she seems at the time to have been of an age to make this connection plausible.
The letters from Mather to Jurin, Boylston to Colman, Lady Mary to her sister and Boylston’s final letter to Sloane are genuine. Jerusha’s “Come home to me,” however, is supposition, though surely some sort of plea must have been made.
Both Lady Mary and Boylston are hard to trace across the year 1725-26. What little information I’ve given for Boylston is what can be gleaned from later writings and genealogies. For Lady Mary, I have relied upon Isobel Grundy’s biography—though I interpret the Richardson painting (c. 1725) differently. Her clothing comes very close to the Turkish costume described in her Embassy Letters—though the décolletage and the waistline have been altered to suit European style. The black boy is often referred to as a “page,” which may well have been his job; the disturbing gleam of a silver collar around his neck, however, surely indicates that he was a slave, whether or not he was hers. His identity has never been discovered. The Wortleys are not known to have had a black servant, though he may well have been “borrowed” from friends who did.
Richardson was a regular at the Royal Society’s unofficial home at the Grecian, and his closest friends included many of the Society’s staunchest advocates of inoculation: Arbuthnot, Cheselden, Mead, Sloane, and Dr. Frederick Slare. Another of the painter’s dearest friends was Alexander Pope. (Both Richardson and Cheselden spent time with Pope at his villa in Twickenham; Pope stayed with Richardson when he was in London.) All of these people, with the exception of Cheselden and Slare, were also Lady Mary’s good friends. Boylston certainly met all of the Fellows, and may well have crossed the Atlantic in part to learn the new method of lithotomy from Cheselden. Although I cannot finger a time or place when all these people came together, the circumstantial evidence that Boylston circulated among these people is very strong. It lends some credence, too, to the possibility that the painting in question does indeed commemorate the battle against small-pox. Such portraits were often commissioned by patrons other than the sitter; Pope, for one, was known to have commissioned and treasured other portraits of Lady Mary. Small groups of friends gathering to watch an artist at work in his studio was a common and convivial pastime among the leisured classes.
From her letters, Lady Mary appears to have been giddily in love in the summer of 1725; by the spring of 1726, this infatuation had faded, apparently unconsummated and possibly unrequited. Again, her beloved’s identity is lost. While she gazed elsewhere, Alexander Pope was gazing at her.
To her family, Lady Mary maintained that the infamous quarrel between her and the poet began when, with ill-chosen timing, he declared his passionate love for her, and she laughed at him. Pope scholars tend to dismiss this event as fiction; Lady Mary scholars tend to accept it as at least a contributory factor.
Smallpox did kill Lady Townshend that spring; with terribly irony, it also took another of Lady Mary’s girlhood friends who had refused inoculation. In the latter case, however, I have avoided introducing a new character, but preserved the historical irony by substituting Philippa Mundy in the place of Sarah Chiswell—probably another of the Sisters in Affliction. (As Lady Mary’s live-in companion, Chiswell played her own part in the Paradise adventures; presumably because she was present. No letters survive to trace her role.)
Boylston presented his book to the Royal Society to great acclaim. The sentence I have him read is his (though I have edited and abridged it slightly and added the phrase also called inoculation). The image of taming the smallpox, in other words, is Boylston’s; I am, however, responsible for making him restate that idea more succinctly as “we have tamed the smallpox.” The standing ovation is my crystallization of all his other applause—I do not know precisely what went on in that room in Crane Court, though it was clearly highly complimentary.
His ensuing election as a Fellow is recorded fact.
ABBREVIATIONS
BG: Boston Gazette
BL: The British Library
BNL: Boston News-Letter
BTR: Boston Town Records
CM: Cotton Mather
CMA: CM, Account
CMD: CM, Diary
CMAB: CM, Angel of Bethesda
CMSL: CM, Selected Letters
DAB: Dictionary of American Biography
ELCP: Early Letters and Classified Paper (The Royal Society)
EWM: Edward Wortley Montagu
Grundy, LMWM: Isobel Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
JHRM: Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts
LM: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
LMCL: LM, Collected Letters
LMEP: LM, Essays and Poems
LMRW: LM, Romance Writings
Miller, AIS: Genevieve Miller, The Adoption of Inoculation for Smallpox
MMV: Mr. Maitland’s Account . . . Vindicated.
MS: Manuscript
MSS: Manuscripts
NEC: New-England Courant
NEHGR: New England Historical and Genealogical Register
NPG: National Portrait Gallery, London
PRO: The Public Record Office, London
PTRS: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
RCB: Records of the Churches of Boston
RSI: The Royal Society, Inoculations
SM: Selectmen’s Minutes
SSD: Samuel Sewall, Diary
Thwing RCN: Reference Code Number, Inhabitants and Estates database on the Thwing CD
WD: William Douglass
WDCC: WD, “Letters . . . to Cadwallader Colden”
WDD: WD, Dissertation
WDPE: WD, Practical Essay
WDS: WD, “A Digression Concerning the Small-Pox”
WHO: Frank Fenner, et. al., Smallpox and its Eradication (published by the World Health Organization)
ZB: Zabdiel Boylston
ZBHA: ZB, An Historical Account, 2nd (corrected) ed.
SOURCES
This book is indebted throughout to Robert Halsband’s and Isobel Grundy’s encyclopedic scholarship on Lady Mary’s life, and to their meticulous editions of her works. Kenneth Silverman’s scholarship on Cotton Mather has proved equally indispensable. Far less scholarship exists on Boylston, but Gerald Marvin Mager’s doctoral dissertation, Zabdiel Boylston: Medical Pioneer of Colonial Boston, offers a solid starting point. Charles Creighton’s 1894 History of Epidemics in Britain, Genevieve Miller’s Adoption of Inoculation for Smallpox in England and France, and John B. Blake’s Public Health in the Town of Boston, 1630-1822 (the latter two both from the 1950s) all remain treasure troves of eighteenth-century descriptions, medical theories, and statistics concerning smallpox.
The finest modern descriptions of the symptoms and course of the disease are Thomas Francis Ricketts’s 1908 study The Diagnosis of Smallpox, based on his work as medical superintendent of London’s smallpox hospitals, and the World Health Organization’s justifiably triumphant Smallpox and its Eradication, which appeared eighty years after Ricketts’s work, coauthored by the international team of crusaders who finally conquered the disease: Frank Fenner, Donald Ainslie Henderson, Isao Arita, Zdeněk Ježek, and Ivan Danilovich Ladnyi.
Biblical quotations are from the King James Version of 1611.
In quoting eighteenth-century writers and speakers, I have updated spelling and pronunciation, and substituted you were for you was (then standard), and it’s for ’tis. My goal has been to allow the speakers to sound natural to modern ears—as they did to each other—rather than quaint and archaic. I have tried, however, to retain their greater sense of
formality and decorum (though their distinctly pre-Victorian humor and oaths were often more earthy than is commonly realized today).
References are keyed to the Bibliography. Throughout, I refer to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as LM, Edward Wortley Montagu as EWM, Zabdiel Boylston as ZB, Cotton Mather as CM, and William Douglass as WD.
Introduction
Reactions to LM: Stuart 36; reactions to ZB: Peter Thacher 777; ZBHA Preface. Eradication of smallpox from nature: Tucker 1 (prison metaphor), 3 (victim count and comparisons to bubonic plague and twentieth-century wars), 116-118 (last-known case).
Odds of the vaccine resulting in death: “Vaccinia (Smallpox) Vaccine Recommendations”; odds of variolation resulting in death: Jurin, Letter to the Learned Caleb Cotesworth and his 1724-27 series of pamphlets titled Account of the Success of Inoculating the Small Pox in Great Britain. Arguments over the origin of vaccinia: Tucker 37-38.
Jenner: see sources for “The Practice.”
Two Marys
Queen’s illness and death: Contemporary accounts: Creighton 2:459-60; Walter Harris, De Morbis Acutis Infantum 158-63. Modern biographies: Chapman 250-60; Elizabeth Hamilton 327-37. Queen’s “why are you crying?” and king’s letter: Chapman 252.
Hemorrhagic smallpox (early and late): Ricketts 73-103; WHO 37-38; WDPE throughout; WDS 401-403; Mead 236-239. “Like creatures flayed”: ZBHA 38. Fatality statistics: WHO 5.
Garden imagery: scattered throughout Mead; Walter Harris, “De Inoculatione Variolarum” and De Morbis Acutis Infantum; ZBHA; WDD; WDPE; WDS.
Historical confusion of smallpox with measles: Creighton 1:448-55.
Gloucester’s death: Gregg 120-21. Smallpox death statistics for 1694 and 1700: Creighton: 2:456 (death figures from the London Bills of Mortality).
LM’s childhood: Grundy, LMWM 5-13; chasing the sun: LMCL 3:132; chasing the steeple of Salisbury Cathedral: LMCL 1:112. Thoresby: John Harris, “Thoresby House” and “Thoresby Concluded.”
Kit-Cat visit: LM’s recollection: Stuart 9; toasts: Miscellany Poems 5: 60-70; LM’s verse to Lord Halifax on the Countess of Sunderland: Harrowby MS 250, folio 4. Kit-Cat history and membership: Allen 33-54; Caulfield. “Pleasure was too poor a word . . .”: adapted from Stuart 9.
Eighteenth-Century London: Ashton, Besant, George, Picard; Eighteenth-century dress: Buck, Cunnington.
Three Rebellions
LM’s girlhood: Grundy, LMWM 14-29; garden-wall escapade with Brownlows: LMCL 1:23. LM’s youthful writings (including the book burning): Grundy, LMWM 18-21, and Grundy, “ ‘The Entire Works of Clarinda.’ ” The two albums: Harrowby MSS Trust MSS 250 and 251. Dorchester’s children greeting him on bended knee: Stuart 31; Kneller’s portrait of Dorchester, c. 1709: NPG 3213; Dorchester’s character: Stuart 8. Secret learning of Latin: Spence, Observations 1:303-04, and Grundy, LMWM 15-16.
LM’s friendship with Anne Wortley and meeting of EWM: Grundy, LMWM 28-33. EWM’s gift of Quintus Curtius with inscribed poem: Stuart 15. Courtship, elopement, and early married life with EWM, generally: Grundy, LMWM 30-65, LMCL 1:4-181. Betty Laskey fiasco: LMCL 1:27-40; LMEP 80; Laroon 138-39, 166-67; Ashton 365-66, 369-70. 1710 Smallpox epidemic: Creighton 1:461 and 2:57; Jurin’s later statistics: Miller, AIS 114-18. Quack medicine advertisements: Defoe, Journal 30-31. Life and street encounters during an epidemic: Miller, AIS 37-43; Creighton 2:452-53. Margaret Brownlow’s death: Grundy, LMWM 23; LMCL 1:34. Recipe for applying cream with a feather Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight 58. Intensifying fears of smallpox: Creighton 1:463-67, 2:434-45. LM, “Men are vile inconstant toads”: LMCL 1:42. EWM, “I know that when you write”: LMCL 1:52. LM, “Madam, you are the greatest coquette”: LMCL 1:60, 62. LM and Lady Frances, “He has all the qualities of an upright man . . .”: adapted from LMRW 124. EWM, “At last I am ready to confess . . .”: LMCL 1:100 (16 April 1711); LM’s response: LMCL 1:102 (17 April 1711).
Deaths of Emperor Joseph I and the grand dauphin Louis: Hopkins 43-45; McKay 132-33; Saint-Simon 2:128-45. Hot and cold regimens: Creighton 1:447-48, 2:445-50; Hopkins 27, 33; Mead 239-40; Miller, AIS 35-39.
LM to Philippa Mundy: “I am glad, dear Phil, . . .”: abridged from LMCL 1:110-111 (2 Nov. 1711); “Your obliging letters . . .”: LMCL 1:111-13 (23 Nov. 1711 and 12 Dec. 1711, combined and condensed); “My adventures are very odd . . .”: LMCL 1:149-50 (Aug. 1712, slightly rearranged).
LM’s letter to Dorchester protesting aversion to Skeffington, and ensuing encounters with him and the family, as well as her “final” answer: drawn from LM’s letters to EWM in LMCL 1:133-36 (26 July 1712), 1:146-47 (7 Aug. 1712), 1:160-61 (16 Aug. 1712).
EWM to LM, “I have been grieved . . .”: LMCL 1:125 (16 June 1712). LM to EWM: “Were I to choose my destiny . . .”: LMCL 1:129 (17 July 1712); “Come next Sunday . . .”: LMCL 1:150 (12 Aug. 1712); “A pious prude in love”: adapted from LMRW 124; “You have not been gone three hours . . .”: LMCL 1:181 (22 June 1713).
Elopement: LMCL 1:164-167 (18-20 Aug. 1712); LMRW 128-36 (“Princess Docile”); Grundy, LMWM 50-56. “I thought to find Limbo . . .”: adapted from LMCL 1:167, n. 1.
EWM as Prince Sombre: LMRW 124. Dorchester as Sir Thomas Grandison (the title character’s father) in Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison: LMCL 3:90.
A Destroying Angel
LM’s life from her brother’s death through her own bout with smallpox: Grundy, LMWM 66-102. Reactions to her brother’s death and her consequent relations with EWM: LMCL 1:181-245; “My Brother . . . is as well as can be”: LMCL 1:182 (25 June 1713); “Your absence . . .”: LMCL 1:183 (3 July 1713). Journal entry about her brother: Stuart 21. Lady Frances’s marriage: Grundy, LMWM 72-74; Philippa Mundy’s marriage: LMCL 1:109, 177-80, 204-207. EWM revenge: LMCL 1:236-45.
Pope’s reading before Lord Halifax: Spence, Observations 1:87-88 and Mack 271-72. His illness and appearance: Mack 152-58.
Craggs on the stairs: Stuart 28-29. Personalities and habits of King George I, Schulenberg, and Kielmansegg: Hatton, especially 25, 29, 50-51, 133, 137-38. LM’s description of the court, including the Prince of Wales: LMEP 82-94.
LM’s bout with smallpox: Ricketts’s description of “confluent smallpox with severe suppurative fever”: Ricketts 4, 26-42; see also WHO 7-22 and Mead. London gossip: Grundy, LMWM 100-103; the earl of Carnarvon (later duke of Chandos), quoted in Sherburn, 204 and 208 n. 1 (pitted/pitied pun); and Lady Loudoun, quoted in Halsband, Life 52.
LM’s smallpox eclogue: LMEP 201-204; LM’s loss of beauty, and her claim that “Flavia” was herself: Stuart 35. Kneller’s early painting of LM: Grundy, LMWM 91-92. Pepys on the duchess of Richmond: Pepys 9:134-35, 139.
Lady Hertford on LM’s loss of beauty (given here to Lady Townshend): Grundy: LMWM 102. LM’s “reply”: adapted from “Carabosse” in LMEP 153-55, 383-84. LM’s friendship with Lady Townshend, generally: Stuart 22-24; Grundy, LMWM 22, 66, 91, 214.
Bidding the World Adieu
LM’s convalescence: Grundy, LMWM 102-115. Preventatives against smallpox and remedies for the scarring: Mead 262; Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight 53-62; Miller, AIS 40 (Boyle’s excrement-in-wine concoction). Pope’s revenge on Curll: Grundy, LMWM 109-10; and Mack 296. Early rumors of inoculation heard in London: Miller, AIS 48-69 (including Mr. Townshend’s report to the Royal Society); Stearns and Pasti 106-13; Creighton 2:646 (discussing Kennedy). Original sources: Kennedy; Pylarinus; Timonius. LM’s mask: LM, “Satturday, the Smallpox, Flavia,” line 70, in LMEP 203; Grundy, LMWM 102, 113.
Departure: Grundy, LMWM 117-18; LMRW 74. Street cries: Laroon. Shops like “gilded theaters”: contemporary account (1715) reprinted in Besant 239-40.
LM’s travels: Grundy, LMWM, 117-42; LMCL 1:248-446.
Vienna: Travels down the Danube and description of Vienna’s buildings and furnishings, LMCL 1:259-61; Viennese gown and hairstyle, and visits with the empresses: LMCL 1:265-69; LM’s witty war with Viennese ladies: LMCL 1:295, n. 1. London milk-maid sporting the May Day headdress to which LM compared her Viennese hairstyle: L
aroon 120-21.
Pope’s letters to LM: Pope, Correspondence 1:352-58, 363-65, 367-70, 382-85.
To Hanover: LM’s dislike of Bohemia and runaway carriage over the River Elbe: LMCL 1:280-82; the cramped Portuguese ambassador: LMCL 1:286; Hanoverian heaters and midwinter fruit: 1:289-91. Viennese fears for LM, her refusal to give up the journey, Prince Eugene as cross-dressed Hercules, the empress’s dwarfs, and LM’s farewell to her sister: LMCL 1:293-96. Farewell to Pope: LMCL 1:296-97.
Vienna to Adrianople: LMCL 1:297-304; Battle of Peterwaradin, travels through Turkish Balkans, Achmet Bey: LMCL 1:304-308 and 315-321. Battle of Peterwaradin: see also McKay 158-63. Baths of Sofia: LMCL 1:312-15, and Spence, Observations 1:311-12. LM’s “former sufferings and mortifications” leading her to observe inoculation: Stuart 35.
My Dear Little Son
LM in Turkey: Grundy, LMWM 142-66; LMCL 1:344-415.
LM’s smallpox/plague letter (including story of Maitland’s arrival with the second cook, LM’s amazement at his recovery): LM to Sarah Chiswell, 1 April 1717, LMCL 1:337-40; “Head of Letters” indicating “Small pox” letter sent to LM’s father: LMCL 1:346; Sloane’s claim that she wrote the court and her friends: Sloane 517.
LM’s Turkish dress: LMCL 1:325-30; Vanmour painting reproduced in LM, Embassy to Constantinople 38; on these portraits (and the Kneller), see Grundy, LMWM 142, 201-202, 301-303. Turkish dancing and music: LMCL 1:351; Turkish beauty: LMCL 1:327. Balm (or Balsam) of Mecca: LMCL 1:345 (letter heading to Kielmansegg), 368-69; Prescott 119-22. Eighteenth-century Constantinople, generally: Mansel; like a cabinet full of jars: LMCL 1:397.
Inoculation conversations between LM and Maitland: Maitland 4-7.
Pope’s letter to LM re “Eloisa to Abelard”: Pope 1:407; LM writing verse on Boxing Day: Grundy, LMWM 159; LM’s poem: “Constantinople,” LMEP 207-10; young Mary’s birth: Grundy, LMWM 149.
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