' I am in great danger," she writes," of losing the English language, i live in a place that very well represents 1 he Tower of Babel. My grooms are Arabs; my foot-men French, English, and German ; my nurse an Ar-menian ; my housemaids Russian ; and half a dozen other servants Greeks ; my steward Italian ; my janissaries Turks:."

She dressed in rose-coloured damask silk trousers, brocaded with silver flowers (far more modest, she declared, than the hideous petticoats of England), shoes of white kid embroidered in gold, a smock of fine white silk gauze edged with embroidery, a richly laced scarlet waistcoat, and blue braided jacket. She was much struck with the beauty of Turkish women, and, strange though it may appear, with the freedom they enjoyed.

" Upon the whole," she wrote, ' I look upon Turkish women as the only free people in the Empire. . . . 'tis impossible for the most jealous husband to know his wife when be meets her (so thickly veiled and disguised is she), and no man dare either touch or follow a woman in the street. . . " One of the highest entertainments in Turkey is having you to their baths ; and when I was introduced to one, the lady of

I U the house came to undress me, which is another high compliment they pay to strangers. After she had slipped off my gown, and saw my stays, she was much struck at the sight of them, and cried out to the other ladies in the bath, ' Come hither and see how cruelly the poor English ladies are used by their husbands ; you need boast, indeed, of the superior liberties allowed you, when they lock you up thus in a box.'

The Pioneer Of Vaccination

At Adrianople in 1717 she first noticed the practice of inoculation for smallpox, and her son was " ingrafted," as she called it. He was the first Briton to be thus treated.

"The smallpox," she wrote, "so fatal and so general amongst us, is entirely harmless by the invention of ingrafting, which is the term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every autumn, in the month of September, when the great heat is abated. . Every year thousands undergo the operation ; and the French Ambassador says pleasantly that they take the smallpox here as by way of discision, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of anyone that has died of it; and you may believe me that I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it upon my dear little son. I am patriot enough to try to bring this useful invention into fashion in England."

And, after her return from the East, Lady Mary set to work to carry into effect her benevolent intention of rendering the most malignant disease of the age comparatively harmless. Her task proved an arduous one, and, for a long while, thankless. Indeed, the medical profession rose in arms against her almost to a man. Soon, however, she won the support of the Princess of Wales (afterwards Queen Caroline), and from this day her work made rapid progress until Dr. Jenner's discovery of vaccination in 1796 led to inoculation of smallpox being superseded gradually by inoculation of cowpox.

And it is, perhaps, as the earliest pioneer of vaccination and as the Ambassador's lady who wore trousers that Lady Mary is best remembered. Pope has, of course, perpetuated her memory in his epistles of Eloise to Abelard, which were inspired by his infatuation for her. He really exceeded the bounds, and he persuaded her husband to become his neighbour at Twickenham. Lady Mary treated his admiration with great good sense and calm.

Lady Mary's Quarrel with Pope

Their long friendship ended in a violent quarrel, the cause of which is not known. Some assert that it originated in Lady Mary ridiculing a letter written by Pope upon the romantic death of two lovers struck by lightning.

However, the quarrel really seems to have been caused by Pope declaring love and being laughed at by Lady Mary. Whatever the cause the quarrel made an immense sensation. Pope took it very badly, lost his head and his dignity, and never allowed an opening for attack to pass unused. In his poems he maligned her, and he did much by his writings to injure her reputation.

Moreover, hard in intellect, unsympathetic at heart, and fond of sarcastic conversation, she made many enemies. She could not keep her tongue under control, and there were many in society who had suffered from her indiscretion, and rejoiced when the " she-meteor," as Walpole called her, streamed out of the horizon of English society to the Continent.

She left without her husband, and without any quarrel, but the separation was final. She visited Venice and Florence, and we get a picture of her from Walpole, who was certainly not prejudiced in her favour. She was, according to him, slovenly in appearance, impudent, avaricious, and altogether a figure of farce. Her husband died in 1761, and a year later Walpole describes a visit he paid her shortly before her death, which occurred in August of that year.

An Eccentric Old Age

" I found her in a little miserable bedchamber of a ready-furnished house (in St. George St.), with two tallow candles, and a bureau covered with pots and pans. On her head she had an old black-laced hood wrapped entirely round, so as to conceal all hair, or want of hair. No handkerchief, but up to her chin a kind of horseman's riding-coat, made of a dark green (green it had been) brocade, with coloured and silver flowers, and lined with furs ; bodice laced, a foul dimity petticoat sprig'd; velvet muffeteens on her arms; grey stockings and slippers. Her face less changed in twenty years than I could have imagined ; I told her so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she need have taken it for flattery, but she did, and literally gave me a box on the ear.

" She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her languages as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. She entertained me at first with nothing but the dearness of provisions at Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a Frenchman, and a Prussian, all menservants, and something she calls an old secretary, but whose age till he appears will be doubtful, she receives all the world, who go to homage her as queen-mother, and crams them into this kennel! "

She died of virulent cancer. Her character was hard. She developed her mind at the expense of her emotions. Her humour was cynical, her outlook broad, and her life is a striking example of incomplete success, due to an almost complete lack of sympathy or anything like affection.

Her verse, fluent, lively, and forcible, was never poetic. Her letters, vivid and bright, lack both imagination and sentiment.