p. 54 “They soon settled into life in the diverse and prosperous Constantinople suburb of Pera where the embassy was based, across the Golden Horn from the main sites of the city … “My Grooms are Arabs,” she wrote about this diversity, “my footmen French, English and Hermans; my Nurse an Armenian; my Housemaids Russians; half a dozen other servants Greeks; my steward an Italian; my Janizary’s Turks”.
p. 71 “Mary occupied a unique position. She was always convinced that the Turkish method of engrafting, using only a tny quantity of smallpox matter, was best. She was the only person to say that a doctor was not necessary and that there was no need for purging or sweating either before or after treatment. In fact, she warned against ‘miserable gashes’ and the unnecessary weakening of patients. She rasped that it was in the doctors’ interests to medicalise the process and opposed this… the first wave of parents who had their children inoculated all teneded to be aristocratic and to have had a personal acquaintance with her. She was probably responsible for their various inoculations. THe upper classes also wanted to ensure that their servants were free of smallpox, so Mary probably inoculated them as well. The Fielding family, the children of her counsin the playwright Fenty Fielding, were all inoculated, for instance, probably by Mary herself. Later in life several of these inoculated children, such as Wilhelmina Tichborne, were to become her friends as adults.”
p. 79 “She would have known Mary Astell before the Turkish trip and had read Astell’s work when she was a teenager, but not something altogether closer developed between the two women. Mary Astell was 23 years older than her young friend, a mother figure for her. The two lived very differently. Mary Astell never married, kept no carriage and lived simply in the relatively undesirable neighbourhood of Chelsea. Her income was a mere £85 to £90 a year (about £14,000 today)… the original bluestocking, Mary Astell elieved that women should create societies of their own, away from emn. She was critical of Mary’s various flirtatious relationships, but she made it clear when it came to writing that she saw Lady Mary as her anointed successor. On four separate occasions she used the image of laying laurels at her young protegee’s feat. Lady Mary’s Embassy Letters were her idea. She was involved in the editing and rewriting that went on and she even contributed a Foreword.”
p. 97 “At some time before 1732, Mary wrote a confidently argued essay in French entitled Sur la Maxime de Mr de Rochefoucault, in priase of marriage. She argued in favour of the institution that ‘ it is married love only which can be delightful to a good mind’. It was to become the piece of writing for which she most renowned during her lifetime. .. Marriage might be a convenient institution, Rochefoucault argued, but marriages were “never delightful”. Mary respectfully disagreed. Lasting happiness could only be found if husband and wife became friends, she explained to her readers. A long marriage was 2a life infinitely .. more elegant and more pleasurable, than the best conducted and most happy gallantry.” Passion was danergous and dark, something best avoided.”
p. 139 “In April 1736, the 47-year-old Lady Mart met the 24-year-old Francesco Algarotti and the meeting changed her life forever. With two weeks of being presented to the young, cultured Italian she was madly, hopelessly in love with him.”
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