00:00:30.000hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is anne
00:00:44.620foster and today we are talking with author sean lusk both about his recent novel a woman of
00:00:50.700opinion as well as the woman of opinion herself the main character in his book who is a real life
00:00:56.440historical woman named Mary Wortley Montague. And I think it's very fortuitous. I didn't plan
00:01:03.400this intentionally, but last week we were talking about Princess Caribou, who was an 18th century
00:01:09.540white English woman who pretended to be from an exotic faraway Eastern land. And part of
00:01:17.260the way she did that was to wear a sort of piece of fabric on her head, pretending it was a turban.
00:01:22.760And Mary Wortley Montague was a white British woman who actually spent some time in the Ottoman Empire in what is now Turkey.
00:01:30.160And she went there and she's like, these clothes are great. These clothes are comfortable.
00:01:33.020And she came back and she kind of kept dressing like that.
00:01:35.360So kind of two different kinds. You don't often see a woman from the Regency era wearing this sort of turban hat.
00:01:46.080You do see people like Carolina Brunswick would wear a sort of stylized hat.
00:01:51.600But anyway, Mary Wirtley Montague went to Turkey, came back, and just kept dressing like she was in Turkey. And that's part of what I was like, oh, she's interesting. But also, long-time listeners of this podcast might remember, in early 2020, I did a series of pandemic special mini episodes, just looking at pandemics in the past and the history of how people lived in those times.
00:02:13.660and Mary Wortley-Monte, you came up in one of those episodes because, um, I did an episode
00:02:19.740about the history of inoculation, which we're going to talk about today, but it's a predecessor
00:02:24.920or a similar thing to vaccination. Um, and it was a practice inoculation that was happening
00:02:31.280in lots of places in, um, East of England, basically, um, all across in Asia and lots
00:02:39.820of places on that side of the world. But it wasn't known about or practiced in Western Europe
00:02:46.200until Mary Wartley Montague went there and learned about it and was like, it would be great if people
00:02:51.580didn't constantly die of smallpox. Let's bring this back to England. And she fought hard and0.99
00:02:57.260then she did. And so that's part of what I knew about Mary Wartley Montague. And then when I saw
00:03:02.960that Sean had written this book, I was excited to learn more about her. And I wanted to say something
00:03:06.780about historical fiction in general, because I do look at historical fiction to learn about real
00:03:12.700people from real history. And I also look at nonfiction. And I think it's interesting and
00:03:17.920valuable to look at both. And just while I was thinking about this, I came across someone was
00:03:22.320quoting a 2017 essay by the late Hilary Mantel, who's talking about why she became a historical
00:03:31.640novelist and part of it. She says she was struggling at first when she started doing it,
00:03:35.820just thinking like, well, she wants to be historically accurate, but then like how much
00:03:41.460space is there in that? Like you can't, if you want to write a novel, you need to make some stuff
00:03:46.580up. But she was saying what she felt comfortable making up was kind of why, how people thought,
00:03:51.280why they made the decisions they made. And then you kind of base it on the evidence that you have
00:03:55.980around, like you could look up to see like, well, what color wallpaper would they have had? And you
00:04:00.520could research maybe to find what color wallpaper they would have had. Anyway, I'm just going to
00:04:04.260I do a quote from this article that I'm going to also link to in the show notes as well. She says,
00:04:10.760some readers are deeply suspicious of historical fiction. And she says that because people often
00:04:15.640would ask her, she's passed away now, but I'm sure Sean gets asked this as well. Other historical
00:04:20.220novelists, how much is true? Like what, how much did you make up? And she says, readers say that
00:04:26.620by its nature, historical fiction is misleading, but I, and this is Hilary Mantel talking, I argue
00:04:32.140that a reader knows the nature of the contract. When you choose a novel to tell you about the
00:04:35.920past, you are putting in brackets the historical accounts, which may or may not agree with each
00:04:39.860other, and actively requesting a subjective interpretation. You are not buying a replica
00:04:44.640or even a faithful photographic reproduction. You are buying a painting with the brush strokes left
00:04:49.520in. To the historian, the reader says, take this document, object, person, tell me what it means.
00:04:54.980To the novelist, they say, now tell me what else it means. The novelist knows her place. She works
00:05:01.700away at the point where what is enacted meets what is dreamed, where politics meets psychology,
00:05:06.220where private and public meet. And so I thought that it was just so timely to read that around
00:05:11.680the same time I was talking with Sean, because he is really, as you're going to hear, he's so
00:05:16.460excited about Mary Wortley Montague's story and wanting people to know about her. And he's doing
00:05:20.680it through historical fiction. And I think sometimes people don't understand the importance
00:05:26.420of historical fiction to really make people care about a historical figure they may not know about
00:05:32.560already. All that being said, please enjoy this conversation with Sean Lusk about the iconic
00:05:39.420Mary Wortley Montague. So I'm joined today by Sean Lusk, whose recent novel is A Woman of Opinion,
00:05:50.180which is a novel about the real-life person, Mary Wortley Montague. Welcome, Sean.
00:05:56.340Oh, thank you very much, Anne. It's lovely to be here.
00:05:59.380I'm really excited to have you here to talk about her. We were just talking a bit before
00:06:03.700I started recording, but back in 2020, when COVID was just starting, I was reassuring myself by
00:06:11.720reading about the past pandemics and epidemics and vaccinations and things, and Mary's name came up.
00:06:30.460Well, my first novel is called The Second Sight of Zachary Clousley.
00:06:34.540And it has a fictional character in it called Aunt Frances.
00:06:37.960And when my editor was asking for another book that had some kind of link to the novel,
00:06:43.180um I went back and looked at where I'd got this idea of Aunt Frances from and it was from Mary
00:06:49.900Worley Montague's Turkish embassy letters which incredibly is still in print they've been in print
00:06:55.380for like 250 years and they were the letters she she wrote when she was the wife of the British
00:07:03.060ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople between 1716 and 18 and they're sensational and
00:07:10.500her voice is there and she kind of curated those letters all her life and they weren't published
00:07:17.080during her lifetime and then there was we might get to talk about there was an incredible
00:07:21.520tussle after her death um her daughter tried to suppress them because she thought they were
00:07:26.920scandalous but they were published and they were an absolute sensation and sold like hot cakes
00:07:32.060because they were full of you know stories from the Turkish harem not lascivious but actually
00:07:38.400feminist you know she was saying women have great equality when they don't have any clothes on and
00:07:43.500they're all together and there are no men in the room and and talking about islam and so on so they
00:07:48.540were incredibly kind of enlightened and progressive and i think in themselves contributed to some of
00:07:55.000the enthusiasm in the late 18th and early 19th centuries about sort of the orient and orientalism
00:08:01.700altogether but you mentioned the pandemic and of course her great gift to the world really
00:08:08.540was inoculation you know people credit edward jenner quite rightly for vaccination but that
00:08:15.500came in the 1790s but mary brought inoculation um against smallpox back from turkey to britain
00:08:24.220in in 1720 and then fought like hell to get it adopted was vilified and criticized being a woman1.00
00:08:31.220bringing foreign practices um it almost broke her really the degree of humiliation she was
00:08:37.820subjected to but she was a woman who fought like crazy and eventually it was adopted and edward
00:08:43.100jenner himself at the age of eight was inoculated against smallpox he might not have lived if he
00:08:48.560hadn't been well and in your book so well that's another question i guess the choice to make it
00:08:54.320well i guess you're a novelist so of course you made it a fictional novel but you you did clearly
00:08:58.220did so much research but you in the book and i presume in her life as well like her she's touched
00:09:02.980by smallpox she like know people in her family she knows die she herself gets it so it's a very
00:09:07.760personal crusade for her oh absolutely um and i mean it's a bit of a conceit in the novel that
00:09:14.500that she secretly she never reveals this she's a very courageous woman which she was but that
00:09:20.000she's kind of fearful of death and she's fearful that anyone she loves is going to die because her
00:09:25.580mother died when she was three her brother died when um when he was very young he died at the age
00:09:31.100of 21 her best friend Anne who was Edward Wortley Montague's sister and you know therefore the link
00:09:39.320for her to as she did she eloped with with Edward um to get out of um the prospect of a horrible
00:09:45.860marriage to a foolish man by the improbable name yeah the name say the name the name is0.74
00:09:50.920clotworthy skeffington you can hardly believe it it was the man her father wanted to marry he was0.99
00:09:56.520due to to inherit an irish viscounty but she thought he was foolish and had no wish to marry
00:10:03.920him but i honestly because it's a novel i thought maybe i should change this name it sounds so kind
00:10:08.900of improbable and like a dickens name you know i i ought to change it but in the end i thought no
00:10:14.560it's the truth i'll keep it but just to come to your question but you know why a novel
00:10:18.460mary kept a diary all her life and that diary must have been absolutely sensational in the novel i
00:10:26.480sort of imagine the things that might have been in the diary she knew george the first george second
00:10:30.280she knew um george the first mistress she knew george the second's incredible wife caroline
00:10:35.880of anspac a genuine big 18th century intellectual um as she knew voltaire she had this incredible
00:10:43.940friendship come in you know frenemy with alexander pope she knew everyone really that
00:10:49.640was important in the first half the 18th century and undoubtedly wrote about them in a very frank
00:10:55.340way in her diaries and when she was on her deathbed she got her daughter she had a very odd
00:11:00.920relationship with both her children which she might come on to but she sort of got her daughter
00:11:05.120was much more straight-laced and by that time was married to the 18th century's first effectively
00:11:10.580the first Tory prime minister, to swear with her life that she'd protect these diaries,
00:11:16.500which her daughter, also called Mary, did, but could not bear the thought of them ever being
00:11:24.220published. And so her daughter destroyed the diaries just before her own death. So we don't
00:11:29.880have her diaries, which is a tragedy for history, but is a great gift to a novelist, because I was
00:11:36.080able to you know invent and fill in loads of gaps um which although there are some very fine
00:11:42.360biographies including by a retired professor who lives in Edmonton Canada uh Isabel Grundy who I
00:11:49.040kept in touch with closely a wonderful wonderful woman and you know although you know the things
00:11:54.560I made up and any mistakes are very much my own and Isabel sort of certainly helped me with some
00:11:59.920of the sort of historical record and pointed me towards some of the sources as well yeah I would
00:12:05.260think because i i have read your book i very much enjoyed it and i i could tell how much um
00:12:10.920research went into it because well things like the name clotworthy scuffington you know it's like
00:12:16.040these this can't be made up but i do think it's interesting to have a story like this where you
00:12:21.400said like the turkish letters like those are there you can read them so you can get a sense of her
00:12:25.020voice and what she was like but then these great gaps where you know like from these biographies
00:12:30.380what she did or where she went but you have to imagine what did she feel about that and why did
00:12:34.840you make that choice. So that's, I don't know, kind of the best of both worlds for you to have
00:12:39.540some facts to cling on to, but just these vast swaths of where you can just make things up.
00:12:46.060Well, those are the novels, you know, I love and I love, obviously, I love reading historical
00:12:50.720fiction and I love writing it. And, you know, the writers I really admire, like the late,
00:12:56.560great Hilary Mantel, for instance, you know, she, they're very, very soundly based historically,
00:13:04.040but she reimagines history she can make us reappraise sort of characters as she did with
00:13:09.500Thomas Cromwell in the in the Wolf Hall trilogy and you know that's something a novel can do which
00:13:15.520um you know there's really both things are important we need really good histories written
00:13:20.520by historians who are professionals and we need I think we need novels because they allow us in a
00:13:26.580way to create an empathy with those characters from the past or you know contemporary novels
00:13:31.660with people that are, you know, invented, but are recognizably people we can relate to.
00:13:37.040And we can get inside their thoughts. And that's what novels do if they're good.
00:13:42.800Yeah. So you mentioned that. So she went to the Ottoman Empire. Actually, let's talk about her
00:13:49.800husband. So she was able to avoid marrying Clotworthy Skeffington by running off with
00:13:56.000Mr. Wortley Montague. And it was because of his job that she was able to go to Turkey,
00:14:01.560where she learned about smallpox, inoculation and things like that. So what do you know
00:14:06.460about her husband in that marriage? Well, she and her sister, you know,
00:14:12.040is quite young girls. She loved her sister Frances, but her sister Frances was a much more
00:14:16.860conventional, less spirited, you know, Mary was just full of utter confidence, really,
00:14:22.940that she could do what she wanted and she was determined not to be constrained as a woman and
00:14:27.980she was the eldest child of um you know her father was the earl of kingston and he in fact um was
00:14:35.960promoted after queen anne's death when george first came the hanoverians came you know he
00:14:40.720eventually became the duke of kingston and was this very powerful figure now mary had she been
00:14:45.380born a man you know she would have been in the house of laws and she i think almost certainly
00:14:49.620would have been you know prime minister uh maybe straight after robert walpole say but um you know
00:14:56.760she so i think she was frustrated that she she couldn't couldn't play that role and she was also0.86
00:15:03.000i mean she thought a lot of men were fools uh and she wasn't wrong i was gonna say she
00:15:10.380she wasn't wrong you know and and she also thought quite a lot of men were smart and interesting and
00:15:15.500and she was her father and and she herself to some extent became part of this circle it was
00:15:21.500called the Kit Kat Club which sounds a bit like the Hellfire Club or something but they were really
00:15:25.040it was a wig it was kind of a wig almost conspiracy because during the James II and
00:15:31.760Queen Mary William and Mary rule and so on and Queen Anne they were still stewards um and
00:15:38.260they you know the wigs weren't weren't in full control anyway until the Hanoverians came in and0.61
00:15:43.740And so she knew these these men, Joseph Addison, and there are a number of other really prominent intellectuals in this group.
00:15:51.740And she definitely fancied herself from the age of about 14.
00:15:55.900She was writing. She taught herself Latin and she was writing and exchanging letters with these intellectuals who were 10 and 20 and 30 years older than her.
00:16:06.360And when her father tried to marry her off to, yeah, say it again, Clotworthy Skeffington.
00:16:11.360she was determined to escape and as you've read the novel you know I obviously imagine quite a
00:16:19.320lot of these scenes though we have some evidence of them from her letters she and her her sister
00:16:25.440I mean I think it was mainly Mary had created a sort of taxonomy of the male sex that men were
00:16:31.760either hell heaven or limbo so I kind of imagine that she probably had a few liaison both with men
00:16:39.280and women I think um as a as a young woman how far those went we don't really know and I you know
00:16:45.860I speculate on that in the novel um but Edward was always I think for Mary a limbo in the sense that
00:16:53.860you know she probably she certainly admired him and he certainly admired her and their letters
00:17:00.460you know their real letters are this sort of blowing hot and cold and I still try and capture
00:17:05.100some of that in the novel but she could see that her father was going again and married to
00:17:10.320the awful clockworthy and so she eloped and it was an absolute elopement I mean she was ready to
00:17:15.680jump out of a window and escape and effectively that's what she did and you know married married
00:17:22.800him he was already a member of parliament he wasn't a very skilled politician Edward he was0.95
00:17:29.060a bit of a prig and um again we have some evidence and again i sort of am able to sort of let you0.85
00:17:37.240know allow this to flow in the novel that mary manipulated him to some extent into trying to
00:17:43.620get a ministerial job once walpole came and that lot came into power um how far mary manoeuvred
00:17:50.860him into the job in in the ottoman empire i don't know so i'm allowed to speculate in the novel but
00:17:57.060i you know i like to think that she pushed him into it she wanted to travel she wanted adventure
00:18:02.720she wanted it more than he did really uh and boy did she get it you know she she just loved1.00
00:18:09.240traveling she had this incredible gift of both infuriating people and she she created enemies1.00
00:18:17.140but also she must have had she just had this incredible wit and charm and intelligence0.99
00:18:23.440which drew people to her and she was just able to make these friendships with the rich and powerful
00:18:29.080with incredible ease um uh which i think she thought her husband should be able to make
00:18:35.820better use of um but he didn't and he didn't last very long as ambassador because he wasn't
00:18:40.660i think a very good diplomat but so he was kind of i mean i don't want to say it's not a full-on
00:18:46.960like lady macbeth scenario because it wasn't murderous at all but just very much just kind
00:18:52.860of like she was kind of steering that ship like i think yeah i mean she was she was such a
00:19:00.260fascinating figure well obviously i think so because she was very conflicted you know later0.85
00:19:05.280in life we she although she always pretended she wasn't interested in politics absolute rubbish
00:19:10.340because we know she was very interested and she she definitely was always trying to sort of tell
00:19:15.400edward what he should be doing but she always said no no no you know she was conscious that
00:19:19.740although she'd married a commoner edward never got a title um but she was lady mary wortley
00:19:25.200montague she was the daughter of the duke and she was conscious of her position which is why
00:19:30.100almost everything she wrote during her lifetime lots of poetry plays and so on were published
00:19:36.520anonymously and then you know in those days a lot of stuff was pirated and stolen which led
00:19:40.940to some terrible conflicts especially with with alexander pope which we which we might come on
00:19:46.860some of the arguments there um so you know but i mean she was so she was sort of both
00:19:56.080you know from her political views that we learn later she was definitely an egalitarian she0.91
00:20:00.780believed in women's rights fiercely she believed in workers rights and yet she was also quite a1.00
00:20:06.120snob um and she also detested the way women didn't have control of their own property0.94
00:20:11.260she suggested something which is so brilliant a septennial marriage act she thought should be1.00
00:20:16.960introduced she was maybe slightly tongue-in-cheek that all marriages should dissolve after seven
00:20:21.460years automatically and if the parties wanted to them to continue they had to just you know say0.95
00:20:27.320they wanted it to resume and this was her idea to get women out of unhappy and abusive marriages
00:20:32.460which um which were of course all too commonplace um so you know yeah she she had that very smart
00:20:41.260mind she wasn't going to be constrained so her son edward a limited number of names unfortunately
00:20:47.660so um her son edward when he was what he was born in 1712 so he'd be about four years old when they
00:20:54.400got to constantinople and she you know she saw what was happening um with smallpox inoculation
00:21:01.380and she saw how no one there were other diseases the plague particularly in constantinople or
00:21:07.080Istanbul, as we call it now, no one had pot marks. And she wondered why. And she went out and found
00:21:13.060out how they did it, the inoculation. She didn't tell Edward she was having a son inoculated. She
00:21:18.420waited for him to be out of town and then had him inoculated. And once she was sure he was okay,
00:21:23.960she wrote to Edward, who was away, and said, by the way, I've had our son inoculated against
00:21:28.660smallpox. So she definitely had her own, you know, absolutely her own mind and wasn't going to be
00:21:33.200controlled by edwards at any point in her life can you talk a bit like we're on the smallpox
00:21:38.620inoculation so she learned that she saw the the success of this in constantinople she came back
00:21:45.440to england and started lobbying that people should do this there so you mentioned just briefly but
00:21:51.260just get into how people were so mad at her but then she was able to convince the queen to inoculate0.89
00:21:57.140the the royal children so like how how did she do this well she knew so actually caroline of ansburg0.56
00:22:05.020um who who was as i mentioned you know quite a quite an intellectual herself um was princess
00:22:12.020of wales at the time so george i was still king um and as with all the hanoverians generation by
00:22:18.660generation the children hated the father and there were terrible relationships so george the first
00:22:24.300george ii had a terrible relationship then george ii and caroline had terrible relationship with
00:22:28.880their son um frederick who actually died before he became king so george iii was was um george
00:22:35.460ii's grandson um but she you know she went to court she was known in known in court and i think
00:22:43.400because she was a smart woman she and caroline had a good relationship and the church of it or some
00:22:49.820people in the church of england some people in the royal college of physicians um were very very
00:22:55.880disdained disdainful of the idea of inoculation um and mary was i mean she was she was stubborn
00:23:04.200and fearless and took no prisoners which is why i think she both alienated she wasn't always always
00:23:09.820the most emollient in her approach but there was a big outbreak and smallpox outbreaks came every
00:23:18.500couple of years really and sometimes they killed a lot of older people and sometimes they tended
00:23:24.320to kill a lot of children and the outbreak and I think it was 1721 so she'd actually been back
00:23:30.080for a couple years was really killing lots and lots of young children and that at that point
00:23:35.100she thought right I've got to have my daughter Mary uh inoculated so we think Mary was the so
00:23:42.020we think little Edward was the first sort of British citizen ever to be inoculated and we
00:23:47.000think mary was probably her daughter mary was probably the first child to be inoculated
00:23:51.420in britain on british soil so you know landmark cases um there were supporters in the royal
00:23:58.580college of physicians as well and and people you know people were had begun to hear and read about
00:24:04.320the notion of inoculation mary was just going ahead so she was going around aristocratic houses
00:24:09.720um speaking to you know fellow aristocrats and and persuading them to have this done0.99
00:24:17.660um but i think she knew that she would need some royal approval caroline therefore got the1.00
00:24:24.000permission of the father because they were royal they were princesses got the permission of the
00:24:29.080king to have uh the the royal princesses inoculated initially not the princes interestingly um but
00:24:35.760before that would be done of course there was always this interest in science amongst the
00:24:40.340hannah variants and um so uh first of all six um inmates on death row at newgate prison were
00:24:49.120told that they would be pardoned if they agreed to be inoculated which of course they did readily
00:24:53.720i mean they're gonna yeah yeah and you know and mary i mean in my novel i have mary actually
00:24:59.460present now i guess she probably didn't go into newgate prison to witness it being done
00:25:04.700but they were absolutely inoculated there were various luminaries present um and of course they
00:25:11.460they all recovered because um it was a pretty safe not as safe as vaccination but pretty safe
00:25:17.860procedure and um and so they walked walked free which of course has given me a great idea for
00:25:24.080another another novel and indeed i've written it so it'll be coming soon but um even then the king
00:25:31.040didn't agree to have the princesses inoculated um until all the orphans of the parish of st
00:25:37.820james were inoculated can you imagine i mean the ethics committee these days might have had a
00:25:42.580problem yeah of course it was actually a great thing to do um and at that point the princess
00:25:48.060were inoculated and that really boosted um boosted inoculation but it you know there were setbacks
00:25:54.320there were occasional deaths because of course it's a live virus and so people people would be
00:25:59.160infectious for i think typically about 10 days to two weeks depending um so there were some cases
00:26:05.300of inoculation where people became infected and very ill or died so they were rare but they did
00:26:11.080happen um and anyway mary mary moved on um after you know a few years of that campaigning and the
00:26:20.020fact that you know she could but you know her views on medic medicine was was so again so advanced so1.00
00:26:26.840she always thought bleeding was a very weird thing to do. Well, of course, that carried on
00:26:31.960as a practice for another 150 years or whatever. But she always thought it was ridiculous that
00:26:38.560people were being bled. So she kind of had this instinctive idea of what was sensible1.00
00:26:45.760treatments and what weren't. And she was easily 150 years ahead of her time, really.
00:26:51.720Can you explain the kind of inoculation that she was advocating for?
00:26:56.280like the process yeah so she'd she'd seen it in in constantinople istanbul um the story is that
00:27:05.400that the process of inoculation sort of came from probably china or somewhere in the far east
00:27:10.460on the sort of great caravan the great sort of spice routes and so on that would come through
00:27:15.100turkey and the circassian women were reputed to be the most beautiful women in the world and quite
00:27:22.140a lot of them were used as sort of concubines so on so that's the kind of as usual there's a sort
00:27:27.760of rather rather deep and distasteful capitalist theory behind things and um it seems that they0.87
00:27:33.920were perhaps amongst the first to be inoculated so that their looks wouldn't be um spoiled um
00:27:40.660so when mary sort of heard about this or noticed that actually it become a very widespread practice
00:27:46.360in constantinople and beyond um and it tends to be greek women um so you know in those days
00:27:54.460constantinople istanbul would be about would be probably a third greek um a third what we might
00:28:01.360you know muslim turkish um and a third other others as well um quite a big big jewish um
00:28:08.620community and back in those days as well and basically they all all rubbed along pretty well
00:28:13.400alongside each other and it seemed to be greek women who who did this so mary went along and0.98
00:28:18.780observed what happened and these greek women would carry the would carry live virus extracted from0.89
00:28:25.040someone who is a smallpox who had the smallpox pustules and they carry this live virus they1.00
00:28:30.680would put a cut in the arm and and pour it into the cut and that was the way they didn't have
00:28:37.500hypodermic needles they weren't invented until inconveniently for my cover design they weren't
00:28:42.660invented until 1850 um or so so um I probably got some early cover designs where there's a
00:28:50.100hypodermic needle and it was one of the and the cover is absolutely gorgeous of this of this book
00:28:55.560um and uh I don't think I've got one with it but anyway it um of course what they didn't use they
00:29:02.340didn't so it's not a hypodermic we had to we had to say oh no that that wouldn't be right
00:29:06.720the epidemic wasn't invented for another 150 years um so it's just a a a scratch or a lancet
00:29:15.480sort of as we call it now uh uh it was done with the lancet by by the surgeon that she persuaded
00:29:22.720so mary then sort of hectored a poor um charles maitland his name was the embassy surgeon um to
00:29:30.920conduct the practice um and he was very uneasy with it because in those days surgeons were
00:29:37.220uh were still sort of barber surgeons they'd only sort of they'd emerged from the sort of
00:29:42.100bar bar industry of sort of hair beard cutting and so on um and they were sort of below physicians
00:29:48.980so it's a long time before you know the royal college of physicians was very much on top and
00:29:53.920the royal college of surgeons came along quite a bit later um so he was quite nervous that that
00:29:59.520physicians would disapprove of him carrying out this practice but anyway mary got her way and
00:30:03.900and and so that that was how it was done well and i want to talk also about her um her writing you
00:30:11.800mentioned the the thing with alexander pope can you explain who alexander pope was yeah so um you
00:30:17.660know quite a lot of your listeners will know that alexander pope was um you know incredibly famous
00:30:23.540poet of the early 18th century he's like a kind of superstar poet um and one of the most famous
00:30:30.680men in in uh in England at the time the rape of the lock is sort of famously his he did a lot of
00:30:36.780the translations of the Iliad and so on and and um so he was hugely admired and you know people
00:30:44.480that might have done a sort of you know English literature degree or whatever might might come
00:30:49.060I personally always found Pope's poetry quite sort of, I don't know, rather sort of pomposity about it.
00:30:57.440But it's very much this sort of classicist approach.
00:36:30.840they are fearful and are not content to sit back and just disappear and they'll do anything to fix
00:36:36.140that from the creators of parkdale haunt comes woodbine a podcast about monsters dreams and
00:36:40.780changes those you want and those you never saw coming season two arrives september 24th
00:36:45.960distributed by realm and we're back and so that was like the where i first heard about her was
00:36:53.360the inoculation stuff but she lived like quite a long life after that and a lot of it was this
00:36:58.480was writing was was what she was was doing this um rivalry really sort of defined that era of her
00:37:06.900life yeah it sort of her from her 30s let's say um uh yeah through her 30s um and early 40s
00:37:17.440she lost a lot of friends because of it because of course pope had a big circle of friends and he
00:37:22.600would set people against her so her circular friends was diminishing once she was let's say
00:37:28.900in her early 40s and I think that sort of um she'd also had a very difficult time so her daughter and
00:37:34.720I mean yeah there's so much to say about it but um so she got involved in the Jacobite risings
00:37:42.180um both in 17 the 1715 rising and then the 1745 rising the famous rising that finished with
00:37:49.860culloden her involvement with the 1715 rising the jacobite rising again which was you know
00:37:55.840the old pretender as it was so that was the stewards who were trying to who said they had
00:38:03.180a better claim on the throne than than the hanoverians her younger sister francis um her
00:38:09.500their father i think francis being more malleable than mary decided that a good marriage um for
00:38:15.700francis would be with the duke of the earl of mar john erskine he'd been a minister in the um
00:38:22.940in the queen anne government um and mary thought this is a terrible idea he was quite a lot older
00:38:29.260than francis uh he already had a son by by marriage um his first wife had died but mary strongly well
00:38:38.040first of all he was a tory mary detested tories she hated tories all her life and yet she sort
00:38:42.820kept finding them popping up around her and she was an ardent wig and she thought he was a Tory
00:38:49.880and she suspected that he had Jacobite sympathies and she was right because within a few months0.93
00:38:55.740really of her sister's marriage the Earl of Mar John Erskine rode north to Scotland and led the
00:39:02.280unsuccessful rising against George I trying to restore the stewards to the throne so that was
00:39:08.400the first thing then of course she went off to turkey anyway so she couldn't really help her
00:39:12.640sister very much john erskine was sent into exile uh roll the story on a little bit and eventually
00:39:19.020francis goes into exile in paris to be with her husband and the jacobite court moved between paris
00:39:24.420rome and avignon that that becomes important as well uh later in mary's story um and john
00:39:32.400is a terrible husband they have no money because he's been you know he's been kicked out of the
00:39:37.520country. Erskine then stupidly decides to become a kind of double agent and betrays the stewards to0.99
00:39:44.160King George I to try and get a bit of money. It's awful. And Francis becomes really mentally ill.1.00
00:39:52.580And eventually, Mary gets her back to England to protect her. Now, women were often subjected to
00:40:00.020what they called lunacy inquisitions in those days. And women who were determined not to be1.00
00:40:07.180controlled by their husbands often were said by the husband and his family to be mad that was a0.99
00:40:13.800way of them controlling their money in this case it was quite different mary was determined to get0.95
00:40:20.500her sister before a lunacy inquisition and then to speak for her and make sure and that was to stop
00:40:26.860erskine's family getting francis's money because her her father of course had protect had put
00:40:33.640certain amounts of money away which could be done in marriage contracts both for her and for any
00:40:39.700offspring and she did have a daughter but that too was a huge mental strain on Mary and she got0.94
00:40:46.100very heavily criticized and you know her enemy said she was just after her sister's money which
00:40:51.500was extremely unfair so she had a pretty tough time of it and I think you know it was probably
00:40:57.400suffering from depression she was probably perimenopausal you know there were lots going
00:41:01.920on in her 40s and then something amazing happened which is mary being mary you know she and edward
00:41:08.280had lived apart pretty much their whole marriages really um they you know they respected each other
00:41:13.500they remained friends and then mary at the age of 48 met a young italian called francesco algarotti
00:41:21.660he was 24 years old and she fell in love she utterly utterly for the first time in her life
00:41:28.440really through caution to the wind her letters from that time which were lost for 200 years
00:41:33.560pretty much um uh her letters reveal you know how passionately in love she was with francesco who
00:41:42.000had come to britain um to meet various people who could help him write an italian translation
00:41:50.140of newton's work that's what he was doing here um there were plenty of things that should have
00:41:56.880told mary that francesca was gay but i think mary i mean she wasn't bothered you know she had
00:42:04.280her best friend really um uh um uh lord john hervey uh was gay and you know she certainly wasn't you
00:42:16.220know was not concerned about that sort of thing it was tough to be gay back in the early 18th
00:42:20.000century but if you're an aristocrat you can kind of get away with quite a lot more and um i think
00:42:25.640mary just i don't know she just saw in francesco the the man the love of her life uh so eventually
00:42:34.020when you know he said you know come and meet me in venice and so she left the country uh she went
00:42:41.140to venice francesco was not there uh the reason he wasn't there was because he was in um berlin
00:42:47.720um schmoozing with frederick the great and almost certainly was his lover by that point
00:42:52.500so there's so much you can see you know you almost couldn't you know it's just truth is
00:42:57.460strange in fiction um but mary loved being in venice you know she loved um she loved
00:43:02.640she found herself a celebrity in venice she um and uh you know she loved going to the opera she
00:43:11.260loved the dance she she was quite happy there um really until francesco reappeared on the scene
00:43:17.740and invited her to come on a spying mission with her so at that point in life when she was about
00:43:23.34050 in her early 50s she kind of took up spying as a profession uh as far as we know the evidence
00:43:30.480of course is in because it's in the nature spine but in my novel i certainly suggest that that's
00:43:35.560what she was up to there's a little doubt that that she was um and why she went to avignon is
00:43:42.580hard to understand why, unless she wanted to spy on the Jacobite court, which by that time was sort
00:43:48.860of most, a lot of the time in Avenue, which is a papal state. And so she almost certainly was
00:43:55.060trying to warn the government back in London about the gathering storm, which turned into
00:44:01.180the Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Jacobite rising of 1745. So a rich and full life, even up to that
00:44:08.680point and there was sort of more to come i wanted to to ask a question i was just double checking
00:44:13.860well i was just scrolling through some images of her and this reminded me i wanted can we talk0.90
00:44:18.400about the way that she dressed yeah um there's several portraits of her she's dressed in a very
00:44:24.580ottoman empire style um what what can you talk about that she she certainly found
00:44:33.200Turkish dress more comfortable uh of course Turkish women would often wear the sort of
00:44:38.180pantaloons the baggy silk trousers uh which were clearly a lot easier to wear than some of the
00:44:43.580dresses the women were expected to wear in terms of western 18th century dress with great hoops
00:44:49.200and so on um so yeah she absolutely she often would dress like that and um I mean she did she
00:44:57.460was a woman who did as she pleased a lot of the time as far as she could she would absolutely put
00:45:03.620on the right performance when she needed to impress or you know meet a queen or a princess0.95
00:45:10.840or a king or whatever she would dress appropriately but I think she almost you know we know that she
00:45:16.940dressed absolutely in Turkish dress a lot and she was quite a performer as well so she she wanted to
00:45:22.840sort of create that but she believed you know so up to that point there's a lot of you know um
00:45:29.580you could call it these days you'd say it was anti-islamic sentiment and she really countered
00:45:34.840that saying there's much to admire in islam and there's much that's similar in in you know islam
00:45:41.260and christianity and people should understand islam but she was fascinated by that she how
00:45:46.900well she taught herself turkish or arabic i'm not sure but she certainly was very interested to0.96
00:45:52.060be able to speak and study those languages and she I mean very mischievously because she was0.53
00:45:58.740mischievous she thought that women who were able to wear the veil and go about effectively not be0.52
00:46:06.820recognized were absolutely able to have much more interesting social lives and I think she implied
00:46:12.660they could have affairs because no you know which would be unimaginable in London because of course
00:46:18.060everyone would see where they were going. But she said, you know, women, a veiled woman can go about1.00
00:46:23.940freely. So this was, you know, for an 18th century British origin, it's quite sensational news. And
00:46:32.560because she wrote so engagingly, I think it changed minds. It certainly intrigued people and made
00:46:38.980people think again about some of their prejudices, which is another thing I, you know, really admire
00:46:44.160about her I have a question sort of on the same line and this is more just I'm curious to know
00:46:49.860if this was your invention or if this was based on something you read there's a part in your book
00:46:54.040where she's going on a trip and she just grabs one of her husband's wigs to wear instead of her own
00:46:59.580yes yeah and actually that's a bit I quite often read out um when I'm doing events because I think
00:47:05.580it sort of says a lot about her and captures it yes and you know she borrows her husband's heavy
00:47:11.620you know the earth so this would be 1716 and in those days the wigs that people were tended to be
00:47:17.200brown or black and quite heavy and full bottomed uh unlike the sort of later sort of powdered
00:47:23.000white wigs of the later 80s of the century um and of course men tended to wear wigs and probably
00:47:29.320probably big advantage over women who often would often have their own hair often done in very very
00:47:34.220elaborate hairstyles whereas men would quite often shave their hair very short um because of course
00:47:39.620the problem was lice and knits and all that stuff which were very hard to combat in those days so
00:47:44.440women must have had a problem with those things uh as as well um but uh in fact women did sometimes0.57
00:47:52.800wear the heavy bottom wig so although i suggest this was something that only mary did and you
00:47:57.260know in the novel it sort of tells you a bit about mary's character and how you know edwards
00:48:02.160infuriated with her for wearing the wig which she put on because it was a windy day and they were
00:48:06.160going on a long journey um it wasn't unheard of for women and you'll sometimes see portraits of
00:48:11.400that time of women wearing um what one might call a man's sort of heavy wig probably because
00:48:17.520they'd shaved their heads to get rid of uh lice actually um that's probably why they did it um0.89
00:48:23.320but otherwise you know women would often have their own hair but in these incredibly elaborate
00:48:27.620hairstyles and later in the novel i talk a bit about the absurd hairstyles when she goes to the
00:48:32.360Austrian court in Vienna in about 1716 and meets the empress and you know the women there would
00:48:38.160have these you know six foot high hairdos with birds nests and things stuck in them1.00
00:48:44.040which she thought was perfectly ridiculous. Well it just seems a lot quicker to just pop a wig on
00:48:49.620and get going. You said for it yeah. So her legacy like you've mentioned a few times just that she's
00:48:59.340not remembered now for for who she was in i'm presuming there's a lack of statues plaques
00:49:08.920yeah you know there's two streets named for in the world they're both in italy
00:49:13.720um where she's a better known i think than in britain um and despite the fact that there have
00:49:21.000been uh you know a couple of good recent um biographies about mary you know when i sort
00:49:27.820mentioned the names of the room there's a few people go well yeah sort of vaguely heard of her
00:49:31.820of what a very small number of people that sort of share share the passion i have for her and i
00:49:37.940to me she's she's such a symbol of the way um you know i'm conscious i'm a man saying this and
00:49:45.140there's a lot of women that will say for goodness sakes we know this but so many women have been
00:49:49.300written out of history by you know largely by male historians and you know the blue stockings0.68
00:49:54.880who came a little bit later Elizabeth Montague and um you know the other incredible women women
00:50:01.460historians women poets women writers from mid 18th century who were I think at the time more or less
00:50:07.700seen as uh you know as equals um you know and Sam Johns the great dictionary you know writer
00:50:15.000the dictionary and so on admired a lot of those women's writing but again I think it's the
00:50:19.760Victorians in particular and one of the things I noticed I haven't gone to some of the original
00:50:24.340sources about about mary is not only that though you know the victorian biographers writing about
00:50:30.420her not only was she sort of diminished they'd feminized it was another thing that was done a lot
00:50:36.440you know mary was a thinker and an intellectual and a writer um but um you know if you look at
00:50:43.700lord wharncliffe's he's got a scrapbook he cut out her letters and stuck in the scrapbook which
00:50:48.560the victorians did this a lot with sort of primary sources annoyingly and you she was his great
00:50:53.880She was he was Mary's great grandson. But you can see that he picks out a letter that has interesting things about, you know, political issues or issues of war and peace in it.
00:51:03.660And he picks out that she went to the theatre and met a friend or, you know, she wore a pretty dress that night or served tea.
00:51:12.360You know, this was done a lot. And I think it was a way for Victorian men to sort of just feminise and limit the sort of scope that women had.0.53
00:51:21.820So, you know, I think all of those things, as with so many other amazing women, particularly from the 18th century, I think that's one of the reasons they're so, so forgotten.
00:51:32.100But I am I'm campaigning to get a blue plaque put up for a place in York called Middlethorpe Hall, where I'm going in a couple of weeks to an event.
00:51:41.260And that's really the only house that still stands that she lived in.
00:51:45.740So therefore, I hope we can get a blue plaque put up for her.
00:51:49.200But I'd love to see a statue put up first.
00:51:51.200there should be she's one that she's she you know one of her close friends um was voltaire the great
00:51:57.780french philosopher and writer and he lived in exile in in london from 1726 1728 and he sought out
00:52:08.720mary and uh they they definitely you know she definitely helped him with some of his writing
00:52:15.880they corresponded a lot he went back to France of course he lived in well just across the border
00:52:22.360in in Switzerland because he was always in trouble with the French authorities and he lived a very
00:52:28.100very long long life and when Mary died he wrote this was a woman for all the world and I thought
00:52:35.640yes absolutely that's true Voltaire admired her and to me she's kind of Britain's forgotten Voltaire
00:52:42.820i think in a way but she was a woman and she deserved to be better known i feel that so
00:52:49.080strongly well and i find that well i'm obviously this is a women's history podcast but there's so
00:52:55.340many people who were so famous or so well known or so regarded when they were alive and it's always
00:53:01.400surprising to me to think but no one's heard of them now where it's like but they were so famous
00:53:05.960and it seems like she's someone like that as well where while she was alive people knew who she were
00:53:11.020And then it's just the legacy afterwards.
00:53:12.680And the Victorians are to blame for a lot of this erasure.
00:53:16.580I think they really wanted to reframe, especially British English history as like, well, there
00:53:23.600was never really women who were like this, because if there were women like this, then
00:53:27.560women in the Victorian era might want to emulate that.1.00
00:53:57.460And actually, women in the 18th century should have sort of knocked down some of the, you know, were so close to getting women into the royal society.
00:54:06.320And maybe, you know, and I don't know, maybe you can imagine women being in Parliament, you know, at least 100 years before they were, and women getting the vote. And I, well, I think several things went on. I think there was a bit of a counter.
00:54:22.500i think the french revolution was part of the problem you know that in a sense there was so
00:54:29.560much chaos and bloodshed in the aftermath of the french revolution that uh people you know it made
00:54:37.060it hard for radicals whether they're men or women because of course you know after we after mary
00:54:43.260early montague you know you you um had um uh oh my i've got a moment's brain freeze mary shelley's
00:54:55.220mother um wallstonecraft mary wallstonecraft the amazing mary wallstonecraft and um you know you
00:55:01.560had the but everything became a bit more difficult for about 1789 90 onwards to make that sort of
00:55:10.100progress although interestingly that there was definitely a conservative a swing in favor of
00:55:16.660more conservative sentiment from about the mid 18th century onwards because when mary came back
00:55:21.440to london after living effectively in exile for 20 years you know i think she sensed that she
00:55:28.300and i have a sense of this in the novel she sensed that she was a kind of a bit of a relic you know
00:55:33.360that she was a novelty and her views which were still very radical had gone out of fashion
00:55:39.820you know fashion had changed and we see goodness knows we see that things swing that you think
00:55:45.400there's so much progress and then we have this right now don't we that rights are under assault
00:55:50.800again and i think it's not a steady a steady sort of course of progress so i think that's one thing
00:55:56.520the other thing and and you have this with um well the great katherine uh katherine mccauley um
00:56:03.160and you know some of those blue stockings if a woman was considered particularly by victorian
00:56:08.560moral standards or late 18th century moral standards to have done something scandalous
00:56:13.540then you know their reputation was really really damaged in a way that it was very unfair so I
00:56:21.520think Catherine Macaulay married you know after her first husband died married a man much younger
00:56:25.800than herself and she was you know one of the greatest historians uh and recognized as such
00:56:30.860in the 18th century Mary of course you know I don't know how many people knew about her with
00:56:36.480about her affair with Al Goretti but there were certainly implications that she had other
00:56:41.060relationships with men younger than her and that was an absolute no-no men could absolutely I mean
00:56:46.340nothing's changed men can still marry or have relationships with women 20-30 young years
00:56:51.940younger than them and it's kind of might raise an eyebrow a woman does it did it then it was0.94
00:56:57.020an absolute outrage and even now of course a woman has a relationship with a much younger man
00:57:00.720And it's regarded as very strange still.
00:57:05.020And I think, you know, all these things have combined to just shroud their reputation.
00:57:12.460So I think it's incumbent on women writers and male writers to try and, you know, make sure some of these women from history are better remembered.
00:57:23.720And so your book, A Woman of Opinion, do you know, where is it available?
00:57:29.200Like what parts of the world at this point?
00:57:31.540Well, at this point, inconveniently, it's Britain and the Commonwealth and not yet in North America or Canada, which is frustrating.
00:57:40.320There are probably ways of getting it.
00:57:42.620So my first novel is available in North America and Canada through Union Square.
00:57:47.560But this novel published by Doubleday and Penguin, and it'll be coming in Britain in paperback in May.
00:57:54.800So it's published in hardback in July.
00:57:57.180so there are probably ways of finding it