🌹 Lady Montague 🩺💉

 "A person who can't be satisfied with themselves will never be satisfied with anything. Intelligence is what generates the right attitude toward life.

Intelligence, as we know, comes in different calibers and profiles: practical, scientific, creative, resourceful, "feminine," behavioral, psychological, and so on. But I think the most important type of intelligence is the one that allows a person to have the right attitude toward life.

People often fall in love with someone at a glance. We writers are capable of falling in love with a single phrase. That's what happened to me. I fell in love with Lady Montague while working on The Writer and Suicide—precisely with a single phrase.

No, don't worry, this lady isn't She committed suicide; she was too smart for that.

Mary was the daughter of Count Pierpont, born in 1689. She spent almost her entire childhood in the library of her father's castle, which housed one of the richest book collections in England. But Mary never became a bookworm, or, as they later called her, a "bluestocking." From books, she learned the most important thing—to think for herself.

At a young age, she found herself in a situation quite common for young women of that era: she fell in love with one man, and her father was planning to marry her off to another. For some reason, however, she was unable to unite with the man she had chosen.

Mary resolved this difficult situation with ungirlish wisdom: if there is no happiness, then there must be peace and freedom. She chose a man she could respect and who promised not to restrict her freedom, ran away with him, and married him without her father's permission. Sir Walter Montagu was also an intelligent man, holding prominent government positions, and his wife became the jewel of London society. People fell in love with her, her witticisms were recounted by word of mouth, and it was considered an honor to correspond with her.

Poor Alexander Pope, the great poet, fell head over heels in love with Mary (apparently, like me, after some clever remark). He passionately confessed his feelings, and the beautiful woman, without listening to the end, burst into laughter—and earned herself an enemy for life.

At the age of twenty-six, Mary was struck by a terrible misfortune for a young woman, and especially a beauty: smallpox, which European medicine was completely unable to treat. Lady Montagu survived, but her entire face became covered in sores, and her famous eyelashes fell out.

She then ceased appearing in society and forced everyone to admire her from a distance. At her insistence, her husband secured a position as ambassador to the Sultan's court. In Constantinople, Mary learned the language and customs, explored harem life for the first time, and published "Turkish Letters," which was widely read throughout Europe. She also studied the Eastern method of smallpox vaccination.

Now it was time to return. Another epidemic broke out in England, and Lady Montagu took up the fight. She began by vaccinating her three-year-old daughter. Then she offered to conduct an experiment on seven criminals sentenced to death in exchange for the promise of a pardon. They survived and were released. Then the same experiment was performed on six orphans from an orphanage (the children there were dying like flies anyway). The orphans also survived. Then the king ordered the life-saving procedure to be performed on his own grandchildren. The country believed in the effectiveness of the treatment, and the epidemic was conquered.

By the age of fifty, Lady Montagu decided she was entering an age of complete freedom and would no longer be bound by convention. She separated from her husband (while maintaining a wonderful relationship) and began to live a life of pleasure.

She traveled, associating only with people who interested her. Lewis Kronenberger's biography states: "She hated bores, from whom she fled, and hated fools, with whom she quarreled." It must be said that Lady Montagu had a low opinion of women, preferring the company of men, which is not surprising given the level of female education at the time.

"I'm glad I'm a woman," Mary said, "because it means I won't have to marry." She also disliked us novelists. "Novelists," she said, "do readers a double harm: they steal their money and their time."

Lady Montagu preferred to live in sweet Italy, returning to her homeland only when she felt it was time to die—at the venerable age of 73 for that era.

Towards the end of her life, Mary once admitted that she hadn't looked in the mirror for the last eleven years. Aren't you smart? "A person who can't be satisfied with herself will never be satisfied with anything."

And now—the phrase that began my love for Lady Montagu. On her deathbed, she said (these were her last words): "It was all very interesting."

That's what you call the right attitude to ward life.

✍️ Boris Akunin

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