“Your most affectionate mother.”

One of Lady Mary’s friends was Cardinal Gerolamo Guerini, a distinguished scholar as well as a great churchman.  One day, in October, 1753, he sent a request, by one of his chief chaplains, that Lady Mary would send him her printed works for the shelves that he was dedicating to English literature in the library attached to the college at Brescia that he had founded.

“I was struck dumb for some time with this astonishing request; when I recovered my vexatious surprise (foreseeing the consequence), I made answer, I was highly sensible of the honour designed me, but, upon my word, I had never printed a single line in my life.  I was answered in a cold tone, his Eminence could send for them to England, but they would be a long time coming, and with some hazard; and that he had flattered himself I would not refuse him such a favour, and I need not be ashamed of seeing my name in a collection where he admitted none but the most eminent authors.  It was to no purpose to endeavour to convince him.  He would not stay to dinner, though earnestly invited; and went away with the air of one that thought he had reason to be offended.  I know his master will have the same sentiments, and I shall pass in his opinion for a monster of ingratitude, while it is the blackest of vices in my opinion, and of which I am utterly incapable—­I really could cry for vexation.

“Sure nobody ever had such various provocations to print as myself.  I have seen things I have wrote, so mangled and falsified, I have scarce known them.  I have seen poems I never read, published with my name at length; and others, that were truly and singly wrote by me, printed under the names of others.  I have made myself easy under all these mortifications, by the reflection I did not deserve them, having never aimed at the vanity of popular applause; but I own my philosophy is not proof against losing a friend, and it may be making an enemy of one to whom I am obliged.”

In this letter to Lady Mar, in which Lady Mary explains her plight, she goes on to deliver herself of her sentiments concerning the difference of opinion as regards women writers that was current in Italy and in England.

Lady Mary held strong views on what are called to-day, or at least were so called until they were lately in the main conceded, women’s rights.  Although she said that she did not complain that it was men, and men only, who were privileged to exercise the power of government, it is not unlikely that she yielded this point in order the more effectively to emphasise some other.  Anyhow she was unfeignedly pleased to be able to record (to Lady Pomfret, March, 1737) a “rumpus” made by ladies who regarded their exclusion from a debate in Parliament as unwarrantable.