“You may easily suppose how much this extraordinary dress sets off and improves the natural ugliness with which God Almighty has been pleased to endow them all generally.  Even the lovely Empress herself is obliged to comply, in some degree, with these absurd fashions, which they would not quit for all the world.”

The above passage is the more interesting because it has so often been asserted that Lady Mary took no interest in dress.  As a matter of fact, however, there are several indications in her letters that she thought a good deal about clothes.

“My little commission is hardly worth speaking of; if you have not already laid out that small sum in St. Cloud ware, I had rather have it in plain lutestring of any colour,” she wrote in June, 1721, to her sister, Lady Mar, at Paris.

“I would have no black silk, having bought here,” she said on another occasion; and again, “My paper is done, and I will only put you in mind of my lutestring, which I beg you will send me plain, of what colour you please.”  “Dear Sister, adieu,” she wrote in 1723.  “I have been very free in this letter, because I think I am sure of its going safe.  I wish my nightgown may do the same:  I only choose that as most convenient to you; but if it was equally so, I had rather the money was laid out in plain lutestring, if you could send me eight yards at a time of different colours, designing it for linings; but if this scheme is impracticable, send me a nightgown a la mode.”

Apparently Lady Mar was careless or forgetful of the commission, for a little later Lady Mary was writing pathetically:  “I wish you would think of my lutestring, for I am in terrible want of linings.”

The account of the Austrian Court of the day, as given by Lady Mary, is invaluable, for there is no other available written by an English person accustomed to another Court.

Lady Mary’s descriptions of Viennese society are also delightful, and if she wrote of the royal circle with respect, she bubbled over with merriment when writing of folk less highly placed.  A letter of hers to Lady Rich is too delicious to be omitted.

“I have compassion for the mortifications that you tell me befall our little friend, and I pity her much more, since I know that they are only owing to the barbarous customs of our country.  Upon my word, if she was here, she would have no other fault but being something too young for the fashion, and she has nothing to do but to transplant hither about seven years hence, to be again a young and blooming beauty.  I can assure you that wrinkles, or a small stoop in the shoulders, nay, even grey hair itself, is no objection to the making new conquests.  I know you cannot easily figure to yourself a young fellow of five-and-twenty ogling my Lady Suffolk with passion, or pressing to lead the Countess of Oxford from an opera.  But such are the sights I see every day, and I don’t perceive any body surprised