Marietta Cosmopilite
| Mrs. Marietta Cosmopilite | |
 | |
| Name | Marietta Cosmopilite |
| Race | Human |
| Age | |
| Occupation | Dress-maker and seamstress (in the Sandra Battye sense) |
| Physical appearance | |
| Residence | 3 Quirm Street, Ankh-Morpork. She apparently also runs a dress-shop/haberdashery located not far away from Blert Wheedown's guitar workshop (Soul Music). |
| Death | |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | |
| Children | |
| Marital Status | presumably there once was a Mr. Cosmopilite |
| Appearances | |
| Books | Moving Pictures |
| Cameos | Witches Abroad, Thief of Time |
Mrs. Marietta Cosmopilite is a dress-maker living at 3 Quirm Street, Ankh-Morpork. She also runs a dress shop and haberdashery not far away from Blert Wheedown's guitar workshop: during the Music With Rocks In craze, Wheedown sent his apprentice Gibbsson round to her shop to negotiate for sequins, Ankhstones and suitably flashy material for guitar straps. During the Holy Wood moving pictures fever, Mrs. Cosmopilite worked as the wardrobe mistress for the actors. Mrs. Cosmopilite also makes dresses for the new dwarf females. Other than dress-making, Mrs. Cosmopilite rents out some rooms in her house (Very Reasonable).
Since seekers of wisdom always want to seek it somewhere far away, some young monks come down from the Ramtops and the Hub and try to learn The Way of Mrs. Cosmopilite. This collection of trite, but sometimes pithy homilies was compiled by Lu-Tze, a.k.a. the Sweeper, of the History Monks; he carries it with him in a small notebook. It has never been published, otherwise, but rumor has spread of the teacher of the great and wise Lu-Tze. The seekers of enlightenment on Quirm Street never know quite what they're looking for, and Mrs. Cosmopilite has no idea why they're bothering her.
She complains that she is bothered at nights by dwarf voyeurs peeping in through the curtains while she undresses. Dwarfs have a different aesthetic as to what constitutes attractiveness (as evidenced by Casanunda's passion for Nanny Ogg), and it is hinted that, however unlikely this behaviour is for dwarfs, this is the only thing she has got right out of a catalogue of interesting delusional beliefs. Although it is possible that she is on one of Nobby Nobbs' patrol beats, and has made a common error re: Nobby's species...
Extremely accomplished with broom, dustpan and feather duster, by Lu-Tze's expert testimony.
Annotation
If the young Lu-Tze went to her to learn The Way of Mrs. Cosmopilite and is over 800 years old at the time of the events described in Thief of Time, how can she still be alive to be gallivanting in the time of Moving Pictures? Is it that Lu-Tze persuaded Qu to send him forwards in time and then bring him back once he'd learnt? (Linear time is not something the History Monks seem to worry about.) Lu-Tze's Yearbook of Enlightenment 2008 dates his time with her to "thirty years ago", at least as time is measured outside Oi-Doing.
It is also possible that part of her interesting mental state may be due to the mercury traditionally employed in the haberdashery and millinery trades.