Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: The Embassy Letters

[mildred_of_midgard]

selenak's write-up on Lady Mary's embassy letters:

This book, which was prepared for publication by its author but only published once she was dead - as she had intended - became an instant bestseller in the 18th century, and has remained in print ever since...Now that I've finally gotten around to reading her most famous work, I can say Lady Mary...is splendid writerly company to spend a few hours with, travelling across 18th century Europe to Turkey and back (after only a year, because her husband didn't work out very well as the British Ambassador, much to her regret, because Lady Mary adored Turkey).

The "Embassy Letters" - their most common title - aren't just a collection of letters written during those years, mind. Some of Lady Mary's actual letters were used for this book by her, with too personal information edited out, but she also drew on her diaries (which were burned after her death by hear daughter - one reason why the "Embassy Letters" manuscript had been given to someone else by her, since that action had been predictable - Lady Mary had been a hugely controversial woman all her life, and at the time of her death, her son-in-law was the new Prime Minister of England and respectability was of the utmost importance), and she redrafted everything so that the letters form a consistent narrative. (I.e. there is no repetitive information - despite the fact that the letters are to different correspondents, they tell a continuous tale.)

Of course, despite the fact this was the first "official" book of Lady Mary's, she'd been a de facto professional writer for most of her long life. She'd been born into privilege, the daughter of a future Duke - hence "Lady Mary" as her title after she gotten married to the title-less Edward Wortley Montagu - , and her father had been indulgent, but she'd been a nerdy child who got most of the education she craved not from her assigned teachers. According to legend, ten years old Mary developed such a passion for Ovid's Metamorphoses that she resolved to learn Latin 'with the help of an uncommon memory and indefatigable labour'. Hiding from her governess, with a Latin dictionary and grammar, she pursued this secret passion for as long as ten hours a day. By the time she was a teenager, she also wrote verses and prose and it soon became anything but adolescent. She became famous as a wit in writing and in the salons, but being a female aristocrat also meant publishing (and even worse, publishing for money!) under your own name was unthinkable; her writings were either circulated in hand written copies, or published anonymously, as when she wrote and edited a satiric magazine. Her family had sided with the Hannover dynasty even before Queen Anne, the last Stuart, had died (though her father also married her sister to a Jacobite, just to be on the safe side), and so her husband secured the Ottoman embassy job that provided the reason for Lady Mary's travels across Europe and Turkey in 1716/1717/1718. She was a young woman in her twenties, with a toddler son; in the year before she left England, she had, like so many others, fallen sick with smallpox and survived, but with heavy scarring. (Which none of her portraits reflect, any more than Mozart's portraits show his small pox scars.) This is important background to what she found in Turkey.

One reason why Lady Mary's travelogues are still so entertaining to read, aside from the historical interest, is that she's a witty writer, and she's also very curious about all she sees. Unusual for a great many later British tourists following in her footsteps, she's far more interested in modern accomplishments (stoves in Dresden and Hannover, smallpox inocculation in Turkey) than historic buildings, though she visits these, too. Most unusually, when noting down other customs, she doesn't always see England as the pinnacle of civilisation but encounters various examples of where the British, in her opinion, could learn something. (Not always something as important as inocculation. For example: she's a great fan of sofas when she encounters them as divans in Turkey - "I shall never endure a chair again".) Now, of course she was a privileged traveller, and most of the people she comes across in any given country long enough to talk intensely to are well off, too; she notes poverty, too, but the poor aren't the people she visits in their houses. But visit she does, and when she's in Turkey, she starts to learn Turkish and Arabic and wears local dresses, which she finds far more comfortable than the contemporary European style.

On the other hand, she's far from free of the prejudices of her day. The same Lady Mary who argues against the dissing of and condescension to the Turks in previous British literature sees nothing wrong with slavery. Alexander Pope, who was one of the correspondants of the Embassy Letters, turned from adoring and idealizing her from afar to viciously attacking her after her return to England, heaping every imaginable slur on her (including accusations of STDs), and when she counterattacked, she used ableism as freely as he did misogyny. She's not someone you can comfortably put in a pedestal. But what she's always: compelling, and speaking as vividly across the centuries as if she'd just dipped her pen into ink to write these letters. Have some examples underneath the cut.


En route from Britain, Lady Mary comes through various German principalities, and has some travelling experiences which might sound not unfamiliar when she arrives at Cologne:

"We were in hopes to reach Cologne. Our horses tired at Stamel, three hours from it, where I was forced to pass the night in my clothes in a room not at all better than a hovel. For though I have my own bed, I had no mind to undress, where the wind came from a thousand places. We left this wretched lodging at daybreak and about six this morning came safe here, where I got immediately into bed and slept so well for three hours that I found myself perfectly recovered and have had spirits enough to go and see all that is curious in the town, that is to say, the churches, for there is nothing else worth seeing, though it is a very large town, but most part of it old built.

The Jesuits' church is the neatest, which was showed me, in a very complaisant manner, by a handsome Jesuit who, not knowing who I was, took a liberty in his compliments and railleries which very much diverted me."

Vienna, she visited twice, because when she and her husband were there, they had to go back to Hannover, where George I. - also the Elector Georg Ludwig von Hannover - was in residence, then back to Vienna again. Her description of the Viennese clothing style in the year of Maria Theresia's birth is a hoot, but what shocked her future English readers was this bit: "But what you'll think very odd, the two sects that divide our whole nation of petticoats are utterly unknown. Here are neither coquettes nor prudes. No woman dares appear coquette enough to encourage two lovers at a time, and I have not seen any such prudes as to pretend fidelity in their husbands, who are certainly the best natured people in the world, and look upon their wives' gallants as favourably as men do upon their deputies, that take the troublesome part of their business of their hands, though they have not the less to do for they are generally deputies in another place themselves. In one word 'tis the established custom for every lady to have two husbands, one that bears the name and another that performs the duties, and these engagements are so well known that it would be a downright affront and publicly resented if you invited a woman of quality to dinner without at the same time inviting her two attendants of lover and husband, between whom she always sits in state with great gravity."

Hannover was a must for British travellers because their new German King George I. was not just from there but actually still liked to return there. Lady Mary is in rare form about George's Hannoverian court: "All the women here have (literally) rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and bosoms, jet eyebrows and scarlet lips, to which they generally add coal-black hair. These perfections never leave them, till the hour of their death, and have a very fine effect by candlelight; but I could wish they were handsome with a little more variety. They resemble one another as much as Mrs. Salmon's court of Great Britain and are in as much danger of melting away, by too near approaching the fire, which they for that reason carefully avoid, though 'tis now such excessive cold weather that I believe they suffer extremely by that piece of self-denial. The snow is already very deep, and the people begin to slide about in their traineaus. This is a favourite diversion all over Germany. There are little machines fixed upon a sledge that hold a lady and a gentleman, and drawn by one horse. The gentleman has the honour of driving, and they move with a prodigious swiftness. The lady, the horse and the traineau are all as fine as they can be made, and when there are many of them together, 'tis a very agreeable show."

On the other hand, she finds things in Hannover that do impress her:

"I was very sorry the ill weather did not permit me to see Hernhausen in all its beauty; but in spite of the snow, I thought the gardens very fine. I was particularly surprised at the vast number of orange trees, much larger than any I have ever seen in England, though this climate is certainly colder. But I had more reason to wonder that night at the King's table. There was brought to him from a gentleman of this country two large baskets full of ripe oranges and lemons of different sorts, many of which were quite new to me; and what I thought worth all the rest, two ripe ananasses, which, to my taste, are a fruit perfectly delicious. You know they are naturally the growth of Brazil, and I could not imagine how they could come there but by enchantment. Upon enquiry I learnt that they have brought their stoves to such perfection, they lengthen the summer as long as they please, giving to every plant the degree of heat it would receive from the sun in its native soil. The effect is very near the same; I am surprised we do not practice in England so useful an invention. This reflection naturally leads me to consider our obstinacy in shaking with cold six months in the year rather than make use of stoves, which are certainly one of the greatest conveniences of life, and so far from spoiling the form of a room that they add very much to the magnificence of it, when they are painted and gilt, as they are in Vienna or at Dresden, where they are often in the shapes of china jars, statues or fine cabinets, so naturally represented they are not to be distinguished. If ever I return, in defiance to the fashion, you shall certainly see one in the chamber of, dear sister, etc."

Earlier in Vienna, Lady Mary had met Prince Eugene of Savoye, then just a month away from his most famous victory against the Turks. He'd advised her and her husband not to continue their journey in winter but to wait till the Danube wasn't frozen anymore, but since the Hannover trip had delayed them anyway, her husband didn't want to wait anymore, and they continued during the winter months. Once they arrived in Serbia, they found the remains of the big battle, and Lady Mary has a reaction that today would cause right wingers to chide her for wokeness:

"(...) We passed over the fields of Karkowitz, where the last great victory was obtained by Prince Eugene over the Turks. The marks of that glorious bloody day are yet recent, the field being strewed with the skulls and carcases of unburied men, horses and camels. I could not look without horror on such numbers of mangled human bodies, and reflect on the injustice of war that makes murder not only necessary but meritorious. Nothing seems to me a plainer proof of the irrationality of mankind, whatever fine claims we pretend to reason, than the rage with which they contest for a small spot of ground (...)."

In Turkey, as I said, she decides to adopt local dress habits, meaning, of course, the dress habits of a rich Turkish lady. This provides us with this detailed description:

"The first peace of my dress is a pair of drawers, very full, that reach to my shoes and conceal the legs more modestly than your petticoats. They are of a thin rose colour damask, brocaded with silver flowers, my shoes of white kid leather embroidered with gold. Over this hangs my smock of a finen white silk gauze, edged with embroidery. This smock has wide sleeves hanging half way down the arm and is closed at the neck with a diamond button; but the shape and colour of the bosom is very well to be distinguished through it. The entari is a waistcoat made close to the shape, of white and gold damask with very long sleeves falling back and gringed with deep gold fringe, and should have diamond or pearl buttons. My caftan of the same stuff with my drawers, is a robe exactly fitted to my shape and reaching to my feet, with very long straight -falling sleeves. Over this is the girdle of about four fingers broad(...). The cüppe is a loose robe they throw off, or put on, according to the weather, being of a rich brocade (mine is green and gold) either lined with ermine or sables. The sleeves reach very little below the shoulders. The headdress is composed of a cap, called kalpak which is in winter of fine velvet embroidered with pearls or diamonds and in summer of a light shining silver stuff."

One of the most famous Embassy letters describes Lady Mary visiting a Turkish bathing house for the first time. It is too long to quote, so have a summary from the Grundy biography:

The women's beauty delighted her: the ‘shineingly white' skins, with no ornament but 'their Beautiful Hair divided into many tresses hanging on their shoulders'. The good order, good humour, and friendliness of the naked assembly — the freedom from 'surprize or impertinent Curiosity ', immodest gestures, disdainfull smiles or satyric whispers '-—impressed her even more . So did the egalitarianism (you could hardly tell the great lady from her slave). As usual, Lady Mary was alert to what was and what was not different. The female body was the standard of beauty in her own culture; the Turkish women's grace and charm were what she might have expected (though their freedom from smallpox scarring, and from the red marks left by tight lacing, were unfamiliar). It was like an artist's fantasy, and Lady Mary 'had wickedness enough to wish secretly' that her friend Jervas might have been there invisible to represent it on canvas. But to find unadorned, unimproved femininity free from lewdness or narcissism or rivalry: this was a most happy denial of what her own culture had led her to expect. From now on she had two separate models of the admirable in Turkish culture: the male library and this 'Women's coffee house'.

Most crucially for history, she encountered the Turkish way of dealing with smallpox. As mentioned, she herself had lived through it very recently before her departure.

"Apropos of distempers I am going to tell you a thing that I am sure will make you wish yourself here. The smallpox, so fatal and so general among us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting, which is the term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation. Every autumn in the month of September when the great heat is abated, people send one another to know if any of the family has a mind to have the smallpox. They make parties for this purpose and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of smallpox, and asks what veins you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her with a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch) and puts into the vein as much venmo as can be upon the head of her needle, and after binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell, and in this manner opens four or five veins. (...) The children our young patients play together all the rest of the day, and are in perfect health until the eigth. Then the fever begins to seize them and they keep their beds two days, very seldom three. They have very rarely above twenty or thirty in their faces, which never mark, and in eight days time they are as well as before their illness. Every year thousands undergo this operation, and the French Ambassador says pleasantly that they take the smallpox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of any one that has died in it, and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of the experiment, since I intend to try it on my own little son. I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England, and I should not fail to write to some of our doctors very particularly about it if I knew anyone of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of their revenue for the good of mankind."

Lady Mary did indeed have her son inocculated in this way, and after her return to Great Britain, repeated the procedure with her daughter (who'd been born in Turkey but as a baby had been too young then) and in public, because she'd been serious with wanting to bring this method to England. The resulting controversy was enormous, but once Caroline, Princess of Wales, decided to follow Lady Mary's example and also have her children inocculated, the British aristocracy followed suit. Frustratingly for Lady Mary, the English doctors then changed the procedure - which was simple enough as to not need a doctor - to one that required serious blood letting before, and a far deeper cut, which of course had far worse results but couldn't be attempted by laymen (and laywomen) and hence was more profitable.

Back to Turkey. A great many of the letters contain a "I know it's claimed that X, but actually Y" is true statement, such as this about the question of music:

"I suppose you may have read that the Turks have no music, but what is shocking to the ears, but this account is from those who never heard any but what is played in the streets, and is just as reasonable as if a foreigner should take his ideas of English music from the bladder and string or the marrow-bones and cleavers. I can assure you that the music is extremely pathetic; 'tis true, I am inclined to prefer the Italian, but perhaps I am partial. I am acquainted with a Greek lady who sings better than Mrs Robinson and is very skilled in both, who gives the preference to the Turkish. They certainly have very fine natural voices; these were very agreeable."

(Pathetic here is used in the old fashioned sense - evoking pathos.)

One big advantage Lady Mary saw in wearing a veil was that she could sight see at her leisure without attracting attention:

"The yasmak, or Turkish veil, is become not only very easy but agreeable to me, and if it was not, I would be content to endure some inconveinence to content a passion so powerful with me as curiosity; and indeed the pleasure of going in a barge to Chelsea is not comparable to that of rowing upon the canal of the sea here, where for twenty miles together down the Bosphorus the most beautiful variety of prospects present themselves. The Asian side is covered with fruit trees, villages and the most delightful landscapes in nature. On the European stands Constantinople, situated on seven hills. The unequal heights make it seem as large again as it is (though one of the largest cities in the world), showing an agreeable mixture of gardens, pine and cyprus trees, palaces, mosques and public buildings, raised one above another with as much beauty and appearance of symmetry as your ladyship ever saw in a cabinet adorned by the most skillful hands, jars showing themselves above jars, mixed with canisters, babies and candlesticks. This is a very odd comparison, but it gives me an exact image of the thing."

Lady Mary has mixed feelings about the Hagia Sophia:

"Perhaps I am in the wrong, but some Turkish mosques please me better. That of Sultan Suleiman is in an exact square with four fine towers on the angles, in the midst of a noble cupola supported with beautiful marble pillars, two lesser at the ends supported in the same manner, the pavement and gallery round the mosque of marble. Under the great cupola is a fountain adorned with such fine coloured pillars I can hardly think them natural marble. On one side is the pulpit of white marble, and on the other the little gallery for the Grand Signor. A fine staircase leads to it and is built lup with gilded lattices. At the upper end is a sort of altar where the name of God is written, and before it stands two candlesticks as high as a man, with wax candles as thick as three flambeaux. The pavement is psread with fine carpets and the mosque illuminated with a vast number of lamps. The court leading to it is very spacious , with galleries of marble with green fountains covered with twentyright leaded cupolas on two sides, a fine fountain of three basins in the midst of it."

She's also not impressed by the authors of previous travelogues:

"I am more inclined, out of a true female spirit of contradiction, to tell you the falsehood of a great part of what you find in authors; as, for example, the admirable Mr. Hill, who so gravely asserts that he saw in St. Sophia is a sweating pillar very balsamic for disordered heads. There is not the least tradition of any such matter, and I suppose it was revealed to him in vision during his wonderful stay in the Egyptian catacombs, for I am very sure he never heard of any such miracle here."

One last quote from her way back to Britain. She's at Lyons, France, and sees a statue of the dead Sun King, Louis XIV:

"In one of the most conspicuous parts of the town is the late King's statue set up, trampling upon mankind. I can't forbear saying one word here of the French statues (for I never intend to mention any more of them) with their gilded full bottomed wigs. If their King had intended to express, in one image, ignorance, ill taste and vanity, his sculptures could have made no other figure to represent the odd mixture of an old beau who had a mind to be a hero, with a bushel of curled hair on his head and a gilt truncheon in his hand."

So much for you, Louis.