Lady+Mary+Montagu,+Turkish+Embassy+Letters,+and+1718

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, formerly Lady Mary Pierrepont was born in London in May 1689. She was the daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont who was the first Duke of Kingston. Lady Mary studied Latin secretly and read books in her father’s library. Early on, she wrote poetry, a short novel, and a prose-verse-romance. He was friends with literate females and corresponded with them frequently.
 * Lady Mary Montagu**

Lady Mary’s friend Ann Wortley died and Anne’s brother Edward Wortley became her correspondent. He offered himself to her father as Lady Mary’s suitor but he rejected him because he wanted his future eldest son to inherit his estate. Defying her father’s wishes, Lady Mary expressed herself as a serious-minded and submissive wife in her courtly letters to Wortley for two years. Her father wanted her to marry the heir to the Irish peerage, Clotworthy Skeffington. These pressures motivated Lady Mary to elope with Wortley in August 1712; Wortley accepted Lady Mary in marriage despite her lack of a dowry and inheritance.

Lady Mary spent the beginning of her marriage excluded in the countryside of York where she wrote poems of wifely submission and a critique of Addison’s //Cato,// which was the only female written piece included in //The Spectator//. In 1713 Lady Mary had her son Edward Wortley Montagu in London who became unmanageable for Lady Mary. After Queen Anne died, the Tory political rule ended and the Whigs came into power. Edward Wortley was elected to Parliament under George I, which allowed Lady Mary to move back into the city of London. In 1715 she contracted smallpox and survived it. She became friends with Alexander Pope and was active in writing with John Gay; she became known as a literary figure in London. Lady Mary and Alexander Pope wrote letters to each other in which she as not as infatuated with him as he as with her; their relationship grew sour and he later wrote nastily of her in //The Dunciad//.

In 1716, Edward was appointed ambassador to Turkey and Lady Mary went with him to Constantinople, the seat of the Ottoman Empire. She accompanied him on a diplomatic mission to keep trade between the English and Ottomans functioning and friendly relations between Austria and Turkey. After traveling through battlefields and woods crawling with wolves, she finally reached Turkey where many of her most intriguing letters were composed. She wrote the letter that will be compiled as //The Turkish Embassy Letters,// which describe her travels and cultural experiences in the Ottoman Empire. During her travels, she witnessed the practice of inoculation, which she later introduces to England. She had a daughter while she was still in the Ottoman Empire who later becomes Countess of Bute.

Edward Wortley Montagu was recalled to England in 1718 and they arrived in England in the fall of that year. After Lady Mary returned to England, she continued to read and write along with embroidering and overseeing the education of her daughter. Upon her return, she edited her travel narratives although she had no intention of publishing them. She circulated her letters through her circle of friends but did not want them published because it would embarrass her family and stain her upper-class status. She also wrote a series of poems on the topics of societies unjust treatment of women.

In the 1720’s she is most known for her introduction of the inoculation of smallpox into western medicine. She learned of this common practice in folk medicine in Turkey from old women. She contracted smallpox earlier in her life and her physical appearance was greatly impacted by the scars of smallpox. She inoculated her five-year old son, making her the first English woman to bring the practice home from the Ottoman Empire. Among her friends the practice was accepted and it spread rapidly, but publically she was critiqued for practicing inoculation. She was accused of gambling her children’s lives with the procedure and her adoption of a medical practice from the backward Ottoman Empire caused media warfare against her.

Upon return to England, she moved lived in Italy without Edward Montagu and cultivated the letters. While she was living with a priest, her letters were stolen and published. Her daughter burned Montagu’s diaries after this event took place because she did not want them published as did her letters.

//The// //Turkish Embassy Letters// chronicle her experiences and interactions with Turkish culture. Lady Mary focuses on the aesthetic appeal of the Turks and specifically the private spaces of women. She wrote to Alexander Pope regarding the beauties of Turkish poetry and took it upon herself to learn Turkish language and grammar in order to translate their beautiful poems into English for her correspondents. Lady Mary participates in a Turkish woman’s courtly lifestyle and attempts to have the experiences of a Turkish woman during her travels.
 * The Turkish Embassy Letters**

Lady Mary viewed the liberties the women had in the Ottoman Empire as pleasant. She showed admiration towards Turkish women’s unpretentious attitudes in relation to each other in the harem and bathhouses; there was nothing similar in Lady Mary’s experiences in the Ottoman Empire to her experiences of gossip and judgment in England. In the bathhouses, women have freedom of conversation similar to the freedom of conversation men have in the coffeehouses. She is particularly infatuated with the custom of the veil in the Ottoman Empire because it allowed women to freely participate in public and economic life. Lady Mary notes that women in the Ottoman Empire are free to have affairs because they can visit lovers’ homes without having their identity revealed. The veil is a symbol of liberation in //The Turkish Embassy Letters// and Lady Mary wishes that this custom were in England.

In //The// //Turkish Embassy Letters,// she elaborates on how Ottoman women are fascinated by the corset she is wearing during her visit to the bathhouse, claiming that it is some device that her husband cruelly puts her body in. Lady Mary does not undress at the bathhouse or disagree with the Turkish women’s comments, which sets up a representation of a diverging view of the gender relationships of the Turks proposed by English travelers. Male travel writers usually represented Islamic women as oppressed, but Lady Mary is the English woman in the bathhouse who is unable to participate in that liberating experience. Her representation places English women as the ones being observed as restricted in comparison to Turkish women. Lady Mary represents Ottoman women as liberated by customs seen by male travel writers as constraining.

In relation to her religious experiences in the Ottoman Empire, Lady Mary hates that Catholicism has relics with fake jewels, claiming that the priest used real jewels for personal ownership; she thinks their idolatry of relics is ridiculous. When she visits the convent, she dislikes it and claims that it is tragic for the nuns to never have been married. In relation to Islam, she says that the Alcoran is not as terrible as we make it out to be and it is “the purest morality delivered in the very best language” (Montagu, //The Turkish,// 106). Also, she notes that the Arnounts are the most aligned in understanding their human capacity because they acknowledge that they are unable to determine the best religion and practice both Christianity and Islam in order to have protection from the true Prophet on judgment day; they admit they are not able to judge the true religion in the world (Montagu, //The Turkish,// 107).

In relation to adoption and inheritance, Lady Mary likes the practice of the Turks when the upper class is not able to have children of their own, they choose a pretty child of the lower class and carry the child as their own and the birth parents denounce all claim to the child. The adopted child cannot be disinherited from the adoptive family. The English custom has inheritance granted based on family name, which Lady Mary finds as unreasonable. She says, “ ’tis much more reasonable to make happy and rich an infant whom I educate after my own manner…than to give an estate to a creature without other merit or relation to me by a few letters” (Montagu, //The Turkish,// 175).

//The Turkish Embassy Letters// represent travel writers as creating fantastical images of the Turks as backwards, barbarous, and highly passionate. Lady Mary suggests that contradictory to other travel writers’ perception of the other, the people we encounter on these voyages are very similar in human nature to ourselves. She found Turkey to be no more backwards or savage than her own country. Her eyewitness account of the Ottoman Empire gives her credibility in offering a different perspective of travel in the East. Her focus on learning Turkish customs helps her unlearn many stereotypes of Turkish culture compared to British culture that is represented by male travel writers. She offers a first hand account of the Turks, which she argues their representation has been misconstrued by other travel writers; she says, “the precipices were not so terrible as I had heard them represented” (Montagu, //The Turkish,// 108). Lady Mary continually notes that the accounts she is telling are true and the stereotypes formed by male English travelers are imaginary. She uses these letters to disprove the perception of the Ottomans travel writers have established in England while simultaneously staying descriptive and eloquent in her representations of the Ottomans.

There was political unrest between the Whigs and Tories. The Whigs were a political faction in England’s parliament. They opposed absolute rule and wanted a constitutional monarchy. The Whigs were in political power in 1718, which began in 1716 from the succession of George I. George I brought the rise of the Whig party as a majority presence in the government until the mid-century. The Tories valued conservatism, tradition, and supported the British monarchy and opposed political and religious reform. Religiously, in the British Empire, the English held protestant beliefs, the Irish were Roman Catholic, and Scotland held onto their traditional cultural practices. The differences between the lands in the British Empire caused religious unrest. The Tories wanted to retain the religious power of the church and wanted England to have less military involvement within other European countries. The Whigs supported religious tolerance and British involvement in European affairs.
 * 1718**

Outside of Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire was powerful because they controlled trade via the Mediterranean Sea, were large territorially, and had no definite boundaries. The Treaty of Passarowitz was a signed on July 21, 1718 between the Ottoman Empire, Austria, and the Republic of Venice. The Ottomans lost territories in the Balkans to Austria, which put an end to the Ottomans’ westward expansion that was, until this point, threatening to European countries. The treaty established peace between Austria and the Ottoman Empire while granting the Austrians trade privileges in the Ottoman Empire. Lady Mary and Edward left the Ottoman Empire before this treaty was signed. Because China and India offered cheaper silk than the Ottoman Empire, trade between the Ottomans and England decreased by the time Lady Mary traveled. Ottoman clothing still influenced fashion in Europe and coffeehouses, adopted from the Ottomans, were extremely popular in 1718.

The Transportation Act was signed in 1718; this act sent British convicts to the Americas for seven to fourteen years. Starting in 1718, people who committed capital and non-capital crimes were sent to live in Maryland and Virginia as punishment.

During 1718, the English theatre scene was changing due to the increased desire for variety in entertainment. There was no longer a single play offered as entertainment as it was in restoration times when one full-length drama was offered. The theater was considered show business that was highly focused on variety and theatrical advertisements. The houses transformed their offering from just drama to a variety of entertainments ranging from singing, dancing, and opera. For instance, on Thursday May 1, 1718 //Macbeth, The Busy Body,// and a musical concert occurred in the same day (The London Stage Part 2, 483).
 * The Theater Season in 1718[[image:http://rebeccariverslitblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/drury-lane-1795-edward-dayes-watercolor1.jpg width="420" height="289" align="right" caption="Google Image: Drury Lane Theater" link="http://rebeccariverslitblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/drury-lane-1795-edward-dayes-watercolor1.jpg"]]**

Some major theaters in 1718 were Drury Lane, Hampton Court, and Richmond Theater. The first Richmond Theater, developed by William Penkethman, opened in June 1718 and plays began on July 19, 1718. Playhouses advertised mainly by word of mouth along with inserting their playbills in the daily newspapers and posting them in the center of London traffic. The theater often used advertisements of new scenes, props, and costumes because they spent a great amount of money on them in order to keep their repertoire of plays interesting. In 1718 Drury Lane advertised new costumes for four plays, which displayed their large income. The total repertoire of plays grew steadily and began to include a play, afterpiece, epilogue, singing, and dancing. With plays commanded by royalty in Hampton Court and other theaters during 1718 and 1719, patronage was high throughout the season.

In relation to finances, playhouses entertained the mass public for profit and acting night was the main financial income of theaters. Actors received no pay except for acting nights and usually could expect to get paid for 170 days out of the year. The royal household assisted in providing finances to the playhouses because they requested special performances that greatly increased the profit of the playhouse. Patrons would pay to enter the playhouse not only to view the entertainment but also to view and be in the presence of royalty. Drury Lane profited from the special performances ordered by the king at Hampton Court in 1718. On November 22, 1718, //The Orphan// had been announced at Drury Lane but the king requested //Love Makes a Man//, causing the play to change on short notice.

Lady Mary relates to the theater season because she herself created a performance with The Turkish Embassy Letters and other writings. The letter itself was a means for Lady Mary to explore aesthetics and gender in the Ottoman Empire while being simultaneously present and absent. She is able to be expressive while maintaining her English upper-class status and persona through letter writing. She did not enter into the professional world of writing, staying absent, however the large circulation of her letters among her friends made her a present figure in the literary scene. Her letters are a performance that displays her reactions to her experiences and the social context in which she is surrounded. She can keep a level of reality that novelist don’t achieve. She can relay messages about the Ottoman Empire that expose the issues with the lifestyle of gentile English women through letters that stand as a true report of her experiences. She exposed private life of Turkish Women and her reactions in a restricted but public circulation method amongst her friends.
 * Performance in Letter Writing**

Lady Mary’s father, being a devoted Whig, belonged to the Kit-Cat Club, which was an association of men that promoted Whig agendas. Linda France’s poetry collection is a poetic biography of Lady Mary’s life. The chapters represent a part of Lady Mary’s life such as her time in York and her time in Turkey. The chapter surrounding Lady Mary’s Ottoman travels highlights her cosmopolitan nature as defined by Bernard Lewis. The poetry mimics the performance of letter writing by being obvious in its expression of thoughts and experiences while maintain a level of ambiguity between being a true account versus an interpretation.
 * The Toast of the Kit-Cat Club**[[image:http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/9781852246778_p0_v1_s260x420.jpg width="247" height="386" align="left" caption="The Toast of the Kit-Cat Club"]]

France’s poem of Lady Mary at the baths “In the Bangio”, begins “the first thing you thing of it corsets” and ends with “and the last thing you think of is corsets” (France, 2005, pg.38). There is a level of ambiguity that mimics Lady Mary’s letters; her status allowed her these experiences, however, in order to communicate them she had to be veiled. The veil symbolizes her blatant presences while still being unknown. France also highlights the point that Lady Mary admires Turkish women by juxtaposing English women with Turkish women without explicitly stating that the women are Turkish. In France’s poem “Recipe to Prevent the Smallpox”, she refers to the Turkish woman who taught Lady Mary the procedure as “old woman” yet describes Lady Mary as “English Lady” (France, 2005, pg. 39-40). She assigns a culture to Lady Mary not the Turkish women teaching Lady Mary inoculation. It is the English who need to be identified culturally in France’s interpretation; she captures Lady Mary’s resistance in stereotyping the Turks as immediately different and other as did other travel writers. France’s adaptation of the life of Lady Mary in poems emphasizes the way Lady Mary used //The Turkish Embassy Letters// to set misperceived representations of Ottoman culture in relation to the culture of the observer—the English.

In “An Expedient to put a stop to the spreading of Vice of Corruption” Lady Mary proposes that parliament be eliminated. She views parliament as a group of people who are hypocrites. She thinks that getting rid of parliament will rid of corruption that poisons personal integrity and morals. Although this is one of her short works, it was not published in a newspaper because if its contradiction with her gender and class status expectations and restrictions. Women of her status would have been looked down on if they became professional writers; she also would have been susceptible to arrest due to the content of this piece.
 * "An Expedient to put a stop to the spreading of Vice of Corruption"[[image:http://assets3.parliament.uk/iv/main-large//ImageVault/Images/id_224/scope_0/ImageVaultHandler.aspx.jpg align="right" caption="Parliament "]]**

Lady Mary attacks parliament claiming it is corrupt; she uses an ill leg as a comparison to parliament, saying according to any wise physician, the corrupt body part needs to be removed in order to restore the health of the body. She argues that “No man would be thought in his sense that would chuse to perish whole, rather than lose a part that no longer answer’d the end of its being” (Montagu, 1997, pg. 101). She represent the vice of corruption as something parliament brings and if men had sense they would see how it should the vice can easily be eliminated.

Lady Mary supports the king having full power, which is contradictory to the views of the Whigs during this time. In fact, it is similar to the ideas conveyed in //Heraclitus Ridens,// an eighteenth century Tory newspaper. She says, “We have a king…he is naturally sincere, which is the foundation of his honour, and incompatible with a base abject mind…we should leave him at liberty to act the dictates of his royal mind without constraint” (Montagu, 1977, pg. 102). The king, being a man of honesty, will only keep himself in company of honest men, which is why he should have full liberty. She sees a universal benefit to this and others who do not see it, she hopes, God will open their eyes to see how these men are just a set of people claiming power in which they do not have.

//Heraclitus Ridens: A discourse between Jest and Earnest; where many true word is pleasantly spoken, in all opposition to all libelers against the government// was a newspaper representing the views of the Tory political party. The paper is framed as a conversation between two men names Earnest and Jest surrounding the government. Jest and Earnest discussed some political and religious issues of present day England with references to the past political situations as justification for the beliefs they held.
 * Heraclitus Ridens: A discourse between Jest and Earnest**

The first periodical of this paper was in 1681 and in it Earl and Jest establish that moderation is necessary in all manners of debates and all manners of life. The argue that the Whigs have a different sort of moderation, one in which laws will be broken but no one will ever take notice of it or reprimand it. Earnest and Jest claim that the Whigs assume power to abate their duty, moderates thier oaths, and break them, which sets himself above the law. Earnest also claims that the Whigs have replaced zeal for moderation and vice versa, they are zealous when they should be moderate and moderate when they should be zealous. The stance of //Heraclitus Ridens// is in direct opposition to the Whigs, which was steadily fostered throughout the periodicals.

In 1718, //Heraclitus Ridens// focused on many issues surrounding the church and politics of England. They discussed how preachers have no understanding of the love and peace of God because of how they expressed their sermons—their language resembled the language of courtship. They also discussed how politicians invent imaginary fears to make their actions more plausible. It is said that they cast mist of strange fears and fogs among the vulgar to make dangers seem greater and more frightening. Also politicians are compared to a torpedo fish; when in danger they let out ink so they can escape without being seen. This argument aligns with their traditional views surrounding the political structure of England; they wanted to have a monarchical government and represented politicians as corrupt.

In relation to the Turks, Earnest hopes that Constantinople falls to the Germans to drive the Turks from expanding in Europe. The have unwelcome intrusions into Transylvania and they make havoc of the emperors conquests.

Jest and Earnest discussed the rightfulness of authority within England, strongly stating that the King has all authority because of virtue. They argue that the people are incapable of holding the sword because the fundamental constitution of the land denies it to them. The bishops are useless because every supreme governor has an inherent right to the strength of the country. Jest claims the people’s hands are equal to madman’s hands and if the sword were to go into any other hand other than the supreme governor, he would be forfeiting his duty to protect the people. //Heraclitus Ridens// discussed the issue of where legislative power resides through the periodicals. Based on viewing the writs of summons, they argue that supremacy and power reside in the King because the parliament is nothing more than creatures of the King’s will. They viewed the King as a representation of God and parliament as a representation of the people.

Jest and Earnest also discussed who has the right of inheritance of the throne in relation to the disinheritance of the Czar of Muscovy’s eldest son in 1718. They viewed the rightful inheritance to be the eldest son. They argue that by law of inheritance, for both the crown and common folk, it is evident that the first-born son should be heir to his fathers throne regardless of their character. The first-born make is the beginning of their father’s strength, therefore should have the right to inheritance. They are entitled to their father’s inheritance based on primogeniture. Considering primogeniture in relation to inheritance is a judicial law made by god and is also a moral law found by reason, which is therefore forever obligatory. They claim that to go against this law is to trust mans’ policy over God’s wisdom, will, and providence from the prevention of future evils. If inheritance is not based on primogeniture, the heart of the king and of his heir is in the hands of man rather than the lord. The first-born eldest son has the right to govern and Earnest and Jest argue if only men of grace should govern then people will never know who is their lawful king, who has the right to the crown, and who they should obey.

In regards to freedom of speech in the government, they discuss how freedom of speech is not the power of man to speak what they please, but it is the privilege only not to be punished but pardoned from the offence of speaking larger than it becomes them to do. We must understand freedom of speech to be ignorant slips of speech, not willful and malicious speech. The king rules all the power in parliament, including power of speech. //Heraclitus Ridens// continued to discuss the freedoms of the parliament and their relationship to the King in their papers.

 After exploring Lady Mary, her texts, and an eighteenth century newspaper from an opposing political party I am surprised to conclude that there are similarities between Lady Mary’s writings and Heraclitus Ridens.“An Expedient to put a stop to the spreading of Vice and Corruption” was similar to Heraclitus Ridens because it argued that the king should have absolute authority, parliament has no political control, and should be dissolved because of its uselessness.
 * Conclusions**

Heraclitus Ridens does not discuss literature, however, it does relate to Lady Mary as a writer in regard to her freedom of speech. Lady Mary’s performance in letter writing speaks to the periodicals point that there is no such thing as free speech. Although Lady Mary writes the letters that will later be known as The Turkish Embassy Letters, she is limited by her status in gender when it relates to publishing her writing for the mass public. Although the time she took to copy the letters and the manner in which she wrote them suggests that she intended for them to be published, she never declared that they were for public view. Lady Mary is only allowed to speak about the status of women and the aesthetics in the Ottoman Empire under the veil of the letters that were only intended to circulate among her friends.

 Heraclitus Ridens discussion of inheritance relate to Lady Mary’s discussion of adoption and inheritance in The Turkish Embassy Letters because they differ. Lady Mary thinks inheritance based on primogeniture is absurd and Earnest and Jest find it to be lawful and moral because of God’s providence. Another differing view is, in the representation on non-Europeans, Lady Mary represents the Turks as wonderful people, whom you would want to get involved with and learn and adopt their customs. She is there on diplomatic missions and wants readers to desire the things she describes. She represents Turkey as a place descendant of ancient Homeric Greeks, and their otherness and customs are fascinating to the English. The coffeehouse, fashion, and luxury goods represent English dependence on the “otherness” in the Ottoman Empire. Heraclitus Ridens has a negative view of the Turks presence in Europe and sees them as unwelcome and intruding.

Overall, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu developed an unabridged appreciation for beauty, luxury, and the aesthetic appeal of the Ottoman Empire. Her juxtaposition of Turkish women and English women contradicts the stereotypes of non-European women in travel writing. Her political views based on her writing fluctuated as she got older, nonetheless her presences as a literary figure was controversial yet valuable in showing a divergent view of travel in the eighteenth century. Heraclitus Ridens in 1718 represented a differing political view than Lady Mary offered; its ideological differences help situate her in conversation with the political discourse of the time. Her time in the Ottoman Empire and her gender allowed her to be removed from the political disagreements of the time while still being able to comment behind the concealment of her letters. Her writing and the adaptation of her life displays an elegant ambiguity to her representation of her travel experiences and involvement in the politics of print culture in the eighteenth century.

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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Created by:** Brittany Boyd, English 416, Fall 2013, December 11, 2013