Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Poems Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Although Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is now best known for her Turkish Embassy Letters, she wrote poetry and essays as well.[55] A number of Lady Mary's poems and essays were printed in her lifetime, either without or with her permission, in newspapers, in miscellanies, and independently.[1]

Montagu did not intend to publish her poetry, but it did circulate widely, in manuscript, among members of her own social circle.[56] Lady Mary was highly suspicious of any idealizing literary language.[57] She wrote most often in heroic couplets, a serious poetic form to employ, and, according to Susan Staves, "excelled at answer poems".[57] Some of her widely anthologized poems include "Constantinople" and "Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to her Husband". "Constantinople", written in January 1718, is a beautiful poem in heroic couplets describing Britain and Turkey through human history, and representing the states of mind "of knaves, coxcombs, the mob, and party zealous—all characteristic of the London of her time".[58] "Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to her Husband", written in 1724, stages a letter from Mrs. Yonge to her libertine husband and exposes the social double standard which led to the shaming and distress of Mrs. Yonge after her divorce.[59] In 1737 and 1738, Lady Mary published anonymously a political periodical called the Nonsense of Common-Sense, supporting the Robert Walpole government. The title was a reference to a journal of the liberal opposition entitled Common Sense. She wrote six Town Eclogues and other poems.[35]

During the twentieth century Lady Mary's letters were edited separately from her essays, poems and plays.[35] She wrote notable letters describing her travels through Europe and the Ottoman Empire; these appeared after her death in three volumes. Lady Mary corresponded with Anne Wortley and wrote courtship letters to her future husband Edward Wortley Montagu, as well as love letters to Francesco Algarotti. She corresponded with notable writers, intellectuals and aristocrats of her day. She wrote gossip letters and letters berating the vagaries of fashionable people to her sister, Lady Mar, the daughter of the Whig Duke of Kingston. They met when the Wortleys visited Paris, France on 29 September 1718.[60] During her visit, Montagu observed the beauties and behaviors of Parisian women. She wrote "their hair cut short and curled round their faces, loaded with powder that makes it look like white wool!"[61] In one of their correspondences, Lady Mary informed her sister of the 'surprising death' of her father. Furthermore, they exchanged intellectual letters with Montagu's only daughter, Lady Bute. Lady Mary and Lady Mar discontinued their correspondence in 1727.[62] Although not published during her lifetime, her letters from Turkey were clearly intended for print. She revised them extensively and gave a transcript to the Reverend Benjamin Sowden, a British clergyman, in Rotterdam in 1761. Sowden also lent the book to two English travelers, including Thomas Becket.[63] Furthermore, during that night, the travelers made copies of her letters.[64] After the travelers returned the book, Sowden handed the book to Lord Bute, the husband of Lady Mary's only daughter, in exchange for two hundred pounds.[63] In 1763 in London, the year after Montagu's death, Becket and De Hondt published this error-laden version manuscript in three volumes, entitled Letters of the Right Honourable Lady My W—y M----e: Written, during her Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa, to Persons of Distinction, Men of Letters, &c. in different Parts of Europe; Which contain, Among other curious Relations, Accounts of the Policy and Manners of the Turks, commonly referred to as the Embassy Letters or Turkish Embassy Letters because it was "composed during and after Montagu's journey through Europe to Constantinople in the company of her husband."[1][26][63] The first edition of the book sold out; in fact, the Critical Review newspaper editor, Tobias Smollett, wrote that the letters were "never equaled by any letter-writer of any sex, age or nation" and Voltaire also had high praise of these letters.[65] Four years later in 1767, editor John Cleland added five spurious letters, along with previous printed essays and verses, to the previous edition of the book.[66]

Despite the immediate success following the publication of Turkish Embassy Letters, Lady Bute was furious and worried about how an unauthorized publication would impact the family's reputation.[67] One of the manuscript volumes that others found was Lady Mary's famous diary, and Lady Bute did not have any knowledge of this existence until a few days before her mother's death.[67] After she received these volumes, Lady Bute "kept it always under lock and key, and though she often looked over it herself, and read passages aloud to her daughters and friends, excepting the first five or six copy-books, which at a late period, she permitted Lady Louisa Stuart to peruse alone, upon condition that nothing should be transcribed."[67] Lady Louisa Stuart, the youngest of Lady Bute's daughters, was scolded for reading books and wanting to be like her grandmother.[60] Later, Lady Louisa followed her grandmother's footsteps and became a writer.[68] Then when Lady Bute felt that the end of her life was near, in 1794, she burnt the diary that her mother kept since her marriage.[67] She chose to burn the diary because Lady Bute always spoke to her mother with great respect, and she feared the possibility of a scandal.[67]

According to O'Quinn, although The Turkish Embassy Letters has been considered one of the best literary works published in the eighteenth century, the work has not been as appreciated as those published by her male peers, such as Alexander Pope and Horace Walpole.[26] She was the "target of vicious attacks"[26] from printing presses and male peers. Although she describes her travels through Europe to the Ottoman Empire in The Turkish Embassy Letters to her correspondents, very few of the letters survived, and the letters in the book may not be accurate transcriptions of the actual correspondence.[69] According to Daniel O'Quinn, the book was not a culmination of facts but of opinions, and there must be some filtering during the editing processes.[69] Furthermore, to avoid public censure, Montagu used pseudonyms, such as "a Turkey merchant" and "Lady President", in her publications.[70] Lastly, Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters was published posthumously-Walpole affirmed that it was Montagu’s deathbed wish to get the letters published.[66]

An important early letter was published, probably without Montagu's consent, titled "The Genuine Copy of a Letter Written From Constantinople by an English Lady" in 1719.[71][72] Both in this letter and in the Turkish Embassy Letters more broadly, particularly in the letters about the scholar Achmet Beg, Montagu participates in a wider English dialogue on Enlightenment ideas about religion, particularly deism, and their overlap with Islamic theology.[73] Montagu, along with many others, including the freethinking scholar Henry Stubbe, celebrated Islam for what they saw as its rational approach to theology, for its strict monotheism, and for its teaching and practice around religious tolerance.[74] In short, Montagu and other thinkers in this tradition saw Islam as a source of Enlightenment, as evidenced in her calling the Qur'an "the purest morality delivered in the very best language"[75] By comparison, Montagu dedicated large portions of the Turkish Embassy Letters to criticizing Catholic religious practices, particularly Catholic beliefs around sainthood, miracles, and religious relics, which she frequently excoriated. In relation to these practices, she wrote, "I cannot fancy there is anything new in letting you know that priests can lie, and the mob believe all over the world."[76]

Montagu's Turkish letters were to prove an inspiration to later generations of European women travellers and writers. In particular, Montagu staked a claim to the authority of women's writing, due to their ability to access private homes and female-only spaces where men were not permitted. The title of her published letters is "Sources that Have Been Inaccessible to Other Travellers". The letters themselves frequently draw attention to the fact that they present a different, and Montagu asserts more accurate description than that provided by previous (male) travellers: "You will perhaps be surpriz'd at an Account so different from what you have been entertained with by the common Voyage-writers who are very fond of speaking of what they don't know."[35] In general, Montagu dismisses the quality of European travel literature of the 18th century as nothing more than "trite observations…superficial…[of] boys [who] only remember where they met with the best wine or the prettiest women". Montagu writes about the "warmth and civility"[77] of Ottoman women. She describes the hammam, a Turkish bath, "as a space of urbane homosociality, free of cruel satire and disdain".[78] She mentions that "hammam are remarkable for their undisguised admiration of the women's beauty and demeanor",[79] which creates a space for female authority. Montagu provides an intimate description of the women's bathhouse in Sofia, in which she derides male descriptions of the bathhouse as a site for unnatural sexual practices, instead insisting that it was "the Women's coffee house, where all the news of the Town is told, Scandal invented, etc."[35] Montagu's reference to "women's coffee house" represents the political and social freedom that women had access to in the Ottoman Empire during the 18th century.[80] Even though Montagu refused to undress for the bath at first, the girls managed to persuade her to "open my shirt, and show them my stays, which satisfied them very well".[30] In one letter to her sister Lady Mar, she wrote, "nothing will surprise you more than the sight of my person, as I am now in my Turkish habit."[80]

During Montagu's time in the Ottoman Empire, she saw and wrote extensively concerning the practise of slavery along with the treatment of slaves by the Turks. Montagu wrote many letters with positive descriptions of the various enslaved people that she saw in the elite circles of Istanbul, including eunuchs and large collections of serving and dancing girls dressed in expensive outfits.[81] In one of her letters written back home, famously from the interior of a bath house, she dismisses the idea that slaves of the Ottoman elite should be figures to be pitied. In response to her visit to the slave market in Istanbul, she wrote "you will imagine me half a Turk when I don't speak of it with the same horror other Christians have done before me, but I cannot forbear applauding the humanity of the Turks to those creatures. They are never ill-used, and their slavery is in my opinion no worse than servitude all over the world."[63]

Montagu's Turkish letters were frequently cited by Western female travellers, more than a century after her journey. Such writers cited Montagu's assertion that women travellers could gain an intimate view of Turkish life that was not available to their male counterparts. However, they also added corrections or elaborations to her observations.[2]

In 1739, a book was printed by an unknown author under the pseudonym "Sophia, a person of quality", titled Woman not Inferior to Man. This book is often attributed to Lady Mary.[82]

Her Letters and Works were published in 1837. Montagu's octogenarian granddaughter Lady Louisa Stuart contributed to this, anonymously, an introductory essay titled "Biographical Anecdotes of Lady M. W. Montagu", from which it was clear that Stuart was troubled by her grandmother's focus on sexual intrigues and did not see Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Account of the Court of George I at his Accession as history. However, Montagu's historical observations, both in the "Anecdotes" and the Turkish Embassy Letters, prove quite accurate when put in context.[83] Despite the availability of her work in print and the revival efforts of feminist scholars, the complexity and brilliance of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's extensive body of work has not yet been recognized to the fullest.[84]