Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Poems

Marriage and embassy to Ottoman Empire

Engagement

Mary Wortley Montagu with her son Edward, by Jean-Baptiste van Mour

By 1710, Lady Mary had two possible suitors to choose from: Edward Wortley Montagu (born 8 February 1678) and Clotworthy Skeffington.[14] The friendship between Lady Mary and Edward Wortley Montagu, the son of Sidney Wortley Montagu, began through Edward's younger sister Anne Wortley.[15] In London, Anne and Lady Mary met frequently at social functions and exchanged visits to each other's homes.[15] They also communicated through writing, in which they filled their letters with "trivial gossip" and "effusive compliments".[15] After Anne died in November 1709, Lady Mary began conversing with Anne's brother Edward Wortley Montagu.[16] Lady Mary often met Edward at "friends' houses" and "at Court".[16] On 28 March 1710, she wrote the first letter she addressed to Edward.[16] Lady Mary corresponded with Edward Wortley Montagu via letters until 2 May 1711 without her father's permission.[16]

Keeping up with their communication became harder when Lady Mary's father bought a house at Acton, a suburban village famous for its mineral springs.[16] Lady Mary hated the house because it was 'dull and disagreeable,' and it did not have a library in it.[16] A few weeks after moving, Lady Mary had the measles, and she asked her maid to write Edward a letter to tell him about the illness.[16] Soon, there were misunderstandings between Edward and Lady Mary. Edward hurried to Acton.[16] There, he left a note, revealing his love: "I should be overjoyed to hear your Beauty is very much impaired, could I be pleased with anything that would give you displeasure, for it would lessen the number of Admirers."[16] In response, she scolded his indiscretion by saying, "Forgive and forget me."[16] Then, in his reply, Edward stated that "he would deal with her father if he were sure they could be happy together."[16] This reply helped Lady Mary forget her irritation. Lady Mary in Acton and Edward in London kept writing to each other until the early summer of 1710.[16]

Lady Mary's primary concern with her engagement was financial, not romantic. Lady Mary denied transient emotions guiding her life: "I can esteem, I can be a friend, but I don't know whether I can love."[16] Then, after setting forth all her terms, including her deference, she warned to Edward that "Make no answer to this, if you can like me on my own terms" and that his proposals not be made for her.[16] However, these correspondences soon endangered Edward. In one particular letter, Edward wrote, "Her being better in 1710, the consequence of its being known that I write to her."[16] A servant in Lady Mary's household found this letter and gave it to her father; this letter put her father "in the utmost rage."[16] However, Wortley was flattered that Lady Mary "had given the father as 'an artifice to bring the affair to a proper conclusion.'"[16] The next day, Wortley called Lady Mary's father about a formal proposal.[16] Mary's father, now Marquess of Dorchester had insisted on one condition in the marriage contract: "that Wortley's estate be entailed on the first son born to him."[16] However, Wortley refused to do this as it would require £10,000.[16]

Consequently, in order to convince Lady Mary's father, Edward thought of publishing the marriage contract in the Tatler, a British journal.[16] On the Tatler's issue of 18 July, Wortley wrote the following: "Her first lover has ten to one against him. The very hour after he has opened his heart and his rent rolls he is made no other use of but to raise her price…While the poor lover very innocently waits, till the plenipotentiaries at the inns of court have debated about the alliance, all the partisans of the lady throw difficulties in the way, till other offers come in; and the man who came first is not put in possession, until she has been refused by half the town."[17] These arguments did not persuade Lord Dorchester.[17] Even though these negotiations reached an impasse, Lady Mary and Edward continued corresponding with one another.

At the end of March 1711, Lady Mary's father 'determined to end her friendship with Wortley'.[18] Her father summoned her to a conference, forced her to promise to not to write, and hustled her to West Dean.[18] However, Lady Mary broke her promise to tell Wortley about her rights and duty: "Had you had any real Affection for me, you would have long go applied yourself to him, from whose hand only you can receive me."[18] After their exchanges of disagreements and realizing she did not like him, he realized their friendship must end.[18] On 2 May, he replied, "Adieu, Dearest L[ady] M[ary]. This once be assur’d you will not deceive me. I expect no answer."[18] Consequently, Lady Mary did not respond that summer.[19] In that same summer, her father Lord Dorchester decided to find a husband other than Edward Wortley Montagu for his daughter.[20]

Lady Mary's father pressured her to marry Clotworthy Skeffington, the heir to the Irish Viscount Massereene.[21] Skeffington's marriage contract included "an allowance of £500 a year as 'pin-money,' and £1,200 a year if he died."[21] However, she rejected him. Thus, to avoid marriage to Skeffington, she eloped with Montagu. In a letter to Wortley, she wrote, "He [my father] will have a thousand plausible reasons for being irreconcilable, and ‘tis very probable the world will be on his side…I shall come to you with only a night-gown and petticoat, and that is all you will get with me. I told a lady of my friends what I intended to do. You will think her a very good friend when I tell you she has proffered to lend us her house if we would come there the first night…If you determine to go to that lady's house, you had better come with a coach and six at seven o’clock to-morrow."[22] The marriage license is dated 17 August 1712, and the marriage probably took place on 23 August 1712.[14][23]

Early married life before travelling to the Ottoman Empire

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Edward Wortley Montagu spent the first years of their married life in England. She had a son, Edward Wortley Montagu the younger, named after his father Edward Wortley Montagu, on 16 May 1713, in London.[24][25] On 13 October 1714, her husband accepted the post of Junior Commissioner of the Treasury. When Lady Mary joined him in London, her wit and beauty soon made her a prominent figure at court. She was among the society of George I and George Augustus, Prince of Wales, and counted amongst her friends Molly Skerritt, Lady Walpole, John, Lord Hervey, Mary Astell, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and Abbé Antonio Schinella Conti.[1]

In December 1715, at the age of twenty-six, Lady Mary contracted smallpox. She survived, but while she was ill someone circulated the satirical "court eclogues" she had been writing. One of the poems was read as an attack on Caroline, Princess of Wales, in spite of the fact that the "attack" was voiced by a character who was herself heavily satirised.[14]

Husband's assignment to Constantinople

Mary Wortley Montagu, by Charles Jervas, after 1716

In 1716, Edward Wortley Montagu was appointed Ambassador at Constantinople to negotiate an end to the Austro-Turkish War.[26] In August 1716, Lady Mary accompanied him to Vienna, and thence to Adrianople and Constantinople. He was recalled in 1717, but they remained at Constantinople until 1718. While away from England, the Wortley Montagus had a daughter on 19 January 1718, who would grow up to be Mary, Countess of Bute.[14] After an unsuccessful delegation between Austria and the Ottoman Empire, they set sail for England via the Mediterranean, and reached London on 2 October 1718.[14] In the same year, the Austrians and Turkish signed the Treaty of Passarowitz at the conclusion of the Austro-Turkish War.[27]

The story of this voyage and of her observations of Eastern life is told in Letters from Turkey, a series of lively letters full of graphic descriptions; Letters is often credited as being an inspiration for subsequent female travelers and writers, as well as for much Orientalist art. During her visit she was sincerely charmed by the beauty and hospitality of the Ottoman women she encountered. In letters she wrote about how different fashion was as she made her way to Turkey. In a letter to Lady Mar, from Vienna, she wrote: "They build certain fabrics of gauze on their heads, about a yard high, consisting of three or four stories, fortified with numberless yards of heavy ribbon…Their whalebone petticoats outdo ours by several yards' circumference, and cover some acres of ground."[28] Furthermore, she recorded her experiences in a Turkish bath, which are reserved for both diversion and health.[29] In a letter, she wrote, "They [Ottoman women] generally take this diversion once a week, and stay there at least four or five hours, without getting cold immediately coming out of the hot bath into the cold room, which was surprising to me."[30] She also recorded a particularly amusing incident in which a group of Turkish women at a bath in Sofia, horrified by the sight of the stays she was wearing, exclaimed that "they believed I was so locked up in that machine that it was not in my own power to open it, which contrivance they attributed to my husband."[31] Lady Mary wrote about the misconceptions that previous travelers, specifically male travelers, had recorded about the religion, traditions and the treatment of women in the Ottoman Empire. Her gender and class status provided her with access to female spaces that were closed off to males. Her personal interactions with Ottoman women enabled her to provide, in her view, a more accurate account of Turkish women, their dress, habits, traditions, limitations and liberties, at times irrefutably more a critique of the Occident than a praise of the Orient.[14] Montagu also carefully constructed Ottoman female spaces, and her own engagement with Ottoman women, as full of homoerotic desire, which is consistent with the gender and sexual fluidity that characterized much of her life and writings.[32][33]


This content is from Wikipedia. GradeSaver is providing this content as a courtesy until we can offer a professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors. We do not consider this content professional or citable. Please use your discretion when relying on it.