An Early Ethnographer of Middle Eastern Women: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-

1762)
Author(s): Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
Source: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4, Arabic and Islamic Studies in
Honor of Nabia Abbott: Part Two (Oct., 1981), pp. 329-338
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/544606
Accessed: 11-06-2020 02:21 UTC

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 AN EARLY ETHNOGRAPHER OF MIDDLE EASTERN WOMEN:
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (1689-1762)

ELIZABETH WA RNOCK FERNEA. Universityi of Texas. Austin

I am now got into a new world, where every thing I see appears to me a
change of scene," wrote Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to her friend Lady Rich in
London.' The year was 1717. Lady Mary was the wife of Edward Wortley Montagu,
British Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of Turkey and representative of the
Levant Company. They had left England in August 1716, and spent seven months en
route.

Her reactions to the announcement of her husband's ambassadorial appointm

were recorded by her friend Joseph Spence, in letters to his mother:
Lady Mary, who had always delighted in romances and books of travels, was charmed w
thoughts of going into the East, though those embassies are generally an affair of twenty
and so 'twas a sort of dying to her friends and country. But 'twas travelling; 'twas going f
than most other people go; 'twas wandering; 'twas all whimsical, and charming; and so
out with all the pleasure imaginable.2

Turkey was indeed far from London, where Lady Mary was a brilliant, witty
in court circles, known for her private poetry and essays as well as for her p
discussions of arts and letters. Her good friends included poet and essayist Ale
Pope, the playwright William Congreve; the poet John Gay; and the Abb6 An
Conti, Italian philosopher, churchman, and poet. Lady Mary was determin
maintain her literary and court friendships even though she was far away and
began the series of Turkish Embassy Letters, written to close friends and relat
rewritten and polished, and finally published in 1763, the year after her death
their wit, clarity, honesty, and descriptive power, they have brought her posth
praise ever since from figures as great and varied as Voltaire, Dr. Johnson, the Engl
feminist Mary Astell, Thomas Carlyle, and Lytton Strachey. Edward Gibbon is s
have exclaimed, when he finished reading them, "What fire, what ease, what knowle
of Europe and Asia."3
Robert Halsband, her most recent biographer, has pointed out that Lady M
writings are used by scholars in many disciplines for their comments on pol
diplomacy, music, health, art, medical history (she campaigned for smallpox in
tion in England), and social history ("for her analysis of religion, custom
morality in Ottoman Turkey").4 But her work has another important dimensio

I Robert Halsband, ed., The Complete Letters of'

Ladv Mary Wortler Montagu (Oxford, 1965), vol.
1, p. 312.
[JNES 40 no. 4 (1981)] 2 Halsband, The Lif'e of Lady Mary Wortler
? 1981 by The University of Chicago. Montagu (Oxford, 1956), p. 56.
All rights reserved. 3 Ibid. p. 289.
0022-2968/81 / 4004-000650 1.00. 4 Preface to Letters, vol. 1, p. vii.
329

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330 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

can be justly called one of the earliest ethnographers of Mid

Mary, in 1717, was among the first to suggest that Muslim wom
"others" bound by a cruel code of restriction and oppression
and customs that were worthy, if not of emulation, at least of
"I went to the (Turkish) bagnio," Lady Mary continued in h
"about ten o'clock. It was already full of women. . . ." She go
the design and construction of the bath, the system of heati
the furniture, including sofas covered with cushions and ca
and their slaves could recline. The ladies were, she noted:

without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain
English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least
wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. They walked and moved with the same
majestic grace, which Milton describes our general mother with. ....

To make the scene and the people in the scene especially sympathetic and human to
her English reader, Lady Mary here employs one of the basic techniques of a
conscientious ethnographer trying to communicate the humanity of the peoples of
another culture. She likens their appearance or behavior to a figure, an institution, or
an object with which the audience is familiar. Using Milton's name and work in
relation to a Turkish bath full of naked women immediately lends an air of virtue and
artistry to what could otherwise be perceived rather differently. And, adding another
familiar comparison to her account, she goes on. "In short, (the bath) is the women's
coffee-house, where all the news of the town is told, scandal invented, etc...."
Finally, she involves herself in the encounter, which brings her audience even closer to
the scene. And she is not afraid of the reactions.

The lady that seemed the most considerable among them, entreated me to sit by her, a
fain have undressed me for the bath. I excused myself with some difficulty. They bein
all so earnest in persuading me, I was at last forced to open my shirt, and show them m
which satisfied them very well; for, I saw, they believed I was so locked up in that mac
it was not in my own power to open it, which contrivance they attributed to my hu

The description was copied out of the 1805 French translation of the Embass
by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, the French painter, and is found i
notebooks. As a result, his famous painting Le Bain Turc (1862) now in the L
said to reflect some of Lady Mary's observations.
It is not only Lady Mary's considerable wit and descriptive powers that
us here, but also her interest in her surroundings and her remarkable openn
values and ideas of another culture, an openness rare in any century, inclu
own. In short, Lady Mary seems remarkably free of ethnocentrism. Her c
about the beautiful Fatima, wife of the Kahya, or Second Officer after th
Vizier of the Sultan, might well apply to herself. "She is very curious after the m
of countrys [sic] and has not that partiality for her own, so common to little mi
Certainly the atmosphere of the period in which she lived influenced and i
Lady Mary's work. She came, after all, from a London where John Locke's p
ical ideas about empiricism were still being discussed, where equality of peo

5 Ibid., p. 313. 7 Ibid., p. 386.

6 Ibid., p. 314.

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 AN EARLY ETHNOGRAPHER OF MIDDLE EASTERN WOMEN 331

proclaimed as a possibility, where "natural religion" or Deism was the topic

churchman's reading list, to say nothing of the lay public and the intellectuals.
of travel to other countries had increased the average person's knowledge o
unknown world, whether it be America, India, Turkey, or the South Seas. T
historian Paul Hazard terms this period, the Enlightenment, the Age of Re
period between one century of belief in dogma and hierarchical princ
seventeenth century) and another (the nineteenth century). Hazard sees the
century as a time of exploration and discovery, in thought as well as action
accordingly a time when the customs and manners of other peoples seemed
less strange and more worthy of analysis.8 If all men were equal, were no
manners of worshipping God also equally valid? This revolutionary idea le
assessment of Islam as well as of Hinduism and Buddhism. The European a
toward the Koran, for example, almost totally changed during Lady Mary's
The first English edition of the Koran, done from an inaccurate French tr
appeared in London in 1649; the title page promised the reader "an introduct
Turkish vanities."' Yet within less than a hundred years English and French
had begun to examine the original Arabic texts themselves, had ridiculed th
Islam was a sweetmeat of vain licentious infidels, and had declared that Muhammad
was a great prophet and reformer. A new translation of the Koran, from the original
Arabic into English, was soon undertaken and was completed in 1734 by George Sale.
In France, Antoine Galland, of the College Royal, finished the first translation of the
Arabian Nights into a European language. (Lady Mary owned all ten volumes in
1739). By 1708 Simon Ockley, professor of Arabic at Cambridge, stated that the West
could not be considered superior to the East!'0
Lady Mary's work appears appropriate in such an intellectual climate. She was
obviously writing of subjects that interested her friends in England and France; their
letters to her were full of questions about the "new world" of the Ottoman Empire.
Many travel accounts of the exotic life of the East had appeared, and Lady Mary's
friends wanted to hear more. Lady Mary tries to answer the questions of her friends,
but the answers she gives are often very different from those of the ordinary European
travelers. Thus the Turkish Embassy Letters are valuable documents, not only as
evidence of an open, inquiring mind observing another culture and trying to see it
"empirically" and without preconceptions, but as data with which other accounts can
be compared.

Lady Mary's ethnographic contributions are limited in time and space, but they are
important in three areas: religious belief and ritual, the recording of material culture
and "vie quotidienne" of early eighteenth century Turkish court life, and the status of
women. Another contribution is her sense of the relationship between cultures, the
common elements in Islamic Turkey and the Christian West, which she welcomes. She
also is careful to identify areas of difference and does not let her "enlightenment"
views lead her to overlook problems in the two societies.
8 Paul Hazard, The European Mind (1680-1725) 9 1 am indebted to Dr. Willard Oxtoby of McGill
(London, 1953); see chap. 1, pp. 3-28. University for a copy of this title page.
10 Hazard, European Mind, p. 17.

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332 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

Lady Mary did not collect data in the sense that the moder
instructed to do. But she listened and looked carefully, and she offers pointed
observations and uses specific incidents to illustrate general trends she sees in Turkish
society. Her comparisons, as in the Turkish bath description above, lead the reader
into the strange culture by offering familiar signposts. She tries to correct stereotypes
currently in existence. Her anecdotes are chosen with care to both entertain and subtly
instruct the reader.
In the beginning, however, she felt she had to deal with the information her readers
already possessed. To an unidentified Lady -, she wrote in June 1717:
Your whole letter is full of mistakes from one end to 'tother, I see you have taken your Ideas of
Turkey from that worthy author Dumont, who has writ with equal ignorance and confidence.
'Tis a particular pleasure to me here to read the voyages to the Levant, which are generally so,
far remov'd from Truth and so full of Absurditys I am very well diverted with 'em. They never
fail giving you an Account of the Women, which 'tis certain they never saw, and talking very
wisely of the Genius of the Men, into whose Company they are never admitted, and very often
describe Mosques, which they dare not peep into."

As a woman, and as a member of the upper class and the diplomatic community,
Lady Mary was luckier than the unfortunate M. Jean Dumont, whose book Nouveau
Voyage au Levant had been translated and published in England in 1696. She was not
subject to the same restrictions as Dumont, for she had access to many areas of society
that were closed to him. Not only was she invited to dine by the widow of the Sultan
Mustafa and other great ladies of the Ottoman Empire, she was also entertained by
the French ambassador and his wife, and by other Europeans living in the city.
Not content with set and formal glimpses of social life in Constantinople she pushed
further, donning native dress to travel about the city, sometimes with friends,
sometimes alone. "The asmak, 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 inconveniency to
content a passion so powerful with me as curiosity," she wrote Lady Bristol in April
1718. In May 1718 she wrote the Countess of -, "I ramble every day, wrap'd up in
my ferige and asmak, about Constantinople, and amuse my selfe with seeing all that is
curious in it."'3 Garbed in her veils, she visited the Bosphorus, the Seraglio and its
gardens, the mosques, the Church of Santa Sophia, and also made some forays into
the markets. These she described by again using an English analogy, as holding "365
shops furnish'd with all sort of rich goods expos'd to sale in the same Manner as the
New Exchange in London."'4 She also goes out to view the camps of the Ottoman
army, preparing for a move to the frontiers, and describes the tents of the Sultan and
his court.5
The complicated social schedule of a diplomatic wife and the organization of a
household of servants seemed able to accommodate these anonymous wanderings as
well as the care of her young son, the beginning of her second pregnancy, her journal-
keeping and letter-writing, and her study of Turkish. She wrote Alexander Pope that
she spends Wednesdays "studying the Turkish language (in which, by the way, I am
already very learned).""' She sent Pope samples of her translations of Turkish poetry
I Letiters, vol. 1, p. 368. 14 Ibid., p. 354.
12 Ibid., p. 397. 15 Ibid., p. 356.
13 Ibid., p. 405. 16 Halsband, Life of Laduk Mary, p. 75.

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 AN EARLY ETHNOGRAPHER OF MIDDLE EASTERN WOMEN 333

and described to him and other readers some of the particular technical problems of
Turkish verse.
From translating and learning the language; from describing the sights, sounds, and
scenes around the Golden Horn, the mosques, the fountains, the markets, cloisters,
and monasteries, "the fine painted meadows by the side of the sea of Marmora";"7 she
turns next to subjects which she knows will interest not only her intellectual and
literary friends, but every lady (and gentleman) of the English court. The furniture,
houses, music, dance, the clothes, jewels, food, the customs of hospitality of the
Turkish upper-class household-the material culture of a vanished class and epoch-
are lovingly delineated here for future generations to enjoy and to learn from. Not
only do we see the Turkish bath, but the house of the Sultana Hafife, widow (and
former favorite) of Sultan Mustafa II.

I was led into a large room, with a Sofa the whole length of it, adorn'd with white Marble
Pillars like a ruelle, cover'd with pale bleu figur'd velvet on a silver Ground. ...
The Sultana's magnificent clothes, accented by diamonds, pearls and a "fine-colour'd
Emerald as big as a Turkey Egg" are pictured for her sister, Lady Mar, as is the table
setting:

The Knives were of Gold, the hafts set with di'monds, but the piece of Luxury that griev'd my
eyes was the Table cloth and napkins, which were all Tiffany embrodier'd with silks and Gold in
the finest manner in natural flowers. It was with the utmost regret that I made use of these
costly Napkins, as finely wrought as the finest handkercheifs that ever came out of this Country.
You may be sure that they were entirely spoilt before Dinner was over (a dinner of 50 dishes of
meat which, after their fashion was placed on the table but one at a time).

Conversations with the Sultana are employed by Lady Mary to dispose of various
questions concerning the harem and the seraglio.

The Emperor precedes his visit by a Royal present and then comes into her (the chosen lady's)
apartment. Neither is there any such thing as her creeping in at the bed's feet. Sometimes the
Sultan diverts him selfe in the Company of all his Ladies, who stand in a circle round him, and
she confess'd they were ready to dye with Jealousie and envy of the happy She that he
distinguish'd by any appearance of preference. But this seem'd to me neither better nor worse
than the Circles in most Courts where the Glance of the Monarch watch'd and every Smile
waited for with impatience and envy'd by those that cannot obtain it.18

Again the comparison with a known, familiar cultural pattern.

Lady Mary was clever enough to forestall criticisms of her detailed descriptions.
After all, many of her correspondents had read the tales of the Arabian Nights by this
time. She wrote her sister, Lady Mar:
Now do I fancy that you imagine I have entertain'd you all this while with a relation that has (at
least) receiv'd many Embellishments from my hand .... This is but too like (says you) the
Arabian Night tales; these embrodier'd Napkins, and a jewel as large as a Turkey's egg!-You
forget, dear Sister, those very tales were writ by an Author of this Country and (excepting the
Enchantments) are a real representation of the manners here.'9

17 Letters, p. 361. 19 Ibid., p. 385.

18 Ibid., p. 381-84.

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334 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

In the apartments of Fatima, the lady of the Kahya, or Second Officer

after the grand Vizier, she witnesses a sensuous performance of mu
Fatima's "20 Maids" which she does not hesitate to describe in a very
fashion. The Maids "put me in Mind of the pictures of ancient Nymp
"this Dance was very different from what I had seen before."
Nothing could be more artfull or more proper to raise certain Ideas, the
motions so Languishing, accompany'd with pauses and dying Eyes, half fal
recovering themselves in so artfull a Manner that I am very possitive the cold
Prude upon Earth could not have look'd upon them without thinking of so
spoke of.20

Lady Mary was impressed with what she observed of the status of Turkish women
in contrast to the observations made by others. Her analysis was of course confined to
the upper class, and she found the fact that women owned property in their own right
particularly striking, given the situation of English women in the eighteenth century.
She confided to her sister in April 1717:
Neither have they much to apprehend from the resentment of their Husbands, those Ladys that
are rich having all their money in their own hands, which they take with 'em upon a divorce
with an addition which he is oblig'd to give 'em. Upon the whole, I look upon the Turkish
women as the only free people in the Empire. .... 'Tis true their Law permits (the men) four
(4) wives, but there is no Instance of a Man of Quality that makes use of this Liberty, or a
woman of Rank that would suffer it.21

The confining of women is also considered in a letter to Alexander Pope:

I have frequent disputes with (Echmet Bey) concerning the differences of our Customs,
particularly the confinements of Women. He assures me there is nothing at all in it; only, says
he, we have the advantage that when our Wives cheat us, no body knows it.22

The all-enveloping ferigee and veil, seen as a disadvantage by most observers, was
viewed in quite a different light by Lady Mary. After her own freedom of wandering in
veiled garb, she wrote her sister,
'Tis very easy to see that they have more liberty than we have, no Woman of what rank so ever
being permitted to go in the streets (without the veil and the ferigee). .. you may guess how
effectively this disguises them, that there is no distinguishing the great Lady from the slave, and
'tis impossible for the most jealous Husband to know his wife when he meets her, and no Man
dare either touch or follow a Woman in the Street. . ... This perpetual Masquerade gives them
entire Liberty of following their Inclinations without danger of Discovery.23

Women's place in Islam is considered in several letters, most notably in two written
to Abbe Conti, who was at that time in Paris. In February 1718, she answered some
questions he had posed:

Quant a votre seconde demande, je vous diray que c'est une chose certainement fausse, quoique
communement crue parmi nous, que Mahomet exclut les femmes de toute participation t une
vie future & bienheureuse. I1 etoit trop galant homme & aimoit trop le beau Sexe, pour le traiter

20 Ibid., p. 351. 22 Ibid., p. 308.

21 Ibid., p. 329. 23 Ibid., p. 328.

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 AN EARLY ETHNOGRAPHER OF MIDDLE EASTERN WOMEN 335

d'une maniere si barbare. Au contraire, il promet un tres-beau Paradis aux femmes Turques. 11
dit, A la verit6, que ce sera un Paradis separe de deluy de leurs Maris; mais je crois que la
pluspart n'ent seront pas moins contentes pour cela; & que le regret de cette separation, ne leur
rendra pas ce Paradis moins agreable.24

Despite the accommodation of women in paradise, Lady Mary had no doubt about
the role which the Prophet had designated for woman on earth, they were to live, she
explained, so that they will be useful; in other words, they should occupy themselves
as far as possible "a faire des petits Musulmans."25 The key importance of motherhood
as giving role and status is mentioned several times in the letters, and the Turkish
woman's fear of being barren is seen as so great that
they do not content themselves with using the natural means, but fly to all sort of Quackerys to
avoid the Scandal of being past Child bearing and often kill themselves by 'em . . . when I have
ask'd them sometimes how they expected to provide for such a Flock as they desire, They
answer that the Plague will certainly kill half of 'em; which, indeed generally happens. ....26

During these months, Lady Mary herself was pregnant. She wrote to Anne Thistle-
thwayte on 4 January 1718 that she was getting ready to call for the midwife.
I am at this present writing not very much turn'd for the recollection of what is diverting, my
head being wholly fill'd with the preparations necessary for the Encrease of my family, which I
expect every day. You may easily guess at my uneasie Situation; but I am, however, in some
degree comforted by the glory that accrues to me from it, and a reflection to the contempt I
shou'd otherswise fall under.... You won't know what to make of this Speech, but in this
country 'tis more despicable to be marry'd and not fruitfull, than 'tis with us to be fruitfull
before Marriage.27

And although she admires the "liberty" of the Turkish ladies, she is not so blinded
by romanticism that she is not aware of the many problems. The news of the death of
a young woman by an unknown hand prompts a discussion of crimes of "honor."

'Tis true the same customs that give them so many opportunitys of gratifying their evil
Inclinations (if they have any) also puts it very fully in the power of their Husbands to revenge
them if they are discover'd and I don't doubt but that they suffer sometimes for their
Indiscretions in a very severe manner.28

Lady Mary provides descriptions of pre-nuptial baths, of marriage processions and

gift giving, of childbirth, of slavery, of enchantments, sorceries, and the so-called balm
of Mecca. Accounts of the performances of the Whirling Dervishes had already
reached Europe, so Lady Mary took it upon herself to witness a session of their
devotions. She described it carefully, concluding "The whole is perform'd with the
most solemn gravity. Nothing can be more austere than the form of these people."29
She also takes up the subject of comparative religion. While in Belgrade, en route to
Constantinople, she and her husband had been housed with a religious judge, the Cadi
Effendi Achmet-Beg. To Abbe Conti, she related the substance of some of their
conversations:

24 Ibid., p. 375-76. 27 Ibid.

25 Ibid. 28 Ibid., p. 407.
26 Ibid., p. 372. 29 Ibid., p. 403.

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336 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

Mahometism is divided into as many Sects as Christianity, and th

neglected and obsdur'd by the interpretations. I cannot here foreb
Inclination of Mankind to make Mysterys and Noveltys. The Zeidi,
in mind of the Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, etc., and are equally
But the most prevailing Opinion, if you search into the Secret o
Deism...." (The Cadi) "assur'd me that if I understood Arabic I sh
with reading the Alcoran, which is far from the nonsense we cha
morality deliver'd in the very best Language. I have since heard im
in the same manner, and I don't doubt but all our translations are
Greek Preists, who would not fail to falsify it with the extrem

She ended the letter by adding:

I don't ask your pardon for the Liberty I have taken in speaking
equally condemn the Quackery of all Churches as much as you r
which we both agree."

Her belief in Deism is enunciated in many letters, a Deism w

between East and West, between Islam and Christianity, be
both worlds.

III

The Turkish Embassy sojourn did not last twenty years for the Montagus. A
combination of national and international problems and Wortley's own fumbling led
to his recall. Wortley, Lady Mary, and their two children came home to London in
1718.

Educating her children and managing her household once more occupied only part
of Lady Mary's prodigious energies. She continued to write poems, essays, fairy tales,
and letters. She worked vigorously for the introduction of smallpox vaccination in
England. She resumed her social life at court, but her marriage was failing, and
eventually she and her husband drifted apart. In her papers several allusions are found
to the ease of divorce in Turkey, and at one point apparently Lady Mary considered
campaigning for a liberalization of English laws concerning divorce and women's
dowry. But although she held some feminist views, she was too attached to the
prescribed roles of her status and class to pursue them actively.
By 1739 the Wortley Montagu children were grown. Lady Mary left England,
purportedly to travel, with Wortley to follow afterward. But they both knew she was
going abroad to meet a certain Count Algarotti. Though never formally dissolved, the
marriage effectively ended at this point, and Lady Mary lived abroad for most of the
rest of her life, writing to her children and her friends, from Italy and France, writing,
always writing, wherever she was. In January 1762, tired and ill, she returned to
England and all of London rushed to see "that extraordinary Phenomenon" whose
reputation had preceded her. Ravaged by an advanced breast cancer, and living in
somewhat straitened circumstances, "her face," Horace Walpole told her, had not
changed in twenty years, and she was so delighted that she boxed his ears! Walpole

30 Ibid.. p. 318. 3I Ibid., p. 320.

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 AN EARLY ETHNOGRAPHER OF MIDDLE EASTERN WOMEN 337

told friends Lady Mary was indeed still very lively.32 Her last months were s
receiving friends and admirers; she died in August 1762.
After her death, the Turkish Embassy Letters were published (in May 1763) a
with instant success. Her daughter, Lady Bute, whose husband had been by th
appointed to the Privy Council of George III, was furious and also terrified a
effect this unauthorized publication might have on the family's position.

All the public acclaim (and the private praise she must have heard), did not alter Lady
belief that it was unseemly for Lady Mary to be an author, an idea which remained in her
until the middle of the next century."

To avoid any further possibility of scandal, Lady Bute burned all the diaries t
mother had kept faithfully from the time of her marriage, through her stay in Tu
and until the very end of her life. The letters remained, in addition to other letter
a number of private papers, but the loss of the diaries can hardly be overestim
was not until 1835 that her own great-grandson Lord Wharncliffe agre
corrected edition of these letters. Since then, many critics have worked over
papers, and several biographies have appeared; the most complete and recent a
is that of Robert Halsband.
Lady Mary herself might have had mixed feelings about the burning of h
For in her later years, restless, bored, and unhappy, she became increasingl
tive and agreed with many of her daughter's views, especially those about t
of superiority and the duties of the upper classes. She had become more
disillusioned with the Enlightenment ideals of equality and natural religion
the lack of congruency between the ideals of the Enlightenment she h
sionately advocated in her youth and the events of her own life helped crea
reaction and eventual bitterness. While living abroad, she had been alternately
maligned and praised at home on moral as well as literary grounds. Her travels
throughout Europe in the company of various gentlemen naturally aroused gossip, but
the unauthorized publication of her poems in 1745 stimulated new interest in her
literary achievement.34
She continually expressed vexation and annoyance at these numerous unauthorized
publications of her work, but her words often contradict her actions. For although she
stated that "one of the most distinguished prerogatives of mankind, writing, was
contemptible if done for money"" and in fact smacked of "trade" rather than art, she
nevertheless wrote, rewrote and published her work, especially the Embassy Letters,
which she showed privately to many friends. Mary Astell, an early English feminist,
read the letters in 1724, urged that they be published, and wrote an enthusiastic
preface to them.

I confess I am malicious enough to desire that the World shou'd see to how much better purpose
the Ladys Travel than their Lords, and that whilst it is surfeited with Male Travels, all in the
same Tone and stuft with the same Trifles, a Ladi" has the skill to strike out a New Path and to
embellish a worn-out Subject with a variety of fresh and elegant Entertainment.6

32 Halsband, Lif/e of lad/v Marv. p. 281. 35 Ibid.

33 Ibid.. p. 289. 36 Ibid.. p. 467.
34 Ibid.. p. 255.

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338 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

The Letters, of course, did not appear then, but Lady Ma

published after her death. This is indicated by the fact that the
departing for England in 1762 was to leave her autograph co
with the Reverend Benjamin Sowden, minister of the Englis
with a note that he was to do with them as he saw fit.
Lady Mary would no doubt be surprised at being termed an ethnographer, s
word hardly existed at the time, and anthropology as the study of other cult
not to appear as a serious discipline for another hundred years. We might sp
however, that she would have been pleased to be praised for the qualitie
ethnographer: the openness to new ideas, the non-judgmental attitude; the eye
important details that illuminate the broader picture; the ability to see one
one's culture from another point of view: the talent to convey these percep
vividly that an ordinary audience not only learns, but is cheered and entertai
these are literary as well as ethnographic accomplishments.
Lady Mary is often characterized as a figure of the Enlightenment salons: a bril
witty personality, always attractive and well-dressed, a dilettante of letters. H
crops up in the memoirs of Addison, Horace Walpole, Alexander Pope, Lord
and countless others. This assessment ignores the discipline of her work and
her achievements. As a woman and a member of the aristocracy, she was exp
live up to the duties of her role, and she did so. But despite the setbacks, trou
pleasures of her long life, she continued to write, experimenting with poetic
writing plays, fairy tales, essays, and letters. Like the Turkish ladies she so
describes in the Embassy Letters, her private life was her own, and she involved h
in serious pursuits, as an artist and intellectual. Her dying wish, as reported b
Walpole, reflects the basic conflict of her life. "She expressed 'great anxiety'
two volumes of letters she given the clergyman in Holland should be publish
her family were in terror lest they should be.""37 The words seem truer to her spir
the death-bed remark frequently attributed to her: "It has all been very interestin
After two hundred and fifty years, the freshness of the Turkish Embassy
reminds us what ethnography could and should be. Middle Eastern women a
who admire, write, and study about Middle Eastern women are indebted
Mary Wortley Montagu for the warm-hearted, clever, and faithful portrait of Tu
court life she left behind for later generations.

37 Ibid.. p. 287. 38 Iris Barry. Portrait of Ladr Mary Montagu

(Indianapolis, 1928). p. 294.

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