Mary Montagu seems to have become quite proficient in Turkish, and Darcy is pleased to share some of the first examples of Turkish transliterated (however imperfectly) into the Latin script."I have got for you, as you desire, a Turkish love-letter, which I have put into a little box, and ordered the captain of the Smyrniote to deliver it to you with this letter. The translation of it is literally as follows: The first piece you should pull out of the purse, is a little pearl, which is in Turkish called Ingi, and must be understood in this manner:
Ingi, Sensin Uzellerin gingi
Pearl, Fairest of the young.
Caremfil, Caremfilsen cararen yok
Clove, Conge gulsum timarin yok
Benseny chok than severim
Senin benden, haberin yok.
You are as slender as the clove!
You are an unblown rose!
I have long loved you, and you have not known it!
Pul, Derdime derman bul
Jonquil, Have pity on my passion!
Kihat, Birlerum sahat sahat
Paper, I faint every hour!
Ermus, Ver bixe bir umut
Pear, Give me some hope.
Jabun, Derdinden oldum zabun
Soap, I am sick with love.
Chemur, Ben oliyim size umur
Coal, May I die, and all my years be yours!
Gul, Ben aglarum sen gul
A rose, May you be pleased, and your sorrows mine!
Hasir, Oliim sana yazir
A straw, Suffer me to be your slave.
Jo ho, Ustune bulunmaz pahu
Cloth, Your price is not to be found.
Tartsin, Sen ghel ben chekeim senin hargin
Cinnamon, But my fortune is yours.
Giro, Esking-ilen oldum ghira
A match, I burn, I burn! my flame consumes me!
Sirma, Uzunu benden a yirma
Goldthread, Don't turn away your face.
Satch, Bazmazum tatch
Hair, Crown of my head!
Uzum, Benim iki Guzum
Grape, My eyes!
Til, Ulugorum tez ghel
Gold wire, I die - come quickly.
And, by way of postscript:
Beber, Bize bir dogm haber
Pepper, Send me an answer.
You see this letter is all in verse, and I can assure you, there is as much fancy shewn in the choice of them, as in the most studied expressions of our letters; there being, I believe, a million of verses designed for this use. There is no colour, no flower, no weed, no fruit, herb, pebble, or feather, that has not a verse belonging to it; and you may quarrel, reproach, or send letters of passion, friendship, or civility, or even of news, without ever inking your fingers."
Darcy is pleased that communications nowadays are considerably less ornate. He is pleased that English too has become less encumbered with frilly references. He feels little of the hüzün for which Pamuk is so famous.
Those who remember the Pope's visit to Turkey will no doubt recall that there was great reluctance to admit him to Aya Sofya. The Pope was but the latest in a long line of official visitors who encountered problems. Even the charming Mary Montagu found it necessary to become a pest before being granted permission.
"The next remarkable structure is that of St Sophia which is very difficult to see. I was forced to send three times to the caimairam, (the governor of the town) and he assembled the chief effendis, or heads of the law, and enquired of the mufti, whether it was lawful to permit it. They passed some days in this important debate; but I insisting on my request, permission was granted. I can't be informed why the Turks are more delicate on the subject of this mosque, than on any of the others, where what Christian pleases may enter without scruple. I fancy they imagine, that, having been once consecrated, people, on pretence of curiosity, might profane it with prayers, particularly to those saints, who are still very visible in Mosaic work, and no other way defaced but by the decays of time; for it is absolutely false, though so universally asserted, that the Turks defaced all the images that they found in the city."
Her view of the status of slaves and women in Turkey was quite unconventional for an European lady of the early eighteenth century.
"I know, you'll expect I should say something particular of the slaves; and 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 these creatures; they are never ill used, and their slavery is, in my opinion, no worse than servitude all over the world. 'Tis true, they have no wages; but they give them yearly clothes to a higher value than our salaries to our ordinary servants. But you'll object, that men buy women with an eye to evil. In my opinion, they are bought and sold as publicly, and as infamously, in all our Christian great cities."
Would that the status of women in Turkey too had risen together with those of their counterparts in Europe! Darcy firmly believes that had women been emancipated earlier, while the decline of the Ottoman Empire could not have been forestalled, at least the Republic could have been founded on firmer foundations.
And, next-to-last, Mary Montagu expresses the feelings of so many visitors to The City over the centuries.
"I am now preparing to leave Constantinople, and perhaps you will accuse me of hypocrisy, when I tell you 'tis with regret, but as I am used to the air, and have learnt the language, I am easy here; and as much as I love travelling, I tremble at the inconveniencies attending so great a journey, with a numerous family, and a little infant hanging at the breast. However, I endeavour, upon this occasion, to do, as I have hitherto done in all the odd turns of my life; turn them, if I can, to my diversion. In order to this, I ramble every day, wrapped up in my serigee and asmack, about Constantinople,and amuse myself with seeing all that is curious in it."
She also gives notice of why Istanbul today is not grander:
"Nothing can be pleasanter than the canal; and the Turks are so well acquainted with its beauties, that all their pleasure-seats are built on its banks, where they have, at the same time, the most beautiful prospects in Europe and Asia; there are near one another some hundreds of magnificent palaces. Human grandeur being here yet more unstable than any where else, 'tis common for the heirs of a great three-tailed bassa, not to be rich enough to keep in repair the house he built; thus, in a few years, they all fall to ruin."
Mary Montagu finally returned home in 1718, after long voyages via Tunis, Genoa and Paris. Canonically the last of her letters was written from Dover. Back in England, she continued to dazzle with her wit and intelligence. So much so that Alexander Pope became smitten with her. She rebuffed his advances, after which their previous amity turned completely sour. In 1739 she began to travel independently of her husband, and was never to see him again. (He continued to make money; at his death he was quite possibly the richest man in England.) Her daughter Mary - the baby born in Istanbul - was by now married to the Earl of Bute, the British Prime Minister. She prevailed upon her mother to return to England, where she died in 1762, a year after her husband.
On the strength of her wit and her writing, Mary Montagu would have gone down in history as a charming lady of the belles lettres, but she has one more, quite considerable claim to fame. To return to the Embassy Letters:
"A propos of distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that will make you wish yourself here. The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless, by the invention of ingrafting, 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 to one
another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox: they make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together) the old womancomes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please to have opened. Sheimmediately 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 matter as can ly upon the head of her needle, and after that, binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell; and in this manner opens four or five veins. The Grecians have commonly the superstition of opening one in the middle of the forehead, one in each arm, and one on the breast, to mark the sign of the cross; but this has a very ill effect, all these wounds leaving little scars, and is not done by those that are not superstitious, who chuse to have them in the legs, or that part of the arm that is concealed. The children or young patients play together all the rest of the day,and are in perfect health to the eighth. 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. Where they are wounded, there remain running sores during the distemper, which I don't doubt is a great relief to it. Every year thousands undergo this operation; and the French ambassador says pleasantly, that they take the small-pox 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 this experiment, since I intend to try it on my dearlittle 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 any one of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of their revenue, for the good of mankind. But that distemper is too beneficial to them, not to expose to all their resentment the hardy wight that should undertake to put an end to it. Perhaps, if I live to return, I may, however, have courage to war with them."
Not only did her son survive unscathed, but when Mary Montagu returned to London she did indeed do her utmost to convince her acquaintances to inoculate themselves and their children. Here she failed. A remedy developed by the barbaric Turk, transmitted by a weak and feeble woman was not to be popular in England, even though the Royal College of Physicians was able to replicate the benefits claimed. And so Edward Jenner is credited with developing the smallpox vaccine. Though his method was less dangerous than that of Mary Montagu, one wonders how many people died and how many others were disfigured (Wikipedia reports a rate of 60% of the population contracting smallpox, with one fifth then dying of the disease) in the years between Mary Montagu's return to England in 1718 and Jenner's experiments in 1796.Darcy proposes a toast in memory of a very interesting woman!
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