Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M--y W---y M---e : written during her travels in Europe, Asia and Africa ... Which contain ... accounts of the policy and manners of the Turks / [Mary Wortley Montagu].

  • Mary Wortley Montagu
Date:
1790
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M--y W---y M---e : written during her travels in Europe, Asia and Africa ... Which contain ... accounts of the policy and manners of the Turks / [Mary Wortley Montagu]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by kiffing their hands. 1 was very well pleafed with having feen this ceremony; and you may believe me, the Turkifh ladies have, at leail, as much wit and civility, nay liberty, as among us. ’Tis true, the fame culfoms that give them fo many opportunities of gratifying their evil inclinations (if they have any), alfo put it very fully in the power of their hufl;ands to revenge thcmfclves, if they are difeovered ; and I do not doubt, but they fuffer fometinies for their indiferetions in a very fevere ]nanner. Ab'uttwo months ago, there was found at day break, not very far from my houfe, the bleeding body of a young woman, naked, only wrapped in a courfe flieet, with two wounds of a knife, one in her fide, and another in her breaft. She w'as not quite cold, and was fo I urprifingly beau- tiful, that there were very few men in Pera, that did not go to look upon her : but it was not poliible for any body to know her, no woman’s face being known. She w'as fuppofed to have been brought, in tlie dead of the night, from tiie Conftantinople fide, and laid there. Veiw- little inquir)' was made about tlie murderer, and the corpfe was privately buried without noife.. Muider is never purfiicU by the king’s officers, as wnth us. ’Tis tlie bufinefs of the next relations to revenge the dead perfon 5 and if they like better to compound the matter for money (as they generally do) there is no more faid of it. One w’ould imagine this defecd in their government ffiould make fuch tragedies very frequent, yet they are extremely rare ; which is enough to prove the people are not naturally cruel. Neither do I think, in many other particulars, they deferve the barbarous charadler we give them. 1 am well acquainted with a Chrifiian woman of quality, who made it her choice to live with a Turkifii hufoand, and is a very agreeable fenfible lady. Her flory is fo extraordinaiT, I cannot forbear relating it; but I promife you, it fhall be in as few words as 1 can polUbly exprefs it. She is a Spaniard, and W'as at Naples w-ith her family, W'hcn that kingdom was part of tlie Spanifh dominion. Coming from thence in a felucca, accompanied by her brother, they were attacked by the Turkifh admiral, boai d- cd