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General SummaryThe famous letter-writer, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), was the eldest daughter of an English gentleman who afterward became a marquis and a duke. She lost her mother when still a child. Her father, though proud of her beauty and wit, seems to have done little for her systematic education, but she read widely and soon acquired a fund of learning quite unusual for ladies at that time. When twenty-four years of age she married Edward Wortley, a young man of good family. He entered parliament and in 1716 received an appointment as ambassador at Constantinople. Lady Mary accompanied him on what was then a long and somewhat perilous journey to the court of the sultan. The Letters here quoted purport to have been written in 1717–1718, during her residence in the East. It seems, however, that the letter form was no more than a literary device and that the correspondence was really prepared for publication by Lady Mary after her return to England, from diaries that she had kept abroad. The letters were first issued, posthumously, in 1763. Their value is quite exceptional as a revelation of Turkish life which, until she wrote, had been almost a sealed book to the Christian peoples of western Europe.
CHAPTER IX
Turkey and the Turks1
49. A Turkish Bath2
I won’t trouble you with a relation of our tedious journey;
but I must not omit what I saw remarkable at Sofia,3 one of the
most beautiful towns in the Turkish empire, and famous for its
hot baths, that are resorted to both for diversion and health. I.
stopped here one day on purpose to see them; and designing to
go incognita, I hired a Turkish coach. . . .
In one of these covered wagons, I went to the bagnio about
ten o’clock. It was already full of women. It is built of stone,
in the shape of a dome, withno windows but in the roof, which
gives light enough. There were five of these domes joined together,
the outermost being less than the rest, and serving only
as a hall, where the portress stood at the door. Ladies of quality
generally give this woman the value of a crown or ten shillings;
and I did not forget that ceremony. The next room is a
very large one paved with marble, and all round it are two raised
sofas of marble, one above another. There were four fountains
of cold water in this room, falling first into marble basins, and
then running on the floor in little channels made for that purpose,
which carried the streams into the next room, something less
than this, with the same sort of marble sofas, but so hot with
steams of sulphur proceeding from the baths joining to it, it was
impossible to stay there with one’s clothes on. The two other
domes were the hot baths, one of which had cocks of cold water
turning into it, to temper it to what degree of warmth the bathers
please to have.
I was in my traveling habit, which is a riding dress, and certainly
appeared very extraordinary to them. Yet there was
not one of them that showed the least surprise or impertinent
curiosity, but received me with all the obliging civility possible.
I know no European court where the ladies would have behaved
themselves in so polite a manner to a stranger. I believe, upon
the whole, there were two hundred women, and yet none of
those disdainful smiles, or satiric whispers, that never fail in our
assemblies when anybody appears that is not dressed exactly in
the fashion. . . . The first sofas were covered with cushions
and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies; and on the second,
their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank
by their dress. . . . In short, the bagnio is the women’s coffeehouse,
where all the news of the town is told, scandal invented,
etc. They generally take this diversion once a week and stay
there at least four or five hours, without getting cold by immediately
coming out of the hot bath into the cold room, which was
very surprising to me.
1 . 5 vols. 6th
edition. London, 1817.
2 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, , vol. ii, pp. 153–159.
3 Now the capital of Bulgaria.
Contents:
Chicago: "A Turkish Bath," Works in Readings in Modern European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1926), 81–82. Original Sources, accessed November 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=HSXLBQH93EH8FLK.
MLA: . "A Turkish Bath." Works, Vol. ii, in Readings in Modern European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, D.C. Heath, 1926, pp. 81–82. Original Sources. 21 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=HSXLBQH93EH8FLK.
Harvard: , 'A Turkish Bath' in Works. cited in 1926, Readings in Modern European History, ed. , D.C. Heath, Boston, pp.81–82. Original Sources, retrieved 21 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=HSXLBQH93EH8FLK.
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