Lady Elizabeth Craven on Turkey
A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople (1789)
Page contents:
Introduction
Lady Craven and Lady Mary
Craven's views of Ottomans
Excerpts
Introduction
Elizabeth, Lady Craven (1750-1828) was another intrepid female traveler in the latter part of the 18th century who made her way to Turkey, wrote a series of formal letters, and in 1789 published them as A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople. After a disastrous marriage that led her into public scandal, she left England for the Continent. Melman states that "What set her on a course of travel and life as an expatriate was her legal separation from her husband and six children and the financial difficulties resulting on the separation" (Melman 48). Though Melman seems sometimes to take Craven at her word too uncritically, we can agree that, for an 18th-century woman, her voyage "was solitary, self-financed and truly adventurous," and the book, in letters written to one male correspondent, was "a bold statement" (49).
As she traveled, she continued a relationship with the Margave of Anspach, who she eventually married after the decease of his wife, enabling her eventually to be reintroduced into respectable London society. Her travels across Europe, through Russian, and into Ottoman territories occurred from 1785-1786.
Much of this page compares Craven's perceptions of the Turks with those of Lady Mary, the other major 18th-century writer about Turkey. What we see contradicts the usual teleological assumptions of history, that as time passes, views become clearer, more enlightened. The Turkey that Craven creates is inferior to the West, less sympathetic, and thus more available for colonization. In Craven's view, "it is lucky for Europe that the Turks are idle and ignorant; the immense power this empire might have, were it peopled by the industrious and ambitious, would make it the mistress of the world” (Craven 272). Defects of the Ottoman character luckily save Europe from annihilation: if they were more like us, Craven seems to say, their trade and natural resources would allow them to conquer us. Craven's text enumerates these character and cultural defects.
Lady Craven and Lady Mary
Craven knew well the legacy of Montagu and, in fact, Craven's work is hardly ever considered on its own, without reference to the Embassy Letters. While the early edition of her letters did not refer to Montagu's effort, her later work took a decisively adversarial stance towards Montagu. In the 1814 enlarged version of her Journey and her later Memoirs of the Margravine of Anspach, Written by herself (1826), Craven states that the Embassy Letters “were most of them male compositions, pretending to female grace in the style, the facts mostly inventions.” She corresponded with Lady Mary's daughter, Lady Bute, who, “having failed to suppress the publication of the Embassy Letters in 1763, was later delighted to find support for her disowning of her mother’s vulgar publishing activities.” Lady Bute seems to have agreed that her mother's letters must have been “composed by men” (Turner 114).
It is unclear what Lady Craven considered the masculine elements of Lady Mary's writing, though Lady Mary's clear sympathy with the Turks (or at least her defense of them against the misperceptions of earlier European writers) probably disgusted Craven, who anoints them "the most ignorant and uninformed men upon earth (Craven 276), and whom, at the end of her trip, breezily declares, "You must not suppose that I mean to murder anyone, but I think of all the two-legged animals I have seen I should regret killing a Turk the least" (377). Lady Craven's eye is thus much more critical that that of Lady Mary, who never seems to feel the need to decide which group of people she would feel least regret in murdering.
Craven's views of Ottomans
Craven's complaints about Ottoman society are numerous:
Turks are stupid: She pulls into an inlet and sees “that rock I dreaded so much; upon which there are about a thousand Turkish vessels that perish constantly every year, as the Turks forget as they leave it to the left in coming out, they must leave it to the right in going in” (she then compares this to a stupidity of the Irish) (Craven 261).
They are clumsy: She describes being carried in a coach by six men, “Thank Heaven I have but a little way to go in this pomp, and fearing every moment the Turks should fling me down they are so awkward” (271).
They are lazy: “the Turks row very well, which is a thing quite incompatible with that idleness visible in all ranks of people. I saw a Turk the other day lying on cushions, striking slowly an iron which he was shaping into a horseshoe, his pipe in his mouth all the time . .. (271).
They are politically corrupt: “The vile low intrigues of the ministers here are not to be imagined.” (275)
And their head of state is impotent: “as some account of the Sultan will not be uninteresting, I shall tell you what I have heard. He is extremely fearful, timid, and ignorant, totally unable to quell the interested little intrigues of his ministers, and direct the interior policy of his cabinet or empire. His excessive ignorance makes it impossible for him to imagine it necessary he should be acquainted with any thing out of Constantinople" (314).
They are aesthetically ignorant: "at present, ruins, that would adorn a virtuoso’s cabinet, are daily burnt into lime by the Turks; and pieces of exquisite workmanship stuck into a wall or fountain. There remains but a very little of that pillar that once probably was a fine ornament to the Atneidan, or market for horses.” (289-290)
The Eastern women are ugly: "I have no doubt that nature intended some of these women to be very handsome, but white and red ill applied, their eyebrows hid under one or tow black lines---teeth black by smoaking, and an universal stoop in the shoulders, made them appear rather disgusting than handsome. … The black powder with which they line their eyelids gives their eyes likewise a harsh expression" (294-95).
And corpulent: "I think I never saw so many fat women at once together, nor fat ones so fat as these" (342).
They can't dance: "A more stupid performance as a dance I never saw; but I can conceive that the pantomime of it represents the despair of Ariadne, when she saw herself forsaken …. The music is as dull and uniform as her steps, which like her eyes, never leave the ground—" (343).
They treat dogs ridiculously: “Nothing is more horrible than the species of this animal here, all of the same race, an ugly currish breed; nothing more absurd than the general protection afforded them" (297-98).
Even Turkish coffee is bad: "With respect to coffee, which you may imagine is good in Turkey, I assure you, prepared by Turks, it is the nastiest potion ever invented—They make it weak and muddy, and drink it without sugar. (358).
In each of these critical statements, Lady Craven reveals an implicit comparison with what she considers to be British or European character, culture, and social arrangements. She is very willing to judge Turkish society and customs by European standards; unwilling to entertain the notion of a degree of relativism in aesthetic standards or to consider that her experience may not have been representative or complete. Her comments lack the self-consciousness of the travel-writer so evident in Lady Mary's work. This could be attributable, in part, to her personal circumstances or to the expansion of and threats to British imperialism that occurred between 1717, when Lady Mary traveled, and 1785. Turner claims that "Craven's repudiation of Montagu is a significant contribution to an emergent colonial discourse, displacing Montagu's classical, tolerant and largely ahistorical stance" (Turner 115). This can be seen even further by contrasting Craven's description of the baths with those of Lady Mary; however, Lady Mary is not always accepting and admiring, as in her off-hand comment of the "natural Uglyness" of Viennese women (265), and the dwarves the Germans keep as servants are "the refuse of Human Nature" (Montagu 294).
While Craven's tone is often downright hostile—enough for one to wonder why she bothers traveling at all—at others she seems simply puzzled by the cultural differences, and by the obvious inferiority of Turkish ways.
For example, she states of Eastern music: “Indeed music is a thing of which Turks and Greeks have not the least idea” (312). But later, her exploration of differences in musical tastes becomes more nuanced. She judges the music of the Greeks to be “horrid noise” compared to the lovely Western music produced by the French ambassador’s musicians:
The servants often ask them [the Greek musicians] if their master’s music is not fine, but they are all of the opinion that it is very disagreeable. This puzzles all my ideas concerning harmony; because nature has fixed the rules of it so well that any person, possessing a good ear for music, will compose in all the perfection of harmony without knowing the rules for composition, or even a note of music. Why then do not these Greeks find out they make nothing but discordant sounds when they sing or play?—I confess it seems to me a very strange thing. (Craven 363)
Lady Mary presents the opposite opinion of Greek musicians, that "The Tunes are extreme Gay and Lively, yet with something in 'em wonderfull soft" (Montagu 333). One might question whether Craven would have suspected Montagu's ear.
On one topic, Lady Craven agrees with Lady Mary, and that is about the freedom of Turkish women, especially in respect to their relations with men. Craven says, admiringly,
I think I never saw a country where women enjoy so much liberty, and free from all reproach, as in Turkey. A Turkish husband that sees a pair of slippers at the door of his harem must not enter; his respect for the sex prevents him from intruding when a stranger is there upon a visit; how easy then it is for men to visit and pass as women! (270)
Lady Mary writes: "Tis very easy to see they have more Liberty than we have," and she marvels that the full length veils women wear "effectually disguises them, that there is no distinguishing the great Lady from her Slave, and 'tis impossible for the most jealous Husband to know his Wife when he meets her . ... This perpetual Masquerade gives them entire Liberty of following their Inclinations without danger of Discovery" (Montagu 328). Both women writers may have had reasons for looking wistfully towards the real or projected liberty of Turkish women: Lady Mary was beginning to discover that the marriage for which she had risked all was not to be the partnership she desired; Lady Craven already knew this perfectly well and was escaping from a London society that was all too ready to condemn and ostracize her.
The telling use of the word "liberty" is intended to gall a supposedly liberty-loving British readership, especially in relation to a culture that was stereotypically seen as oppressive, and in relation to the women of that society, who were stereotypically seen as passive and subject to arbitrary male power and sexual subjection. As Colley states, "liberty was the hallmark of Englishness" (Colley 111), and so to attribute this to an Eastern power might provoke reconsideration of British social assumptions.
Craven takes her admiration further:
The Turks in their conduct towards our sex are an example to all other nations, A Turk has his head cut off—his papers are examined—every thing in his house seized---but the wife is provided for; her jewels are left her—
The Harem is sacred even to that rapacious power which has seized the master’s life, only because he was rich. It may be said that, in Turkey likewise, women are perfectly safe from an idle, curious, impertinent public, and what is called the world can never disturb the ease and quiet of a Turkish wife. Her talents, her beauty, her happiness, or misery, are equally concealed from malicious observers. Of misery, unless a Turkish woman is beyond conception unreasonable, I cannot imagine that her portion can be great; for the wife whose wretched husband earns subsistence b carrying water, or burthens, sits at home bedecked with jewels, or goes out as her fancy directs, and the fruits of his labour are appropriated to her use (Craven 305).
One can hear the voice of revenge in this passage, as Craven conjures a marriage system in which the women receive the monetary rewards of the union and where their occluded status is protection from an ignorant public only too willing to prey upon women who fall from marital grace. What jars ironically is to imagine such a spirited, jingoistic, and energetic woman longing for this mythical life of dominating dependence. She well knew the British form of female oppression, and she seems wistfully to hope that an Eastern form would be an improvement.
Craven situates herself between East and West. While her disgust for Turkish life is apparent, her need to find better models for the treatment of women drives her to admit superiority when she encounters it, but she still seems uncomfortable doing so—while the women's situation may be superior, remember, they are still ugly and fat. She seems to imply that Western women would be must more suited, in fact, they deserve this status much more that Eastern women, who don't appreciate their liberty as they should.
Lady Craven describes the baths in Athens, a city under Ottoman control in the 18th century:
The Baths here are very well contrived to stew the rheumatism out of a person’s constitution---but how the women can support the heat f them is perfectly inconceivable—The Consul’s wife, Madame Gaspari, and I went into a room which precedes the Bath, which room is the place where the women dress and undress, sitting like tailors upon boards---there were above fifty; some having their hair washed, others dyed , or plaited; some were at the last part of their toilet, putting with a fine gold pin the black due into their eyelids; in short, I saw here Turkish and Greek nature, through every degree of concealment, in her primitive state---for the women sitting in the inner room were absolutely so many Eves---and as they came out their flesh looked boiled—These Baths are the great amusement of these women, they stay generally five hours in them; that is in the water and at their toilet together—but I think I never saw so many fat women at once together, nor fat ones so fat as these. There is much art and coquetry in the arrangement of their dress---the shift particularly, which closes by hooks behind between the shoulders …We had very pressing solicitations to undress and bathe, but such a disgusting sight as this would have put me in an ill humour with my sex in a bath for ages. Few of these women had fair skins and fine forms---hardly any---and Madame Gaspari tells me, that the encomiums and flattery a fine young woman would meet with in these baths, would be astonishing ... (Craven 342)
Turner notes that Craven's “Turkish” bath actually occurs in Athens, testifying to her “tendency to lump together Greeks, Turks, Tartars, and Cossacks as eastern and primitive, regardless of politics or national identity—and indeed use the term ‘Turk’ as a term of abuse for any objectionable eastern individual—but also the distance which Craven strenuously constructs between herself and the eastern other, especially in Turkey and its dominions, where the pernicious influence of Islam is stressed” (Turner 120).
Source of image: http://www.iranian.com/Iranica/Sept97/Decor/
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