As wife of the British ambassador to the Porte, Lady Mary had the entrée of the homes of the Turks, rich and poor, where she was always cordially received and hospitably entertained. Besides this, she was familiar with the language of her hostesses of the harems which she visited and was thus able to become far more intimately acquainted with the people than those who must needs depend on unreliable interpreters. For these reasons her sprightly pictures of the life of the Turkish women have always had special value and one can easily understand her admiration for them and for many of their customs which are so different from those of her own country—England. She would have fully endorsed what her distinguished countrywoman, Lady Isabel Burton wrote many years afterwards: “As a rule I met with nothing but courtesy in the harems and much hospitality, cordiality and refinement.” The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton: The Story of Her Life Told in Part by Herself and in Part by W. H. Wilkins, Vol. II, p. 452 (New York, 1897).
[122] Turkey and the Turks, p. 84, et seq. (by Z. D. Ferriman, New York, 1911).
“There has been,” writes an American woman who has had exceptional opportunities for studying the condition of women in Turkey, “a vast amount of pity wasted upon the Moslem woman. It may surprise even the woman suffragist to learn that the laws of Mohammed confer upon women a greater degree of legal protection than any code of laws since the middle Roman law. The more recent liberties and protection granted to married women by the laws of divorce and the exclusive property rights now in the United States alone can be properly compared to those in force in, Turkey.” In the Palaces of the Sultan, pp. 448, 449 (by Anna Bowman Dodd, New York, 1903).
[123] Ibid.
[124] The Evil of the East, or Truths about Turkey, p. 42 (London, 1888).
[125] See the North American Review.
[126] Lieutenant Wood in his “Journey to the Source of the Oxus,” p. 194 (London, 1872), writes: “Nowhere is the difference between European and Mohammedan society more strongly marked than in the lower walks of life. The broad line that separates the rich and poor in civilized society is as yet but faintly drawn in Central Asia. Here unreserved intercourse between their superiors has polished the manners of the lower classes and, instead of this familiarity breeding contempt, it begets self-respect in the dependent.... Indeed, all the inferior classes possess an innate self-respect and a natural gravity of deportment which differs as far from the suppleness of a Hindustani as from the awkward rusticity of an English clown.” These characteristics of the people of Central Asia, which so impressed the gallant explorer of the Oxus, are much more striking in the inhabitants of Anatolia.
Another author writes: “The fine manners of all classes of Mohammedans in Constantinople were a constant source of admiration to me. It was as if the grace and dignity of past times—of Courts of the eighteenth century—had taken refuge in Stamboul. Your Caiquejee, your Cafeje and the very boot-blacks, if they are Mohammedans, know how to be unobtrusively polite and well-bred towards each other, and even towards the Giaour himself, if he treats them civilly. The older fashioned, the more prejudiced, the Turkish gentleman, the finer are his manners, the more gracious and delightful his welcome.” The Sultan and His Subjects, Vol. I, pp. 280, 281 (by Richard Davy, New York, 1897).
[127] “The houses of the great Turkish ladies,” declares that keen observer, Lady Montague, “are kept clean with as much nicety as those in Holland.” Letters, Vol. II, p. 24 (London, 1793).
[128] Destruction of the Greek Empire, p. 524 (London, 1903).