by Susan Nagel
3. Wittman, 64-65. Dr. Wittman, who attended Mary on the birth of her first child, actually dedicated his Travels to Lord Elgin with the following inscription:
The attention, so honourable to your Lordship’s feelings, with which I as well as others of our countrymen, was favoured by your Lordship, while in the dominions of the Grand Seignor, has excited in me sentiments of gratitude for the public expression of which I hope to be forgiven.
It is under this impression that I have presumed to prefix your Lordship’s name to a work, which is the result of my observations and inquiries while in those countries. If it should serve to record the hospitable and liberal conduct of your Lordship, in your public capacity, and the respect and esteem which that conduct could not fail to excite in its Author; and if, at the same time, it should in any degree, contribute to your Lordship’s amusement, it will be a subject of permanent satisfaction to MY LORD, your Lordship’s obliged Servant, THE AUTHOR.
Chapter 6: Constantinople: “Ambassadress Poll” Makes Waves
1. Although the palace burned down in the nineteenth century, the street remains, renamed Istiklal Caddesi.
2. In his 1805 memoirs, French officer Pouqueville remarks that it was Elgin who obtained the firmans to get the French released from the awful Seven Towers section of Yedikule prison.
3. A midcalf or longer short-waisted coat. (In Mary’s case, she meant fur.)
4. Shankland pleads the Smith brothers’ case in Beware of Heroes with the comment that Selim III pronounced the name Elgin (correctly pronounced with a hard g) with a soft g, “El Jin,” which meant “the devil” in his language; he does, however, admit that Elgin’s charge that “Sir Sidney’s interference in the internal affairs of Turkey, and particularly about his intervention in Cyprus” was “‘without parallel in diplomatic history’” (Shankland quoting Elgin) “was certainly true” (Shankland, 115).
Chapter 8: Captain of Her Ship
1. Now known as “The Biel Chair,” it is in the British Museum.
2. This letter to Menou’s commandant de cavallerie was found in the private papers of Lady Elgin.
Chapter 10: The Stronger Vessel
1. Mr. Pisani, from an old Venetian family, was the chief interpreter to the British Embassy. Muslims were forbidden to learn foreign languages. As Venice had been part of the Ottoman Empire, sultans often relied on their Italian citizens to deal with Westerners. Many official Ottoman documents were written in Italian, and the Pisanis were extremely useful to Elgin in his correspondence with the Turks. Visitors, traders, and foreign diplomats came into contact with Italians, Russians, Slavs, Greeks, and Jews in Constantinople as frequently as they did Turks.
2. Daunt, “Palaces of Diplomacy,” 70.
3. The Treaty of Amiens was signed on March 25, 1802, returning Egypt to the Ottoman Empire.
Chapter 13: The Acropolis: Caution to the Wind
1. McNeal, 112.
2. Schama, 105.
3. Hazlitt, “Exhibition of Living Artists.”
Chapter 16: Shanghaied
1. Here is Mary’s letter to Bonaparte concerning this agreement:
Citizen First Consul
Told that you had consented to the exchange of my husband for General Boyer, I hurriedly wrote England to tell of your intentions.
I console myself with the hope that Lord Elgin will obtain his liberty, as I have just learned that he has been transferred from Pau to the fortress at Lourdes, unhealthy place, even more so for someone in the state of health my husband sadly finds himself.
I have no doubt that this exchange will not be agreed to in England. I presume to ask, Citizen First Consul, that the grace you have generously accorded him will not be for naught. The state of his health, if he must remain for any time at Lourdes, will preclude him from participating in the exchange that you have so wished to authorize. This is the opinion of people who had seen him during the summer. I beg you then Citizen First Consul to permit him to remain in Pau under whatever kind of surveillance that pleases you until news of the exchange arrives.
Please, Citizen First Consul, give serious consideration to my request; you will alleviate the severity of my tribulations.
Accept my most sincere and respectful good wishes.
I have the honor to be
[The letter remains unsigned, as it is a copy that Mary retained.]
Chapter 22: Shipwrecked
1. Scott, Familiar Letters, 92.
2. “Domestic Intelligence,” 71.
3. Scott, op. cit., 115.
4. St. Clair, 129.
