Maiden Voyages
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Others seem to be fleeing: Isabella Bird was told that travel would help her back troubles and she never stopped moving after that while Isabelle Eberhardt fled an unhappy aristocratic home even to the point of relinquishing her birthright. Both Mary Kingsley and Dervla Murphy set out upon their journeys after the death of their ailing parents whom they had nursed for years. After suffering extreme personal loss (the death of her husband and sons), Ethel Tweedie began to travel and write. Whether it is curiosity about the world or escape from personal tragedy, the women here approach their journeys with wit, intelligence, compassion, and empathy for the lives of others.
For some of these writers, the experience of writing from “away” seems to have produced their greatest masterpieces. Lady Montagu was a prolific writer of prose and poetry (she is the only English-language woman poet of the eighteenth century who has a critical biography written about her), yet the book of hers that has remained in print since it was written is the collection of her letters from Turkey. When Mary Shelley (the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft) and her husband, the Romantic poet, Percy Shelley, went to Italy, they took with them one book—Mary Wollstonecraft’s travels in Scandinavia. Though Isak Dinesen and Rebecca West were famous writers of fiction in their own time, the books that are considered their masterworks are their writings on Africa and Yugoslavia, respectively. We have also chosen writers who wouldn’t be considered travel writers per se—Annie Dillard and Joan Didion, for example—but whose sense of place serves as a catalyst to broader musings about the world.
Most of the women in this volume represent what as I have said above Crawford refers to as a “woman of independent means and without domestic ties.” The early women travelers were women of the upper classes in European society, invariably white and privileged. This trend has not shifted greatly in the past two hundred years as we are left with the legacy of colonialism. Travel literature by both men and women awaits its full range of multicultural voices and perspectives. Yet as feminists the writers gathered here hold surprisingly progressive views considering the times in which they wrote and lived. It is hard not to be amazed by Lady Montagu’s sense that the Turkish woman is the freest in the world because she can hide behind her veil and move about as she wishes, including anonymous rendezvous with her lover. Or Mrs. Tweedie’s plea for the elimination of the sidesaddle on the grounds that it is a preposterous invention, bad for women’s health and ill-suited for serious riding. Or Mrs. Bridges’ indignation at polygamy in America.
We have tried to assemble a diverse body of work that charts feminism, over close to three hundred years, through women and their journeys. In some cases—Maud Parrish and Vivienne DeWatteville, for example—the only traces of themselves these women left behind was their travel writing and it was difficult, therefore, to provide biographical information about them. For various reasons, we decided not to include involuntary travel. It would have seemed casual—disrespectful, even—to juxtapose slave narratives, pioneer literature, and war stories of flight and displacement with accounts of deserts crossed, swamps forded, and mountains climbed by choice.
Our criteria were very specific and in some cases we opted not to include writers who are well known for their travel writing because their views or experiences did not seem appropriate to the goal of this anthology. We regret the absence of more multicultural voices. It is our hope that in the future both the gender and racial gaps will be bridged, but for now the voices we present are those we found.
Since all travel is about return as well as departure, I go back to the beginning and John Gardner’s premise that there are only two plots in literature. From Penelope to the present, women have waited—for a phone call, a proposal, or the return of the prodigal man from sea or war or a business trip. To wait like patients for a doctor, commuters for buses, prisoners for parole, is in a sense to be powerless. It is our hope that this volume will make it clear that both plots are available to women. If we grow weary of waiting, we can go on a journey. We can be the stranger who comes to town.
Mary Morris
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
(1689–1762)
When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a poet and satirist with a respected reputation and friends who included writers Alexander Pope and Joseph Addison, left London in 1716 to follow her husband, the ambassador to Turkey, to Constantinople, she created a scandal. Women of her social class were not to travel without their husbands, particularly to the East. But Lady Montagu, the first woman to travel abroad for curiosity’s sake, spurned societal expectations to the point of changing her dress for Turkish robes and inoculating her son and baby daughter with a vaccine presented her by a local medicine woman (seventy years before the invention of the Jenner smallpox vaccination). At 49, she again left London—and her husband—to pursue the man she loved to Italy, and although she failed in her romantic conquest, she lived the next twenty-two years on the Continent with an assortment of escorts. She did not return home to England until her husband died in 1762, and she died shortly thereafter. Her book of letters was published a year after her death.
from EMBASSY TO CONSTANTINOPLE
TO LADY MAR—
Adrianople April 1, 1717
I wish to God (dear sister) that you was as regular in letting me have the pleasure of knowing what passes on your side of the globe as I am careful in endeavouring to amuse you by the account of all I see that I think you care to hear of. You content yourself with telling me over and over that the town is very dull. It may possibly be dull to you when every day does not present you with something new, but for me that am in arrear at least two months’ news, all that seems very stale with you would be fresh and sweet here; pray let me into more particulars. I will try to awaken your gratitude by giving you a full and true relation of the novelties of this place, none of which would surprise you more than a sight of my person as I am now in my Turkish habit, though I believe you would be of my opinion that ’tis admirably becoming. I intend to send you my picture; in the meantime accept of it here.
The first piece of my dress is a pair of drawers, very full, that reach to my shoes and conceal the legs more modestly than your petticoats. They are of a thin, rose-colour damask brocaded with silver flowers, my shoes of white kid leather embroidered with gold. Over this hangs my smock of a fine white silk gauze edged with embroidery. This smock has wide sleeves hanging half-way down the arm and is closed at the neck with a diamond button, but the shape and colour of the bosom very well to be distinguished through it. The antery is a waistcoat made close to the shape, of white and gold damask, with very long sleeves falling back and fringed with deep gold fringe, and should have diamond or pearl buttons. My caftan of the same stuff with my drawers is a robe exactly fitted to my shape and reaching to my feet, with very long straight falling sleeves. Over this is the girdle of about four fingers broad, which all that can afford have entirely of diamonds or other precious stones. Those that will not be at the expense have it of exquisite embroidery on satin, but it must be fastened before with a clasp of diamonds. The curdee is a loose robe they throw off or put on according to the weather, being of a rich brocade (mine is green and gold) either lined with ermine or sables; the sleeves reach very little below the shoulders. The head-dress is composed of a cap called talpack, which is in winter of fine velvet embroidered with pearls or diamonds and in summer of a light, shining silver stuff. This is fixed on one side of the head, hanging a little way down with a gold tassel and bound on either side with a circle of diamonds (as I have seen several) or a rich embroidered handkerchief. On the other side of the head the hair is laid flat, and here the ladies are at liberty to show their fancies, some putting flowers, others a plume of heron’s feathers, and in short what they please, but the most general fashion is a large bouquet of jewels made like natural flowers, that is the buds of pearl, the roses of different coloured rubies, the jasmines of diamonds, jonquils of topazes, etc., so well set and enamelled ’tis hard to imagine anything of that kind so
beautiful. The hair hangs at its full length behind, divided into tresses braided with pearl or riband, which is always in great quantity.
I never saw in my life so many fine heads of hair. I have counted one hundred and ten of these tresses of one lady’s, all natural; but it must be owned that every beauty is more common here than with us. ’Tis surprising to see a young woman that is not very handsome. They have naturally the most beautiful complexions in the world and generally large black eyes. I can assure you with great truth that the Court of England (though I believe it the fairest in Christendom) cannot show so many beauties as are under our protection here. They generally shape their eyebrows, and the Greeks and Turks have a custom of putting round their eyes on the inside a black tincture that, at a distance or by candlelight, adds very much to the blackness of them. I fancy many of our ladies would be overjoyed to know this secret, but ’tis too visible by day. They dye their nails rose colour; I own I cannot enough accustom myself to this fashion to find any beauty in it.
As to their morality or good conduct, I can say like Harlequin, “ ’Tis just as ’tis with you”; and the Turkish ladies don’t commit one sin the less for not being Christians. Now I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring either the exemplary discretion or extreme stupidity of all the writers that have given accounts of ’em. ’Tis very easy to see they have more liberty than we have, no woman of what rank soever being permitted to go in the streets without two muslins, one that covers her face all but her eyes and another that hides the whole dress of her head and hangs half-way down her back; and their shapes are wholly concealed by a thing they call a ferigée, which no woman of any sort appears without. This has strait sleeves that reach to their fingers’ ends and it laps all round ’em, not unlike a riding hood. In winter ’tis of cloth, and in summer, plain stuff or silk. You may guess how effectually this 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, and no man dare either touch or follow a woman in the street.
This perpetual masquerade gives them entire liberty of following their inclinations without danger of discovery. The most usual method of intrigue is to send an appointment to the lover to meet the lady at a Jew’s shop, which are as notoriously convenient as our Indian houses, and yet even those that don’t make that use of ’em do not scruple to go to buy penn’orths and tumble over rich goods, which are chiefly to be found amongst that sort of people. The great ladies seldom let their gallants know who they are, and ’tis so difficult to find it out that they can very seldom guess at her name they have corresponded with above half a year together. You may easily imagine the number of faithful wives very small in a country where they have nothing to fear from their lovers’ indiscretion, since we see so many that have the courage to expose themselves to that in this world and all the threatened punishment of the next, which is never preached to the Turkish damsels. Neither have they much to apprehend from the resentment of their husbands, those ladies that are rich having all their money in their own hands, which they take with ’em upon a divorce with an addition which he is obliged to give ’em. Upon the whole, I look upon the Turkish women as the only free people in the empire. The very Divan pays a respect to ’em, and the Grand Signior himself, when a Pasha is executed, never violates the privilege of the harem (or women’s apartment) which remains unsearched entire to the widow. They are queens of their slaves, which the husband has no permission so much as to look upon, except it be an old woman or two that his lady chooses. ’Tis true their law permits them four wives, but there is no instance of a man of quality that makes use of this liberty, or of a woman of rank that would suffer it. When a husband happens to be inconstant (as those things will happen) he keeps his mistress in a house apart and visits her as privately as he can, just as ’tis with you. Amongst all the great men here I only know the defterdar (i.e., treasurer) that keeps a number of she slaves for his own use (that is, on his own side of the house, for a slave once given to serve a lady is entirely at her disposal), and he is spoke of as a libertine, or what we should call a rake, and his wife won’t see him, though she continues to live in his house.
Thus you see, dear sister, the manners of mankind do not differ so widely as our voyage writers would make us believe. Perhaps it would be more entertaining to add a few surprising customs of my own invention, but nothing seems to me so agreeable as truth, and I believe nothing so acceptable to you. I conclude with repeating the great truth of my being, dear sister, etc.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
(1759–1797)
A writer passionate about political and social injustices, Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, found the ideal vehicle for her spontaneous style of commentary in her Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In this work she opposes the domestic custom of hiring nurses to suckle children even as she criticizes government, church, and the penal system. Travel gave Wollstonecraft the time to reflect upon the world around her, including her relationship with her infant daughter, Fanny, who did not accompany her on this trip. She would return to England to be with her daughter and be close to the father, Gilbert Imlay, who received the letters that formed A Short Residence. Imlay was unfaithful, and eventually she left him. The personal informs her vision in ways that are true of the best modern travel writings of Rebecca West, Mary Lee Settle, and Barbara Grizzuti Harrison.
Later, Wollstonecraft would marry William Godwin, the celebrated author, and in 1797 she would die giving birth to a girl, Mary. (This second daughter, Mary, would wed Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816, the same year that her half-sister Fanny killed herself, and in 1818 publish Frankenstein.)
from LETTERS WRITTEN DURING A SHORT RESIDENCE IN SWEDEN, NORWAY, AND DENMARK
The sea was boisterous; but, as I had an experienced pilot, I did not apprehend any danger. Sometimes I was told, boats are driven far out and lost. However, I seldom calculate chances so nicely—sufficient for the day is the obvious evil!
We had to steer amongst islands and huge rocks, rarely losing sight of the shore, though it now and then appeared only a mist that bordered the water’s edge. The pilot assured me that the numerous harbours on the Norway coast were very safe, and the pilot-boats were always on the watch. The Swedish side is very dangerous, I am also informed; and the help of experience is not often at hand, to enable strange vessels to steer clear of the rocks, which lurk below the water, close to the shore.
There are no tides here, nor in the Kattegat; and, what appeared to me a consequence, no sandy beach. Perhaps this observation has been made before, but it did not occur to me till I saw the waves continually beating against the bare rocks, without ever receding to leave a sediment to harden.
The wind was fair, till we had to tack about in order to enter Larvik, where we arrived towards three o’clock in the afternoon. It is a clean, pleasant town, with a considerable iron-work, which gives life to it.
As the Norwegians do not frequently see travellers, they are very curious to know their business, and who they are—so curious that I was half tempted to adopt Dr. Franklin’s plan, when travelling in America, where they are equally prying, which was to write on a paper, for public inspection, my name, from whence I came, where I was going, and what was my business. But if I were importuned by their curiosity, their friendly gestures gratified me. A woman, coming alone, interested them. And I know not whether my weariness gave me a look of peculiar delicacy; but they approached to assist me, and enquire after my wants, as if they were afraid to hurt, and wished to protect me. The sympathy I inspired, thus dropping down from the clouds in a strange land, affected me more than it would have done, had not my spirits been harassed by various causes—by much thinking—musing almost to madness—and even by a sort of weak melancholy that hung about my heart at parting with my daughter for the first time.
You know that as a female I am part
icularly attached to her—I feel more than a mother’s fondness and anxiety, when I reflect on the dependent and oppressed state of her sex. I dread lest she should be forced to sacrifice her heart to her principles, or principles to her heart. With trembling hand I shall cultivate sensibility, and cherish delicacy of sentiment, lest, whilst I lend fresh blushes to the rose, I sharpen the thorns that will wound the breast I would fain guard—I dread to unfold her mind, lest it should render her unfit for the world she is to inhabit—Hapless woman! what a fate is thine!
But whither am I wandering? I only meant to tell you that the impression the kindness of the simple people made visible on my countenance increased my sensibility to a painful degree. I wished to have had a room to myself; for their attention, and rather distressing observation, embarrassed me extremely. Yet, as they would bring me eggs, and make my coffee, I found I could not leave them without hurting their feelings of hospitality.
It is customary here for the host and hostess to welcome their guests as master and mistress of the house.
My clothes, in their turn, attracted the attention of the females; and I could not help thinking of the foolish vanity which makes many women so proud of the observation of strangers as to take wonder very gratuitously for admiration. This error they are very apt to fall into; when arrived in foreign country, the populace stare at them as they pass; yet the make of a cap, or the singularity of a gown, is often the cause of the flattering attention, which afterwards supports a fantastic superstructure of self-conceit.
Not having brought a carriage over with me, expecting to have met a person where I landed, who was immediately to have procured me one, I was detained whilst the good people of the inn sent round to all their acquaintance to search for a vehicle. A rude sort of cabriole was at last found, and a driver half drunk, who was no less eager to make a good bargain on that account. I had a Danish captain of a ship and his mate with me: the former was to ride on horseback, at which he was not very expert, and the latter to partake of my seat. The driver mounted behind to guide the horses, and flourish the whip over our shoulders; he would not suffer the reins out of his own hands. There was something so grotesque in our appearance, that I could not avoid shrinking into myself when I saw a gentleman-like man in the group which crowded round the door to observe us. I could have broken the driver’s whip for cracking to call the women and children together; but seeing a significant smile on the face, I had before remarked, I burst into a laugh, to allow him to do so too,—and away we flew. This is not a flourish of the pen; for we actually went on full gallop a long time, the horses being very good; indeed I have never met with better, if so good, post-horses, as in Norway; they are of a stouter make than the English horses, appear to be well fed, and are not easily tired.