141 — To his Mother
Constantinople, June 28, 1810.
My dear Mother, — I regret to perceive by your last letter that several of mine have not arrived, particularly a very long one written in November last from Albania, where I was on a visit to the Pacha of that province. Fletcher has also written to his spouse perpetually.
Mr. Hobhouse, who will forward or deliver this, and is on his return to England, can inform you of our different movements, but I am very uncertain as to my own return. He will probably be down in Notts, some time or other; but Fletcher, whom I send back as an incumbrance (English servants are sad travellers), will supply his place in the interim, and describe our travels, which have been tolerably extensive.
I have written twice briefly from this capital, from Smyrna, from Athens and other parts of Greece; from Albania, the Pacha of which province desired his respects to my mother, and said he was sure I was a man of high birth because I had small ears, curling hair, and white hands!!! He was very kind to me, begged me to consider him as a father, and gave me a guard of forty soldiers through the forests of Acarnania. But of this and other circumstances I have written to you at large, and yet hope you will receive my letters.
I remember Mahmout Pacha, the grandson of Ali Pacha, at Yanina, (a little fellow of ten years of age, with large black eyes, which our ladies would purchase at any price, and those regular features which distinguish the Turks,) asked me how I came to travel so young, without anybody to take care of me. This question was put by the little man with all the gravity of threescore. I cannot now write copiously; I have only time to tell you that I have passed many a fatiguing, but never a tedious moment; and all that I am afraid of is that I shall contract a gypsy like wandering disposition, which will make home tiresome to me: this, I am told, is very common with men in the habit of peregrination, and, indeed, I feel it so. On the 3rd of May I swam from
Sestos
to
Abydos
. You know the story of Leander, but I had no
Hero
to receive me at landing.
I also passed a fortnight on the Troad. The tombs of Achilles and Æsyetes still exist in large barrows, similar to those you have doubtless seen in the North.
The
other day I was at Belgrade (a village in these environs), to see the house built on the same site as Lady Mary Wortley's
. By-the-by, her ladyship, as far as I can judge, has lied, but not half so much as any other woman would have done in the same situation.
I have been in all the principal mosques by the virtue of a firman: this is a favor rarely permitted to Infidels, but the ambassador's departure obtained it for us. I have been up the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, round the walls of the city, and, indeed, I know more of it by sight than I do of London. I hope to amuse you some winter's evening with the details, but at present you must excuse me; — I am not able to write long letters in June. I return to spend my summer in Greece. I write often, but you must not be alarmed when you do not receive my letters; consider we have no regular post farther than Malta, where I beg you will in future send your letters, and not to this city.
Fletcher is a poor creature, and requires comforts that I can dispense with. He is very sick of his travels, but you must not believe his account of the country. He sighs for ale, and idleness, and a wife, and the devil knows what besides. I have not been disappointed or disgusted. I have lived with the highest and the lowest. I have been for days in a Pacha's palace, and have passed many a night in a cowhouse, and I find the people inoffensive and kind. I have also passed some time with the principal Greeks in the Morea and Livadia, and, though inferior to the Turks, they are better than the Spaniards, who, in their turn, excel the Portuguese.
Of
Constantinople you will find many descriptions in different travels; but Lady Mary Wortley errs strangely when she says, "St. Paul's would cut a strange figure by St. Sophia's."
I have been in both, surveyed them inside and out attentively. St. Sophia's is undoubtedly the most interesting from its immense antiquity, and the circumstance of all the Greek emperors, from Justinian, having been crowned there, and several murdered at the altar, besides the Turkish Sultans who attend it regularly. But it is inferior in beauty and size to some of the mosques, particularly "Soleyman," etc., and not to be mentioned in the same page with St. Paul's (I speak like a
Cockney
). However, I prefer the Gothic cathedral of Seville to St. Paul's, St. Sophia's, and any religious building I have ever seen.
The walls of the Seraglio are like the walls of Newstead gardens, only higher, and much in the same
order
; but the ride by the walls of the city, on the land side, is beautiful. Imagine four miles of immense triple battlements, covered with ivy, surmounted with 218 towers, and, on the other side of the road, Turkish burying-grounds (the loveliest spots on earth), full of enormous cypresses. I have seen the ruins of Athens, of Ephesus, and Delphi.
I
have traversed great part of Turkey, and many other parts of Europe, and some of Asia; but I never beheld a work of nature or art which yielded an impression like the prospect on each side from the Seven Towers to the end of the Golden Horn
.
Now for England. I am glad to hear of the progress of
English Bards
, etc. Of course, you observed I have made great additions to the new edition. Have you received my picture from Sanders, Vigo Lane, London? It was finished and paid for long before I left England: pray, send for it. You seem to be a mighty reader of magazines: where do you pick up all this intelligence, quotations, etc., etc.?
Though
I was happy to obtain my seat without the assistance of Lord Carlisle, I had no measures to keep with a man who declined interfering as my relation on that occasion, and I have done with him, though I regret distressing Mrs. Leigh
, poor thing! — I hope she is happy.
It is my opinion that Mr. B — — ought to marry Miss R — — . Our first duty is not to do evil; but, alas! that is impossible: our next is to repair it, if in our power. The girl is his equal: if she were his inferior, a sum of money and provision for the child would be some, though a poor, compensation: as it is, he should marry her. I will have no gay deceivers on my estate, and I shall not allow my tenants a privilege I do not permit myself —
that
of debauching each other's daughters. God knows, I have been guilty of many excesses; but, as I have laid down a resolution to reform, and lately kept it, I expect this Lothario to follow the example, and begin by restoring this girl to society, or, by the beard of my father! he shall hear of it. Pray take some notice of Robert, who will miss his master; poor boy, he was very unwilling to return. I trust you are well and happy. It will be a pleasure to hear from you.
Believe me, yours very sincerely,
Byron
.
P.S. — How is Joe Murray?
P.S. — I open my letter again to tell you that Fletcher having petitioned to accompany me into the Morea, I have taken him with me, contrary to the intention expressed in my letter.
Footnote 1:
Lady Mary describes the village of Belgrade in a letter to Pope, dated June 17, 1717 (
Letters
, edit. 1893, vol. i. pp. 331-333). But Walsh (
Narrative of a Residence in Constantinople
, vol. ii 108, 109), who visited Belgrade in 1821, says that no trace of her description was then to be seen — no view of the Black Sea, no houses of the wealthy Christians, no fountains, and no fruit-trees. "The very tradition" of the house, which had disappeared before Dallaway visited Belgrade in 1794, had perished.
Footnote 2:
Lady Mary does not compare St. Paul's with St. Sophia's, but with the mosque of the Valide,
"the largest of all, built entirely of marble, the most prodigious, and, I think, the most beautiful structure I ever saw, be it spoken to the honour of our sex, for it was founded by the mother of Mahomet IV. Between friends, St. Paul's Church would make a pitiful figure near it"
(
Letters
, vol. i. p. 356).
Footnote 3:
"The European with the Asian shore
Sprinkled with palaces; the ocean stream
Here and there studded with a seventy-four;
Sophia's cupola with golden gleam;
The cypress groves; Olympus high and hoar;
The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream,
Far less describe, present the very view
Which charm'd the charming Mary Montagu."
Don Juan
, Canto V stanza 3.
Footnote 4:
For Mrs. Leigh,
née
Augusta Byron, see page 18,
1.
