No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
Lady Montagu also found this pleasure in writing letters, considering writing and reading to be twin obsessions. Her view of reading was that it was a vehicle that could take one anywhere. One can vicariously experience anything at all however prohibitive the cost of actually doing it in real life might be. Not everyone back home could experience traveling in Turkey, but through her letters they were able to not only picture the land and the people but also to learn to look at the Orient in a different way. Reading the letters also stayed with the recipient long after they had folded them back up and put them into the envelope again. Reading expands the horizons and in reading Lady Montagu's letters, the recipients were able to expand their knowledge of Turkey and the region as a whole and also perhaps to view the country in a different light.
The vulgar Turk is very different from what is spoken at court, 'tis as ridiculous to make use of the expressions commonly used in speaking to a great man or lady, as it would be to talk broad Yorkshire or Somersetshire in the drawing room.
Lady Montagu is a member of the nobility, and as such, distantly related to the British monarch. This means that she speaks what is colloquially known as The King's English, or The Queen's English, depending on who is monarch of the day. It was not accented at all, and had no regional identification. A Yorkshire accent, on the other hand, is definitely recognizable and is both thick and difficult to understand, pronouncing short vowel sounds rather than elongated ones; Somersetshire, is equally recognizable by its accent, which is extremely slow and languid, taking much longer to pronounce every word than other regional speakers. Accents that were discernible like this usually denoted a lack of class or education and that is why Lady Montagu observes that it would be ridiculous to expect to hear this kind of regional accent in the drawing room of an upper class home.
Equally ridiculous would be hearing the "street" Turkish language in any kind of embassy setting or residence. The two things would not be experienced together at all and nobody should expect them to be. Her experience of Turkey very quickly shows her that there is just as big a class divide in the Orient as there is in her own country, which by her own admission she finds extremely surprising.
