The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent. Volume I: Greece and the Levantine Littoral: Mabel Bent's diaries of 1883-1898, from the archive of the ... of the Hellenic and Roman Societies, London

“Then we went to the other bath. Here I found I was being again taken to the men’s place, so I said, ‘I’m not going in here’.But a great outcry was raised and loud exclamations of invitation and constant assurances that there was nobody naked, so when T said fiercely, ‘Come in and don’t make a fuss.They all wish it’, I entered a large hall with the raised divans peopled by gentry in cloaks and turbans of towels.There was fortunately no one in the hot bath as it deserved a careful examination.The wide platform round the tanks was inlaid with beautiful marbles and there were recesses with pumps, etc., also inlaid…” (Bursa, February 1888)On August 2nd 1877, the English explorer and archaeologist James Theodore Bent married an extraordinary Irishwoman, Mabel Virginia Anna Hall-Dare, the second of the four daughters born to Mr Robert Westley Hall-Dare of Co.Wexford and Essex. Mabel was 31, Theodore 25, and within a few months they had embarked on their pattern of annual travels that continu