Marjory Scott Wardrop and Early Twentieth-Century Georgian History (Critical Essay‪)‬

English-Georgian literary contacts have never been as intensive, multilateral, and interesting as in the nineteenth century. The initiation of diplomatic relation between these two countries began with the appointment Sir John Oliver Wardrop (1864-1948) as a first British Commissioner of Transcaucasia. He helped to set up the Georgian Committee in London, founded the Georgian Historic Society, which published its own journal Georgica. He was the founder of the Wardrop collection of Georgian books and manuscripts in the University of Oxford Bodleian Library (see Barrett). John Oliver Wardrop visited Georgia and consequently published in 1888 his first book, The Kingdom of Georgia: The Land of Women, Wine and Songs. He learned Georgian and became a translator of Georgian literature and author of scientific works. However, here my focus is on his sister Marjory Scott Wardrop: after reading her brother's book, she, too, visited Georgia and met the poet Ilya Chavchavadze, who, introduced Wardrop to Shota Rustaveli's twelfth-century long poem Vepkhistkaosani (The Knight in the Panther's Skin). Filled with admiration for the work, she threw herself into study of Georgian language and in 1912 Rustaveli was brought to English readers in a prose translation. She worked on it for eighteen years and it is the first translation of the text to English, still considered as one of the best among four versions. Wardrop visited Georgia in 1894-95 and in 1896 and kept contact with her friends there until she deceased in 1909. Among her publications of Georgian literature are Georgian Folk Tales (1894), The Hermit: A Long Poem by Ilia Chavchavadze (1895; for a review of the translation, see Gale), and The Life of St. Nino (1900). She was collecting books, magazines, and journals from close friends in Georgia and always knew what was happening there not only from Georgian, but from English and Russian newspapers and magazines and she was translating newspaper articles from Georgian to English with personal comments and notes about her views (on Wardrop, see, e.g., ALM [Mikaberidze, Alexander L.]; Donkin; Nasmyth; Odzeli; Odzeli, Khintibidze, Tkhinvaleli; Sharadze). Wardrop's letters and translations I am discussing here were issued between 1900-1909 during the Russian occupation of Georgia. The manuscripts indicate that her political and personal views were on the side of Georgia and against the politics and practices of the Russian empire. In the following, I present selected texts from the Marjory Scott Wardrop manuscript collection in the Oxford Bodleian Library's Wardrop Collection--established by John Oliver Wardrop, who also established the Wardrop Fund at the University of Oxford--and I begin with the letter "Memoir concerning events in Georgia in 1906": it is and important text as it includes her personal views and comments on matters Russian and Georgian. The text is of seven handwritten pages and describes the rebellion of Georgians against the Russian invasion and its aftermaths: "Russian women! Do you not hear the sobs and groans of Georgians? Do you know what is being done to your sisters in beautiful Georgia? The whole country enveloped in flames--the newish method of pacification--women are subjected to outrage. None are shared--old women, children, school- girls ... Horror and madness have seized the land. And this happens every day in every corner of Georgia. For two months women and children have been fleeing to forests and mountains hiding them from the punitive division, but even there they are not safe from the unbridled brutality which seeks them out ... How many children of tender years have died, victims of violation" (Wardrop Collection D 20). Further, the political situation of Georgia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is described in Wardrop's translation of an article published in the Georgian magazine Tsnobis Purzeli 3035 (24 March 1906). The text, although not a complete translation of the magazine