Portrait | Julius Michael Millingen (1800-1878) and Other Millingens

Mavi Boncuk | Julius Michael Millingen (1800–1878) was an English physician and writer. He was one of the doctors treating Lord Byron at his death.

He was born in London on 19 July 1800, a son of James Millingen. He spent his early years in Calais and Paris, and was sent to school in Rome. In holidays he took walking tours in Germany, on one of which he is said to have visited Goethe in Weimar. In 1817 he entered the University of Edinburgh, and attended medical classes there until 1821, when he received a diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

When the London Philhellenic Committee was formed, Millingen was recommended to it by William Smith, and on 27 August 1823 he left England for Corfu, with letters of introduction to the Greek government and to Lord Byron. Arriving at Asos in Cephalonia in November of that year, he found Byron at Metaxata, and spent some time with him there. He later accompanied him to Missolonghi, and attended him in his last illness, which, at the autopsy, Millingen pronounced to be purulent meningitis He was accused by Francesco Bruno, another of Byron's doctors, in an article in the Westminster Review, with having caused his death by delaying phlebotomy. Millingen replied at length in his Memoirs. A modern view is that both doctors were culpable in Byron's death, for their use of bleeding.

Soon after Byron's death in 1824, Millingen had a severe attack of typhoid fever; on recovering he was appointed surgeon in the Greek army, in which he served until its surrender to the Turks.On 31 March 1825, he was appointed surgeon of the Neokastro garrison which at the time was undergoing a siege by Egyptian troops. He was taken prisoner by Ibrahim Pasha, and released only after representations by Stratford Canning, then British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. In November 1826 Millingen went to Smyrna, and after a short stay in Kutahya and Broussa(Bursa), settled in 1827 in Constantinople. There he attained a reputation as a physician.

Millingen was also court physician to Mahmud II and his four successors as Sultan; he was one of a commission appointed to inquire into the death of Sultan Abdulaziz. He was also a member of the International Medical Congress on Cholera held in Constantinople in 1866, and an original member and afterwards president of the General Society of Medicine. In 1860 David Urquhart set up a Turkish bath in London, as Millingen had advocated.

Like his father, Millingen was an archæologist. For many years he was president of the Greek Syllogos or Literary Society of Constantinople, where he lectured in Greek on archæological subjects. He discovered the ruins of Aczani in Phrygia, an account of which was published by George Thomas Keppel, and excavated the site of the temple of Jupiter Urius on the Bosphorus.

In a major fire at Pera in 1870, Millingen lost most of his belongings, and a manuscript biography of Byron. He died in Constantinople on 1 December 1878.

Works

Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece[*], with Anecdotes relating to Lord Byron, London, 1831, vol. i. only (vol. ii. remained in manuscript). Its publication involved him in controversy with Edward John Trelawny.

Arbitrary Detention by the Inquisition at Rome of three Protestant Children in Defiance of the Will of their Father, London, 1842.

He also contributed an article in French on "Oriental Baths" to the Gazette Médicale d'Orient, 1 January 1858.

[*] Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece (1831) is one of the better accounts of the war: Millingen was on personal terms not only with the Missolonghi philhellenes but with leading figures in the Greek government and, during his stint with Ibrahim, with the Ottoman leadership as well. While he had been a partisan of Byron and Mavrocordatos, Millingen the memoirist could look on the affairs of 1823-26 from the perspectives of all concerned in the Revolution. Indeed he is critical of all concerned, lending his narrative a credibility lacking in the more ideologically driven accounts. His awareness of the complex political context and particularized descriptions of persons, places, and manners render his narrative the more plausible.

Aware that his censorious remarks about the Greeks would prejudice their cause, Millingen refrained from publication until the war for independence had been won. His graphic descriptions of the self-interested and often vicious behavior of the warring parties, and of attitudes and customs repulsive to liberal sensibilities, were not calculated to win friends in either the East or the West. Byron alone emerges as a disinterested promoter of civic virtue. Millingen reports that it was through Byron's unblinking eyes that he first came to see affairs in Greece for what they were.

Like Byron, Millingen was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan: his family background was Anglo-Dutch-French and prior to his medical training in Edinburgh he lived mostly on the Continent. His fluency in languages is apparent from his biography. Like his father (a friend and correspondent of Samuel Rogers) he was an connoisseur of classical antiquities and a highly cultured man. He had friends in high places, as appears both from his letters of recommendation mentioned at the beginning of the narrative and from his letters of appeal printed at the end. That Greeks, Egyptians, and Turks would all vie for his services suggests something of his skills at diplomacy as well as medicine.

Millingen did not publish his memoirs to turn a profit; his motives, as stated in his preface, were to add his personal observations to the historical record and to defend his reputation from the charge of political apostasy. The Memoirs is carelessly printed and suffers from the remote author's inability to correct proofs. It appeared in December 1830—poor timing since this corresponded with the publication of the second volume of Thomas Moore's biography of Byron. The Literary Gazette and Monthly Review offered excerpts with little critical comment, while other reviews merely reprinted anecdotes from Millingen in their reviews of Moore.

The Literary Gazette did, however, follow up with a vitriolic attack on Millingen written by Edward John Trelawny, then resident in Florence. Trelawny, like Sir Leicester Stanhope, had supported Odysseas Androutsos in his conflict with the Greek government. When Odysseas went over to the Turks Mavrocordatos or his allies tried to have him and Trelawny assassinated. The source of Trelawny's animosity is thus apparent. In the Literary Gazette he serves up unflattering anecdotes of Millingen and Mavrocordatos drawn from an account of Byron “written on his coffin by me ... Mesolonghi, April 29, 1824.” Despite this close proximity to his subject, scholars have been inclined to regard Millingen as the more reliable witness.

David Hill Radcliffe (Source)

Family

Millingen separated from his first wife Marie Dejean[1] (1816–1874), a Roman Catholic who then embraced Islam, and was married three times. She married, secondly, Kıbrıslı Mehmed Emin Pasha and took the name Melek Hanum. She was divorced by her second husband, and wrote an autobiography, Thirty Years in the Harem (1872).

The children of the first marriage included:

A daughter, Evelin or Evelina[2] (1831–1900), who married Count Alvaro Pisani. Henry James wrote in a letter that she "makes one believe in the romantic heroines of D'Israeli and Bulwer".

Frederick Millingen[3](1833/34–c.1901), the second son, took the name Osman Bey and joined the Ottoman army; and later called himself Vladimir Andrejevitch. He was in the Ottoman service 1853 to 1864, but clashed with Fuad Pasha.

James R. van Millingen (Constantinople, 1835; id. 1876), who became the Director of Ottoman Telegraphs

The children of the second marriage to Zafira van Millingen (Ralli) (b.July 19, 1814 - d. July 23, 1843)  included:

Alexander van Millingen [4](1840–1915), the third son.

Charles [van] Millingen (Constantinople, 1842 – Tehran, 1880) and John [van] Millingen (Constantinople, 1842 – 1844), twin brothers

The children of the third marriage to Adelaide van Millingen (La Fontaine) (b.July 19, 1819 - d. 1893 (73-74) Daughter of James La Fontaine and Niccoleta La Fontaine (Coccini) included:

Julius Robertson van Millingen [5](Constantinople, 22 November 1848 – Dunblane, Scotland, 16 November 1940)

Edwin [van] Millingen [6](Constantinople, 30 April 1850 – Constantinople, 7 April 1900), who was an oculist in Eastern Europe.

[1] Melek Hanum (1814–1873) met Kibrisli Mehemet (Mehmed) Pasha, in Paris, and they were married upon returning to Istanbul. She accompanied him to various postings in Palestine and Serbia and shared with him the frustrations of the arbitrary periodic dismissals that characterized late Ottoman politics. Her sensationalist account of life in Turkey contains details of political intrigue and corruption and demonstrates the influence and mobility available to women in the official households of the Ottoman elite. 

During Mehmed Pasha’s absence, Melek Hanim concocted a plan to replace her sickly son with another child in the event of his expected death. Although her own son survived, one of her co-conspirators killed another, and the ensuing scandal resulted in her divorce. She spent the rest of her life trying to exact vengeance upon her ex-husband and attempting to gain access to the property she viewed as legitimately her own. After several setbacks, she and two of her children finally fled to Paris. Thirty Years in the Harem was written during her impoverished exile there, and is highly critical of Islam and of Ottoman society. Her vitriolic account is seen by some as proof of Ottoman women’s political influence, and by others as self-serving and scandalous.

[2] Evelina van Millingen (4 April 1831 — 25 June 1900), also known as Evelina Millingen and later as Evelina, Countess Pisani, was an Englishwoman born in Constantinople, and known as a hostess, a cultivator of gardens, and a novelist, based in northern Italy.

Evelina van Millingen was born in Constantinople, the eldest child of Julius Michael Millingen and his first wife, Marie Dejean Millingen (a Frenchwoman later called "Melek Hanum"). Her younger brother was Byzantine scholar Alexander van Millingen. Her father was an English-born doctor who attended Lord Byron on his deathbed at Missolonghi. Evelina was raised mainly in her grandmother's household in Rome. Strong disagreement over Evelina's and her brothers' educational placements and religious upbringing precipitated their parents' divorce.

Upon assuming her role as countess at the Villa Pisani in 1852, Evelina focused on creating extensive formal gardens on the grounds of the villa in Vescovana. Her gardens reflected her English and her Turkish influences. She also commissioned the family chapel on the grounds, built in 1860 and designed by sculptor Antonio Gradenigo. She hosted international travelers at the villa,  including Henry James and Augusta, Lady Gregory.

Evelina van Millingen married Count Almorò III Pisani in 1852, in Venice. She was widowed when he died in 1886, and, because they were childless, the Pisani family of Santo Stefano ended with his death. Evelina, the last Countess Pisani, died in the summer of 1900, aged 68 years, in Italy. The family's former villa in Vescovana, now an inn, encourages visitors to look and listen for Evelina's ghost haunting her gardens.  An event every spring, "I Bulbi di Evelina Pisani", celebrates the blooming of her tulip gardens.

[3] Frederick Millingen, aliases (Major) Osman Bey and (Major) Vladimir Andrejevich, went by many names, but spent much of his life obsessed by a single idea. Born in 1832 in Istanbul, Millingen’s career included a brief stint as an Ottoman officer and a would-be Union soldier who sailed to New York in 1865 to help win the Civil War, arriving too late to be of use.

Upon his return to Europe, Millingen’s interests soon shifted to global Jewry. His 1873 La conquête du monde par les Juifs (The Conquest of the World by the Jews) was an international hit, appearing in numerous languages and even crossing the Atlantic thanks to a St. Louis publisher. (1878 U.S. edition )

Yet according to his memoirs, the book brought its author nothing but misfortune. In a 1900 pamphlet entitled Dreyfus, martyr Juif (Dreyfus, Jewish Martyr), which he signed “Osman-bey, martyr of the Jews,” Millingen describes being hounded across Europe by a transnational cabal of “Judeo-nihilists” and their allies, including his own sister. He concludes by tallying up his expulsions (including one and a half from Italy) and pronouncing himself “the most expelled man of the 19th century.”

Wild Life Among the Koords by Frederick Millingen , Osman, Major F.R.G.S . Frederick Millingen

[4] MILLINGEN, Professor Alexander Van (1840-1915) 

Born in 1840; third son of Julius Michael Millingen educated at Malta Protestant College, Blair Lodge Academy, Polmont, Edinburgh University and New College, Edinburgh; MA (Edinburgh); Doctor of Divinity (St Andrews and Knox College, Toronto); Honorary Student, British School at Athens; Professor of History, Robert College Constantinople; Pastor of the Free Church of Scotland Church, Genoa; Pastor of the Union Church, Pera, Constantinople; recreations: archæology and travelling; died 1915. No connection of Van Millingen with King's College is known. 

Publications: Byzantine Constantinople: the walls of the city and adjoining historical sites (John Murray, London, 1899); Constantinople. Painted by Warwick Goble. Described by A. Van Millingen (Adam & Charles Black, London, 1906); with Ramsay Traquair, W S George and A E Henderson, Byzantine Churches in Constantinople: their history and architecture (Macmillan & Co, London, 1912); Walter S George, The Church of Saint Eirene at Constantinople , with an historical notice by Alexander Van Millingen (Oxford University Press, London, [1913]). 

Also contributed to Murray's Handbook to Constantinople and to the Encyclopædia Britannica .

[5] Julius Robertson van Millingen, British banker and collector of antiquities who sold several gems to the British Museum.

[6] Edwin van Millingen (b.April 30, 1850 - İstanbul, Turkey d.1900) Oculist, Son of Dr. Julius Michael van Millingen and Adelaide van Millingen Husband of Marie van Millingen and Johanna van Millingen

In 1880, Marie was at a catholic orphanage in the Pera district of Constantinople (Istanbul), when she was visited by an English doctor specialising in eyes, called Edwin van Millingen, who came to treat her eye condition (documented in the autobiography of JULIUS ROBERTSON VAN MILLINGEN 1848-1940). Edwin was the son of JULIUS MICHAEL VAN MILLINGEN, MD,

Edwin performed surgery on Marie so probably had to visit on several occasions. During this time, they began an affair and Marie became pregnant. However, Edwin was already married to an Austrian lady, JOHANNA FISCHER, who was childless and of fragile health! However, despite this, he continued his affair with Marie and probably provided for her and set her up with an address. The child, MARY, is believed to have been born in Graz, in Austria. This is near Vienna, where Edwin did his specialist medical training, so he may have sent Marie there for her confinement and to get her out of the way. That the affair was discovered shortly after the baby’s birth is suggested by a photograph of Edwin’s brother, which is addressed to Johanna and says “To Johanna, with the love and sympathy of Julius, 5 July 1881.” Johanna separated from Edwin and probably returned to Vienna.

Clearly the affair continued and in 1882, Marie had another child who was named EDWIN. He died a year later. In 1884, Marie became pregnant with EVELINE but on 10 December of that year, Edwin’s estranged wife died and the couple rushed to get married at the chapel of the British Consulate in Constantinople a mere 13 days later. There were no family witnesses recorded on the marriage register. Eveline was born a few weeks later in January 1885.

Marie had a further 3 children by Edwin. These were ETHEL, b.1887, who died at 3 years old of scarletina, RALPH EDWIN CHARLES VAN MILLINGEN b. 1889 and VIVIEN BYRON VAN MILLINGEN, b.1891.

In 1900, the family were living in San Stefano, now called Yeşilköy, a suburb of Istanbul. Edwin’s brother Julius wrote in his autobiography that on his last visit to Constantinople, Edwin did not see him off for his return voyage to England because he was suffering from flu. This was the last time that he saw him as a few weeks later he died, aged 50, at the British Seamen’s Hospital in Galata. Edwin is buried with his father in Haider Pasha cemetery, Scutari.

After Edwin’s death, it became clear that the family were in financial difficulties, because although Edwin had earned enormous sums of money, he was also a big spender. The children had been placed in Scottish boarding schools but the fees were in arrears. Julius and his half-brother ALEXANDER VAN MILLINGEN, and half-sister Countess EVELINA PISANI, felt obliged to pay off his debts and continue to pay for the education of the two boys, Ralph and Vivian. The girls, Mary and Eveline, went to live with their uncle Julius in Dunblane in Scotland.