News of the great events that were taking place in France had now reached Sayda, and Lady Hester, whose foible it was to think that the successors of Pitt could do no right, was highly displeased at the action of the British Government. She gave vent to her sentiments in the following letter, dated April 1816, to her cousin the Marquis (afterwards Duke) of Buckingham:--
'You cannot doubt that a woman of my character and (I presume to say) understanding must have held in contempt and aversion all the statesmen of the present day, whose unbounded ignorance and duplicity have brought ruin on France, have spread their own shame through all Europe, and have exposed themselves not only to ridicule, but to the curses of present and future generations. One great mind, one single, enlightened statesman, whose virtues had equalled his talents, was all that was wanting to effect, at this unexampled period, the welfare of all Europe, by taking advantage of events the most extraordinary that have occurred in any era.... Cease therefore to torment me. I will not live in Europe, even were I, in flying from it, compelled to beg my bread. Once only will I go to France, to see you and James, but only that once. I will not be a martyr for nothing. The granddaughter of Chatham, the niece of the illustrious Pitt, feels herself blush that she was born in England--that England who has made her accursed gold the counterpoise to justice; that England who puts weeping humanity in irons, who has employed the valour of her troops, destined for the defence of her national honour, as the instrument to enslave a freeborn people; and who has exposed to ridicule and humiliation a monarch [Louis XVIII.] who might have gained the goodwill of his subjects if those intriguing English had left him to stand or fall upon his own merits.'
The announcement of the arrival of the Princess of Wales at Acre, and the possibility that she might extend her journey to Sayda, induced Lady Hester to embark for Antioch, where she professed to have business with the British consul. It was considered an act of great daring on her part to go into a district inhabited entirely by the Ansárys, on whom she had lately wrought so signal a vengeance. But the Ansárys had apparently no desire to bring upon themselves a second punitive expedition, and though Lady Hester spent most of her time in a retired cottage outside the town, in defiance of the warning that her life was in danger, the tribes forbore to molest her. In September she returned to Mar Elias; and, a few weeks later, Giorgio returned from England, bringing with him an English surgeon and twenty-seven packing-cases filled with presents, to be distributed among Lady Hester's Turkish friends and acquaintances. On January 18, 1817, Dr. Meryon, having initiated his successor into Eastern manners and customs, took leave of his employer, and sailed for Europe, little thinking that he would ever set foot in Syria again.
PART II
During the next ten or twelve years, we get but a few scanty glimpses of the white Queen of the Desert. After Dr. Meryon's departure, Lady Hester removed to a house in the village of Dar Jôon, or Djoun, a few miles from Mar Elias. To this house she added considerably, laid out some magnificent gardens, and enclosed the whole within high walls, after the manner of a mediaeval fortress. Here she seems to have passed her time in encouraging the Drûzes to rise against Ibrahim Pasha, intriguing against the British consuls, and attempting to bolster up the declining authority of the Sultan. In the intervals of political business she occupied herself with superintending her building and gardening operations, physicking the sick, and tyrannising over her numerous servants. At Mar Elias, which she still kept in her own hands, she maintained an eccentric old Frenchman, General Loustaunau,[Footnote: Dr. Meryon's spelling.] who had formerly been in the service of a Hindu rajah, but who, in his forlorn old age, had wandered to Syria, and there, by dint of applying scriptural texts to contemporary events, had earned the title of a prophet. Like Samuel Brothers, he prophesied marvellous things of Lady Hester's future, which she, rendered credulous by her solitary life in a mystic land, where her own power and importance were the chief facts in her mental horizon, came at length to believe.
In the Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess by the Emira Asmar, daughter of the Emir Abdallah Asmar, the author tells us that as a girl she paid a long visit to the Emir Beshyr, prince of the Drûzes. During this visit, which apparently took place in the early 'twenties,' she was sent with a present of fruit to a neighbour's house, and there found a guest, a tall and splendid figure, arrayed in masculine costume, and engaged in smoking a narghila. The stranger, who talked Arabic with elegance and fluency, discoursed on the subject of astrology, and tried to dissuade the Emira from taking a projected journey to the west, where she declared the sun had set, and the hearts of the people retained not a spark of the virtues of their forefathers. 'Soon afterwards,' continues the author, 'she rose, and took her departure, attended by a large retinue. A spirited charger stood at the gate, champing the bit with fiery impatience. She put her foot in the stirrup, and vaulting nimbly into the saddle, which she bestrode like a man, started off at a rapid pace, galloping over rocks and mountains in advance of her suite, with a fearlessness and address that would have done honour to a Mameluke.' The stranger was, of course, none other than Lady Hester Stanhope, who, at that time, was on friendly terms with the Emir Beshyr, afterwards her bitterest enemy.
In 1826 Lady Hester wrote to invite Dr. Meryon to return to her service for a time, and he, who seems all his life to have 'heard the East a-calling,' could not resist the invitation, though his movements were now hampered by a wife and children. He began at once to make preparations for his departure, but was unable to start before September 1827. Meanwhile, Lady Hester had been gulled by an English traveller, designated as 'X.' in her letters, who had induced her to believe that he was empowered by the Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Bedford, and a committee of Freemasons, to offer her such sums as would extricate her out of her embarrassments, and to settle an income upon her for life. How a woman who professed to have an almost supernatural insight into the characters and thoughts of men, could have been deceived by this story, it is hard to understand; but apparently the difficulties of her situation, occasioned by her custom of making large presents to the pashas in order to keep up her authority, as well as by her benevolence to the poor in her neighbourhood, rendered her willing to catch at any straw for help. This 'X' had promised to send her a hundred purses for her current expenses, and to bring out from England masons and carpenters to enlarge her dwelling, in order that she might entertain the many distinguished people who desired to come and see her. In a letter to Dr. Meryon on this subject, Lady Hester writes:--