I must now thank you for a most admirable cheese, and the case of liqueurs which accompanied it. You tell me not to send any more wine; but I shall not attend to it. I only regret that I cannot forward more by this conveyance; for it is excessively scarce, which will account for the small quantity; but I shall always continue to ship some, whenever I can procure it; and I only wish this country produced anything that would be agreeable to you or Mrs. Webb.
I have heard that at Geneva there are very fine flowers. If you will procure me a few seeds, I should be very much obliged to you, as my stock of flowers this year has become very low, owing to my having had a very careless gardener, who neglected to water the seeds, so that they never came up. My fine steed is gone long ago, and my garden remains my only amusement. I have made a little note; but, if there should be any other showy flowers or shrubs, pray include them. Very small flowers are considered here as weeds, however pretty they may be.
I have received my account from your house, and I have drawn for another thousand dollars. They tell me, besides, that the doctor is gone to England. If so, I fear some trick will be played me, and he will not be allowed to return. It does not signify—I am an Arab.[20] I have, however, written to him, desiring him, in case of his return, to beg you to attend most particularly to the state of your health and that of Mrs. Webb, and that he will leave with you a volume of medical advice. The other letter you will please to forward to his friend, Mr. N. S.
It was immediately after the date of this letter that the news of the battle of Navarino must have reached Sayda and Beyrout. On that occasion, all the Franks at Sayda, in a single hour, fled precipitately from their homes, the greater part of them taking refuge with Lady Hester Stanhope. In the narrative of her subsequent conversations, some account of the expense she was put to by this unforeseen event will be found; for, in her correspondence with me, she was particularly careful not to make any allusion to the universal alarm which prevailed amongst the Europeans, lest it might possibly have some influence upon the fears of my family, and deter us from prosecuting our journey.
Some private business requiring my presence in England, I left Italy in June, 1828, for London, and returned to Pisa in the following October. Up to this time (now nearly a year), I had had no answer from Lady Hester to my letters (one from Zante, and one from Leghorn), in which I had given an account of the piracy. At that time there were no steamboats on those waters, and correspondence was necessarily carried on, at great risk and uncertainty, by merchant-vessels, many of which were plundered by the Greeks, while others frequently consumed two or three months, returning from the Levant to Marseilles or Leghorn. At last, a letter reached me, in the handwriting of Miss Williams, dictated by Lady Hester Stanhope.
Lady Hester Stanhope to Dr. ——.
Djoun, Mount Lebanon, March 23, 1828.
I have received the account of your disasters by sea, and latterly the books you were so good as to send me. The books I cannot read, and I have nobody to read them to me: however, I thank you for your kind attention. I am much afflicted at the trouble and vexation you have had, and at the situation in which you find yourself. I must say, it would be very imprudent to bring women or children into this country at this moment, and a great source of fatigue and vexation to me; for they could not be comfortable under the present circumstances of the times. What I should propose is, that, when you have settled your business, you immediately set off alone with a Dutch passport,[21] in case things should turn out ill before you arrive. Leave Mrs. —— at Pisa, where she could remain very comfortably until you return. Write to X. these few words—“She has ordered me to forbid you evermore to interfere with her affairs, or even to write to her.”
The plague will be over before you get here. The Turks behave extremely well to me, the Christians and Franks as ill. I shall say nothing about the state of my affairs—(you may guess what it may be in these times) nor of the state of my health, without a person of any kind to assist me in anything. If I outlive the storm, I may help you:—if not, you can take poor Williams away.