I found Lady Hester in good health and excellent spirits, and looking much the same as when I left her some years before. She received me with great apparent pleasure, kissing me on each cheek, ordering sherbet, the pipe, coffee, and a finjàn[27] of orange-flower water; all which civilities, at meeting, are regarded in the East as marks of the most cordial and distinguished regard. I myself was truly astonished at all this, but more especially at her salutation on the cheeks after the Oriental fashion; for, in the early part of her travels, when I was with her for seven years together, I do not recollect that she had often even taken my arm—an honour she seldom vouchsafed to any body less than a member of the aristocracy. My astonishment was increased, when, for several days in succession, she insisted on my always sitting by her on the sofa—a privilege she rarely, indeed, I believe never, allowed to any one afterwards.
The conversation turned at first on such inquiries as are common, after a long separation, to persons who have known each other before. I remained with her from noon until midnight, in vain endeavouring to get away, during which time I hardly moved from the sofa, except to sit down to dinner. A description of the dinner appointments of this lady, who once presided at Mr. Pitt’s table in the splendour of wealth and fashion, may be considered both curious and interesting. She sat on the sofa, and I opposite to her, on a common rush-bottom chair, with an unpainted deal table (about three feet by two and a half between us), covered with a scanty tablecloth, of the kind usually spread on a bed-room table at an inn. Two white plates, one over the other, French fashion, were placed before each of us, and in the centre of the table were three dishes of yellow earthenware (common in the south of France), containing a pilàf, a yackney, or sort of Irish stew, and a boiled fowl, swimming in its broth. There were two silver table-spoons for each of us, which, she said, were all she had, and two black bone-handled knives and forks. One spoon was for the broth, one for the yackney; and, when the pilàf was to be served, we helped ourselves with the same spoons with which we had been eating. The arrangements were completed by a black bottle with Mount Lebanon wine in it, of exquisite flavour, it is true, and a common water-decanter. She said that in this style the young Duke of Richelieu had dined with her; adding, however, that her destitute state as to dishes and table-service was not quite so deplorable previously to the long illness she had gone through; but that, at that melancholy period, her slaves and servants had robbed her of everything, even to the cushions and covers of her sofa.
At length, after frequently pleading the anxiety my family must feel at being left so many hours in a strange habitation, I contrived to make my escape, and found Mrs. ——, on my return, sitting disconsolate in the midst of her trunks, under a conviction that I must either have been lost, or devoured by the wolves and hyænas, with whose neighbouring depredations, for want of other subjects of conversation, the secretary had endeavoured to entertain her. There was no great difficulty in appeasing her fears on such occasions, of which we had afterwards so many repetitions; but it was not quite so easy to reconcile her to the undisguised slights which Lady Hester Stanhope put upon her from the very moment of our arrival, in retaliation, as we supposed, for the repeated delays, of which Lady Hester believed her to have been the cause, in the prosecution of my journey. Her ladyship’s resentment was probably rendered still more severe by her general want of sympathy towards her own sex.
The reader will pardon these extraneous details. They are introduced for the sake of preserving entire the thread of the narrative, and certainly with no acrimonious feeling towards Lady Hester Stanhope, whose motive, as she afterwards told me, for adopting this strange line of conduct towards my family, was to check in the bud the womanish caprices, which she anticipated might otherwise disturb the harmony of our intercourse.
Before we commence our diary, it is necessary to give a description of the residence which Lady Hester Stanhope had chosen, in order to avoid the confusion which an ignorance of localities is sometimes calculated to produce.
Her first retreat, when she settled in Syria in 1813, was an old monastic house, about two miles from the ancient city of Sidon: but this she found much too small for her establishment; and having observed, in one of her rides whilst living there, a small house near the village of Jôon,[28] or Djoun, as the French spell it to accommodate the sound to their pronunciation, she resolved to hire it, and remove thither. It belonged to one Joseph Seweyah, a Damascus merchant, who very readily let it to her for 1,000 piasters, or £20 a-year, as the exchange was then, on condition that, on quitting it, the buildings and improvements she might make were to revert to him and his heirs, without any consideration on his part. The house was, and is, called Dar Jôon (see the view), dar signifying a Hall, or gentleman’s dwelling, as when we say Boxwood Hall, Wortley Hall. Dar also means a mount, or elevated hunch. In which of the two senses the word is applied in Dar Jôon I could not learn, as some Arabs told me one way, and some the other.
The mount on which the house stands is shaped like a half orange, with a flat on the summit, which afforded room for exercising ground, a garden, stabling, and any other additional buildings that might be thought necessary. The garden, entirely of her own creation, was richly diversified with covered alleys, serpentine walks, summer-houses, pavilions, arbours, and other embellishments, in which she displayed such admirable taste, that it would not be easy, even in England, to find a more beautiful garden within similar limits.[29]
Around the house Lady Hester built small rooms, stables, cottages, offices, and entire dwellings. The rooms and dwellings were intended for lodging those who, she expected, would fly to her for refuge, during the revolutions which she believed were then impending, not only over the country in which she resided, but the whole world; and, anticipating that many individuals, whose lives would be eagerly sought after by their persecutors, might ask for an asylum at her hands, she contrived several detached rooms, in such a way, that persons dwelling within the precincts of the same residence should be ignorant who their neighbours were; whose vicinity, in like manner, should be unknown to others. The whole was surrounded by a wall more than ten feet high to the north and east, and about six or seven feet high on the other two sides. The entire space within the wall was a parallelogram.
Ground Plan of Lady Hester Stanhope’s Residence at Joon.