Length of the Outside Wall 180 paces.
Breadth of d° ... 100 d°
The Dots mark the way from the Doctor’s Pavilions to the inner Courts.

REFERENCE:

London. Published by H. Colburn, 13 Gᵗ. Marlboro St.

The buildings were, in some instances, composed of a number of walls, one within the other like the palace of the kings of the Medes (see the annexed ground-plan); and owing to the different enclosures wherein servants with different occupations lived, a person attempting to enter, or to escape, was certain of being seen, and almost equally certain of being stopped. Two gateways opened into the buildings, one for the men servants and visitors, and the other for the women, and those who were introduced secretly to her ladyship’s apartment. On entering by either of these two gates, a stranger would be seriously perplexed, and his first question would be, Where am I going? Is this a labyrinth, with a door here, and a dark passage there; a garden on one side, a screen on the other; here a courtyard, there another? what does it all mean? Some passages afforded an immediate communication with parts which, to one unacquainted with the building, and judging by the roundabout approach from one to another, would seem to be at least fifty or one hundred yards apart. In the garden were two pavilions, with trap-doors in the floor leading to steps which descended to a room under ground, from which opened doors through the wall upon the open country. More than one individual has been indebted for his safety, if not for his life, to these secret means of escape and shelter.

Her constant outlay in building arose not from the love of brick and mortar witnessed in many persons as they advance in years, but from the one predominant idea, that to her the distressed, the proscribed, the rich, the poor, would fly for protection, succour, and concealment. And however erroneous the fancy might have appeared at first (for events in some sort proved she was right), nobody who really knew her character could have suspected for a moment the generosity and pure disinterestedness of her motives. Her asses, mules, camels, and horses, were kept principally with the same view; and her servants were taught to look forward, with a sort of awe and religious expectation, to events and catastrophes, where their services and energies would be tasked to the utmost.

Besides the additions which Lady Hester Stanhope was constantly making to her own residence, she had hired four or five cottages in the village of Jôon, and had bought an old ruined house there. This, she said, she should repair, and convert into a sort of inn, where she might conveniently lodge a number of those persons who would be passing backward and forward on the important affairs in which she was soon to play so conspicuous a part. “And do not think,” she one day observed, “when the time comes, that I shall let your family, or that of my secretary, reside in the houses you now occupy: these I shall want; and I have in my eye, in a village about three leagues off, an asylum for all the women and children, and useless members of my establishment. There I shall send them; and you will have to give up all the spare room you can to the people who will take refuge with me.”

It often formed a source of strange reflection with me, what could have made Lady Hester Stanhope select such a locality, so remote and solitary, instead of living in a city, where the conveniences of life were readily accessible; and I at last came to the conclusion, in my own mind, that it proceeded from her love of absolute power, which could not be so thoroughly gratified in the midst of a numerous population as in a lonely and retired residence. She chose to dwell apart, and out of the immediate reach of that influence and restraint, which neighbourhood and society necessarily exert upon us. Arbitrary acts may lose at a distance some of their odiousness, or admit of being explained away. Servitude also becomes more helpless in proportion as it is removed from the means of escape or appeal. Mar Elias, at Abra, where she had previously resided six or eight years, was scarcely two miles distant from Sayda; so that her servants, when they were tired of her service, could abscond by night, and take refuge in the city; and her slaves, rendered low-spirited by the monotony of their existence, could at any time run away, and secrete themselves in the houses of the Turks. By removing to Jôon, she cut off their retreat; for a poor slave could rarely muster courage enough to venture by night across lonely mountains, when jackalls and wolves were abroad; or, if he did, by the time he reached Sayda, or Beyrout, or Dair-el-kamar, the only three towns within reach, his resolves had cooled, the consequences of the step he had taken presented themselves forcibly to his mind, or there was time to soothe him by promises and presents; all which palliatives Lady Hester Stanhope knew well how to employ. The love of power made her imperious; but, when her authority was once acknowledged, the tender of submission was sure to secure her kindness. Unobserved escape was well nigh impracticable by day, in consequence of the situation of the house on the summit of a conical hill, whence comers and goers might be seen on every side; yet, notwithstanding this, on one occasion all her free women decamped in a body, and on another her slaves attempted to scale the walls, and some actually effected their object and ran away.

In addition to these artificial barriers, she was known to have great influence with Abdallah Pasha, to whom she had rendered many services, pecuniary and personal; for to him, as well as to his harým, she was constantly sending presents; and he, as a Turk, fostered despotism rather than opposed it. The Emir Beshýr, or Prince of the Druzes, her nearest neighbour, she had so completely intimidated by the unparalleled boldness of her tongue and pen that he felt no inclination to commit himself by any act which might be likely to draw either of them on him again. In what direction, therefore, was a poor unprotected slave or peasant to fly? Over others, who were free to act as they liked, as her doctor, her secretary, or her dragoman, and towards whom she had more menagemens to preserve, there hung a spell of a different kind, by which this modern Circe entangled people almost inextricably in her nets. A series of benefits conferred on them, an indescribable art in becoming the depositary of their secrets, an unerring perception of their failings, brought home in moments of confidence to their bosoms, soon left them no alternative but that of securing her protection by unqualified submission to her will.

As a proof of this we may take the case of an English gentleman, of acknowledged abilities and of good professional education, who, about the years 1827 or 1828, after having remained attached to Lady Hester Stanhope as her medical attendant for a certain period, felt an insurmountable anxiety to quit her service. The village of Jôon furnished beasts of burden for hire, and Lady Hester Stanhope’s own mules went two or three times a week to Sayda for corn, provisions, &c. A horse was at the doctor’s call for his own riding, and the means of conveyance for so short a distance as two leagues were always therefore at hand. What, then, under such circumstances, could have induced him to set off on foot, without giving notice of his intention to anybody, if it were not that he was aware he could not get away in any other manner? When his absence was discovered, and it was known that he was gone to Sayda, a letter from Lady Hester Stanhope could not bring him back, neither could all the exhortations of her man of business, sent for that purpose, make him alter the determination he had taken not to return under her roof.