These details are unimportant in themselves, but they are significant in a high degree of her ladyship’s peculiarity of character; and, as we have touched upon the incidents of her bed-room, which was, for most purposes, her principal apartment, it may be as well to complete the description by a few additional particulars. The room bore no resemblance to an English or a French chamber, and, independently of its rude furniture, it was, in another sense, hardly better than a common peasant’s. Its appearance, when illness confined its occupant to her bed, was something of this sort; for I often entered it, early in the morning, before breakfast. On the floor, which was of cement, the common flooring of Syria, lay, upon an Egyptian mat, a large oblong bit of drab felt, of the size of a bedside carpet, called in Arabic libàd, and a thick coarse chintz cushion, from which her black slave, Zezefôon, had just risen, and where she had slept by her mistress’s bedside; the slave having this privilege over the maid, who always slept behind the curtain. This dirty red cotton curtain was suspended by a common cord across the room, to keep off the wind when the door opened, most of the curtain-ring tapes being torn off: so that the curtain hung, alternately suspended here, and dangling there, a testimony of the little time the maids found for mending. There were three windows to the room; one was nailed up by its shutter on the outside, and one closed up by a bit of felt on the inside: the third only was reserved for the admission of light and air, looking on the garden. In two deep niches in the wall (for the walls of houses in Syria are often three feet thick), were heaped on a shelf, equidistant from the top and bottom, a few books, some bundles tied up in handkerchiefs, writing-paper—all in confusion, with sundry other things of daily use; such as a white plate, loaded with several pair of scissors, two or three pair of spectacles, &c.; and another white plate, with pins, sealing-wax, wafers; with a common white inkstand, and the old parchment cover of some merchant’s day-book, with blotting-paper inside, by way of a blotting-book, in which, spread on her lap, as she sat up in bed, she generally wrote her letters. These places were seldom swept out, and dust and cobwebs covered the books, into none of which, I believe, she ever looked, excepting Tissot’s Avis au Peuple, another medical book, the title of which I have forgotten, the Court Calendar, a Bible, and a Domestic Cookery. The ground was strewed with small bundles; gown-pieces of silk, or coloured cotton, which she destined as presents; bits of twine, and brown paper, left from day to day, from packages which had been undone, &c.
She had no watch, clock, or timepiece; and generally the last words, when I left her in the evening, were, “Doctor, tell me what it is o’clock before you go.” I took the liberty of asking her why she had not sent for a watch or timepiece during the number of years she had remained on Mount Lebanon, a thing so necessary every where, but especially in a solitary house, where the muezzim[37] could not be heard, as in towns. “Because I cannot bear any thing that is unnatural,” was her answer; “the sun is for the day, and the moon and stars for the night, and by them I like to measure time.” Upon another occasion, she said, “I never should be induced to go into a steamboat; I, who have seen five men killed by the explosion of a boiler, and I don’t know how many more wounded and scalded, have always a dread about me. Besides, I like nothing but nature.”
On a wooden stool, which served as a table, by the bedside, stood a variety of things to satisfy her immediate wants or fancies; such as a little strawberry preserve in a saucer, lemonade, chamomile tea, ipecacuanha lozenges, a bottle of cold water, &c. Of these she would take one or other in succession, almost constantly. In a day or two they would be changed for other messes or remedies. There would be a bottle of wine, or of violet syrup; aniseeds to masticate, instead of cloves; quince preserve; orgeat; a cup of cold tea, covered over by the saucer; a pill-box, &c.; and so thickly was the wooden stool covered, that it required the greatest dexterity to take up one thing without knocking down half a dozen others. And, in this respect, the noiseless movements and dexterity of the Syrian and black women pass all imagination. For months together nothing of this assemblage would be upset or broken; whilst a blundering Frank (Lady Hester would often say) could not come into a room without tumbling over her pipe, hooking his foot in the carpet or mat, pitching forward against the table, and manifesting all that European clumsiness, upon which she so delighted to expatiate.
Her bed had no curtains, no mosquito net. An earthenware ybrick, or jug, with a spout, stood in one of the windows, with a small copper basin, and this was her washing apparatus. The room had no table for the toilet, or any other purpose; and, when she washed herself, the copper basin was held before her as she sat up in bed. There were no curtains to the windows; and the felt with which one of them was covered was kept in its place by a faggot-stick, stuck tightly in from corner to corner, diagonally. Such was the chamber of Lord Chatham’s grand-daughter! Diogenes himself could not have found fault with its appointments!
I see I have omitted, in the enumeration of the furniture, to mention a necessary appendage, often so ornamental in English rooms—I mean, bellropes. Lady Hester Stanhope’s room had one, a common hempen cord, such as is customarily used for cording boxes. It was reeved through a wooden pulley, screwed into the centre of the ceiling, and came down slanting to the wall, where it was tied to a rusty hook; the bend, within her reach, was thickly knotted, so that she might the more easily lay hold of it. Nor was it made so strong and stout without good reason; for she lugged at it sometimes with a degree of violence and vigour, that would have snapped whipcord in two; and seldom did a servant leave her room without being rung back again, once, twice, or thrice—so impatient was her ladyship’s temper, and in such quick succession did her ideas rise in her mind upon every order she had to give.
Worn out with the fatigue of ringing, talking, and scolding, at length Lady Hester Stanhope would fall asleep; all would be hushed, and so the silence would continue for three, four, or five hours. But, soon after sun-rise, the bell would ring violently again, and the business of the morning would commence. This was a counterpart of the night, only that the few hours’ sleep gave her a fresh supply of vigour and activity. As she seldom rose until four or five in the afternoon, the intervening hours were occupied in writing, talking, and receiving people; for, as she then sat up in her bed, her appearance was pretty much the same as if she had been on a sofa, to which her bed bore some resemblance. She would see, one after another, her steward, her secretary, the cook, the groom, the doctor, the gardener, and, upon some occasions, the whole household. Few escaped without a reproof and a scolding; her impatience, and the exactitude she required in the execution of her commands, left no one a chance of escape. Quiet was an element in which a spirit so restless and elastic could not exist. Secret plans, expresses with letters, messengers on distant journeys, orders for goods, succour and relief afforded to the poor and oppressed—these were the aliments of her active and benevolent mind. No one was secure of eating his meals uninterruptedly; her bell was constantly ringing, and the most trifling order would keep a servant on his legs, sometimes a whole hour, before her, undergoing every now and then a cross-examination worse than that of a Garrow.
In the same day, I have frequently known her to dictate, with the most enlarged political views, papers that concerned the welfare of a pashalik; and the next moment she would descend, with wondrous facility, to some trivial details about the composition of a house-paint, the making of butter, the drenching of a sick horse, the choosing lambs, or the cutting out of a maid’s apron. She had a finger in everything, and in everything was an adept. Her intelligence really seemed to have no limits; the recesses of the universe, if one might venture to say so, absolutely seemed thrown open to her gaze. In the same manner that she frustrated the intrigues and braved the menaces of hostile Emirs and Pashas, did she penetrate and expose the tricks and cunning of servants and peasants, who were ever plotting to pilfer her. It was curious to see what pains she would take in developing and bringing to light a conspiracy of the vile wretches, who, from time to time, laid their deep schemes of plunder—schemes to which European establishments have no parallel, and machinations which Satan himself could hardly have counteracted. She used to say, “there are half a dozen of them whom I could hang, if I chose;” but she was forbearing to culprits, when she once had them in her power, although unwearied and unflinching in her pursuit of them.
No soul in her household was suffered to utter a suggestion on the most trivial matter—even on the driving of a nail into a bit of wood: none were permitted to exercise any discretion of their own, but strictly and solely to fulfil their orders. Nothing was allowed to be given out by any servant without her express directions. Her dragoman or secretary was enjoined to place on her table each day an account of every person’s employment during the preceding twenty-four hours, and the names and business of all goers and comers. Her despotic humour would vent itself in such phrases as these. The maid one day entered with a message—“The gardener, my lady, is come to say that the piece of ground in the bottom is weeded and dug, and he says that it is only fit for lettuce, beans, or selk, The consequence of all this was, she was pestered from morning till night, always complaining she had not even time to get up, and always making work for herself. Here is another example. A maid, named Sâada, was desired to go to the store-room man, and ask for fourteen sponges. She went, and added, out of her own head when she delivered the message, “fourteen to wipe the drawing-room mats with”—it being customary in the Levant (and an excellent custom it is) to clean mats with wet sponges. In the course of the day, this slight variation in the message came to Lady Hester’s ears, and she instantly sent for the culprit, and, telling her that she would teach her for the future how she would dare to vary in a single word from any message she had to deliver, she ordered the girl’s nose to be rubbed on the mats, while this injunction was impressed on her, that, whatever the words of a message might be, she was never to deviate from them, to add to them, or to take from them, but to deliver them strictly as she received them. In fact, she maintained that the business of a servant was, not to think, but simply to obey. Truly did old General Loustaunau say sometimes that, with all her greatness and her talents, there was not a more wretched being on earth. People have often asked me how she spent her life in such a solitude: the little that has already been related will show that time seldom hung heavily on her hands, either with her or those about her.