In reference to the blind obedience she required from servants, Lady Hester Stanhope one day said to me, “Did I ever tell you the lecture Lord S******* gave me? He and Lady S—— had taken me home to their house from the opera. It was a cold snowy night; and, after I had remained and supped tête-à-tête with them, when it was time to go, owing to some mistake in the order, my carriage never came for me; so Lord S—— said his should take me home. When he rang for the footman to order it out, I happened to observe, ‘The poor coachman, I dare say, is just got warm in his bed, and the horses are in the middle of their feed; I am sorry to call him out on such a night as this.’ After the man had left the room, Lord S—— turned to me and said, ‘My dear Lady Hester, from a woman of your good sense, I should never have thought to hear such an observation. It is never right to give a reason for an order to a servant. Take it for a rule through life that you are never to allow servants to expect such a thing from you: they are paid for serving, and not for whys and wherefores.’”
When Lady Hester Stanhope got up, increasing attention to her own personal wants through long years of bad health had rendered her a being of such sensitiveness, that a thousand preparations were necessary for her comfort; and herein consisted the irksomeness of the service for those about her. Yet this, if ever it was pardonable in any person, was surely so in her; for her nature seemed to lay claim to obedience from all inferior creatures, and to exact it by some talismanic power, as the genii in Eastern tales hold their familiar spirits in subjection.
The marked characteristic of Lady Hester Stanhope’s mind was the necessity she was under of eternally talking. This is a feature in her life to which justice can hardly be done by description. Talking with her appeared to be as involuntary and unavoidable as respiration. So long as she was awake, her brain worked incessantly, and her tongue never knew a moment’s repose. It might be supposed that such a perpetual flow and outpouring of words must lead to the unconscious disclosure of every thought and feeling; but it was not so with Lady Hester Stanhope. Her control over her expressions was wonderful, in spite of her impetuous volubility. Her tongue was anything but the frank interpreter of her thoughts; it seemed rather to be given to her, upon Talleyrand’s principle, to conceal them; it was the tongue of a syren, always employed in misleading the hearer, and in conducting him to some unexpected conclusion by a roundabout road, or through a labyrinth of words, in which she would inextricably entangle him, until, at length, to his amazement, he found himself at some point, which he had never thought of before, or which he had been all along trying to avoid.
Her conversations lasted six and eight hours at a time, without moving from her seat; so that, although highly entertained, instructed, or astonished as the listeners might be, it was impossible not to feel the weariness of so long a sitting. Everybody who has visited Lady Hester Stanhope in her retirement will bear witness to her unexampled colloquial powers; to her profound knowledge of character; to her inexhaustible fund of anecdotes; to her talents for mimicry; to her modes of narration, as various as the subjects she talked about; to the lofty inspirations and sublimity of her language, when the subject required it; and to her pathos and feeling, whenever she wished to excite the emotions of her hearers. There was no secret of the human heart, however studiously concealed, that she could not discover; no workings in the listener’s mind that she would not penetrate; no intrigue, from the low cunning of vulgar artifices to the vast combinations of politics, that she would not unravel; no labyrinth, however tortuous, that she would not thread.
It was this comprehensive and searching faculty, this intuitive penetration, which made her so formidable; for, under imaginary names, when she wished to show a person that his character and course of life were unmasked to her view, she would, in his very presence, paint him such a picture of himself, in drawing the portrait of another, that you might see the individual writhing on his chair, unable to conceal the effect that her words had on his conscience. Everybody who heard for an hour or two retired humbled from her presence; for her language was always directed to bring mankind to their level, to pull down pride and conceit, to strip off the garb of affectation, and to shame vice, immorality, irreligion, and hypocrisy.
In the latter years of her life, social and unrestrained conversation was out of the question—it was difficult to unbend before her—to spend a couple of hours with her was to go to school. She was unceasingly employed in laying bare the weaknesses of our common nature. Mercy, in the sense of tenderness for people’s foibles, she had none; but, to her honour be it said, although she was constantly drawing a line between the high and low born, good qualities in the most menial person bore as high an estimation in her mind, as if she had discovered them in princes.
It was wonderful how long she would hold a person in conversation, listening to her anecdotes and remarks on human life; she seemed entirely to forget that the listener could possibly require a respite or even a temporary relief. It may be alleged that nothing was more easy than to find excuses for breaking up a parley of this sort; but it was not so—for her words ran on in such an uninterrupted stream, that one never could seize a moment to make a pause. I have sat more than eight, ten—nay, twelve and thirteen hours, at a time! Lady Hester Stanhope told me herself, that Mr. Way[38] remained, one day, from three in the afternoon until break of day next morning, tête-à-tête with her; and Miss Williams once assured me that Lady Hester kept Mr. N. (an English gentleman, who was her doctor some time) so long in discourse that he fainted away. Her ladyship’s readiness in exigencies may be exemplified by what occurred on that occasion. When she had rung the bell, and servants had come to her assistance, she said very quietly to them, that, in listening to the state of disgrace to which England was reduced by the conduct of the Ministers (this was in 1818-19), his feelings of shame and grief had so overpowered him, that he had fainted. Mr. N., however, declared to Miss W. that it was no such thing, but that he absolutely swooned away from fatigue and constraint.
Her conversations were generally familiar and colloquial, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes rising to eloquence so noble and dignified, that, like an overflowing river, it bore down everything before it. Her illustrations were drawn from every sensible or abstract thing, and were always most felicitous. Her reasoning was so plain, as to be comprehended and followed by the most illiterate person, at the same time that it was strictly logical, and always full of strength and energy. She had read all subjects without books, and was learned without lore; and, to sum up all, if she was mad, as many people believed, she was, like the cracked Portland vase, more valuable, though damaged, than most perfect vessels.
These dialogues may not, perhaps, read so well upon paper as they sounded to the ear when she spoke them. The flexibility of her features, the variety of her tones, her person, her dignified manner, her mimicry—all contributed towards the effect. Sometimes, after being deeply impressed with her discourse, I have gone from her, and immediately put it down in writing, word for word; but it never seemed to me the same thing.
It was often necessary to bear with great superciliousness and arrogance in her manner, and she might be said to be the most deliberately affronting person that ever existed, for she would say anything to anybody. Few, however, thought proper to put themselves in a passion, for she generally hit right. I have known her call a prince a coquin to his face. Nobody could despise her powers of argument, and her superiority of intellect. Her quickness of perception between right and wrong was indubitable; but, when she chose it, her sophistry was no less subtile and irresistible.