Such were the religious opinions which Lady Hester Stanhope expressed from time to time. There may be observed in the lives of persons of extraordinary political talents a disposition to believe in the possibility of a class of agencies, which are generally considered visionary by common capacities. This may arise from the comparison they make between their own intellectual faculties and those of common minds. For, when they reflect how much superior they are to the generality of mankind, how much farther they can see into men’s projects, and what numberless agents, unknown and unsuspected by the vulgar, they call into action to effect their own plans and purposes, they then set no bounds to the range of an omnipotent being, and they fancy such a power to be served by spirits as much invisible to themselves, as their spies and creatures are unseen and unobserved by those whom they influence.
It was so with Lady Hester Stanhope. She managed whatever affair she undertook with impenetrable mystery; and the hand that weighed down the guilty or lifted up the oppressed was, when she stretched it out, oftener felt than perceived. Hence, probably, it was that her all-powerful mind had taken a strong bias towards dæmonology, necromancy, and magic. She seemed to entertain a firm belief that the elements were filled with spirits, who watched over and guided the steps and actions of men. The air we move in, and the earth we tread on, she considered as filled with delicate and aërial beings, by whom the gentle and sage were rewarded and protected for the amenity and prudence of their every-day movements and actions, but who, in return, avenged themselves on the wicked, nay, even on the awkward, by causing the numberless bodily accidents which such persons are liable to. “Never do I move a foot,” Lady Hester would sometimes say, “but I ask these guardian sylphs to watch over me; and never do I see a blundering fellow knock his head against the top of a doorway, but I think he is breaking some of their delicate members. For, as a piece of valuable china is generally set in a place where it may not be easily knocked down, so do these spirits generally perch where our steps may not molest them: and, as a man who spits about a room commonly aims his saliva where he will not spoil the furniture, so should we look that our motions and gestures do not injure these unseen creatures; and hence it becomes us, in what we do violently, to give them a kind of warning to get out of the way.”
In this belief, Lady Hester still acknowledged the Holy Scriptures as inspired writings; she quoted from them as such, and may be said to have looked into them oftener than into any other book. Thus, in speaking of the resurrection, she drew her argument from the New Testament. “There will be two resurrections,” she used to say; “for the Scripture mentions somewhere the first resurrection, and people don’t talk of their first wife unless they have had a second. The first resurrection will be such, that the dead will rise, and walk on the earth, with the people of it, in their accustomed forms and raiment; but, at the second, they will all appear before the Murdah,[40] and then will be the day of judgment.”
On another occasion, she exclaimed, “What wonderful things those prophecies are in the Bible! To think they should foretel events, and even people’s names, so many hundred years before a thing happens!”
When the missionary, Mr. Way, was at Jôon, Lady Hester and he talked together on religion for several hours. “Mr. W.,” she said, “was clever and learned; but he, like the rest, fancied he was to effect the conversion of men by his own efforts: they are all mistaken. My scheme is quite different. I am but an instrument in the hands of God, and, when he pleases that the great change is to take place, he will bring it to pass as he likes. My duty is to prepare people’s minds; and, if I were to die to-morrow, I should be contented if I thought I had made some persons, at least, reflect.”
In some things, Lady Hester Stanhope had adopted portions of the Jewish law, or perhaps of that of the Mussulman sect of the Shyites. Several of her maid-servants were taken from the neighbouring villages, where there are a great many schismatic Mahometans, called Metoualys; and in them she probably remarked certain observances, about which she obtained fuller explanations from the learned Sheykhs who occasionally visited her; and she seems to have copied these observances as useful rules of life, but not as religious duties. The Metoualys have the terms nidjez and halal, synonymous with unclean and lawful, constantly in their mouths, and most of the laws respecting uncleanliness in the Levitical code are followed by them. Lady Hester Stanhope had imbibed many of these prejudices, as will be seen from an example or two.
A gentleman, irreproachable on the score of cleanliness and of refined manners, having arrived somewhat unexpectedly at Jôon, the servants, in their hurry to get his dinner, made use of some things which belonged to her ladyship’s service. After dining, the guest paid his visit to her, and then retired to go to rest. It was nearly one in the morning. From a word, casually dropped by the slave, she discovered that some of her own dinner napkins had been given out for her visitor. Such an uproar began, as few people can imagine would ever spring from so trifling a cause, and was hardly over by daylight.
“What! is there no possibility,” she cried, “of keeping anything to myself? I do insist, that everything which regards other people may never be mixed with what is for me. Neither shall water be boiled in my kitchen, nor cooking go on there, nor saucepan, dish, nor glass, that has once gone out for any one, ever return there again.” The confusion lasted for some hours after midnight; she had all her pots, pans, tumblers, dishes, towels, knives and forks, every article of the table or kitchen, brought in, and spread before her, to teach them, as she said, by the trouble they had, not to violate her orders again. But there was reason to suppose that all these minute and exclusive regulations were not attended to. She was the dupe of the servants’ lies; and she once said, as if in despair at not being able to enforce obedience, “Doctor, they wipe their noses, then the ..., and then the drinking-glasses, in the same towel; and lie, and lie, with an assurance that sets detection at defiance.”
FOOTNOTES:
[37] The man who cries the hour of prayer from the minaret-top.