She discoursed on her health, and recapitulated the different illnesses she had got over. She told me that she used to say to Miss Williams—“‘Mind, if I die, you are not to let Mr. A. have anything to do with my affairs.’ ‘Oh! but, my lady, how could I help it?’ Miss Williams would reply; ‘the consular authority....’ ‘D—— the consular authority!’ I used to say to her; ‘hire some strong peasant to drive him away with a good stick, if he makes his appearance. Sell everything that I leave in the house, if you can’t raise money enough any other way, to pay somebody to do it, and let my body be thrown into the sea.’ But, doctor,” she continued, “I’ll take care he shan’t have anything to do with burying my body; for, sooner than that, I’ll order myself to be burned, without priest or prayer. I can’t bear that man. What right has he over me? as I said to him, ‘Show me your firman, if that authorises you to interfere with the nobility—you are here for merchants and such people!’[50] No! as long as I have breath in my body, no consul shall ever presume to enter my doors without my leave. I broke a good stick over the shoulders of a fellow he sent me, and told the rascal to tell his master I would have done the same to him had he come in person.”
Alluding to my departure, she observed—“Here I shall be left to myself and my own resources: but I am like a cork; and, though I may be kept down by my troubles for a little while, I soon come to the surface again. As for keeping slaves, I only do as all the great people here do; and as for being harsh to them, about which you talk so much, what am I to do? If they don’t mind me when I tell them to do a thing, I suppose I must do something more than talking, or else I should be murdered. And if I get rid of slaves, why then I must take the people of the country, who are all thieves—not thieves in great things, but light-fingered, so that nothing in a single room in the house is safe from them: such as will slip a wax candle, or the mouthpiece of a pipe, or any little thing, into their pocket, and sell it the next morning.”
April 3.—Our departure being no longer opposed, Lady Hester Stanhope requested me to take a vessel from Sayda to Cyprus, and not from Beyrout. “It is as well,” she observed, “to avoid the Franks there, who will bother you with a thousand questions: and, now the matter is settled between us, the less said of it the better.” As I assented to all this, she promised to send next day to engage a vessel; and M. Gerardin, the French consular agent residing at Sayda, was employed for the purpose. I begged her to accept the furniture, china, and glass, we had brought with us; but she refused, alleging that the sight of what had belonged to me would only give her pain. During our conversation there happened a violent storm of thunder and lightning, and the wet came through the roof into the room, so that it was necessary to place pans to catch the water. On returning home, my own bed-room was flooded, as if half-a-dozen pails of water had been thrown over it. The violent gusts of wind would render it dangerous to have tiled roofs[51] to the houses, although it is seldom that a winter passes without the water penetrating through the flat ones, which are general in most parts of Syria. The hurricane carried away one side of the matting that had been raised to screen our courtyard from the sun.
April 5.—Our passage was engaged in a shaktoor, Captain Hassan Logmagi, from Sayda to Cyprus, for three hundred piasters. I went to Lady Hester’s at eleven in the morning, and stayed until half-past twelve at night. She begged that all that had passed might be forgotten.
I had bethought myself of an excellent young man, named Lunardi, whose care of his master, Mr. John Webb, of Leghorn, I had witnessed in my professional attendance on that gentleman, during my residence at Pisa, and I recommended him to Lady Hester. She seemed to think, by the description I gave of him, that he would suit her, and I wrote immediately to the mercantile house of Webb, James, and Co., at Leghorn, offering him the place.[52]
April 6.—This was the last day I passed with Lady Hester Stanhope: she was in bed, not being very well, and I drank tea with her. It was the only time she had taken tea during the many evenings I had sat with her, and I thought she had abandoned it altogether: however, she had not wholly forgotten this part of English life. Although in bed, she did the honours, as ladies do in England, sitting up and pouring out the tea, handing the cup to me, presenting me the cakes, &c.; all which things surprised the black slave, in a country where they are not used to see great people do anything with their own hands: and it was the same when I dined with her. There were three sorts of excellent rich cakes, made of almond paste in different ways. Travellers in the East may perhaps recollect mâmool, gharyeby, and baklâawy. She asked me how I liked them, and, on my answering that they were delicious, she said I should find a chest of each sort prepared for the use of my family on the passage; and, true enough, they had been sent to Mrs. —— after I had come away from home.
After this, she produced the list of her debts, which I read over to her, she making observations as I proceeded, on the manner in which she had been led to contract them. Being on the eve of my departure, I had not time to write down what she said until I was in the vessel; but, as far as I recollected, the first was dated in 1827. The whole, however, originated in charitable and benevolent motives. Among the distressed persons whom she had assisted figured Abdallah Pasha himself, when, upon being amerced by the Porte, he had applied to her for a large sum of money, which she had lent him. The next were the wife and family of the Sheykh Beshýr, who, when the Sheykh was imprisoned, were driven from their princely palace, and compelled to wander and hide themselves in distant parts of Syria. To them she sent money and clothes. Then there was the widow of Girius Baz, principal secretary of the Emir Beshýr, who was reduced, by the decapitation of her husband, and the confiscation of his property, from affluence to poverty. Other individuals of less note had shared her bounty. All her debts bore interest at from 15 to 25 per cent. When once she got into the nets of the money-lenders, she had never been able to extricate herself again, and the evil had gone on increasing up to the present time, when she owed, according to a rough calculation, nearly £14,000.
As soon as she had done talking of her debts, she asked me to go and replace the list in Miss Williams’s writing-desk, from which it had been taken, and which was in an adjoining room. I did so; but, on returning to her chamber-door, to re-enter and take my leave of her, I found it bolted, and one of the maids waiting on the outside, who told me Lady Hester would see me no more, to spare both of us the pain of saying farewell. I was somewhat affected for the moment, but reflection told me she had acted rightly. Two of her black slaves, who had got intimation of what was passing, came and kissed my hand: the rest of the people were all asleep, except the porter, who let me out: and, mounting my donkey, I left the house, as I then thought, for ever.
It was midnight when I got home. I found that, during my absence, Lady Hester Stanhope had ordered to be sent, besides the cakes and baklâawy (which, of all pastry in the world, is, in many people’s estimation, as in mine, the most delicious), a very fine amber-headed pipe, and a large quantity of the best Gebely tobacco from her own store, and had, moreover, given numberless directions for our comfort on board; which acts of kindness, I trust, my family, as well as myself, appreciated as they deserved.
April 7.—In the morning, mounted on asses, having sent our baggage by camels, we set off for Sayda, where we arrived about noon, and were lodged in a spare room in the French khan. The French agent, with whom I had been on terms of acquaintance for some years, during my previous residence in Syria, well aware of our dispute with Lady Hester Stanhope, prudently resolved to pay his court to her by not being very courteous to us. All the Frank families imitated his example, and, instead of receiving ten or fifteen visits, which we should otherwise have expected, not one single person called upon us. So much for friendships in the Levant.