Lady Hester had, at this time, in her service thirty-five persons. There was one Arabic secretary, an upper bailiff, three under ones, two men cooks, two porters, one for each gate, three grooms, two muleteers, two ass-drivers, whose sole occupation was fetching water from the spring, and occasionally an extra one; four maids and a girl for herself; three boys, and eight men-servants. She had two mares, which were never ridden, one horse for my riding, and five asses, also never used, as having completed a certain stated period of service, and being now placed on the superannuated list. There was a mule, also, which was never allowed to be worked, except by certain servants, and even then only on her ladyship’s special commission, for some reason connected with its star: it was afterwards given to Monsieur Guys. The remainder of the stock consisted of three cows and a flock of sheep. Formerly, a herd of goats had been kept (one hundred in number), but their throats were all ordered to be cut in one day, for some cause which I never clearly understood, but with the intention of defeating a scheme of the goatherd’s, who had been detected in turning their flesh and milk to his own account; and this slaughter, she told me, was made in imitation of her cousin, Lord Camelford, whose energetic character and abhorrence of knavery she greatly admired. It was, no doubt, also in emulation of his Lordship’s example that, if she ever discovered that any of her domestic animals had been put to any use contrary to her orders, she instantly had them shot, issuing her mandate, at the same time, that the human delinquents should be, at a moment’s notice, turned adrift.
There were also three amblers in the stables. These horses, very common in Syria, are trained by tying leaden weights to their legs until their trot becomes a run. Soon after my arrival, Lady Hester signified to me that she should have them shot, for her under-bailiffs did nothing but ride them when they ought to go on foot, and, moreover, treated them cruelly. Accordingly, Osman Chaôosh, an under-bailiff, who always carried a silver-headed stick in his hand, the emblem of the office of chaôoshes, of whom many are kept in the employ of Pashas as a sort of police-officers, was commissioned to be their executioner. He received his orders from Lady Hester herself to this effect. “Osman, you will say to each horse, before you shoot him, putting your mouth close to his ear, ‘You have now worked enough on the earth; your mistress fears you might fall, in your old age, into the hands of cruel men, and she, therefore, dismisses you from her service.’” This order, strange as it may appear, was actually executed to the letter, with imperturbable gravity. Lady Hester’s mysterious ways had given her an extraordinary ascendency over the minds of her people; and the Syrians, who are credulous, like all Eastern nations, were generally disposed to believe that her ladyship really did possess those undefined powers which are assigned to demonology and magic. That she herself believed in the transmigration of souls she frequently avowed, and her faith in aërial spirits also admits of no doubt.
Throughout Syria, and, I believe, the whole Ottoman empire, the belief in magic and charms is universal. There is not a single person who does not resort to some means for counteracting the effect of the evil eye—such as spells by written papers, enchantments, and the like. Impotence, estrangement of affection, the murrain in cattle, blight in fruit-trees, anything the cause of which is not immediately obvious, is universally accounted for by witchcraft. Lady Hester, indeed, had imbibed all these notions; and, to judge from the substance of many conversations she held on the subject, no reasonable doubt can be entertained of the startling fact, that she placed implicit faith in them.
“Astrology,” she would say, “is confined to the influence of the stars over people’s birth and actions; but magic has to do with the devil. Sometimes it is by compact; as when, for a certain price, I say, for example, to an evil spirit, ‘If you will tell me what they have written from the Porte to Abdallah Pasha, I will do so and so;’ or if, by means which I know to be powerful enough to bring devils under my command, I say to them, ‘You must do this, and that, and the other,’ they are obliged to obey, or I annihilate them.
“There are persons,” she continued, “who can write charms, by which they can effect the most diabolical purposes: but their charms are sometimes baffled by higher influences. I am an example: my star, more powerful than that on which they rely, renders their magic useless. So far, there is a connection between astrology and magic. But take care, doctor, there are men here who will slip a paper into your pocket unknown to you, and make you an idiot, or blind, or a hundred things. Always keep at a distance from Girius Gemmal—that man is an agent of the devil.
“Why, do you know that a woman’s evil eye once fell upon me? I felt a strange pricking just above my knee; and soon after there appeared, first, an oval black rim, then a bluish ground within it, and then a black spot in the centre, so that any one might have said, ‘There is an eye:’ after a few days it disappeared. There was a man near Cara, between Damascus and Aleppo, who possessed the faculty of the evil eye so strongly that he could kill a person, when he chose to use his power to the utmost.”
Now all this, the reader will say, looks like the grossest credulity. But, setting aside the observation that the greatest men among the ancients, as we know from their writings, entertained a similar creed, and that many eminent philosophers and jurisconsults, as Lord Bacon and Sir Matthew Hale, were actuated by similar convictions, it may be conjectured that Lady Hester Stanhope knew very well what a powerful weapon was this superstition, placed in the hands of those who understood how to make use of it. Whether premeditatedly or not, she more than once brought crafty and designing knaves into signal disrepute by attributing to them dealings of this sort, and thus punished or kept in awe those whose villanous machinations it might be impossible to detect, but of which there was little doubt, even though not tangible by the hand of justice.
Lady Hester Stanhope once built a new room; and, just before she was going to inhabit it, from some cause, imagined, or pretended to imagine, it was charmed. We may judge of the builder’s surprise, when she sent for him, and said, “To-morrow you must assemble your workmen, and pull down the new room.” The man, fancying some defect had been discovered in his workmanship, humbly begged her to say what it was that moved her displeasure, as, perhaps, he might be able to find a remedy for it, without destroying the whole. “Your business, sir,” answered Lady Hester, in that tone of voice which she made so terrible when she chose, “is to pull down if I like it, I suppose, as well as to build; so be so good as to obey my orders without farther question.” “When they were removing the arch of the door, doctor,” said Lady Hester, who related the story to me, “I saw a paper fall out. I took it up and sent it to a man versed in charms. He told me it was a charm, written by one of my deadly enemies: and, if I had dwelt in the room, I should have died. Only think, how lucky it was I did what I did!
“Another time, when I had been ill in bed for some weeks, I happened to be looking out from under my eyelids, as you know I have got a way of seeing everything when people think I see nothing, and I observed Girius Gemmal fumble a paper between his fingers, and dip it into a glass of lemonade that the slave was going to give me. I said nothing, but merely desired the slave to set the glass down. Had I drunk it, I have no doubt I should have been his victim. He is a terrible fellow! I warn you never to go to the village or take your family there, because I am afraid he would do some of you some harm. I don’t know how he might do it: he might slip a paper into your boot, or sprinkle a few drops of water on your clothes, and utter some incantation; for they have a hundred ways of inflicting maledictions.”
It may be as well to add here, although not occurring at this time, that on reading an article in a newspaper to her about vampires, she said, “I believe in vampires, but the people in England know not how to distinguish them. Such a being is not a mere creation of people’s fancies.”