On one occasion she spoke of Mr. B. in terms of regard, and said she should write to him, as a fellow-sufferer like herself from fallen greatness. “I shall tell him I understand the bedgown is in existence (alluding to his taste in dressing-gowns when he was a friend of the Prince of Wales). When he receives my letter, he will say: ‘There she is again, the dear creature! always the same:’” for I said I had seen him once or twice at Calais, dressed very quietly, and very much like a gentleman, with no appearance of foppery, except when he leaned out of his lodging window in a sort of a fine chintz dressing-gown. “Ah!” cried Lady Hester, “those are the patterns that the Prince sometimes used to give £100 for, to have them like his.”
There was a gentleman who visited Lady Hester Stanhope on Mount Lebanon, Mr. H*****, who, she said, would not be an unworthy successor of Mr. Brummell. She called him a gentlemanlike fop, who gave her a sort of a look from top to toe of ineffable insouciance, and used to cry out, when she was telling him some laughable story, “For God’s sake, don’t make me laugh so: I shall die, I vow and protest: I shall expire from laughing; now pray, Lady Hester!”
Something turned the conversation to the duc de R——, who had visited her once. “I told him,” said Lady Hester, “he had nothing like a duke about him. ‘Comment! est ce que je suis trop petit?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘it is not that; you neither look like one, nor act like one.’ Oh! I trimmed him,” she continued. “He wrote to me after he was gone, and said he had prayed for me at Jerusalem. I wrote him back a letter so impudent, doctor, and joked him about a belle marquise, who, by a shrewd guess, I fancied, was his chere amie, I bade him pray for her, and not for me, and sent him—what do you call it when there are four lines in rhyme?—ah! a quatrain, which I will try to recollect.” She mused a little, and then repeated four lines something to this effect:
“Ne verse pas des larmes, ma chère et belle marquise,
Tu seras l’héroine de toutes mes entreprises;
Je prie trois dieux pour toi; et si ton héros meurt,
A eux je laisse mon ame, à toi je donne mon cœur.”
Lady Hester added, “He was more like a militia officer than a French duke, and very stingy.”
“Did Lord St. Asaph publish anything?” she asked. I told her not that I knew of. “He was very active,” she added, “and went about seeking for antiquities everywhere: whenever he heard of anything, off he set, and visited it. When he saw my garden, he expressed great admiration of it, and assured me that it was not only well kept for this country, but better kept than many a gentleman’s grounds in England.”
Saturday, July 15.—I spent this day and the next at Mar Elias with my family, and returned to Jôon on Monday, July 17.