Sunday, August 13.—I remained with Lady Hester, reading and talking, until midnight. She was greatly pleased with the “Penny Magazine,” a volume or two of which I had with me; and, some conversation having arisen respecting English poetry, I selected Lord Byron’s stanzas on the dying gladiator, Wolfe’s lines on the death of General Moore, Mr. Moore’s on his own birthday, and Pringle’s “Alone in the desert I love to ride.” Of Byron’s, she said, “I don’t see much in them;” Wolfe she extolled greatly, and thought his poetry finer than Lord Byron’s. Of Mr. Moore she said again; “I always liked that little man” and she laughed where he expresses a wish to live his life over again, exclaiming, in another sense, “Ah, I dare say he does.” Her remark on Pringle was, “That’s a good man, I’ll venture to say; there are some good thoughts there.” I then read the death of Mary Queen of Scots, of Lady Jane Grey—on the effects of tight-lacing, and on boarding-school mismanagement. “Oh!” observed she, “if I had time, I would write a book on Swiss governesses: they are the most artful, nasty creatures!—you can’t imagine.”
It may be recollected by some of my readers that in her correspondence with Lord Palmerston, Lady Hester Stanhope made use of this expression, “Whoever had been the bearer of a disagreeable message to me, would have found me to be a cousin of Lord Camelford’s. She admired Lord C.’s character, and, in some things, imitated him. His name happened to be mentioned, and she spoke of him in the following words:
“Lord Camelford was not such a man as you would have supposed. He was tall and bony—rather pale—with his head hanging generally a little on one side—so. What a fright people were in wherever he came! I recollect his taking me one evening to a party, and it was quite a scene to notice how the men shuffled away, and the women stared at him. At last there was a countess, then a little passée, with a ten years’ reputation for fashionable intrigues, who came and sat down by him on the sofa, and began talking to him. She was a woman who had seen a great deal of the world, and knew, as well as anybody, the true characteristics of men of high breeding and fashion. He went away before supper; and then how she broke out about him! she could talk of nothing else but Lord Camelford. Such delightful manners, such fascinating conversation! He was quite charming, irresistible; so well-bred, such a ton about him!—and so she ran on, in a perfect ecstasy of admiration.
“People were very much mistaken about him. His generosity, and the good he did in secret, passes all belief. He used to give £5,000 a-year to his lawyer to distribute among distressed persons. ‘The only condition I enjoin,’ he used to say, ‘is not to let them know who it comes from.’ He would sometimes dress himself in a jacket and trowsers, like a sailor, and go to some tavern or alehouse; and if he fell in with a poor-looking person, who had an air of trouble or poverty, he would contrive to enter into conversation with him, and find out all about him. ‘Come,’ he would say, ‘tell me your story, and I will tell you mine.’ He was endowed with great penetration, and, if he saw that the man’s story was true, he would slip fifty or a hundred pounds into his hand, with this admonitory warning—‘Recollect, you are not to speak of this; if you do, you will have to answer for it in a way you don’t like.’
“Mr. Pitt liked him personally as much as I did; but considerations of propriety, arising out of his position, obliged him to keep him at a distance. How frightened Lady Chatham was for fear he should marry me! Lord Chatham thought to have the Bowcourt estate (or some such name), but he was prettily taken in; for Lord Camelford paid £50,000 to cut off the entail, and left it to his sister. Mr. Pitt took little or no notice of him, out of absolute fear of the scrapes he was constantly getting into. He was greatly perplexed about him when he shot the lieutenant: but Lord Camelford did it from a quick perception of what was right to be done, which was a sort of instinct with him. He saw that the ship’s crew was ready to mutiny, and he stopped it at once by his resolute conduct. Everybody at home was open-mouthed against him, until the news came of Captain Pigot, of the Hermione, being thrown overboard, and then all the lords and the ladies began to tremble for their sons and nephews. Then nothing was too good for Lord Camelford, and the next mutiny which took place in our ships showed how well he had foreseen what would happen.
“I recollect once he was driving me out in his curricle, when, at a turnpike-gate, I saw him pay the man himself, and take some halfpence in exchange. He turned them over two or three times in his hand without his glove. Well, thought I, if you like to handle dirty copper, it is a strange taste. ‘Take the reins a moment,’ said he, giving them to me, and out he jumped; and, before I could form the least suspicion of what he was going to do, he rushed upon the turnpike-man, and seized him by the throat. Of course, there was a mob collected in a moment, and the high-spirited horses grew so restive that I expected nothing less than that they would start off with me. In the midst of it all a coach and four came to the gate. ‘Ask what’s the matter,’ said a simpering sort of gentleman, putting his head with an air out of the coach-window, to the footman behind.—‘It’s my Lord Camelford,’ replied the footman.—‘You may drive on,’ was the instant ejaculation of the master, frightened out of his senses at the bare apprehension lest his lordship should turn to him.
“The row was soon over, and Lord C. resumed his seat. ‘I dare say you thought,’ he said, very quietly, ‘that I was going to put myself in a passion. But, the fact is, these rascals have barrels of bad halfpence, and they pass them in change to the people who go through the gate. Some poor carter perhaps has nothing but this change to pay for his supper; and, when he gets to his journey’s end, finds he can’t get his bread and cheese. The law, ’tis true, will fine them; but how is a poor devil to go to law?—where can he find time? To you and me it would not signify, but to the poor it does; and I merely wanted to teach these blackguards a lesson, by way of showing them that they cannot always play such tricks with impunity.’
“Doctor, you should have seen, when we came back again, how humble and cringing the turnpike-man was. Lord C. was a true Pitt, and, like me, his blood fired at a fraud or a bad action.”
A messenger had arrived in the course of the day from Monsieur Guys, French consul at Beyrout, to announce the landing of an Italian lady we expected from Leghorn, whom I had engaged to join us in Syria. Mustafa, a Turkish servant, was immediately despatched to see to her wants; and the secretary, who spoke Italian, sailed in a shaktôor from Sayda to convey her by water, the heat rendering the land journey very oppressive.
August 12.—I rode over to Mar Elias to see my family, and make arrangements for the reception of the new comer; and, as Lady Hester Stanhope had some business at Beyrout, which required my presence, respecting an importunate creditor, it was decided that I should go thither, under the plea of thanking Monsieur and Madame Guys for the hospitality they had shown to the Italian lady.