Hardly was I recovered from my migraine and inflammation in my eyes, when, lo! all my people fall ill—the little black girl and all—and I have been tormented and tired to death: but, thank God, they are now all well again!
I have delayed writing to you, expecting always to have letters by the steamer; but, when I reflect on it, I doubt if I shall receive any until Parliament meets—at least, that will be the excuse, and they will say that everybody is just now out of town.
It will be curious to see how they will prove their right to conceal from me that money had been left me. I understand clearly that there are two legacies (one I have been informed of by an indirect, but a very certain channel, since I saw you); a considerable one and a small one. If I were spiteful, I could make them repent of their doings in a court of justice: but, even as it is, the matter cannot be passed over without creating some noise in the world.
I have twice advised Mr. Coutts that I should draw on him, after the 10th of October, both for my pension and the £950 which fell due in September; and, after the repeated assurances which they have made, that, in future, they will be punctual in their payments, I can’t think they will play me any more tricks, especially when they will have so much to do for me since the discovery which I have made. Therefore, will you let me know if you have money enough by you to cash a bill of £300, before the money from England comes to hand. Of that amount, I wish you to keep 200 gazi for expenses.
Lady Hester now told me that, having written ineffectually to a nobleman on the subject, she had turned over in her thoughts where she could find a fit person, in whom she could confide, to ascertain the truth of these matters, and to whom she could write, with the request that he would make the necessary inquiries. She had deliberated a long while whether it should be a lawyer, a man of business, or one of her old friends. Among the latter, from first to last, she added, “I have thought Sir Francis Burdett would be the one I could most assuredly confide in.” In speaking of him, she said, “He is a man of feeling, doctor, and he and I were always the best of friends. I recollect, when I told him how basely two or three people had behaved on Mr. Pitt’s death, he was ready to go beside himself: his hand went into the breast of his waistcoat and out again, as if he could not contain his indignation. What do you think?—would not he be the proper person? I always said Sir Francis was no democrat. He threw himself into the hands of the people merely that he might have an excuse of business to be out, or by himself. All the democrats that I have known were nothing but aristocrats at heart—ay, and worse than others. Even Horne Tooke was not a democrat—that I am sure of, by the court he always paid me, and by his constantly making so many civil speeches to me and of me. I have never known a man yet, if he was not to be bought, that was not a democrat from personal motives.”
In fine, it was resolved to write to Sir Francis, and a rough copy of a letter was drawn up by Lady Hester’s dictation, which, after some verbal alterations, she thought would do. Several remarks, quite foreign to the subject, were introduced, announcing the researches she had made as to the Eastern origin of the Irish and Scotch; and, as Lady Hester kept constantly saying to me, “Will this letter do? do you see anything that wants altering?” a question very usual with her when dictating letters, I forgot Gil Blas’s warning, and very distinctly expressed my apprehensions lest the introduction of the opinions about the affinity of the Irish and the Koreýsh should make Sir F. think her cracked. For, I observed, his studies, most probably, have never led him to investigate these subjects, which, thus introduced into a letter on business, might be made a handle for the ill-natured comments of people who disliked her. She thanked me, but retained them all, and only requested me to write them out fair. I did so, and inadvertently skipped a page, which, when the sheet was full, created some confusion in reading it. So, resolving to rewrite it, I merely submitted it to Lady Hester’s perusal, whilst I rode down to see my family. But I was there seized with a phlegmonous inflammation of my leg, which, in one night, from the irritation of the stirrup-leather (rudely made, as it always is in Turkey), assumed so alarming a character,[77] and was so painful, that I took to my bed and kept it eleven days. I wrote a note to Lady Hester, describing my situation, requesting her to send me the letter to Sir F. in order that I might write it over again: but, hearing that I suffered a great deal, she said it was not necessary; and, sealing the copy she had got, she despatched it by a foot-messenger to Beyrout to go by the steamboat.
September 12.—We were thus occupied until this day, with the exception of the many hours passed by Lady Hester in diatribes on women and their husbands; she endeavouring to prove that, in almost all possible cases, women should be simple automatons, moved by the will and guidance of their masters. Her fertile memory brought a vast number of cases to bear on her argument; cases which she had seen in high life during her time, where gentlemen, otherwise of estimable character, became the ridicule of society from suffering themselves to be ruled by their wives. But Lord F. was the one whose example she dwelt upon most strenuously.
“Women,” she would say, “must be one of three things. Either they are politicians and literary characters; or they must devote their time to dress, pleasure, and love; or, lastly, they must be fond of domestic affairs. I do not mean by domestic affairs a woman who sits working at her needle, scolding a couple of children, and sending her maid next door to the shop for all she wants: there is no trouble in that. What I mean is a yeoman’s wife, who takes care of the butter and cheese, sees the poultry-yard attended to, and looks to her husband’s comfort and interest. As for the advantage of passing your evenings with your family, which you urge as a reason for having them near you,” she remarked, “all sensible men that I have ever heard of take their meals with their wives, and then retire to their own room to read, write, or do what they have to do, or what best pleases them. If a man is a fox-hunter, he goes and talks with his huntsmen or the grooms, and very good company they are; if he is a tradesman, he goes into his shop; if a doctor, to his patients; but nobody is such a fool as to moider away his time in the slip-slop conversation of a pack of women.”[78]
I happened to observe that many clever men had not only passed their hours with their families, but even studied and wrote surrounded by them; and I named four or five that occurred to my recollection, one of whom was C——. “Did you ever hear me say there were not more fools than one in the world?”—She rejoined, “As for Mr. C——, I knew him; so you need not talk to me about him. Mrs. C——! there was a woman!—Charles C. was one of the greatest roués in London—always drunk. He was in the Blues, and took it into his head to fall in love with a Rt. Hble.—very ugly—but her relations would not let her marry him. Perhaps he wanted her money; he was very agreeable. Mr. C. lived in a very hugger-mugger sort of a way, with a maid of all work and a boy, and it was his daughter who did most things for him. Perhaps he was not rich enough to have another room to study in.”