Grieve not about me—I am without fear and without reproach. My mind is a Paradise, since I have cast all that botheration from me: it is full of sublime ideas and knowledge. Write no more. I want nothing, and shall be off as soon as the fine weather comes, unless it should please God to eftah bab el khyr, [to open the door to good fortune]; otherwise, I shall burn all, and send Williams to Malta, with a note to be paid the first when Lady Bankes dies; for I have never paid her expenses here to Mr. David. Adieu, God bless you!
PS.—There is another letter at your friend’s in the city, which goes by this conveyance, and a note in it for ——. Puff! upon the £800. I spit upon it, and as many thousands from the same quarter. Are you mad? No, but I, in misfortune as in prosperity, am unlike the rest of the world; and I shall give sufficient proof that I defy it altogether.
Lady Hester Stanhope to Dr. ——.
Djoun, January 6, 1827.
I have received your letters of the 17th September and 18th of October of last year safe. You will inquire for a letter of mine directed to Coutts’s, but not in my hand; and do not say it came from me. Say nothing to any one of having received this, until you have well conned over the other: then go to B., insist upon seeing him, saying it is of the utmost importance. The note, which I told you in my letter of yesterday would be enclosed in this, I have burnt, for fear of accidents. Notwithstanding, in the event of my being mistaken, in order that all may be clear to you, I have sent you enclosed more notes. In the letter of the 5th you will find my ultimate resolves. I hope and trust not in them.
I have read over your letters again. Never did I tell X. to ask for a place, or recommend him, more than saying he had acted generously and kindly by me, which I then believed.
As for my debts, it is not, as you think, 25 per cent. yearly that I have to pay, but 50 and 95, and, in one instance, I have suffered more loss still. Gold of 28½ piasters they counted to me here at 45, which I spent at 28½, and am to repay at Beyrout at the rate of 45—calculate that. I was compelled to borrow; for I can’t eat silk, and that is all that is to be found here. Had those, who ought, then given a clear answer, things would not have been thus: but so it is written; I was to be a beggar. Be it so! All situations have their blessings, with the grace of God; it is uncertainty which is torture: but now my mind is made up. I have saved a mid[9] of the corn of the Beni-Israel, having no more land to sow. When in ear, ripe or not ripe, I shall cut it and be off, and give up my present and future income to my creditors for my life. Perhaps they may gain two hundred per cent.
Should the other letter be lost, burn this; hold your tongue, and say you have not heard from me; for this is of no use without the other, which contains full explanations, and for which reason you may be commanded to say that you have not heard from me. The loss will change nothing. I shall follow my fate, and be far off, I hope, before new lies arrive.
Not that I credit any change,—but, in case of a happy turn of events, I have said all this to provide for all cases, that you may not be embarrassed how to act. But I have little or no hope. I am no dupe to the tricks played me; who could be, who had one grain of common sense? A child of seven years old, well brought up, must at once see how unlikely—how impossible—it was that I should have applied for money to those who, from the hour I have first known them, have been themselves involved, or to that one[10] whom admiration and respect give me confidence in, and not intimacy. How could any human being credit that, with my independent character, I could stoop to receive one farthing from relations who have behaved to me like mine ..., and who, for years and years, have been upon the footing of strangers?
What an affliction to me is the sad news you wrote! Poor dear angel! what a heart! May he inhabit the seventh heaven![11]