Lady Hester went on: “When Charles and James left Chevening,[7] Mr. Pitt said to Mahon (the present Earl Stanhope), ‘You know that, when your father dies, you will be heir to a large property—whether £15,000 a-year or £25,000 it does not much signify. Now, as far as a house goes and having a table where your brothers may dine, I have got that to offer. But young men in the army have a number of wants, for their equipment, regimentals, &c., and for all this I have not the means. You, therefore, Mahon, must do that for them; and, if you have not money, you can always let their bills be charged to you with interest, as is very common among noblemen until they come to their fortune. You ought to raise a sum of money for them, and see to their wants a little: your two brothers should not be left to starve.’
“Mahon said he would. Charles one day told me that, as a poor captain of the army, the baggage warehouse and his tailor were rather shy of trusting him; and if Mahon would only go and say to them—‘Do you let my brothers have what they want, and I will be answerable for them;’ then I could get on. Mahon did that too; and, in reliance on this arrangement, they had clothes and other things, considering him as responsible for them. After Mr. Pitt’s death, several tradesmen applied for their bills.”
So, recollecting an old peer, who had been one of Mr. Pitt’s particular friends, I sent off James to him to his country-seat with a letter, relating the whole business: this person immediately gave James a draft for £2,000, with which he returned, and paid his own and Charles’s debts.
“Well, it was agreed between Charles, James, and me, that whoever had the first windfall should pay the £2,000. Charles died: James was not rich enough at any time to do it; and it fell to my lot to pay it since I have been in this country. And that was the reason of my selling the Burton Pynsent reversion, which, you know, I did in 1820 or thereabouts; and when Mr. Murray found fault with me for my extravagance, and said he would have no hand in the business, neither he nor anybody else knew then why I sold it.
“When Coutts wrote me word that my brother James had been very good to me in having given me £1,000, he did not know that the civility was not so disinterested as he imagined. James might think he did a great deal for me: but, let me ask you—did I not make a pretty great sacrifice for Lord Mahon and him? I sold a pretty round sum out of the American funds, and James took possession of about five hundred pounds’ worth of plate of mine, and of my jewels, and of Tippoo Saib’s gold powder-flask, worth £200, and of the cardinal of York’s present, which, to some persons who wanted a relic of the Stuarts, was invaluable. Then there was a portfolio, full of fine engravings of Morghen and others, that the Duke of Buckingham bought of him: so there was at least as much as he sent me.
“If I had not been thwarted and opposed by them all, as I have been, and obliged to raise money from time to time to get on, I should have been a very rich woman. There was the money I sold out of the American funds; then there was the Burton Pynsent money, £7,000; my father’s legacy, £10,000; the (I did not distinctly hear what) legacy, £1,000:” and thus her ladyship reckoned up on her fingers an amount of £40,000.
“Is it not very odd that General G. and Lord G. could not leave me a few thousand pounds out of their vast fortunes when they died? They knew that I was in debt, and that a few thousands would have set me up; and yet in their wills, not to speak of their lifetime, they never gave me a single sixpence, but left their money to people already in the enjoyment of incomes far exceeding their wants, and very little more nearly related to them than I am. Well, all their injustice does not put me out of spirits. The time will soon come when I shall want none of their assistance, if I get the other property that ought to come to me. Oh! how vexed Lady Chatham always was, when Lady Louisa V. used to point at me, and say—‘There she is—that’s my heir.’ Lady L. was deformed, and never thought of marrying; but Lord G. did marry her nevertheless, and she had a child that died.
“Then there is the reversion of my grandfather’s pension of £4,000 a-year, secured for four lives by the patent: the first Lord Chatham one, the late Lord Chatham the next, and I, of course, the third.”[8]
Nov. 14.—I saw that Lady Hester grew weaker every day, and I felt alarmed about her. Still, whenever I had to write to the person she, about this time, most honoured with her confidence, Mons. Guys, the French consul at Beyrout, she would not allow me to make any further allusion to her illness than to state simply that she was confined to her bed-room with a cold. “I see you are afraid about me,” she said, “but I have recovered from worse illnesses than this by God’s help and the strength of my constitution.”