My wife sent to her to say that she or my daughter would, with pleasure, come and keep her company, or sit up with her: this she refused. I then offered Miss Longchamp’s services: but Lady Hester’s pride would not allow her to expose to a stranger the meagreness of her chamber, so utterly unlike a European apartment. It was indeed an afflicting sight to behold her wrapped up in old blankets, her room lighted by yellow beeswax candles in brass candlesticks, drinking her tea out of a broken-spouted blue teapot and a cracked white cup and saucer, taking her draughts out of an old cup, with a short wooden deal bench by her bedside for a table, and in a room not so well furnished as a servant’s bed-room in England.
The general state of wretchedness in which she lived had even struck Mr. Dundas, a gentleman, who, on returning overland from India, staid some days with her: and, as Lady Hester observed, when she told me the story, “He did not know all, as you do. I believe he almost shed tears. ‘When I see you, Lady Hester,’ said he, ‘with a set of fellows for servants who do nothing, and when I look at the room in which you pass your hours, I can hardly believe it is you. I was much affected at first, but now I am more reconciled. You are a being fluctuating between heaven and earth, and belonging to neither; and perhaps it is better things should be as they are’” Lady Hester added, “He has visited me two or three times: he is a sensible Scotchman, and I like him as well as anybody I have seen for some years.”
November 15.—It was night, when a messenger arrived from Beyrout, and brought a small parcel containing a superbly bound book presented to her ladyship by the Oriental Translation Fund Society. It was accompanied by a complimentary letter from the president, Sir Gore Ouseley. The book was “The History of the Temple of Jerusalem, translated by the Rev. J. Reynolds.” After admiring it, and turning over the leaves, she said to me, “Look it over, and see what it is about,” and then began to talk of Sir Gore. “I recollect, doctor,” said she, “so well the night he was introduced to me: it was at Mr. Matook’s (?) supper.
“You may imagine the numbers and numbers of people I met in society, whilst I lived with Mr. Pitt, almost all of whom were dying to make my acquaintance, and of whom I necessarily could know little or nothing. Indeed, to the greater part of those who were introduced to me, if they saw me afterwards, when they bowed I might return the salutation, smile a little, and pass on, for I had not time to do more:—a person’s life would not be long enough. Well, I recollect it was at a party where Charles X. was present—I think it was at Lord Harrington’s—that somebody said to me, ‘Mr. —— wants to know you so much! Why won’t you let him be introduced to you?’—‘Because I don’t like people whose face is all oily, like a soap-ball,’ answered I. Now, doctor, upon my word, I no more knew he had made his fortune by oil, than I do what was the colour of the paper in your saloon at Nice; and when his friend said, ‘You are too bad, Lady Hester,’ I did not understand what he meant. However, they told me there would be all the royalties there, and so I consented.
“I have had an instinct all my life that never deceived me, about people who were thorough-bred or not; I knew them at once. Why was it, when Mr. H*******n came into a room, and took a long sweep with his hat, and made a stoop, and I said: ‘One would think he was looking under the bed for the great business;’ and all the people laughed, and when at last Mr. Pitt said, ‘Hester, you are too bad, you should not be personal,’ I declared ‘I did not know what he meant?’ Then he explained to me that the man was a broken-down doctor, a fact which, I honestly assured him, I never heard of before. But my quickness in detecting people’s old habits is so great, that I hit upon a thing without having the least previous intimation.
“As I passed the card-table that evening where the Comte d’Artois was playing, he put down his cards to talk to me a little, so polite, so well-bred—poor man! And there were the other three old dowagers, who were playing with him, abusing him in English, which he understood very well, because he had stopped the game. After he had resumed his cards, I was leaning over the back of a chair facing him, reflecting in one of my thoughtful moments on the uncertainty of human greatness in the picture I had then before me, when I gave one of those deep sighs, which you have heard me do sometimes, something between a sigh and a grunt, and so startled the French King, that he literally threw down his cards to stare at me. I remained perfectly motionless, pretending not to observe his action; and, as he still continued to gaze at me, some of the lookers-on construed it into a sort of admiration on his part. This enraged Lady P., and her rage was increased when, at every knock at the door, I turned my head to see who was coming, and he turned his head too; for I was expecting the royalties, and so was he: but she did not know this, and she took it into her head that the Prince and I had some understanding between us.
“I never thought any more of the matter; but, in the course of the evening, somebody brought Lady P. to me, and introduced her. ‘I have longed,’ said Lady P. ‘for some time to make your acquaintance: I don’t know how it is that we have never met; it would give me great pleasure if I sometimes saw you at my parties,’ and so on. The next day I had a visit from Lady P., and the day after that came her card, and then an invitation; and, day after day, there was nothing but Lady P. So, at last, not knowing what it meant, I said to an acquaintance, ‘What is the reason that Lady P. is always coming after me?’—‘What! don’t you know?’ she replied: ‘why, the King of France is in love with you?’ And this is the art, doctor, of all those mistresses: they watch and observe if their lovers are pleased with any young person, and then invite her home, as a lure to keep alive the old attraction.”
Here Lady Hester paused, and, after a moment, added: “How many of those French people did I see at that time, especially at Lord H.’s! There was the Duchess of Gontaut, who was obliged to turn washerwoman; and even to the last, when she was best off, was obliged to go out to parties in a hackney-coach. Why, the Duc de Berry himself lodged over a greengrocer’s in a little street leading out of Montague Square, and all the view he had was to lean out of his window, and look at the greengrocer’s stall. I have seen him many a time there, when he used to kiss his hand to me as I passed. The Duchess of Gontaut afterwards brought up the Duke of Bordeaux. That was a woman quite admirable; so full of resources, so cheerful, she kept up the spirits of all the emigrants: and then she was so well dressed! She did not mind going in a hackney-coach to dine with the Duke of Portland.
“Lord H********** scraped up a reputation which he never deserved,” continued Lady Hester, as her reflections led her from one person to another. “Insincere, greedy of place, and always pretending to be careless about it, he and my lady lived in a hugger-mugger sort of a way, half poverty half splendour, having soldiers for house servants, and my lady dining at two with the children (saying my lord dined out), and being waited on by a sergeant’s daughter. How often have I seen a scraggy bit of mutton sent up for luncheon, with some potatoes in their skins, before royalty! The princes would say to me, ‘Very bad, Lady Hester, very bad; but there! he has a large family—he is right to be saving.’ And then Lady H**********, with her little eyes, and a sort of waddle in her gait (for she once had a paralytic stroke), with a wig all curls, and, at the top of it, a great bunch of peacock’s feathers—then her dress, all bugles, and badly put on—horrid, doctor, horrid! and why should they have lived in such a large house, half furnished, with the girls sleeping altogether in large attics, with a broken looking-glass, and coming down into their mother’s room to dress themselves!
“But to go back to Sir Gore Ouseley: it was at Mr. M.’s supper, when getting up from the card-table, and advancing towards me, he made a diplomatic bow, accompanied with some complimentary speech. That was the old school, very different from the fizgig people now-a days. Just before, the Prince had been standing in the middle of the room, talking to some one I did not know, first pulling up the flap of his coat to show his figure, then seizing the person he spoke to by the waistcoat, then laughing, then pretending to whisper; and this he continued for nearly an hour. ‘What can the Prince be talking about?’ said some one next to me: ‘He does not know himself,’ said I. Soon after, the person who had been talking to the Prince approached the sofa, when the mylord, who was sitting next to me, observed, ‘We have been looking at the Prince and you; what in the world was he talking about?’—‘He don’t know himself,’ answered his friend, ‘and I’m sure I don’t know.’—‘That’s just what Lady Hester said,’ rejoined the first speaker. ‘I have been wishing to make my bow to Lady Hester all the evening,’ said the friend, who then sat down by me.”