[16] An ibryk is a common earthenware jug with a spout to it, the usual drinking-vessel of the lower classes.
[17] This Pasha was so afraid, in the midst of all his power, of being poisoned, that he had the dishes brought to his table under padlock. When he travelled, a horseman in his suite had the office assigned him of carrying the implement that makes such a distinguished figure in the farce of Pourceaugnac. When he was shaved, he always had some of his guards standing round the barber with their pistols cocked, and he himself had a drawn sabre lying across his lap. Fancy the situation of a man who, in the midst of these formidable preparations, is obliged to keep his hand steady.
[18] In this same tomb Lady Hester herself was afterwards interred.
CHAPTER VII.
Lady Hester like the first Lord Chatham—Her recollections of Chevening—Her definition of insults—Her deliberate affronts—Her warlike propensities—Earl C—— Marquis of Abercorn—Logmagi—Osman Chaôosh—Letter from Colonel Campbell—George the Third’s flattering compliment to Lady Hester—Her Majesty Queen Victoria—Lord M.—Prophecy of a welly—Lady Hester’s poignant affliction—Her intractability—Her noble and disinterested benevolence.
December 21, 1837.—I had sat up until two in the morning, despatching letters to Europe, which I had written by Lady Hester’s dictation, through the channel of M. Guys, the French consul at Beyrout, who, alone, among the Europeans there, had contrived to remain on friendly terms with her. In my letter to him, Lady Hester required that I should tell him she was in a state of convalescence. Alas! she was far from being so; for, on going to her, I found her labouring under many bad symptoms, against which she contended with a spirit that seemed to brook no control—not even from nature herself. As she could not talk, I read to her, out of the Speaker, a character of the first Lord Chatham. She recognized, and so did I, so many points of resemblance between herself and her grandfather, that she said, more than once, “That’s me.” At the words, “He reigned with unbounded control over the wilderness of free minds,” I observed that there was something contradictory in control and freedom. “No, there is not,” said she. “If you are walking on the road, and you inquire the way of some person you meet, he tells you the best road is in such a direction, and then takes his leave; you turn round, every now and then, as long as the person is in sight, to look at him to see if he points to you that you are going right; but you are free to go which way you will.”
December 31.—I saw Lady Hester in the morning, after which I took a walk with my family: on my return, I went again to inquire how she was. One of her maids told me that, soon after I had left her, she suddenly burst into tears, and cried a great deal, they could not tell why; that she had called for Zezefôon to dress her, had, in a manner, rushed out of her bed-room, and had gone to the saloon, where, in consequence of her long confinement, she found all the sofa cushions piled up, and the sofa mattresses removed, so that she had not a place to sit down on; that then she had left the saloon abruptly, on seeing the state it was in, and returned to her bed-room, where she gave a loose to her sorrow.
My presence being announced, I was admitted. “Doctor,” said she, “to-night in my father’s house there used to be a hundred tenants and servants sitting down to a good dinner, and dancing and making merry. I see their happy faces now before my eyes: and, when I think of that and how I am surrounded here, it is too much for me. When you left me this morning, things of former times came over my mind, and I could not bear to sit here, so I went out to break the chain of my thoughts. I would have gone into the garden, if it had not rained.”
I endeavoured to say something consolatory to her. “Everybody,” she continued, “is unkind to me. I have sought to do good to everybody, either by relieving their distresses or purifying their morals, and I get no thanks for my pains. I sometimes make reproaches to myself for having spent my money on worthless beings, and think it might have been better otherwise; but God knows best. I had hoped to find some persons whose minds might have been enlightened, and who would have felt the importance of what I tell them. But you even, of whom I had some hope, are as bad as the rest; and, if you assent to the truth of what I say, you make so many hums and hahs that I don’t believe you care a farthing about it. I want nobody that has no conviction.”
“I should think it a sin if I saw people acting foolishly, not to tell them of it. It does not signify who it is, you or the stable-boy; if I can make them aware of their folly, I have done my duty. Why do I scold you so much, but because I wish you to prepare yourself for the convulsions that will shortly take place. I always acknowledge your spotless integrity, and thank you for the care you bestow on my affairs, and in keeping things a little in order; but, in these times, something more is wanting: a man must be active, and prepared for great events. People are teaching their children to read and write, when they should be teaching them to drive a mule: for of what use are your reading men, who sit poring for hours over books without an object? I have a thorough contempt for them, and for all your merchants, and your merchants’ clerks, who spend their time between the counting-house and the brothel.”