Lady Hester reverted again to Chevening, and spoke at great length of her grandmother Stanhope’s excellent management of the house, when she (Lady Hester) was a child. At all the accustomed festivals, plum puddings, that required two men to carry them, with large barons of beef, were dressed, &c., &c. All the footmen were like gentlemen ushers, all the masters and mistresses like so many ambassadors and ambassadresses, such form and etiquette were preserved in all the routine of visits and parties. Every person kept his station, and precise rules were laid down for each inmate of the family. Thus, the lady’s maid was not allowed to wear white, nor curls, nor heels to her shoes, beyond a certain height; and Lady Stanhope had in her room a set of instruments and implements of punishment to enforce her orders on all occasions. There were scissors to cut off fine curls, a rod to whip with, &c., &c.
No poor woman lay-in in the neighbourhood, but two guineas in money, baby linen, a blanket, some posset, two bottles of wine, and other necessaries, were sent to her. If any one among the servants was sick, the housekeeper, with the still-room maid behind her, was seen carrying the barley-water, the gruel, the medicine, &c., to administer to the patient, according to the doctor’s orders. In the hopping time, all the vagrants and Irish hoppers were locked up every night in a barn by themselves, and suffered to have no communication with the household. A thousand pieces of dirty linen were washed every week, and the wash-house had four different stone troughs, from which the linen was handed, piece by piece, by the washerwomen from the scalder down to the rinser. In the laundry a false ceiling, let down and raised by pulleys, served to air the linen after it was ironed. There was a mangle to get up the table-linen, towels, &c., and three stoves for drying on wet days. The tablecloths were of the finest damask, covered with patterns of exquisite workmanship. At set periods of the year, pedlars and merchants from Glasgow, from Dunstable, and other places, passed with their goods. The housekeeper’s room was surrounded with presses and closets, where were arranged stores and linen in the nicest order. An ox was killed every week, and a sheep every day, &c., &c. In the relation of these details, which I spare the reader, as being, probably, what he has observed in many other families, Lady Hester by degrees recovered her self-possession, whilst they only served to impress more forcibly on my mind the sad contrast which reigned in everything about her between her former and her present condition.
January 10-15, 1838.—The cough continued, attended by spasms in the limbs. Yet, although she was thus exhausted and harassed by continued suffering, the elasticity of mind she exhibited in the few intervals of ease she enjoyed was astonishing. The moment she had a respite from actual pain, she immediately set about some labour for the benefit of others; and the room was again strewed over with bundles and boxes. But, in spite of these delusive appearances, I could not conceal from myself that a hectic spot occasionally marked the inroads which disease was now making on her lungs.
January 17, 1838.—What a day of anxiety and sorrow for me, and of anguish for Lady Hester! From morning until midnight to see a melancholy picture of a never-dying spirit, in an exhausted frame, wrestling with its enemy, and daring even to set the heaviest infirmities of nature at defiance. Yet, who does not bend under the power of disease? Lady Hester held out as long as a human being could do; but at last her anguish showed that, like Prometheus bound, she was compelled to acknowledge the weight of a superior hand, and that resistance was vain.
The reflections she made on her abandoned situation, neglected by her friends and left to die without one relation near her, were full of the bitterness of grief. In these moments, as if the excess of her indignation must have some object to waste itself upon, she would launch out into the most fierce invectives against me, and tell me I was a cannibal and a vulture that tore her heart by my insensibility.
A day or two before, in defending myself against the accusation of coldness and want of feeling, I had inadvertently said that it was an insult to a person, whose intentions she could not but know were well meaning, to heap so much abuse on him. To this her ladyship said nothing at the time; but to-day, being in a state of excitement, the word insult recurred to her recollection. “Do you not know,” she asked, “that people of my rank and spirit are incapable of insults towards their friends: it is only the vulgar who are always fancying themselves insulted. If a man treads on another’s toe in good society, do you think it is taken as an insult? It is only people like —— and —— who take such things into their heads. I never have hurt a person’s feelings in my life intentionally, except, perhaps, by my wit. But if people expect that I should not tell them the truth to their face, they are much mistaken; and if you or anybody else act like a fool, I must say so. Such people as Lord Melville and Mr. Pitt would stop, perhaps, until a person was gone out of the room to say, ‘That man is the most egregious ass I ever saw;’ but I, were he a king, must say it to his face. I might, if I chose, flatter and deceive you and a hundred others. There is no one whom I could not lead by the nose, if I chose to do it; I know every man’s price, and how to buy him: but I will not stoop to the baseness of making you run your head through a wall, even though I saw some advantage for myself on the other side. As for your saying, that’s your character, and that you can’t bear to be spoken to as I speak to you, what do you talk to me of character for? Everybody has a character, and so they have a behind: but they don’t go about showing the one any more than the other. Fools are always crying out, ‘That’s my disposition;’ but what’s their disposition to other people more than their anything else?
“Let us have no more of that stuff; for, though not a man, I shall no more put up with it than if I were; and I warn you that, if you repeat that word, you stand a chance of having something at your head.”
Let not the reader imagine that this was all, or even one half of what her ladyship said on this occasion: it is only a tissue of the most striking sentences. Never had I seen her so irritated as that one expression of mine had made her. She went on in this merciless way for four hours; and, although I frequently attempted to soothe her by assurances and explanations, she continued in the same strain until evening, when she subsided into a gentler tone. Being now restored to a calmer temper, she seemed desirous to atone by kindness for the wound she had inflicted on my feelings, and wanted, amongst other things, to get ponies for my children to ride. The generosity of her nature was obvious in all this, and I resolved, whatever language she might make use of in future, never to take the slightest notice of it.
This haughty assumption of superiority over others on almost all occasions was a salient feature in her character. It must have created her a host of enemies, during the period when she exercised so much power in Mr. Pitt’s time; and probably those persons were not sorry afterwards to witness her humiliation and downfall.
Once, at Walmer Castle, the colonel of the regiment stationed there thought himself privileged to take his wife occasionally to walk on the ramparts of the castle. I do not know the localities, and am ignorant how far, in so doing, these two persons might infringe on the privacy of Mr. Pitt and Lady Hester Stanhope: but, without intimating by a note or a message that such a thing was disagreeable, she gave orders to the sentry to stop them when they came, and tell them they were not to walk there. Let any one put himself in the place of Colonel W., and fancy how such an affront must have wounded his pride.