“How great the sympathies and antipathies are in stars that are the same or opposite I have told you before in my grandfather’s case, in Mr. Pitt’s, and in my own. Lord Chatham, when on a sick bed, could bear three people only to wait on him—Lady Chatham, Sarah Booby, and somebody else. My grandmamma’s star and Sarah Booby’s star were the same—both Venus—only grandmamma’s was more moderate; she could keep it down. Mr. Pitt, when he was ill at Putney, had such an aversion to one of the footmen, that he was nervous when he heard his step; for you know people, when they are sick, can hear a pin drop: he said to me, ‘Hester, do send that fellow to town.’ I did not let him know why he was sent to town, but I got him off as quickly as possible: he was, notwithstanding, a good servant, clean, and had otherwise good qualities; but Mr. Pitt’s and his star were different. As to myself, since I have been here, I had a professed French cook, called François—the people named him Fransees el Franjy. His skill was undoubted; yet, whenever he dressed my dinner, I was always sending for him to complain, and sometimes threw the dish in his face: a sweetmeat from his hand turned bitter in my mouth. But, what is most extraordinary of all, Miss Williams’s star was so disagreeable to me that I could not bear her to be near me when I was ill:—if I was in a perspiration, it would stop the moment she came into the room. You know how many good qualities she had, and how attached she was to me, and I to her: well, I always kept her out of my sight as much as I could, when anything was the matter with me.
“Such is the sympathy of persons born under the same star, that, although living apart in distant places, they will still be sensible of each other’s sufferings. When the Duke of York died, at the very hour, a cold sweat and a kind of fainting came over me, that I can’t describe. I was ill beyond measure, and I said to Miss Williams, ‘Somebody is dying somewhere, and I am sure it is one of my friends: so I made her write it down. Some time after, when she was poking over a set of newspapers, she came to me, and said, ‘It’s very singular, my lady; but, the time you were so very ill, and could not account for it, corresponds exactly with the date of the Duke of York’s death—the hour, too, just the same!’ Now, doctor, wasn’t it extraordinary? You drawl out ‘Y—e—s,’ just as if you thought I told lies: oh, Lord! oh, Lord! what a cold man!
“The proof of sympathy between the stars of two persons, or, in other words, of the star of another being good for you, is, when a person puts his finger on you and you don’t feel it. Zezefôon, when Mademoiselle Longchamp touches her with her fingers in examining the Turkish dress, shudders all over: that is a proof that her star is not good for her, and yet Miss L. uses more kind expressions to her than anybody; but that makes no difference; there is no sympathy in their stars.
“Animal magnetism is nothing but the sympathy of our stars. Those fools who go about magnetizing indifferently one person and another, why do they sometimes succeed, and sometimes fail?—because, if they meet with those of the same star with themselves, their results will be satisfactory, but with opposite stars they can do nothing. Some people you may magnetize, some you cannot; and so far will the want of sympathy act in some, that there are persons whom it would be impossible to put in certain attitudes: they might be mechanically placed there, but their posture never would be natural; whilst others, from their particular star, would readily fall into them. Oh! if I had your friend, Mr. Green,[25] here, I could give him some useful hints on choosing models for his lectures.
“There are animals, too, under the same star with human beings. I had a mule whose star was the same as mine; and, at the time of my severe illness, this mule showed as much sensibility about me, and more, than some of the beasts who wait on me. When that mule was first foaled, I had given orders to sell the foal and its mother; but, happening to see it, I countermanded the order immediately. It received a hurt in its eye, and when, with my hand, I applied some eye-water with camphor in it, which, of course, made the eye smart, it never once turned its head away, or showed the least impatience of what I was doing. When this mule was dying some years afterwards, she lay twenty-four hours, every minute seeming to be going to breathe her last; but still life would not depart. They told me of this, and I went to the stable. The moment she saw me, she turned her eyes on me, gave an expressive look, and expired. All the servants said she would not die until my star, which was hers, had come to take her breath: isn’t it very extraordinary? Serpents never die, whatever you can do to them, until their star rises above the horizon.[26]
“Some can do well only when under the guidance of another person’s star. What was Lord Grenville without Mr. Pitt? with him to guide him he did pretty well; but, as soon as Mr. Pitt was dead, he sunk into obscurity: who ever heard of Lord Grenville afterwards? So again Sir Francis Burdett has never been good for anything since Horne Tooke’s death. So long as Napoleon had Josephine by his side he was lucky: but, when he cast her off, his good fortune left him. You know you sent me her portrait: well, it was a good engraving, and I have no doubt was a likeness. I observed in her face indications of much falsity, and a depth of cunning exceedingly great: it was her sâad (luck) that held him up. You may see so many examples of such good fortune depending on men’s wives. Mahomet Ali owes all to his wife—a woman without a nose. What saved the Shaykh Beshýr but the sâad of the Syt Haboos? Hamâady told the Emir Beshýr, ‘You will never do anything with the Shaykh Beshýr until you get rid of her, and then the Shaykh is in your power.’ So what did he do? he sent his son—the little Emir Beshýr, as they call him—who surrounded her palace with twenty horsemen, and, when she attempted to escape, drove her into her own courtyard, and stabbed her: her body was cut in pieces, and given to the dogs to eat.
“What is to account for some people’s good fortune but their star? There was Lord Suffolk, an ensign in a marching regiment, and thirteenth remove from the title—see what an example he was! It was predestined that he should arrive at greatness, although, when the news was brought him that he was come to the title, he had not money enough to pay for a post-chaise: but nothing could hinder what his good star was to bring him. Lady Suffolk, the daughter of a clergyman of a hundred a-year, was a very clever, shrewd woman, and filled her elevated station admirably.”
I have embodied thus much in Lady Hester Stanhope’s own words of what may give a tolerable idea of her notion of planetary influence. What her own star was may be gathered from what she said one day, when, having dwelt a long time on this, her favourite subject, she got up from the sofa, and, approaching the window, she called me to her—“Look,” said she, “at the pupil of my eyes; there! my star is the sun—all sun—it is in my eyes: when the sun is a person’s star, it attracts everything.” I looked, and replied that I saw a rim of yellow round the pupil.—“A rim!” cried she; “it isn’t a rim—it’s a sun; there’s a disk, and from it go rays all round: ’tis no more a rim than you are. Nobody has got eyes like mine.”[27]
Lady Hester Stanhope, in a letter she wrote to Prince Pückler Muskau, describes her system briefly as follows; and she desired me to keep a copy of it, that I might not, as she said, substitute my own ideas for hers.
“Every man, born under a given star, has his aërial spirit, his animal, his bird, his fruit-tree, his flower, his medicinal herb, and his dæmon. Beings born under any given star may be of four different qualities and forms, just as there may be four different qualities of cherries, having little resemblance one to another, but being nevertheless all cherries. Added to this, there may be varieties in the same star, occasioned by the influence of other stars, which were above the horizon in particular positions at the hour of a man’s birth: just as you may say that a ship is more or less baffled by certain winds, though she is standing her course. Again, a man being born under the same star with another man, whilst that star is in one sign of the zodiac, changes somewhat the character and appearance when in another sign of the zodiac: just as two plants which are alike, when one grows where there is always shade and the other where there is constantly sunshine, although precisely of one and the same kind, will differ slightly in appearance, odour, and taste.