“A man born under a certain star will have, from nature, certain qualities, certain virtues and vices, certain talents, diseases, and tastes. All that education can do is merely artificial: leave him to himself, and he returns to his natural character and his original tastes. If this were better known, young people would not be made to waste their time uselessly in fitting them for what they never can be.
“I have learned to know a man’s star by his face, but not by astrological calculations, as perhaps you fancy; of that trade I have no knowledge. I have been told that the faculty which I possess is much more vague than the astrological art, and I believe it: but mine is good for a great deal, though not for calculating the exact epoch of a man’s maladies or death.
“You will ask me how it is possible to know mankind by looking at their features and persons; and so thoroughly too. I answer—a gardener, when he sees twenty bulbs of twenty different flowers on the table before him, will he not tell you that one will remain so many days under ground before it sprouts, then it will grow little by little, very slowly, and in so many days or weeks will flower, and its flowers will have such a smell, such a colour, and such virtues: after so many days more, it will begin to droop and fade, and in ten days will wither: that other, as soon as it is out of the ground, will grow an inch and a half in every twenty-four hours: its flowers will be brilliant, but will have a disagreeable smell; it will bloom for a long time, and then will wither altogether in a day and why may not I, looking on men, pronounce on their virtues, qualities, and duration in the same way? This may not be well explained, but a clever person will divine what I mean.”
Such were, in the main, the opinions of Lady Hester on astrology, to which several travellers have alluded, but which, from defective information, they have hitherto misrepresented. It will be seen that there was at least method in her belief. We will now return from this digression.
Our narrative broke off in the middle of a conversation on the evening of January 31, 1838.
Tea was ordered; but so simple a process as getting tea ready was now a painful business. If it did not come immediately, Lady Hester grew so impatient, that it was distressing to see her agitation. She would then ring for a pipe, and perhaps send it back to be fresh filled or changed four or five times in succession, each one being, for some trifling reason, rejected. Alas! it was not the tea nor the pipes that were in fault; it was Colonel Campbell’s letter that had given a stab to her heart, from which she never recovered; and, in proportion to the apparent calm which she endeavoured to assume, when speaking on that subject, did the feeling of the supposed indignity which she had received prey on her spirits and on her pride.
She reverted to the letter. “The thing to be considered,” she said, “is whether I shall write a letter to the Queen, and ask the Duke of Wellington to give it to her, or whether I shall put it in the newspapers: for I am afraid, if I send it to him, he will not give it to her; or, if he does, they will say nothing about it. I should like to ask for a public inquiry into my debts, and for what I have contracted them. Let them compare the good I have done in the cause of humanity and science with the D——s of K——’s debts. When I am better, I’ll set all this to rights. I wonder if Lord Palmerston is the man I recollect—a young man just come from College, that was hanging about, waiting to be introduced to Mr. Pitt. Mr. Pitt used to say, ‘Ah! very well; we will ask him some day to dinner.’ Perhaps it is an old grudge that makes him vent his spite. He is an Irishman, I think.”
February 1.—To-day Lady Hester was much the same as on the preceding days: her pulse was low; her lungs were loaded with phlegm; aphthæ had shown themselves on her tongue; her nails were cracked from the contraction of the surrounding integuments; the tips of her fingers were cold; her back, as she sat up in bed, was bent; her bones almost protruded through the skin, from being obliged to lie always on one side. Speaking of her inability to sleep, except in some particular position, she observed that she was like those little figures of tumblers; place her as you would, she rolled over to the left side, as if there was a weight of lead there.
After the usual preliminaries of smoking a pipe and a little conversation, she dictated her letter to the Queen and to Mr. Abercrombie, speaker of the House of Commons.