Again she asked me to take my pen and paper, and returned to the Duke of Wellington’s letter. “I can’t collect my ideas,” she said: “one while I am thinking of what Mr. Pitt said of him; then of the letter he wrote when invited down to the country ball; then of what he is now: so put down your paper, and ring for a pipe. The duke is a man self-taught, for he was always in dissipation. I recollect, one day, Mr. Pitt came into the drawing-room to me—‘Oh!’ said he, ‘how I have been bored by Sir Sydney coming with his box full of papers, and keeping me for a couple of hours, when I had so much to do!’ I observed to him that heroes were generally vain: ‘Lord Nelson is so.’ ‘So he is,’ replied Mr. Pitt; ‘but not like Sir Sydney: and how different is Arthur Wellesley, who has just quitted me! He has given me details so clear upon affairs in India! and he talked of them, too, as if he had been a surgeon of a regiment, and had nothing to do with them; so that I know not which to admire most, his modesty or his talents: and yet the fate of India depends upon them.’ Then, doctor, when I recollect the letter he wrote to Edward Bouverie, in which he said that he could not come down to the ball which Bouverie had invited him to, for that his only corbeau coat was so bad he was ashamed to appear in it, I reflect what a rise he has had in the world. Bouverie said—‘You would like to dance with him amazingly, Lady Hester: he is a good fellow.’
“He was at first, doctor, nothing but what hundreds of others are in a country town—a man who danced, and drank hard. His star has done every thing for him; for he is not a great general.[32] He is no tactician, nor has he any of those great qualities that make a Cæsar, or a Pompey, or even a Buonaparte. As for the battle of Waterloo, both French and English have told me that it was a lucky battle for him, but nothing more. I don’t think he acted well at Paris: nor did the soldiers like him.”
Thursday, February 15.—This morning, the letter to the Duke of Wellington was written.
Lady Hester Stanhope to the Duke of Wellington.
Jôon, February 13, 1838.
My dear Duke,
If you merit but half the feeling and eloquent praise I heard bestowed upon you shortly before I saw you for the first time, you are the last man in the world either to be offended or to misconstrue my motives in writing to you upon the subject in question, or not to know how to account for the warmth of the expressions I may make use of, which are only characteristic of my disposition.
Your Grace’s long residence in the East will have taught you that there is no common rate character in England an adequate judge what manner of living best answers among a semi-barbarous people, and how little possible it is to measure one’s expenses where frequent revolutions and petty wars are carried on without any provision for the sufferers, from its being considered the duty of every one to assist them as his humanity may dictate or as his circumstances may afford.
Acre besieged for seven months! some days, 7,000 balls thrown in in twenty-four hours!—at last, taken by storm, and little more than 200 of the garrison remaining!—then the wretched inhabitants, who expected to find succour from their old friends in the country, finding their backs turned upon them in the dread and awe they stood in of Ibrahim Pasha; nay, it is very strange to say that the Franks likewise held back in a most extraordinary manner. Therefore, these unhappy people had no resource but in me, and I did the best I could for them all. Mahomet Ali, Ibrahim Pasha, Sheriff Pasha, all set at me at once, in order to make me give up certain persons, who immediately would have lost their heads for having fought well in the cause which they were engaged in. I opposed them all round single-handed, and said that I neither protected these persons in the English or French name, but in my own, as a poor Arab, who would not give up an unhappy being but with his own life; that there was no other chance of making me bend by any other means than by attempting mine. In this manner I saved some unfortunate beings, whom I got rid of by degrees, by sending them back to their own country, or providing for them at a distance in some way or another. Can you, as a soldier, blame me for what I have done? I should have acted in the same way before your eyes to the victims of your own sword. Then the host of orphans, and widows, and little children, who, to feed or clothe for nearly two years, took away all the ready money with which I ought in part to have paid my debts, and caused new ones!—yet I am no swindler, and will not appear like one. Your Queen had no business to meddle in my affairs. In due time, please God, I should have known how to arrange to satisfy everybody, even if I left myself a beggar. If she pretends to have a right to stop my pension, I resign it altogether, as well as the name of an English subject; for there is no family that has served their country and the crown more faithfully than mine has done, and I am not inclined to be treated with moins d’égards than was formerly shown to a gentleman-like highwayman.