As Mr. Forster and his friend had to cross a deep valley and mount a steep ascent before they could take the road to Beyrout, to which town they were now going, I sent Ali Hayshem, the messenger, to put them on their way. He returned in the course of an hour or two, and was despatched the same evening on foot, with letters to Beyrout, where he arrived next day before Messieurs Knox and Forster. He told me, on his return, that their surprise was very great on finding him at the inn, knowing that they had left him behind them, the morning before, up the mountain. Ali’s account of Mr. Forster’s regimentals, in which he saw him dressed at Beyrout, was very flaming: and from that day, in speaking of the two, he always distinguished him from Mr. Knox by the title of ‘the general.’
Lady Hester deeply regretted that she was not able to see these gentlemen. “Ah!” said she, “how many times have I been abused by the English when I did not deserve it, and for nothing so much as for not seeing people, when perhaps it was quite out of my power! There was Mr. Anson and Mr. Strangways, who, because I refused to see them, sat down under a tree, and wrote me such a note! Little did they know that I had not a bit of barley in the house for their horses, and nothing for their dinner. I could not tell them so; but they might have had feeling enough to suppose it was not without some good reason that I declined their visit. Many a pang has their ill-nature given me, as well as that of others. I have got the note[40] still somewhere.
“Among the visitors I have had was the duchess of Gontaut’s brother, she that brought up the Duke of Bordeaux. I supposed she must have talked of me to her brother, whom I never recollect: however, he came with his two sons; but I would not see him. It was that time when Monsieur Guys, after sitting and staring at me some minutes, exclaimed—‘Madam, when I see you dressed in that abah’ (the Bedouin cloak), ‘in that keffiah’ (the Bedouin vizor), ‘and when I think you are that Lady Hester Stanhope, qui faisoit la pluie et le beau temps à Londres, I am lost in wonder how you could have come and fixed yourself in these desolate mountains.’
“Another of Charles the Tenth’s courtiers came here, but a higher personage, whom I also refused to see: he was dreadfully savage about it too. I fancy Charles the Tenth had a secret intention of resigning the crown, and of coming to this country to finish his days in the Holy Land like another St. Louis? and I think this man had something to ask me about it: however, I refused to see him. But it was not caprice, nor, as this proves, was it Englishmen alone I denied myself to. Sometimes I was not well enough to sustain a conversation—sometimes I had no provisions in the house, perhaps no servant who knew how to set a table; but travellers never fancied that there could be any other reason for my refusal, but the determination to affront them. God knows, when I could, I was willing to receive anybody.
“Once I had a visit from two persons whom we will call Mr. A. and Mr. B., or Mr. B. and Mr. C.—what letter you like. I thought Mr. B. very stupid, but, good God! doctor, there never was anything so vulgar as Mr. C. When I got his note to ask leave to come, the name deceived me; I thought he might be a son of Admiral C. But when he came into the room with his great thighs and pantaloons so tight that he could hardly sit down, I thought he was more like a butcher than anything else. He was a man entirely without breeding, with his Ma’ams and ladyships. I asked him a few questions, as—‘Pray, sir, will you allow me to ask if you are a relation of Admiral C’s.?’—‘No, ma’am, I am no relation at all.’—‘Will you permit me to inquire what is the motive of your visit to me?’—‘Only to see your ladyship, ma’am.’—‘Do you come to this country with any particular object?’—‘To be a merchant.’—‘You are probably conversant in mercantile affairs?’—‘No, ma’am, I am come to learn,’—and so on. After some time, I told them that I never saw people in the morning, and would take my leave of them, as they probably would wish to set off early; and I desired them to order what they liked for their breakfast. Next morning, when I thought, as a matter of course, they were gone, in came a note from them to say, they were not going till next day, and then another to say they did not know, and then a third to say that, as they expected ships, and God knows what, they must go.—Good God! they might go to the devil for me: I had taken my leave of them, and there was an end of it. Mr. C. was a downright vulgar merchant’s clerk, come to Syria, I suppose, to set up for himself. Lord St. Asaph said to me—‘Lady Hester, you really should consider who you are, and not allow people of that description to pay visits to you.’
“There was a man who bore a great resemblance to the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Clarence, but something between both, who passed two or three years in this neighbourhood and sometimes came to see me; he was good-natured, and I liked him. He went about with a sort of pedlar’s box, full of trinkets and gewgaws to show to the peasant woman, thus bringing the whole population of the village out of their houses: and then giving away beads and earrings to get the young girls around him.
“Of the English, who have visited me here, I liked Captain Pechell and Captain Yorke very much, and thought them both clever men.
“Colonel Howard Vyse one day came up to the village and wrote me a note, and did everything he could to see me. He was an old Coldstream:—it broke my heart not to see him; but it would have revived too many melancholy reflections. Poor man! I believe he was very much hurt; but I could not help it.
“A man came here—I believe the only one who was saved out of a party that was killed going across the Desert—and asked me for a letter to the Arabs. I sent him away, telling him that he might just as well come and ask me for a pot of beer. What had I to do with their schemes and their navigation of the Euphrates? Yet, for this, this officer wrote verses upon the wall of the room against me.
“Then Mr. Croix de la Barre came, but I could not see him. He said he wanted to talk politics with me, and learn the customs and manners of the natives. I should tire you, doctor, if I were to tell you how many have come. I saw Lord B******, when he was travelling, at the baths of Tiberias, where Abdallah Pasha happened to be. Lord B. proposed calling on the pasha, and equipped himself for that purpose with a pair of pistols and a yatagàn in his girdle, after the fashion of a Turkish subaltern; for the Franks, who surrounded him as dragomans and menials, had taught him to adopt what accorded with their ideas of finery, and not what was suitable to his rank. Luckily, he mentioned his intention the day before to me, and I told him that there was a full dress of ceremony in Turkey as well as in Europe, and I lent him the most essential part of it, a benýsh,[41] with which he presented himself. At first there was some hesitation, on his entering the room with his people, as to which was the great Mylord; for his lordship’s doctor, who sat down close by him, and poked his head forward with an air of great attention to what the pasha said, made him doubt whether the doctor was not the chief personage; it being a part of Oriental etiquette that no dependant should obtrude himself into the least notice in his superior’s presence: nay, generally speaking, it is required that doctors, secretaries, dragomans, and the like, should remain standing during such interviews. This difficulty being got over, the pasha, after some questions about Lord B.’s health, asked him what brought him to Tiberias, a part of his province the least beautiful and most barren. The question would have led most persons to say that, knowing the pasha was there, he seized the opportunity of paying his respects to him, or some such complimentary speech. But Lord B., with a naïveté somewhat plebeian, replied, that he came to see the baths. The pasha coldly desired that proper persons should show them to him, and soon after broke up the interview. The very attendants of his Highness were struck with the incivility and want of tact which Lord B. showed, and it was one of them who told me the story. But this was not all: the pasha, who is fond of consulting European doctors, requested Lord B., who was to depart next day, to leave his doctor behind for twenty-four hours; which request Lord B. refused. After he was gone, the pasha sent me a pelisse of considerable value, with a request that I should present it in his name to Lord B., but I returned it, saying Lord B. was gone; for I did not think his incivility deserved it. So much for English breeding! and then let them go and call the Turks barbarians.