“There might be some apparent levity in my manner, both as regarded affairs of the cabinet and my own; but I always knew what I was doing. When Mr. Pitt was reproached for allowing me such unreserved liberty of action in state matters and in affairs where his friends advised him to question me on the motives of my conduct, he always answered—‘I let her do as she pleases; for, if she were resolved to cheat the devil, she could do it.’ And so I could, doctor; and that is the reason why thick-headed people, who could never dive into the motives of what I did, have often misinterpreted my conduct, when it has proceeded from the purest intentions. And, in the same way, when some persons said to Lady Suffolk, ‘Look at Lady Hester, talking and riding with Bouverie and the Prince’s friends; she must mind what she is about’—Lady Suffolk remarked, ‘There is nothing to fear in that quarter; she never will let any body do a bit more than she intends: what she does is with connoissance de cause.’ And she was right; nobody could ever accuse me of folly: even those actions which might seem folly to a common observer, were wisdom. Everything with me, through life, has been premeditatedly done.
“Mr. Pitt paid me the greatest compliment I ever received from any living being. He was speaking of C******, and lamenting he was so false, and so little to be trusted; and I said, ‘But perhaps he is only so in appearance, and is sacrificing ostensibly his own opinions, in order to support your reputation?’—‘I have lived,’ replied Mr. Pitt, ‘twenty-five years in the midst of men of all sorts, and I never yet found but one human being capable of such a sacrifice.’—‘Who can that be?’ said I. ‘Is it the Duke of Richmond? is it such a one?’ and I named two others, when he interrupted me—‘No,—it is you.’
“I was not insensible to praise from such a man; and when, before Horne Tooke and some other clever people, he told me I was fit to sit between Augustus and Mæcenas, I suppose I must believe it. And he did not think so lightly of my lectures as you do: for one day he said to me, ‘We are going to establish a new hospital, and you, Hester, are to have the management of it: it is to be an hospital for the diseases of the mind; for nobody knows so well as you how to cure them.’ I should never have done if I were to repeat the many attestations of his good opinion of me: but it was no merit of mine if I deserved it: I was born so. There was a man one day at table with Mr. Pitt, an old friend of his—Canning told me the story—who, speaking of me, observed that he supposed I should soon marry, and, after some conversation on the subject, concluded by saying, ‘I suppose she waits till she can get a man as clever as herself.’ ‘Then,’ answered Mr. Pitt, ‘she will never marry at all.’
“In like manner, in the troublesome times of his political career, Mr. Pitt would say, ‘I have plenty of good diplomatists, but they are none of them military men: and I have plenty of good officers, but not one of them is worth sixpence in the cabinet. If you were a man, Hester, I would send you on the Continent with 60,000 men, and give you carte blanche; and I am sure that not one of my plans would fail, and not one soldier would go with his shoes unblacked; meaning, that my attention would embrace every duty that belongs to a general and a corporal—and so it would, doctor.”
After musing a little while, Lady Hester Stanhope went on. “Did you ever read the life of General Moore that I have seen advertised, written by his brother? I wonder which brother it was. If it was the surgeon, he was hard-headed, with great knowledge of men, but dry, and with nothing pleasing about him. His wife was a charming woman, brought up by some great person, and with very good manners.
“As for tutors, and doctors, and such people, if, now-a-days, mylords and myladies walk arm-in-arm with them, they did not do so in my time. I recollect an old dowager, to whom I used sometimes to be taken to spend the morning. She was left with a large jointure, and a fine house for the time being, and used to invite the boys and the girls of my age, I mean the age I was then, with their tutors and governesses, to come and see her. ‘How do you do, Dr. Mackenzie? Lord John, I see, is all the better for his medicine: the duchess is happy in having found a man of such excellent talents, which are almost too great to be confined to the sphere of one family.’—‘Such is the nature of our compact, my Lady, nor could I on any account violate the regulations which so good a family has imposed upon me.’—‘It’s very cold, Dr. Mackenzie: I think I increased my rheumatic pains at the Opera on Saturday night.’—‘Did you ever try Dover’s Powders, my lady?’ He does not, you see, tell her to use Dover’s Powders; he only says, did you ever try them? ‘Lord John—Lord John, you must take care, and not eat too much of that strawberry preserve.’
“‘How do you do, Mr. K.?—how do you do, Lord Henry? I hope the marchioness is well? She looked divinely last night. Did you see her when she was dressed, Mr. K.?’—‘You will pardon me, my lady,’ answers the tutor, ‘I did indeed see her; but it would be presumptuous in me to speak of such matters. I happened to take her a map,’ (mind, doctor, he does not say a map of what) ‘and, certainly, I did cast my eyes on her dress, which was, no doubt, in the best taste, as everything the Marchioness does is.’ Observe, here is no mention of her looks or person. Doctors and tutors never presumed formerly to talk about the complexion, and skin, and beauty, of those in whose families they lived or found practice. Why, haven’t I told you, over and over again, how Dr. W—— lost his practice from having said that a patient of his, who died, was one of the most beautiful corpses he had ever seen, and that he had stood contemplating her for a quarter of an hour: she was a person of rank, and it ruined him. Even his son, who was a doctor too, and had nothing to do with it, never could get on afterwards.
“Then would come in some young lady with her governess, and then another; and the old dowager would take us all off to some show, and make the person who exhibited it stare again with the number of young nobility she brought with her. From the exhibition, which was some monster, or some giant, or some something, she would take us to eat ices, and then we were all sent home, with the tutors and governesses in a stew, lest we should be too late for a master, or for a God knows what.
“I have known many apothecaries cleverer than doctors themselves. There was Chilvers, and Hewson, and half-a-dozen names that I forget: and there was an apothecary at Bath that Mr. Pitt thought more of than of his physician. Why, I have seen Sir H—— obliged to give way to an apothecary in a very high family. ‘We will just call him in, and see what he says:’ and the moment he had written his prescription and was gone out of the house, the family would consult the apothecary, who perhaps knew twice as much of the constitution of the patient. ‘You know, my lord, it is not the liver that is affected, whatever Sir H—— pretends to think: it is the spleen; for, did not we try the very same medicine that he has prescribed for above a week? and it did your lordship no good. You may just as well, and better, throw his draught away:’ and sure enough it was done. Sir Richard Jebb the same.
“Do you think,” continued she, “that the first physician in London is on terms of intimacy with the mylords he prescribes for? he prescribes, takes his guinea, and is off: or, if he is asked to sit down a little, it is only to pick his brains about whether somebody is likely to live or not: but I am not, and never was, so mean: I always liked people should know their relative situations. Ah! Dr. Turton, or some such man as that, would be perhaps asked now and then to dinner, or to take a walk round the grounds. A doctor’s business is to examine the grandes affaires, talk to the nurse, and see that his blister has been well dressed, and not to talk politics, say such a woman is handsome, and chatter about what does not concern him.”