Whilst Lady Hester was going on with her strictures on the poor doctors, a favourite theme with her, I produced from the back of a cupboard a miniature print of General Moore, which had been lying at Abra, neglected for some years. She took it from my hand, and, looking at it a little time, she observed that it was an excellent likeness of what he was when he became a weather-beaten soldier: “Before that,” said she, “those cheeks were filled out and ruddy, like Mr. Close’s at Malta.”
After a pause, Lady Hester Stanhope continued: “Poor Charles! My brother Charles one day was disputing with James about his handsome Colonel, and James, on his side, was talking of somebody’s leg being handsome, saying he was right, for it had been modelled, and nobody’s could be equal to it; when Charles turned to me, and asked with great earnestness if I did not think General Moore was the better made man of the two, I answered, ‘He is certainly very handsome.’—‘Oh! but,’ said Charles, ‘Hester, if you were only to see him when he is bathing, his body is as perfect as his face.’ I never even smiled, although inwardly I could not help smiling at his naïveté.
“I consider it a mark of vulgarity and of the association of bad ideas in people’s minds when they make a handle of such equivoques in an ill-natured way, as you recollect Mr. T. did when he was at Alexandria. People of good breeding do not even smile, when, perhaps, low persons would suppose they might show a great deal of affected primosity. Only imagine the Duc de Blacas to be announced;—what would my old servant, poor William Wiggins, have done? He would never have got out the word.” Here Lady Hester set up laughing most heartily, and then she laughed, and laughed again. I think I never saw anything make her relax from her composure so much.
“As for what people in England say or have said about me, I don’t care that for them,” (snapping her fingers); “and whatever vulgar-minded people say or think of me has no more effect than if they were to spit at the sun. It only falls on their own nose, and all the harm they do is to themselves. They may spit at a marble wall as they may at me, but it will not hang. They are like the flies upon an artillery-horse’s tail—there they ride, and ride, and buz about, and then there comes a great explosion; bom! and off they fly. I hate affectation of all kinds. I never could bear those ridiculous women who cannot step over a straw without expecting the man who is walking with them to offer his hand. I always said to the men, when they offered me their hand, ‘No, no; I have got legs of my own, don’t trouble yourselves.’ Nobody pays so little attention to what are called punctilios as I do; but if any one piques me on my rank, and what is due to me, that’s another thing: I can then show them who I am.”
October 16.—These conversations filled up the mornings and evenings until the 16th of October, when I went to Mar Elias for a day. Whilst there, a peasant arrived with an ass-load of musk grapes and mukseysy grapes that Lady Hester had sent. An ass-load in those happy countries is but a proof of the abundance that reigns there. A bushel-basket of oranges or lemons, a bunch of fifty or sixty bananas, ten or twelve melons at a time, were presents of frequent occurrence.
October 18.—I returned to Jôon, and employed myself busily in fitting up the cottage intended for our dwelling. The nearer the time approached for bringing my family close to her premises, the more Lady Hester seemed to regret having consented to the arrangement. Petty jealousies, inconsistent with a great mind, were always tormenting her. Of this a remarkable and somewhat ludicrous instance occurred during the latter part of the month of September. Most persons are probably aware that Mahometans have a religious horror of bells, and, in countries under their domination, have never allowed of their introduction even into Christian churches. It is not uncommon, by way of contempt, to designate Europe as the land of bells. This pious abhorrence penetrates the arcana of private life; and, in a Turkish house, no such thing as a bell for calling the servants is ever to be seen. A clap of the hands, repeated three times, is the usual summons; and, as the doors are seldom shut, the sound can be easily heard throughout every part of the dwelling.
Lady Hester, however, retained her European habits in this one particular; and perhaps there never existed a more vehement or constant bell-ringer. The bells hung for her use were of great size; so that the words Gerass el Syt, or my lady’s bell, echoing from one mouth to another when she rang, made the most indolent start on their legs; until, at last, as nobody but herself in the whole territory possessed house-bells, the peasantry and menials imagined that the use of them was some special privilege granted to her by the Sublime Porte on account of her exalted rank, and she probably found it to her advantage not to disturb this very convenient supposition.
On taking up our residence at Mar Elias, there were two bells put by in a closet, which were replaced for the use of my family, with bell-ropes to the saloon and dining-room, none of us ever suspecting that they could, by any human ingenuity, be considered otherwise than as most necessary appendages to a room: but we calculated without our host. This assumption of the dignity of bells was held to be an act of læsa majestas; and the report of our proceedings was carried from one person to another, until, at last, it reached Lady Hester’s ears, endorsed with much wonder on the part of her maids how a doctor’s wife could presume to set herself on an equality with a meleky (queen). Lady Hester, however, saw the absurdity of affecting any claim to distinction in such a matter, and, therefore, vexed and mortified although it appears she was, she never said a word to me on the subject. But, one morning in September, when we were all assembled at breakfast, on pulling the bell-rope no sound responded, and, examining into the cause, we discovered that the strings had been cut by a knife, and the bells forcibly wrenched from their places. Much conjecture was formed as to who could have done all this mischief. The maids were questioned; the porter, the milkman, the errand-boy, the man-servant, every body, in short, in and about the place, but nobody knew anything of the matter. Understanding Arabic, I soon found there was some mystery in the business; and answers, more and more evasive, from the porter, the harder he was pressed, led to a presumption, amounting almost to a certainty, that her ladyship’s grand emissary, Osman Chaôosh, had arrived late at night, armed with pincers, hammer, etcetera, and, before daylight, had carried off the bells to Lady Hester’s residence. I concealed my conjecture from my family, wishing to cause no fresh source of irritation; and, having occasion to write that day to Lady Hester, I merely added, as a postscript, “The two bells have been stolen during the night, and I can find no certain clue to the thief. For, although I have discovered that Osman el Chaôosh has been here secretly, I cannot think it likely that any one of your servants would presume to do such a thing without your orders; nor can I believe that your ladyship would instruct any one to do that clandestinely which a message from yourself to me would have effected so easily.”
When I saw Lady Hester a day or two afterwards, she never alluded to the bells, nor did I; and nothing was ever mentioned about them for two or three months, until, one day, she, being in a good humour, said, “Doctor, it was I who ordered Osman to take away the bells. The people in this country must never suppose there is any one connected with my establishment who puts himself on an equality with me, no matter in what. The Turks know of only one Pasha in a district; the person next to him is a nobody in his presence, not daring even to sit down or to speak, unless told to do so. If I had let those bells hang much longer, the sound of my own would not have been attended to. As it is, half of my servants have become disobedient from seeing how my will is disputed by you and your family, who have always a hundred reasons for not doing what I wish to be done; and, as I said in my letter to Eugenia, I can’t submit to render an account of my actions; for, if I was not called upon to do so by Mr. Pitt, I am sure I shan’t by other people; so let us say no more about it.” Of course, I complied with her whims; or rather, I should say, admitted the good sense of her observations: for I knew very well that she never did anything without a kind or substantial motive. So, after that, the exclamation of Gerass el Syt recovered its magical effect.
October 23.—I escorted my family to their new residence, which was called the Tamarisk Pavilion, from a tamarisk-tree that grew from the terrace. They were all delighted with it, and happiness seemed restored to its inmates.