After a pause, she resumed:—“I must have something extraordinary about me, for Mr. Pitt listened to me, the Turks listen to me, the Arabs listen to me, and wherever I go I have a talisman, which makes it so, and so it must be. When I was young, people might say there was something brilliant about me, which caught everybody’s attention. Now, my looks are gone; but if I had not a tooth in my head, which will very soon be the case, I shall go on in my old way and change for nobody; so do not think with your grumpiness that I shall alter: and now go to bed. I am very much obliged to you for writing copies of all those long letters for the prince; but some day I hope I shall have it in my power to thank you: so, good night.” I rose to go, and she went on—“And will you be so good as to give that blackguard, Mohammed, a good scolding about my pipes?—Oh! and send for the secretary to come up the day after to-morrow. I got rid of him whilst the prince was here: I did not choose to have him spying about, to carry all his spyifications to his father, for him to send them to Beyrout:—and the day after to-morrow I shall look over Fatôom’s store-room, to see if there are any good blue plates for visitors;—and mind you have the banana beignets made in the way I told you, for Mrs. M. to taste:—isn’t it extraordinary that I should know so much about cooking? I, who got a slap in the face if ever I went into the kitchen or spoke to a servant. I was not bred up to the plough; I was not bred up a carpenter, nor a mason, nor a blacksmith, nor a gardener; and yet I know all these trades: isn’t it very extraordinary? And, doctor, ask John if he will paint that border for me—there’s the pattern on the book-cover: and let me know if my two mares have got any more green barley to eat. Poor things!—every year but this they have always had enough to last till the end of May: I don’t know what they will do. Oh! Fatôom was so delighted with her forty piasters! Did you rate that other beast as I told you? I have brought her down prettily to-day: I told her, if she was taken to market, she would not fetch so much as a skin[15] of good oil: it mortified her famously. And, doctor, I must cut out some linen for the little new black; for there is nobody can do it but myself. So, good night: only, when you go out, do just send for the store-room man, and ask if the wheat, that was put in the sun, is dry enough to go to the mill.—What a pack of ignorant people they are in Europe: they don’t know, I verily believe, what the bread they eat comes from.—Only look at my pocket-handkerchiefs;—not one that is not full of holes.—Stop, how is the money? God knows what we shall do: but never mind—when I get my £25,000 a-year, I’ll humble those consuls till they kiss my babôoches.”
Thus would she go on, on a score of different subjects, of which her head was always full, talking until two or three in the morning; and always talking most, just after the person who was with her had risen to go away. Her greatest delight was to sit and harangue when her hearers stood around her: it fostered the dreams of greatness which floated in her brain; and, when she saw the homage the natives paid her, and looked on their oriental humility, she fancied herself, for a moment, the Queen of the East.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Lady Hester’s doctrines went farther than the shape of the foot; they went even to the tread. “Did I never tell you the story,” said she one day, “of Lord B.’s friend? He was sleeping at some inn, I don’t know where, when, in the morning, as he was lying thinking in bed, he heard a step over his head: he immediately rang the bell in a state of agitation, and begged to see the landlord directly. ‘Sir,’ cried he to him, ‘you must tell me who the person is that slept over my head. I know it is a woman, and the one too I have been looking for all my life; her footstep has that in it which will fulfil my warmest hope: if she is single, I must marry her, or else it will be the death of me.’ He did marry her, and they were the happiest couple imaginable: he found in her all that his most sanguine expectations had fancied, and she made him a most excellent wife.”
Lady Hester delighted in anecdotes that went to show how much and how justly we may be biassed in our opinions by the shape of any particular part of a person’s body, independent of the face. She used to tell a story of ——, who fell in love with a lady on a glimpse of those charms which gave such renown to the Cnidian Venus. This lady—luckily or unluckily—happened to tumble from her horse, and by that singular incident fixed the gazer’s affection irrevocably. Another gentleman, whom she knew, saw a lady at Rome get out of her carriage, her head being covered by an umbrella, which the servant held over her on account of the rain, and, seeing nothing but her foot and leg, swore he would marry her—which he did.
[14] It must be recollected that Lady Hester’s guests were always placed on a sofa opposite to her.—(See frontispiece.) On some occasions, she had singular ways of talking, sometimes as if she was addressing herself to the wall, sometimes to her lap; and, latterly, when most of her teeth were gone, she mumbled a little. The prince at another time regretted that he lost more than half she said.
[15] Oil, in Syria, is sold in goat-skins, made air-tight like Macintosh pillows.
CHAPTER V.
Prince Pückler Muskau’s style of writing—Talking beneficial to health—Young men of Lady Hester’s time—Lady Hester’s superstitious belief in good and bad days—Hamâady, the executioner—His importance—Folly of education, according to Lady Hester—Lord Hood, Lord Bridport, Payne, the smuggler’s son—the O****s—The Prince’s self-invitations to dine out—B.—Prince Pückler and old Pierre—The American Commodore—Lady Hester’s cats—Mahomet Ali’s secret devices.
Monday, April 23.—During the stay of the prince, the count lent me a work written by the former, under the assumed name of Semilasso, and I read a page or two of it to Lady Hester Stanhope. “Ah!” cried she, “I see; he writes as he talks: he is not profound.”