[17] This is mentioned to give the reader a notion of Lady Hester’s manner of calculating money.
CHAPTER VI.
Dr. M.’s dilemma—Apprehensions of poisoning—Mr. Cooper’s dray-boy—Memoirs of a Peeress—Lady B. and the Duchess of ——Novel scheme for making maids obedient—English servants—Lady J.—Lord C.—Mr. Pitt, and the disturbed state of England—Peers made by Mr. Pitt—Footmen’s nosegays—Mr. Pitt’s last words, as related by Gifford—Melancholy reflections—Mr. Pitt’s signature—Mr. Pitt a Statesman inferior to Lord Chatham—Mr. Fox—Sir Walter Scott—Shaykh Mohammed Nasýb—Turkish dervises—Anecdote of Sir William Pynsent—Sir John Dyke—High and low descent exemplified in Captain —— and Count Rewisky—Lady Charlotte Bury—The Empress Josephine—Buonaparte—Mr. Pitt’s physiognomy—Advantageous offers refused by Lady Hester—Her house in Montague Square—The Cheshire Squire—Ingratitude of the world—Trust not in man, but in God.
Monday, April 30.—For three days I find a blank in my diary. The fact is, I had been so much fatigued for the last month that I threw my memorandums aside, and, on retiring to my house, gave myself up to the enjoyment of a little conversation with my family, or else buried my cares and anxieties in sleep.
On the day when I paid my visit to Prince Pückler Muskau in Sayda, he had asked me, in the course of conversation, if I had been long in Syria, and whether I had any intention of returning to Europe. I answered, that I had come with the understanding of remaining some months only, and probably should go back in the summer. “But you will not leave my lady whilst she is so ill?” he exclaimed. These words of his were ever running in my mind. I saw no prospect of Lady Hester’s realizing her hopes respecting the property she supposed had been left her. I was fairly worn off my legs by late hours, multiplied occupations, and fruitless endeavours to soothe an irritated and neglected, although a high-born and gifted creature—the victim of fallen greatness, false hopes, and superhuman efforts to effect vast projects of philanthropy and political combinations on small means and ruined resources. I was therefore anxious to close my labours, and retire to the obscurity from which she had called me: but still the fatal words—“You will not leave my lady whilst she is so ill”—recurred to my thoughts, and I knew not what to do. Lady Hester would often say to me—“You are of no use to me: what good do you do me? I was just as well without you.”—But, during a long period of thirty years, in which I was either with, or in correspondence with her, I had good reason for believing that I had been of much service to her, both as respected her health and her affairs—indeed I may say, without presumption, of greater service than any other person. This was felt by everybody around her; and throughout all her dilemmas and illnesses, the constant cry was—“My lady, you must send for the doctor: there is nobody suits you or understands your constitution so well as he does.” That I was devotedly attached to her, the best part of a life spent in her service will sufficiently testify; but I was now grown too old and infirm to be equal to the task of meeting her constant calls on my time and my energies: I had become nervous. Doctor C., an Englishman, had fled from her dwelling, fearing to be poisoned by her villanous servants; yet I had much greater reason to apprehend such a fate than he had: for the cook (who dressed my family dinner every day,) was the particular object of Lady Hester’s suspicions in what regarded the enormous waste of stores; and, although not entertaining the same suspicions myself, (from having had him once as my own servant, and having kept my eye upon him for some years, and from knowing also that there were worse depredators living in the house;) still, as she directed her daily attacks against him, and even said I suffered him to rob her by the forbearance I showed in not having him chastised, I was worked up, on many occasions, into a state of excitement against him that carried me beyond all restraint, and necessarily made me hateful in his eyes, inasmuch as he considered me the principal hindrance to his peculations. I had rated him in unmeasured terms for his rascality, and the hot-blooded children of the East do not easily forget or forgive such language. All this anxiety could not render a man gay, and I wasted away visibly to the eye. I had nobody to confide in; for I studiously concealed all these vexations from my family, and endeavoured to put on a cheerful air before them, when my mind was far from being tranquil. Can it be wondered at, therefore, if I looked to Europe with a longing desire of returning thither?
But the prince had said, “You will not surely leave her whilst she is so ill:” and I was constantly reiterating to myself, “How can I leave her whilst she is so poor?” Her embarrassed circumstances, now that my stay with her could be considered as disinterested, seemed to be an insuperable barrier to my departure. Had she been rich, I need not have used any ceremony: the state of my health, now that hers was somewhat improved, would have been a sufficient plea: but she was known to be short of money and beset with creditors; and to leave her would seem to be the result of a mercenary calculation. Under all these circumstances, I held my peace, and was resolved to remain, as long as I thought my presence could be either useful or consolatory to her.
The first subject of conversation to-day was this very cook’s peculations: “What am I to do?” said Lady Hester; “if nobody will help me, I’ll go myself, and stand from morning to night in the kitchen, and see everything come and go. Here am I ruined, because those about me are so proud and so particular about their dignity that they can’t put their heads into a kitchen. I presume your father was not better than Mr. Cooper of Sevenoaks; and, if he had had a son, a doctor, I’ll venture to say he would not have been so mighty fine.” Here her thoughts were luckily carried away from the vile cook to Mr. Cooper, and she went on: “What beautiful teams of gray horses Mr. Cooper had! There was a boy, who used to ride on one of the dray-horses dressed in green; a little fellow, who, having seen the Prince of Wales drive through Sevenoaks, going somewhere, set off by himself one fine day for London, found out where the Prince lived, and went and knocked at the gate of Carlton House. The porter was a giant, and wanted to know what the boy knocked so loudly for: he said he had something to say to the Prince of Wales. The porter called him an impudent little scoundrel, and told him to go about his business; but the boy would not go, and the fight between the giant and this Tom Thumb made a sort of an uproar: upon which the Prince, who was at dinner, inquired what was the matter, and desired that the young urchin might be brought in; who, nothing abashed, being asked what he wanted, said that, having seen the Prince’s fine servants go along the road, he had come to London to be one of them; the Prince said very well, and sent him to the stables. Doctor, he became an excellent groom, and was afterwards for many years one of his best coachmen.”
This anecdote seemed to have tranquillized Lady Hester’s mind, as was generally the case when she talked about old times. She proposed that I should read a little of Lady Charlotte Bury’s novel, the “Memoirs of a Peeress.” After listening to a few pages, at the mention of some incident, interrupting me, she said:—“Ah! that was Lady B., who placed a cast of the statue of Antinous amidst myrtle-pots in a vestibule of her house: she had ten times more cleverness than her sister the duchess. The duchess’s reputation was, in great part, the effect of her position: for fine horses, fine carriages, and that éclàt that attends a great personage wherever she goes, made up the greatest part of it. Why, she sometimes would employ her own people to puff her off. You would see a man in a shop in Bond Street say to the people of the shop—‘Whose fine carriage is that yonder?’—‘That’s the Duchess of **********’s, sir,’ the shopman would reply. Then another man, pretending to be a stranger to the first, would cry out, ‘Good God!—the Duchess of **********; do let me look: I would give more to get a sight of her grace than I would of the king.—Pray, excuse me; I shall be back in a moment;’—and off he would run.
“The Duchess of **********, when she did not smile, had something satanic in her countenance. Then her affectation was so high charged. No matter to whom—to a dirty clerk of the Foreign Office—she would say, ‘If you would be so very good, sir, just to give yourself the trouble to deliver this note—I am sure you are so kind a looking gentleman.’ And then she would speak in French to whoever was with her—‘Quels beaux yeux! ne le trouvez vous pas? C’est un bel homme, n’est ce pas?’ just as if the clerks in the Foreign Office might not know French.”
Wednesday, May 2, 1839.—To-day, as was usual on Wednesdays, I did not see Lady Hester until after sunset; but dinner was scarcely over, when came the accustomed message of “The Syt will be glad to see you as soon as you are at liberty?” She could not bear to be alone: and I was, therefore, summoned that she might have somebody to talk to. She made inquiries whether the dinner had been to our liking; whether the tartlets and bread-pudding were well cooked; and, on such occasions, I always knew she had been lecturing the cook about his negligence, and answered accordingly, anxious, if possible, to avoid the broils which kept the house in a continual uproar; but I seldom succeeded in averting them entirely; for, after having manifested her anxiety about my family’s comfort, she would begin about her own, with—“Thus it is: I am obliged to look after everybody’s dinner, and am left to starve myself.” She then launched out into her customary complaints, and told me how she had contrived the means of at last bringing her maids down; for she had ordered a thing to be made like a clothes’ horse, which was to stand in her room with a sheet hanging over it, behind which the maids were to take turns to wait alternately, hour by hour, that she might be sure she had them within call: “for,” said she, “if they will not move fast enough when I ring, I’m determined I’ll keep them on their legs, one or the other, all day; and I have told them I put them behind a screen that I may not see their ugly faces. That beast, Sâada, scratches herself before me, just like an Italian or a Frenchman: I have never been used to such behaviour in servants, and will not bear it.