That you should be in despair at the loss of such a woman is but too natural: but you should consider, at the same time, that you have enjoyed perhaps in this one year more happiness than falls to the share of many, even during the course of their lives. Thank God for it! and do not, by despondency, displease the Omnipotent who has thus favoured you, or allow that amiable creature in other regions, from which she is perhaps still watching over you, to witness your despair. I have heard from one who knows you that you are of a manly character. Without making any sacrifice of those feelings which belong to energetic people only, make use of that energy and good sense to palliate your griefs; and bow with resignation to the will of the Almighty. I am quite against persons endeavouring to drive away sorrow by hurry or dissipation: cool reflection can alone bring some balm to the soul.
I remain, sir, &c.
Hester Lucy Stanhope.
PS.—In the present state of your mind, I will not allow you to give me any answer. But I shall keep my eye upon you; and, if you are unheeding of my advice, I shall put myself into one of my great passions, which even exceed those which I understand you sometimes fall into, but which enhance your character in my estimation. For the cold-heartedness of men of the present generation is nearly death to me.
After this letter was written, Lady Hester talked about Lord Prudhoe and Colonel Davidson, who was also staying at the inn at Beyrout, and whose father, Lady Hester said, was a man of some note in her time. “Did you make acquaintance with them?” she asked: I replied, “No; for according to English custom, Englishmen, even in lands so remote from home, maintain their strange reserve, and carry their looks of distrust with them wherever they go. The ‘Who are you, I wonder?—‘shall I degrade myself in speaking to you?’ seems to be ever uppermost in their thoughts.” She then spoke of Mrs. Moore, the lady of the British consul, whom she eulogized greatly. “That is one of the few women I must like,” said Lady Hester; “indeed it is my duty to do so, and, when next you go to Beyrout, you must tell her so: but you don’t know the reason, nor does she. What do you think of her, doctor?” I answered, “It appears to me that M. Lamartine, had he known her, would have felt the inspiration which he caught so readily in the poetic land of the East:—he has celebrated beauty less remarkable than hers.”
“And so I dare say you have supplied the omission,” observed Lady Hester. “I have attempted to do so in a very bungling way,” replied I. “Well,” said she, “never mind; let me hear what you have written.” So I drew out a few verses, which I had pencilled at the inn at Beyrout immediately after I had the honour of seeing that lady, and read them.
“They are not so bad,” observed Lady Hester; “but that was not what you went to Beyrout for.”
The subject carried her back to past times, and she said—“I have made it a rule all my life, from the moment I came into the great world, never to suffer verses to be written about me by anybody. If I had liked the thing, I might have had thousands of poets to celebrate my praises in all manner of ways; but there is nothing I think so ridiculous. Look at the Duchess of Devonshire, with every day ‘A copy of verses on her taking a walk’—‘An impromptu on her having a headache’—and all such nonsense: I detest it.”
This brought to my mind a circumstance which occurred in the early part of our travels. I had written a small poem, in which a few lines, eulogistic of herself, were introduced; and one day I read it to her. After I had finished, she said, “You know, doctor, this will only do to show people in private; and, if ever you dare to put my name to any published poetry, I’ll take measures to make you heartily repent of it.”
Lady Hester, however, was not insensible to that species of praise which rests on the application of a passage of some classic author, to illustrate one character by its resemblance to that of another already stamped with celebrity. Thus she was greatly pleased when Mr. Pitt, in reading Gray’s fragment of the tragedy of Agrippina aloud, and in coming to some lines in which he recognized a great similarity to her language, cried out—“Why, Hester, that’s you; here you are—just like you!” then, reading on a little farther—“Here you are again scolding him!” meaning, as Lady Hester told me at the time, that it was just like her, scolding Lord Mahon.