H. L. Stanhope.
Saturday, June 9.—The morning came. Preparations for the reception of the duke had been going on all the day before. A lamb had been killed; beef had been sent for from Dayr el Kamar, the only place where it was sold; fruit and vegetables had come up from Sayda gardens, and Logmagi had sent fish; bills of fare had been made out for each meal by Lady Hester, as a guide to the cook; the silver spoons and forks had been given out; the servants had put on their best clothes, and all was bustle for the reception; for the duke’s liberality to all those who served him in any shape was very generally talked of, and this was an infallible spur to all the menials, who anticipated large vails. Mercenary wretches! whose God was a bakshýsh, and whose torpor, as Lady Hester often said, only two things could overcome—money, and a good flogging.
I waited on Lady Hester early. She told me she had passed a very bad night, that she was in a burning fever, and felt so ill it would be impossible to receive the duke. Her looks were pale, her skin parched and dry, her breathing short, and she complained of an increased pain in her side, which had entirely deprived her of rest. I felt her pulse, and encouraged her to hope that it was not so bad. “Doctor,” replied she, “it is nothing: it is when the thunder is in the air that you should feel it; my pulse beats then like two bullets, and if, at that moment, I were to meet a thousand men opposed to me, I should brave them all: but, when the storm is over, my pulse falls into its natural state, and all is quiet again. Anybody but you would say now I must be bled; and, whether you approve it or not, bled I shall be: so be so good as to raise no difficulties, and you must set off immediately to Dayr Mkhallas, with an apology to his highness; for I have neither breath nor strength enough to undergo the exertion of conversation, and put him off you must.”
I set off to the monastery, and found the duke surrounded by a numerous company. Nothing could equal his regret at Lady Hester’s indisposition. Lady Hester’s state requiring my immediate return, I hastened back. The bleeding did her good. About five in the afternoon, the duke and his party were seen passing on the high-road on their way back to Sayda. His object in leaving the seaside had been to see Lady Hester, and, disappointed in that, he returned immediately. Eventually, this contrariety proved fortunate for him. He had hardly reached his tents, when the English steamboat arrived; his passage had been agreed for, and the duke and his suite, but too happy to quit a country where he had met with so many vexations, and had been exposed to so much danger, were on board in half an hour after her arrival. The sick negro and four slaves, who had been purchased in Egypt, were left behind, under the care of Signor Lapi, with orders likewise to that gentleman that no expense or care should be spared to forward Wellington’s recovery.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] In all cities in Turkey, trades of the same kind are always in the same street in a cluster. Thus, the saddlers are in one street, the druggists or grocers in another, the shoemakers in another: and it is customary to say, when directing to a place in a town—“Close to the goldsmiths’ bazar, beyond the corn market, before you come to the Blacksmiths’ Street,” &c.
[25] What the traveller related to me had almost slipped my memory; but having since met with it in an Arabic book, I here translate it.
[26] The Mahometans, imbued with the persuasion that whatever is the will of the Almighty must come to pass, and that resignation to his decrees is their duty, never refuse assistance to persons afflicted with contagious maladies. Hence may be seen that marked difference in their conduct and that of Christians during the prevalence of the plague; the former attending on the sick bed of their relatives, the latter flying from them and leaving them to die through neglect.
[27] Thus, while writing out these memorandums in August, 1839, I learn that the plague has re-appeared at Jerusalem, Jaffa, and at other places, where, in 1838, a few cases announced its presence. We shall see whether a quarantine establishment will save Syria: I think it will not. The Turkish authorities, when left to themselves, invariably resist the introduction of all quarantine regulations; or, at least, they did so in the beginning of this century: it is only when the preponderance of European influence, backed by orders from their own government, compels submission, that they unwillingly adopt them. But Mahomet Ali and Ibrahim Pasha, when spoken of, are not to be considered as Mahometans. Imbued with Machiavelian principles, gathered from their intercourse with Europeans, they were not slow to see that, in fit hands, a quarantine establishment has little more to do with health than it has with the growth of the sugar-cane, or any extraneous employment. A Lazaretto, as conducted in Piedmont or France, is no more nor less than a fiscal measure and a legalized panoptikon. It is, first of all, subsidiary to the Customs, and next, a most efficient mode for staying travellers, crews of ships, and all manner of moving things entering on a territory, then and there to be enabled in cool despotism to examine letters, pry into men’s business, learn their opinions, destination, &c., and, finally, to tax them in their money and substance, in the most undisguised and complete manner yet invented by designing rulers. Quarantine ought never to exist in a free country, neither ought passports. A town properly built, ventilated, and cleansed, will not foster contagion, and passports do not facilitate the detection of offenders. The plague still visits the Levant, and Pichegru remained undiscovered in France for two years, in spite of all the passports and all the police of Buonaparte, his mortal enemy.
[28] This was the report of a suit in one of the county courts of assize, wherein, under somewhat similar circumstances, a surgeon was acquitted.