She went on. “I dare say Sir Francis was puzzled how to act. He was afraid some of my relations would say, ‘What business have you to interfere in family affairs?’ and so perhaps, thinking he might get into a duel, or some unpleasant business, he writes in an evasive manner. But never mind! when the correspondence gets into the newspapers, somebody will be found somewhere who will know something about the matter. Why, doctor, when Mr. Pitt died, there were people from the bank who came to tell me of the money he had there, and advised me to take it—they came twice: I suppose it was money somebody had put in for him. But how Sir Nathaniel Wraxall could ever get into his head that Lord C. lent him any, I can’t imagine—a man who was so stingy, that nothing ever was like it. No! when Mr. Pitt went out of office, six great men subscribed a sum to pay his debts, but Lord C. was not one of them.”
Sunday, July 8.—To-day was marked by a little fright not uncommon in these countries. Mrs. M. was reading the morning service with the children, when, on looking up, she observed, outside of the window, which was open, an immense number of sparrows making sharp cries, fluttering about the terrace, and hovering round some object, which she immediately perceived to be the body of a huge serpent, hanging in one coil from the rafters of the terrace, and suspended by the head and the tail. Sayd Ahmed, the porter, or Black Beard, as he was usually called from that large jet black appendage to his chin, was known to be a deadly enemy to serpents, and my wife had the presence of mind to say to one of the children, “Steal gently out of the door, without alarming the serpent, and run and call Black Beard here directly, telling him what he is wanted for, that he may bring some weapon with him.” John did as he was bid, and, not finding him in the lodge, called the first servant he saw. No less than seven ran together; and the cook, who had seized the porter’s blunderbuss, which was kept ready loaded on a peg, advanced to where the serpent was yet hanging precisely in the same position, aimed at it, and shot it through the body. The serpent fell, and was soon killed by blows from the bludgeons of the others. It proved, on measurement, to be seven feet and a half long: its colour was dark brown, somewhat mottled along the back, and gray under the belly: and it was the largest, excepting the boa-constrictor exhibited by T. Gully, that I had ever seen.
The alarm excited by this enormous reptile was scarcely over, when, two or three hours after sunset, a man was seen crouching under the garden-wall, about two hundred yards from the house; and my family, who supposed it was a deserter, or a robber concealing himself for some wicked purpose, informed me of it: but, as the dogs did not bark, I knew he must be one of the people, come there to receive stolen goods from the maids. Probably he saw he was observed, for he made off through the vines which grew thickly round the place.
News was brought that Ibrahim Pasha had enticed the insurgents into the plain, attacked them at a village called Yanta, near the Bkâa, and killed and wounded nearly a thousand men; for the Druzes had no artillery, and, being undisciplined, were no match for regular troops in an open country. The Emir Beshýr, in the mean time, although it was said that he had been repeatedly summoned to take the field, was either unwilling or afraid to stir from his palace.
I read out of Wraxall’s Memoirs a page or two, which set Lady Hester talking, in her usual way, about old times. She related several anecdotes of the last Lord Chatham, of Lord Camden, of Lord Harrington, and of her father, but I forbear repeating them. “I dare say,” said she, “I have seen Sir Nathaniel when he dined at Mr. Pitt’s; but there came so many of them, one after another, rap, tap, tap, rap, tap, tap! and, as soon as the last entered, dinner was served immediately: I could not know every body. If I had known him, I would have made him a peer, he writes so well, and his opinions and remarks are so just! I don’t agree with him in one thing: the late Lord Chatham was not exactly like his father. His nose was more pointed, and my grandfather’s was thicker in the bone towards the top, and with more of a bump.”
When Lady Hester assumed the Turkish dress, she had her head shaved, as it is not possible to wear the red fez and a turban in any comfort with the hair on. The conversation led her to speak of heads; when, on a sudden, she pulled off her turban, fez and all, and told me to examine her skull. Having no precise knowledge of phrenology, I could only make very general observations: but the examination, no doubt, would have been an excellent study for a craniologist. The frontal bone certainly was prominent: but, with this exception, and a marked cavity in the temporal bones, the skull was remarkably smooth in carrying the hand over it, and pleasing to the eye from its perfect form; perfect, as we should say of a cupola that crowned an edifice with admirable proportions.
She asked me, laughing, if I could see the thieving propensity strongly marked. Then she said, “I don’t think there are any improprieties; do say!”—“People,” she added, “have told me the fighting bump is as big as a lion’s:”—I felt it, but it did not correspond with the assertion. The general appearance was this: her head was somewhat small, her features somewhat long; her ear was by no means handsome, being rather large and the convolutions of it irregular.
After she had put her turban on again, she observed, “It is an erroneous opinion that a big head always denotes much sense. I knew a countess, who put her husband to the blush by her ignorance every day of her life. She would read and pore over a book, in order to get ready something learned to say at dinner-time, and yet was sure to make some blunder. Thus, for example, she would be talking of a sea-fight, and then go to ancient history, and say something of the battle of Actium, where Scipio Africanus distinguished himself. ‘No, my dear,’ the husband would say, ‘you don’t mean Scipio—you forget,’ and so on. Well, this countess I recollect seeing at Dobree’s, the hatter in Bond Street:—he made the best beavers of any man in London, and generally charged half a guinea more than anybody else; but he was terribly impudent. She was trying on a beaver, the largest in the shop, and it would not fit her; and she was saying she must have it made larger, when Dobree gave it a blow with his measure, and knocked it off the counter, saying, ‘Ma’am, why, do you think I make hats half a yard in diameter? there ought to be no head that there hat won’t fit.’ Her head was enormous, doctor, spreading out all round here” (and Lady Hester put the forefinger and thumb of each hand in a semicircle to each temple), “so she was a pretty good proof that big heads have no memory. Your head is the same, and you have no memory whatever—were you always so from a boy?... Now I have reflected, and there was Mr. Coutts; he had a small head, but what a memory! and what sharpness and intelligence! Mr. Fox’s was small in proportion to his face: Mr. Pitt’s was neither small nor large: Lord Chatham, my grandfather’s, was large.
“The fact is, as it appears to me, that size has nothing to do with it, but all depends on the building of the skull; just as, in the making of a cupola or a dome, if the hemisphere is constructed in a proper way, it will render an echo, and, if any error is made in the arch, sound is no longer propagated in it: so, a skull, formed in a certain way, with the brain lodged in it, seems to give just echoes to the senses, and to form what is called a good understanding. All depends on construction, not size; and a little head, well made, will have twenty times the sense of a great one, badly built.”
Monday, July 9.—I went to Sayda. On my way I passed a man on foot, raggedly dressed, evidently weary with walking, and come from a distance: the walking groom who was with me loitered behind, and a recognition seemed to take place between them: they talked together for about a quarter of an hour, and then the groom resumed his station. “Do you know that poor wretch?” said I: “where does he come from?”—“He is a sort of kinsman of mine,” replied the lad; “for he was once a farrier’s boy like myself, and we are both nicknamed el beitàr: he is just come from Damascus, or thereabouts.”—“How?” said I: “I thought the road was impassable.”—“So it is,” quoth the groom; “but he was not fool enough, I dare say, to come by the road: there are plenty of by-paths across the country.”—“Is there no news of the Pasha and the Druzes?” asked I. “Humph!” said the groom; “he does not dare to tell me if there is; but what he has let out is pretty much what was known already. A battle has been fought at Yanta, and things go badly.”