But there is yet a moral to be drawn from her life which is pregnant with serious reflections. That she was more unhappy in her solitude than, in her unbending nature, she would stoop to avow, this diary of the last years of her existence but too plainly demonstrates. Although she derived consolation in retirement from the retrospect of the part she had played in her prosperity, yet her mind was embittered by some undefined but acute sense of past errors; and, although her buoyant spirits usually bore her up against the weight by which she was oppressed, still there were moments of poignant grief when all efforts at resistance were vain, and her very soul groaned within her. She was ambitious, and her ambition had been foiled; she loved irresponsible command, but the time had come when those over whom she had ruled defied her; she was dictatorial and exacting, but she had lost the talisman[44] of that influence which alone makes people tolerate control, when it interferes with the freedom of thought and action. She had neglected to secure wealth while she had it in her power; but the feelings which prompted her princely munificence were as warm as ever, now that the means were gone which enabled her to gratify them. Her mind was in a perpetual struggle between delusive schemes and incompetent resources. She incurred debts, and she was doomed to feel the degradation consequent on them. She entertained visionary projects of aggrandizement, and was met by the derision of the world. She spurned the conventional rules of that society in which she had been bred, and perhaps violated propriety in the realization of a singularity in which she gloried. There was the rock on which she was finally wrecked: for, as Madame de Staël somewhere says, a man may brave the censures of society, but a woman must accommodate herself to them. She was thought to defy her own nation, and they hurled the defiance back upon her. She held in contempt the gentler qualities of her own sex, who, in return, were not slow to resent the masculine characteristics on which she presumed to maintain her assumed position. She carried with her from England the disposition to conciliate, by kindness and forbearance, the fidelity and obedience of her domestics: but she was eventually led into undue harshness towards them, which became more and more exaggerated in her by the idleness, the ignorance, and irritating vices of her Eastern household.
Another important lesson may be gleaned from her life. We have a favourable opportunity of observing, in her example, how far the human understanding may, by its own natural powers unassisted by books, work its way to celebrity. Her intellects were so acute that she had little difficulty in comprehending all the moral and political questions discussed in her presence, and she consequently gathered information from very superior sources, as she enjoyed the intimacy of first-rate men. Still she had but narrow views of general policy, of the rights of mankind, in fine, of politics and ethics in the abstract; inasmuch as the discussions, which were carried on before her, were the debates of parties and sects, having immediate reference merely to certain men and certain questions, rather than presenting enlightened and comprehensive considerations grounded on philosophical principles. But it was here that her profound knowledge of mankind came into play; and this it was which impressed on her sayings and counsels the stamp of pre-eminent sagacity. Intercourse with the world, however, or even with cabinet ministers, although it may render us accomplished diplomatists, cannot make us statesmen, in the true acceptation of the word—least of all can it make us teachers and philosophers. We cannot solve a problem in mathematics, unless we have previously traced the steps which lead to it one by one; nor can we ever arrive at precision on any subject until we have mastered its elements and made ourselves acquainted with the results of antecedent investigations. In this, therefore, lay the grand defect of Lady Hester’s education. She was not only wanting, as almost all women are, in the philosophical power of generalization, but her reading was literally so circumscribed, that her deficiency in what may be called book-learning often amounted to absolute ignorance. She said she despised books; but it was simply because she was never made aware how much valuable information they contain. She trusted everything to intuitive perception. Her constant denial of the utility of study, founded on the conviction that education does not alter men’s characters or change their innate disposition, is wholly independent of that other proposition, which recognizes knowledge as an edifice seated on a height, to which we must climb step by step, taking care that each fundamental truth, in the ascent, shall be laid down with certainty, in order to secure the solidity of the superincumbent materials. She disowned alike the benefits of learning and the necessity of the progressive acquisition of knowledge. Her ladyship jumped to conclusions in perfect ignorance of the researches and discoveries of previous inquirers.
Lady Hester possessed none of the more graceful accomplishments of her sex:—not from inability to acquire them, for her remarks on music, painting, and other fine arts, were always striking and apposite; but because she preferred occupying her mind on matters more congenial to her peculiar tastes. It cannot be doubted that she had all the opportunities usually afforded to the children of the nobility for the culture of the mind in liberal pursuits and attainments; but she took no delight in such things, and only spoke of them slightly and incidentally.
Popular opinion has ascribed the eccentricities of Lady Hester Stanhope to a crazed brain:[45] it is not for me to venture upon a question of so delicate a nature. Lucius Junius Brutus was supposed to be insane, and played the part of an idiot until the proper time arrived for casting away the mask. Hamlet enacts madness for a purpose: and some writers go so far as to assert that Mahomet was insane, and that no enthusiast of a high order can achieve his ends and gain over proselytes to his views without a tincture of insanity. The dream of Lady Hester’s life was sway and dominion—how to obtain the one or the other was the difficulty; for she was born a subject, and excluded by her sex from vice-royalties and governments: with the genius of a hero, she could neither take the command of fleets or armies, nor preside in the councils of state. How far then she may have contemplated the possibility of acquiring power by endeavouring to establish a superstitious belief amongst those around her, and, through them, over a wider range, that she possessed supernatural gifts; how far she may have tried to help out this design by professing implicit faith in strange and absurd legends and traditions, visions, and tales; and how far the delusion, originally taken up for a purpose, may have ultimately re-acted upon her own mind—these are speculations which I leave to others; but, whilst I decline, from motives of delicacy, and in deference to the public, from whose award the decree must finally come, to pronounce any opinion on Lady Hester Stanhope’s perfect sanity, I do not feel myself precluded from calling the reader’s attention to one striking point of evidence in favour of it, which extends, like a vein of pure ore, through the whole course of her varied career.
I have depicted, somewhat minutely, and without ostentation or disguise, her ladyship’s habitual deportment and language towards her visitors, her household, and myself. I have introduced all those, who have patiently followed me in these pages, into her sanctuary; have let them join in her conversations; have, as I hope, induced them to listen to her improbable stories of witchcraft and astrology; and have shared their incredulity in her supernatural mission: but I would now invite them to weigh against these seeming hallucinations the remarkable fact, that, in all her epistolary correspondence, down to the close of her life, not one aberration of intellect occurs. It is as if she had said to herself—“Those who come to glean ridicule from my words, and presume to fathom my purposes, will I make fools of and confound: they shall go away loaded with a cargo of their own choosing, and shall retail countless absurdities in their books to amuse the world for awhile: but, when the time shall be accomplished, these absurdities shall rebound on themselves; for I will challenge the most diligent research to gather any from my writings, and then, who will believe that I uttered them, except to make the unworthy hearers ridiculous?” The fact is, she may have spoken a great many strange things, but she has written none. I am in possession of a letter of hers, drawn up with attention on a very serious subject in the very plenitude of her mental powers; but I declare that it presents no superiority, either in style or composition, over the productions of her later years: neither do her familiar letters, from first to last, leave an opening for the most critical caviller to say that, down to the day of her death, she manifested any decline of reason, or disclosed one jot less of that sound sense or those discriminating powers which had made her the admiration of some of the leading characters of her times. Her letter to the Duke Maximilian of Bavaria breathes as much delicacy of sentiment as if it had issued from her boudoir in Downing Street: her condolence with the Beyrout merchant is more profound in reasoning, though less epigrammatic, than that of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero on the death of his daughter Tullia; and her appeal to the good feeling of her countrymen against the uncalled-for interference of the Foreign Office in her private affairs is inferior to no production of our ablest combatants against the abuses of authority.
One point more remains to be touched upon. Lady Hester Stanhope, the advocate of the divine right of sovereigns, the stickler for the exclusive privileges of the aristocracy, she, who treated with ineffable ridicule and disdain the presumption of people, who, belonging to the class of commoners, set up claims of equality with the noble born, was herself weak enough to betray irritation, and even resentment, towards that still higher power in the state to which our allegiance is ever due. Of our beloved Queen, to whose sacred majesty she did homage in the abstract, she could not forbear speaking irreverently on many occasions. The letter which she wrote to her Majesty, in reference to the sequestration of her pension, was as unpardonable in diction as it was unjustifiable in substance. But great allowances are to be made for her; and they alone, who know the trying circumstances in which she was placed, can feel the full force of the plea that might be alleged in mitigation of her offence.
My task is done:—it has been one of no ordinary difficulty. I have had to undeceive the world respecting the real life of a distinguished woman, who, in her day, occupied a large share of its attention, and whose ill-defined celebrity was based chiefly on the accounts of travellers, written no doubt in good faith, but in grievous ignorance of the truth. I have had to remove the veil which shrouded her existence, to disperse the imaginary attributes with which the fancy of most readers had invested her, to dissipate the splendour thrown over her retirement, and to substitute unpleasant facts for Eastern fables. Let it not be suspected that, in doing this, I have overstepped the bounds of professional confidence or violated the sacred intimacies of domestic life.
My object has been to vindicate the fame of a persecuted lady, whose memory I honour, and most of whose actions have been misrepresented; and, in pursuing this object with frankness and integrity, I have only fulfilled a plain duty, imposed upon me by her constant denunciations of the injustice which the English had done to the purity of her motives—a duty distinctly enjoined by her frequent appeals to me that I should make public some circumstances of her life, which might set them right, and correct their judgment concerning her conduct. Using as much as possible her own words (indeed I may say entirely), I have unavoidably introduced the names of many individuals yet alive, and of others but lately removed from the scene of ambition, envy, and political strife. The utmost delicacy consistent with the utmost candour has been observed in a task which presented such a dilemma of difficulties; and, if any persons should feel hurt at any of the disclosures in this work, I can assure them that, due regard being had to the state of mental irritation to which wounded feelings had brought Lady Hester Stanhope, they will do no wrong in considering all the acrimonious passages they may detect in these pages merely as a scene out of “Timon of Athens”—a burst of spleen against mankind, produced by a long series of mortifications, wrongs, and disappointments.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] See “Robinson’s Three Years in the East,” note xviii., page 125, vol. Palestine.