[35] This letter, and the letter to Lord Brougham, were intended by Lady Hester Stanhope for publication in the newspapers conjointly with the correspondence about her debts: but the space, which so much matter would have occupied, rendered it necessary to leave them out.
[36] The adoption of the words “Sir Baron, Sir Count,” at the beginning of letters, may appear to the reader quaint and ridiculous; but these expressions are only verbal translations of “Monsieur le Baron,” “Monsieur le Comte,” and less abrupt than plain “Baron,” “Count.” Abroad, the prefix “Dear” is not so lightly attached to a name as it is in England. I recollect, some years ago, an Italian gentleman, Signor Guiseppe Celi, proprietor of a marine villa on the Island of Palmaria, in the Gulf of Spezzia, to have shown me a letter he had received from an English gentleman, who had tenanted his house for some months, and between whom and himself, as it appeared, there existed a tolerable degree of intimacy, and his asking me what I thought of Mr. B.’s addressing him Caro Signore. The wary Italian seemed to imagine it was a term of friendship, to which he was not entitled, and fancied he was about to be wheedled out of something; he could not imagine it proceeded from the writer’s good nature.
Chi vi carezza più che non suole,
O vi ha ingannato, o ingannarvi vuole.
[37] Lady Hester Stanhope was deceived in her prediction. Shibly el Arriàn went over to the Pasha, and, by a letter received from Lady Hester, dated March, 1839, she informed me he was employed in raising troops among his dependants and friends against his former allies.
[38] A Gallicism, meaning by the next steamer.
[39] The yazjees, or government secretaries, are men of the same presumed respectability in Syrian towns as bankers, solicitors, or professional men are with us; yet, in cases of malversation of the public money, often, indeed, on mere suspicion of peculation, they are punished with the lash, or by bastinado. Woe to an exchequer defaulter under Ibrahim Pasha!
[40] Memoirs of Sir W. K. by Lady Knighton. Who shall say what Lady Hester meant by “Love is not amongst them?”
[41] Diary of the Times of George IV.
[42] Soph. Antig., l. 888.