To the Lady Hester Stanhope.
Saida, June, 1823.
Madam,
I have just received a letter which bears your Ladyship’s signature; but I doubt its being genuine, as I never wrote to your Ladyship, nor did I mention your name in my letter to Miss Williams.
With regard to my views and pursuits, they give me perfect tranquillity and happiness, and they must be quite immaterial to your Ladyship.
Your humble servant,
Joseph Wolff.
At the time this correspondence took place, Miss Williams may be supposed to have grown disgusted with an Eastern life, and to have wished to return to her sister. This feeling Lady Hester was probably fully aware of; and to have admitted Dr. Wolff, who had seen that sister, as a visitor at her house, was to open a means of communication which might have led to Miss Williams’s return. With her customary energetic tactics, Lady Hester therefore put an end to all such contingencies.
That the reverend gentleman, whose philanthropic exertions in the cause of humanity have already raised him to a height in men’s esteem, where no praises of mine can reach him, does not feel the term “apostate,” so harshly applied to him by Lady Hester Stanhope, as a reproach, is evident from the readiness with which he made the communication, and is a proof, if any were required, of his firm belief in the truths which he preaches.
Dr. Wolff informed me, in furnishing me with these particulars, which I had begged for insertion in my Travels, that the bearer of his letter was bastinadoed by Lady Hester and kicked down stairs; and that the poor fellow returned to Sayda lame, and told him that “the daughter of the King of England had beaten him.”