CHAPTER
I. [Farewell to England]
II. [Mediterranean Yachting]
III. [Oriental Initiation]
IV. [Excursion in the Holy Land]
V. [In the Country of Djezzar Pacha and the Emir Bechir]
VI. [Far niente at Damascus]
VII. [Lady Hester and Lascaris]
VIII. [The Queen of Palmyra]
IX. [From the Temple of Baalbeck to the Ruins of Ascalon]
X. [In the Mountains of the Assassins]
THE CIRCE OF THE DESERTS
CHAPTER I
FAREWELL TO ENGLAND
ON February 10, 1810, the frigate Jason, commander James King,—left Portsmouth, bound for Gibraltar. In the stern of the vessel, a group of four persons watched the coast, which was enveloped in a clinging mist which the meagre English sun could not contrive to absorb, gradually recede into the distance. Three men stood a little apart from a woman whose gigantic stature must not have passed unnoticed, even on British soil.
She was six feet in height and was developed in proportion. Strangers who met her for the first time allowed their astonished and mocking eyes to wander at random and to lose their way over the vast surface which she offered to the admirers of bulk, but when they had succeeded in reaching the face, pale and passionate flower borne by a robust stalk, they were interested, captivated, subjugated, dazzled! What wonderful surprise, after the difficult and monotonous ascent of a lofty peak, to discover boundless fields of fresh snow, sparkling with light!...
More strange than beautiful, this woman attracted attention, and those who had gazed upon her features never forgot them. Can one say that the sun is beautiful when its fires blind? Thus everything about her glittered; her skin dazzling as marble, of which it possessed the pure grain and the cold smoothness, her eyes of a pale and frosty grey which were illuminated by a terrifying and wild glitter when passion roused her and which was heightened by a bluish ring.... Everything about her was striking: her lips, of a dark red, firm and strong in shape, her dazzling teeth, her curved nose, her obstinate chin. A northern light seemed to play on this lofty and superb forehead, on this countenance of a perfect oval, and isolated her in crowning her as a queen ... or as a madwoman....
What age could she be? Some thirty years hardly. Perhaps more, for the corners of the mouth, a trifle fallen in, had a wrinkle of bitterness and disenchantment which accused her of being older.
At this moment she was gazing at the north with a singular intensity of expression, and when England had disappeared in its wrappings of mist, smiling and satisfied she triumphantly wagged her foot; a foot so long and so arched that a kitten might easily run about on it.... She crossed the bridge and went to lean her elbow on the bow of the ship. Had she a presentiment that her departure would be definitive, eternal, and that she would never more behold the green forest trees of Chevening or the fine equipages of Bond Street?
Lady Hester Stanhope was born on March 12, 1776, of the marriage of Hester, sister of William Pitt, with Charles, Lord Mahon, afterwards third Earl Stanhope, the frenzied Republican. Her ancestors, both paternal and maternal, were not ordinary people. Her grandfather, Lord Chatham, had, by the side of his great intellectual faculties, the detestable mania of enveloping the most anodyne acts of life with an impenetrable mystery which kept all his entourage on the alert and in suspense. Had he not one day when he was unwell, refused to receive a man, the bearer of urgent news, who insisted on seeing him immediately? After long discussions, the messenger contrived to be introduced into the Minister's room; but the room was darkened and the Minister invisible behind a rampart of screens. New battle to succeed in catching sight of Lord Chatham. At last, when the man had by main force gained this honour, he drew from his pocket a parchment containing the title-deeds of two estates with a rent-roll of £14,000, bequeathed by Sir Edward Pynsent as a proof of his admiration. The property had nearly escaped him. Lady Hester Stanhope, if she did not inherit Burton Pynsent, inherited, at any rate, all these eccentricities of character.
As for her other grandfather, he was that second Earl Stanhope who had forbidden his son to powder his hair on the occasion of his presentation at Court, "because," he pretended, "wheat was too dear." So that Lord Mahon went quite simply into the presence of the King with his natural head of hair, that is to say, black as coal and lightened by a white plume, which caused the spiteful tongue of Horace Walpole to remark that "he had been tarred and feathered."