LADY HESTER STANHOPE IN HER SALOON
London, Henry Colburn, 1845

MEMOIRS
OF THE
LADY HESTER STANHOPE,

AS RELATED BY HERSELF
IN CONVERSATIONS WITH HER
PHYSICIAN;
COMPRISING
HER OPINIONS AND ANECDOTES OF
SOME OF THE MOST REMARKABLE PERSONS
OF HER TIME.

All such writings and discourses as touch no man will mend no man.—Tyers’s Rhapsody on Pope.

Second Edition.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER,
GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1846.

FREDERICK SHOBERL, JUNIOR,
PRINTER TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT,
51, RUPERT STREET, HAYMARKET, LONDON.

CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.

MEMOIRS
OF
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

CHAPTER I.

Lady Hester Stanhope’s descent—The Author’s first introduction to her—Her reasons for quitting England—Anecdotes of her childhood and womanhood—Her motives for going to live with Mr. Pitt—Mr. Pitt’s opinion of Tom Paine—Lady Hester noticed by George III.—Anecdote of Sir A. H.—Of Lord G.—Of Lord A.—Impertinent questioners—Anecdote of the Marquis * * *—Mr. Pitt’s confidence in Lady Hester’s discretion—and in her devotion to him—His opinion of her cleverness, and of her military and diplomatic abilities—Her tirade against doctors—Her reflections on prudery—Anecdote of General Moore—Of the Duc de Blacas, &c.

It probably will be known to most readers that Lady Hester Stanhope was the daughter of Charles Earl of Stanhope by Hester, his first wife, sister to Mr. William Pitt, and daughter of the first Earl of Chatham. He had issue by this first wife three daughters—Hester, Griselda, and Lucy. The earl married a second wife, by whom he had three sons: the present earl; Charles, killed at Corunna; and James, who died at Caen Wood, the villa of his father-in-law, the Earl of Mansfield.

I became acquainted with Lady Hester Stanhope by accident. The chance that introduced me to her was as follows:—I was going to Oxford to take my degree; and, having missed the coach at the inn, I was obliged to hurry after it on foot, for the want of a hackney-coach, as far as Oxford-road turnpike, where I overtook it, and mounted the box in a violent perspiration. The day was bitterly cold, and, before night, I found myself attacked with a very severe catarrh. The merriment of a college life left me little time to pay attention to it; and, after about fifteen days, I returned with a troublesome cough, to London, where I took to my bed.

Mr. H. Cline, jun., (the son of the celebrated surgeon) being my friend, and hearing of my indisposition, came to inquire after my health very frequently. One day, sitting by my bedside, he asked me if I should like to go abroad. I told him it had been the earliest wish of my life. He said, Lady Hester Stanhope (the niece of Mr. Pitt) had applied to his father for a doctor, and that, if I liked, he would propose me, giving me to understand from his father that, although the salary would be small, I should, if my services proved agreeable to Lady Hester, be ultimately provided for. I thanked him, and said, that to travel with such a distinguished woman would please me exceedingly. The following day he intimated that his father had already spoken about me, and that her ladyship would see me. In about four days I was introduced to her, and she closed with me immediately, inviting me to dine with her that evening. Afterwards, I saw her several times, and subsequently joined her at Portsmouth, whence, after waiting a fortnight, we sailed in the Jason, the Hon. Captain King, for Gibraltar.

The reasons which Lady Hester assigned for leaving England were grounded chiefly on the narrowness of her income. Mr. Pitt’s written request, on his deathbed, that she might have £1500 a year, had been complied with only in part, owing to the ill offices of certain persons at that time in the privy-council, and she received clear, after deductions for the property-tax were made, no more that £1200. At first, after Mr. Pitt’s death, she established herself in Montague Square, with her two brothers, and she there continued to see much company. “But,” she would say, “a poor gentlewoman, doctor, is the worst thing in the world. Not being able to keep a carriage, how was I to go out? If I used a hackney-coach, some spiteful person would be sure to mention it:—‘Who do you think I saw yesterday in a hackney-coach? I wonder where she could be driving alone down those narrow streets?’ If I walked with a footman behind me, there are so many women of the town now who flaunt about with a smart footman, that I ran the hazard of being taken for one of them; and, if I went alone, either there would be some good-natured friend who would hint that Lady Hester did not walk out alone for nothing; or else I should be met in the street by some gentleman of my acquaintance, who would say, ‘God bless me, Lady Hester! where are you going alone?—do let me accompany you:’ and then it would be said, ‘Did you see Lady Hester crossing Hanover Square with such a one? he looked monstrous foolish: I wonder where they had been.’ So that, from one thing to another, I was obliged to stop at home entirely: and this it was that hurt my health so much, until Lord Temple, at last, remarked it. For he said to me one day, ‘How comes it that a person like you, who used to be always on horseback, never rides out?’—‘Because I have no horse.’—‘Oh! if that is all, you shall have one to-morrow.’—‘Thank you, my lord; but, if I have a horse, I must have two; and, if I have two, I must have a groom; and, as I do not choose to borrow, if you please, we will say no more about it.’—‘Oh! but I will send my horses, and come and ride out with you every day.’ However, I told him no: for how could a man who goes to the House every day, and attends committees in a morning, be able to be riding every day with me? And I know what it is to lend and borrow horses and carriages. When I used to desire my carriage to go and fetch any friend, my coachman was sure to say, ‘My lady, the horses want shoeing;’ or the footman would come in with a long face, ‘My lady, John would like to go and see his sister to-day, if you please:’ there was always some excuse. All this considered, I made up my mind to remain at home.”

For some time did Lady Hester remain in Montague Square: but her brother and General Moore, having fallen at the battle of Corunna, I believe she grew entirely disgusted with London; and, breaking up her little establishment, she went down into Wales, and resided in a small cottage at Builth, somewhere near Brecon, in a room not more than a dozen feet square. Here she amused herself in curing the poor, in her dairy, and in other rustic occupations: until, not finding herself so far removed from her English acquaintances but that they were always coming across her and breaking-in upon her solitude, she resolved on going abroad, up the Mediterranean.

Arrived at Gibraltar, she was lodged at the governor’s, in the convent, where she remained some time; and then embarked for Malta in the Cerberus, Captain Whitby, who afterwards distinguished himself in Captain Hoste’s victory up the Adriatic. At Malta, she lived, at first, in the house of Mr. Fernandez: afterwards, General Oakes offered Lady Hester the palace of St. Antonio, where we resided during the remainder of her stay.

We departed for Zante in the month of June or July, 1810. From Zante, we passed over to Patras, where she bade adieu to English customs for the rest of our pilgrimage. Traversing Greece, we visited Constantinople, and, from Constantinople, sailed for Egypt. At Rhodes we were shipwrecked, and I there lost my journals, among which were many curious anecdotes that would have thrown much light on her ladyship’s life. I shall relate what I have since gathered, without observing any order, but always, as far as I could recollect, using her very expressions; and, in many instances, there will be found whole conversations, where her manner would be recognized by those who were acquainted with it. I shall sometimes preface them with observations of my own.

Speaking of her sisters, Lady Hester would say: “My sister Lucy was prettier than I was, and Griselda more clever; but I had, from childhood, a cheerfulness and sense of feeling that always made me a favourite with my father. She exemplified this by an anecdote of the second Lady Stanhope, her stepmother, referring to the time when her father, in one of his republican fits, put down his carriages and horses.

“Poor Lady Stanhope,” she said, “was quite unhappy about it; but, when the whole family was looking glum and sulky, I thought of a way to set all right again. I got myself a pair of stilts, and out I stumped down a dirty lane, where my father, who was always spying about through his glass, could see me. So, when I came home, he said to me, ‘Why, little girl, what have you been about? Where was it I saw you going upon a pair of—the devil knows what?—eh, girl?’—‘Oh! papa, I thought, as you had laid down your horses, I would take a walk through the mud on stilts; for you know, papa, I don’t mind mud or anything—’tis poor Lady Stanhope who feels these things; for she has always been accustomed to her carriage, and her health is not very good.’—‘What’s that you say, little girl?’ said my father, turning his eyes away from me; and, after a pause, ‘Well, little girl, what would you say if I bought a carriage again for Lady Stanhope?’—‘Why, papa, I would say it was very kind of you.’—‘Well, well,’ he observed, ‘we will see; but, damn it! no armorial bearings.’ So, some time afterwards, down came a new carriage and new horses from London; and thus, by a little innocent frolic, I made all parties happy again?”[1]

Lady Hester continued. “Lucy’s disposition was sweet, and her temper excellent: she was like a Madonna. Griselda was otherwise, and always for making her authority felt. But I, even when I was only a girl, obtained and exercised, I can’t tell how, a sort of command over them. They never came to me, when I was in my room, without sending first to know whether I would see them.

“Mr. Pitt never liked Griselda; and, when he found she was jealous of me, he disliked her still more. She stood no better in the opinion of my father, who bore with Lucy—ah! just in this way—he would say to her, to get rid of her, ‘Now papa is going to study, so you may go to your room:’ then, when the door was shut, he would turn to me, ‘Now, we must talk a little philosophy;’ and then, with his two legs stuck upon the sides of the grate, he would begin—‘Well, well,’ he would cry, after I had talked a little, ‘that is not bad reasoning, but the basis is bad.’

“My father always checked any propensity to finery in dress. If any of us happened to look better than usual in a particular hat or frock, he was sure to have it put away the next day, and to have something coarse substituted in its place.

“When I was young, I was always the first to promote my sister’s enjoyments. Whether in dancing, or in riding on horseback, or at a feast, or in anything that was to make them happy, I always had something to do or propose that increased their pleasure. In like manner, afterwards, in guiding them in politics, in giving them advice for their conduct in private life, in forwarding them in the world, I was a means of much good to them. It was always Hester, and Hester, and Hester; in short, I appeared to be the favourite of them all; and yet now, see how they treat me!

“I was always, as I am now, full of activity, from my infancy. At two years old, I made a little hat. You know there was a kind of straw hat with the crown taken out, and in its stead a piece of satin was put in, all puffed up. Well! I made myself a hat like that; and it was thought such a thing for a child of two years old to do, that my grandpapa had a little paper box made for it, and had it ticketed with the day of the month and my age.

“Just before the French revolution broke out, the ambassador from Paris to the English Court was the Comte d’Adhémar. That nobleman had some influence on my fate as far as regarded my wish to go abroad, which, however, I was not able to gratify until many years afterwards. I was but seven or eight years old when I saw him; and when he came by invitation to pay a visit to my papa at Chevening, there was such a fuss with the fine footmen with feathers in their hats, and the count’s bows and French manners, and I know not what, that, a short time afterwards, when I was sent to Hastings with the governess and my sisters, nothing would satisfy me but I must go and see what sort of a place France was. So I got into a boat one day unobserved, that was floating close to the beach, let loose the rope myself, and off I went. Yes, doctor, I literally pushed a boat off, and meant to go, as I thought, to France. Did you ever hear of such a mad scheme?

“But I was tired of all those around me, who, to all my questions, invariably answered, ‘My dear, that is not proper for you to know,—or, you must not talk about such things until you get older; and the like. So I held my tongue, but I made up for it, by treasuring up everything I heard and saw. Isn’t it extraordinary that I should have such a memory? I can recall every circumstance that ever occurred to me during my life—everything worth retaining, that I wished to remember. I could tell what people said, how they sat, the colour of their hair, of their eyes, and all about them, at any time, for the last forty years and more. At Hastings, for example, I can tell the name of the two smugglers, Tate and Everett, who attended at the bathing-machine, and the name of the apothecary, Dr. Satterly, although I have never heard a word about those persons from that day to this.

“How well I recollect what I was made to suffer when I was young! and that’s the reason why I have sworn eternal warfare against Swiss and French governesses. Nature forms us in a certain manner, both inwardly and outwardly, and it is in vain to attempt to alter it. One governess at Chevening had our backs pinched in by boards, that were drawn tight with all the force the maid could use; and, as for me, they would have squeezed me to the size of a puny miss—a thing impossible! My instep, by nature so high, that a little kitten could walk under the sole of my foot, they used to bend down in order to flatten it, although that is one of the things that shows my high breeding.

“Nature, doctor, makes us one way, and man is always trying to fashion us another. Why, there was Mahon, when he was eight or nine years old, that never could be taught to understand how two and two make four. If he was asked, he would say, four and four make three, or ten, or something: he was shown with money, and with beans, and in every possible way, but all to no purpose. The fact was, that that particular faculty was not yet developed: but now, there is no better calculator anywhere. The most difficult sums he will do on his fingers; and he is besides a very great mathematician. There was a son of Lord Darnley’s, a little boy, who was only big enough to lie under the table, or play on the sofa, and yet he could make calculations with I don’t know how many figures—things that they have to do in the Treasury. Now, if that boy had gone on in the same way, he would by this time have been Chancellor of the Exchequer. But I hear nothing of him, and I don’t know what has become of him; so I suppose he has not turned out anything extraordinary.

“But nature was entirely out of the question with us: we were left to the governesses. Lady Stanhope got up at ten o’clock, went out, and then returned to be dressed, if in London, by the hair-dresser; and there were only two in London, both of them Frenchmen, who could dress her. Then she went out to dinner, and from dinner to the Opera, and from the Opera to parties, seldom returning until just before daylight. Lord Stanhope was engaged in his philosophical pursuits: and thus we children saw neither the one nor the other. Lucy used to say that, if she had met her step-mother in the streets, she should not have known her. Why, my father once followed to our own door in London a woman who happened to drop her glove, which he picked up. It was our governess; but, as he had never seen her in the house, he did not know her in the street.

“He slept with twelve blankets on his bed, with no nightcap, and his window open: how you would have laughed had you seen him! He used to get out of bed, and put on a thin dressing-gown, with a pair of silk breeches that he had worn overnight, with slippers, and no stockings: and then he would sit in a part of the room which had no carpet, and take his tea with a bit of brown bread.

“He married two wives; the first a Pitt, the second a Grenville; so that I am in two ways related to the Grenvilles.”

Lady Hester continued: “As I grew up, Lady Stanhope used to chuck me under the chin, and cry, ‘Why the kurl (girl) is like a soap ball; one can’t pinch her cheek:’ and I really used to think there was something very strange about me. Soon after Horne Tooke took notice of me, and pronounced flatteringly on my talents. And when Mr. Pitt followed, and kindly said, ‘Why I believe there is nothing to find fault with, either in her looks or her understanding,’ I began to know myself. Mr. Elliott, (who married Miss Pitt) used to say to me, dear man! in his bontonné manner, ‘You must not be surprised, my love, if you make a great noise in the world.’

“Sir Sydney Smith said of me, after he had known me fifteen years, and when my looks were much changed by illness, ‘When I see you now, I recall to my recollection what you were when you first came out. You entered the room in your pale shirt, exciting our admiration by your magnificent and majestic figure. The roses and lilies were blended in your face, and the ineffable smiles of your countenance diffused happiness around you.’

“The Duke of Cumberland used to say to me—‘You and Amelia (Princess Amelia) are two of the most spanking wenches I ever saw; but, if (alluding to my ill-health) you go on in this way, I do not know what the devil you will make of it.’”

When mentioning this, her ladyship added: “Doctor, at twenty, my complexion was like alabaster; and, at five paces’ distance, the sharpest eye could not discover my pearl necklace from my skin: my lips were of such a beautiful carnation, that, without vanity, I can assure you very few women had the like. A dark blue shade under the eyes, and the blue veins that were observable through the transparent skin, heightened the brilliancy of my features. Nor were the roses wanting in my cheeks; and to all this was added a permanency in my looks that fatigue of no sort could impair.”

I am now writing when disappointments and sickness have undermined her health, and when she has reached her 54th year. Her complexion had now assumed a yellow tint, but her hands were still exceedingly fair, and she had the very common though pardonable fault of often contriving to show them. There were moments when her countenance had still something very beautiful about it. Her mouth manifested an extraordinary degree of sweetness, and her eyes much mildness.

She never would have her likeness taken, when in the bloom of her beauty, and it is not probable it can be ever done now. There is a sort of resemblance between her and Mr. Pitt, (if I may judge from his portraits.) She has told me also, that she was like the late Duchess of Cumberland. Her head, seen in front, presented a perfect oval, of which the eyes would cover a line drawn through the centre. Her eyebrows were arched and fine, I mean slender; her eyes blue, approaching to gray; her nose, somewhat large, and the distance from the mouth to the chin rather too long. Her cheeks had a remarkably fine contour, as they rounded off towards the neck; so that Mr. Brummell, as has been related, once said to her in a party, “For God’s sake, do take off those earrings, and let us see what is beneath them.” Her figure was tall (I think not far from six feet), rather largely proportioned, and was once very plump, as I have heard her say. Her mien was majestic; her address eminently graceful; in her conversation, when she pleased, she was enchanting; when she meant it, dignified; at all times, eloquent. She was excellent at mimickry, and upon all ranks of life. She had more wit and repartee, perhaps, than falls to the lot of most women. Her knowledge of human nature was most profound, and she could turn that knowledge to account to its utmost extent, and in the minutest trifles. She was courageous, morally and physically so; undaunted, and proud as Lucifer.

She never read in any book more than a few pages, and there were few works that she praised when she looked them over. History she despised, considering it all a farce: because, she said, she had seen so many histories of her time, which she found to be lies from beginning to end, that she could not believe in one. She had a great facility of expression, and, on some occasions, introduced old proverbs with wonderful appositeness. Conversation never flagged in her company. But to return to Lady Hester’s own account of herself.

“I can recollect, when I was ten or twelve years old, going to Hastings’s trial. My garter, somehow, came off, and was picked up by Lord Grey, then a young man. At this hour, as if it were before me in a picture, I can see his handsome but very pale face, his broad forehead; his corbeau coat, with cut-steel buttons; his white satin waistcoat and breeches, and the buckles in his shoes. He saw from whom the garter fell, but, observing my confusion, did not wish to increase it, and with infinite delicacy gave the garter to the person who sat there to serve tea and coffee.

“The first person I ever danced with was Sir Gilbert Heathcote.

“When I was young, I was never what you call handsome, but brilliant. My teeth were brilliant, my complexion brilliant, my language—ah! there it was—something striking and original, that caught everybody’s attention. I remember, when I was living with Mr. Pitt, that, one morning after a party, he said to me, ‘Really, Hester, Lord Hertford’ (the father of the late lord, and a man of high pretensions for his courtly manners) ‘paid you so many compliments about your looks last night, that you might well be proud of them.’—‘Not at all,’ answered I: ‘he is deceived, if he thinks I am handsome, for I know I am not. If you were to take every feature in my face, and put them, one by one, on the table, there is not a single one would bear examination. The only thing is that, put together and lighted up, they look well enough. It is homogeneous ugliness, and nothing more.’

“Mr. Pitt used to say to me, ‘Hester, what sort of a being are you? We shall see, some day, wings spring out of your shoulders; for there are moments when you hardly seem to walk the earth.’ There was a man who had known me well for fifteen years, and he told me, one day, that he had tried a long time to make me out, but he did not know whether I was a devil or an angel. There have been men who have been intimate with me, and to whom, in point of passion, I was no more than that milk-jug” (pointing to one on the table); “and there have been others who would go through fire for me. But all this depends on the star of a person.

“Mr. Pitt declared that it was impossible for him to say whether I was most happy in the vortex of pleasure, in absolute solitude, or in the midst of politics; for he had seen me in all three; and, with all his penetration, he did not know where I seemed most at home. Bouverie used to say to me, when I lived at Chevening, ‘I know you like this kind of life; it seems to suit you.’ And so it did: but why did I quit home? Because of my brothers and sisters, and for my father’s sake. I foresaw that my sisters would be reduced to poverty if I did not assist them; and, though people said to me, ‘Let their husbands get on by themselves; they are capable of making their own way,’ I saw they could not, and I set about providing for them. As for my father, he thought that, in joining those democrats, he always kept aloof from treason. But he did not know how many desperate characters there were, who, like C——, for example, only waited for a revolution, and were always plotting mischief. I thought, therefore, it was better to be where I should have Mr. Pitt by my side to help me, should he get into great difficulty. Why, they almost took Joyce out of bed in my father’s house; and when my father went to town, there were those who watched him; and the mob attacked his house, so that he was obliged to make his escape by the leads, and slip out the back way. Joyce was getting up in the morning, and was just blowing his nose, as people do the moment before they come down to breakfast, when a single knock came to the door, and in bolted two officers with a warrant, and took him off without even my father’s knowledge. Then, were not Lord Thanet, Ferguson, and some more of them thrown into gaol? and I said, ‘If my father has not a prop somewhere, he will share the same fate;’ and this was one of the reasons why I went to live with Mr. Pitt. Mr. Pitt used to say that Tom Paine was quite in the right; but then he would add, ‘What am I to do? If the country is overrun with all these men, full of vice and folly, I cannot exterminate them. It would be very well, to be sure, if everybody had sense enough to act as they ought; but, as things are, if I were to encourage Tom Paine’s opinions, we should have a bloody revolution; and, after all, matters would return pretty much as they were.’ But I always asked, ‘What do these men want? They will destroy what we have got, without giving us anything else in its place. Let them give us something good before they rob us of what we have. As for systems of equality, everybody is not a Tom Paine. Tom Paine was a clever man, and not one of your hugger-mugger people, who have one day one set of ideas, and another set the next, and never know what they mean.’

“I am an aristocrat, and I make a boast of it. We shall see what will come of people’s conundrums about equality. I hate a pack of dirty Jacobins, that only want to get people out of a good place to get into it themselves. Horne Tooke always liked me, with all my aristocratical principles, because he said he knew what I meant.

“No, doctor, Bouverie was right: I liked the country. At the back of the inn, on Sevenoaks common, stood a house, which, for a residence for myself, I should prefer to any one I have ever yet seen. It was a perfectly elegant, light, and commodious building, with an oval drawing-room, and two boudoirs in the corners, with a window to each on the conservatory. When I visited there, it was inhabited by three old maids, one of whom was my friend. What good ale and nice luncheons I have had there many a time! What good cheese, what excellent apples and pears, and what rounds of boiled beef?”

The next day these personal recollections were renewed.

“I remember, when Colonel Shadwell commanded the district, that, one day, in a pelting shower of rain, he was riding up Madamscourt Hill, as I was crossing at the bottom, going home towards Chevening with my handsome groom, Tom, a boy who was the natural son of a baronet. I saw Colonel Shadwell’s groom’s horse about a couple of hundred yards from me, and, struck with its beauty, I turned up the hill, resolving to pass them, and get a look at it. I accordingly quickened my pace, and, in going by, gave a good look at the horse, then at the groom, then at the master, who was on a sorry nag. The colonel eyed me as I passed; and I, taking advantage of a low part in the hedge, put my horse to it, leaped over, and disappeared in an instant. The colonel found out who I was, and afterwards made such a fuss at the mess about my equestrian powers, that nothing could be like it. I was the toast there every day.

“Nobody ever saw much of me until Lord Romney’s review. I was obliged to play a trick on my father to get there. I pretended, the day before, that I wanted to pay a visit to the Miss Crumps” (or some such name), “and then went from their house to Lord Romney’s. Though all the gentry of Kent were there, my father never knew, or was supposed not to have known, that I had been there. The king took great notice of me. I dined with him—that is, what was called dining with him, but at an adjoining table. Lord and Lady Romney served the king and queen, and gentlemen waited on us: Upton changed my plate, and he did it very well. Doctor, dining with royalty, as Lord Melbourne does now, was not so common formerly; I never dined with the king but twice—once at Lord Romney’s at an adjoining table, and once afterwards at his own table: oh! what wry faces there were among some of the courtiers! Mr. Pitt was very much pleased at the reception I met with: the king took great notice of me, and, I believe, always after liked me personally. Whenever I was talking to the dukes, he was sure to come towards us. ‘Where is she?’ he would cry; ‘where is she? I hear them laugh, and where they are laughing I must go too:’ then, as he came nearer, he would observe, ‘if you have anything to finish, I won’t come yet—I’ll come in a quarter of an hour.’ When he was going away from Lord Romney’s, he wanted to put me bodkin between himself and the queen; and when the queen had got into the carriage, he said to her, ‘My dear, Lady Hester is going to ride bodkin with us; I am going to take her away from Democracy Hall:’ but the old queen observed, in rather a prim manner, that I ‘had not got my maid with me, and that it would be inconvenient for me to go at such a short notice:’ so I remained.

“It was at that review that I was talking to some officers, and something led to my saying, ‘I can’t bear men who are governed by their wives, as Sir A. H*** is; a woman of sense, even if she did govern her husband, would not let it be seen: it is odious, in my opinion:’ and I went on in this strain, whilst poor Sir A. himself, whom I did not know, but had only heard spoken of, was standing by all the time. I saw a dreadful consternation in the bystanders, but I went on. At last some one—taking commiseration on him, I suppose—said, ‘Lady Hester, will you allow me to introduce Sir A. H*** to you, who is desirous of making your acquaintance.’ Sir A. very politely thanked me for the advice I had given him; and I answered something about the regard my brother had for him, and there the matter ended.

“When first I went to live with Mr. Pitt, one day he and I were taking a walk in the park, when we were met by Lord Guildford, having Lady —— and Lady ——, two old demireps, under his arm. Mr. Pitt and I passed them, and Mr. Pitt pulled off his hat: Lord G. turned his head away, without acknowledging his bow. The fact was, he thought Mr. Pitt was escorting some mistress he had got. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘there goes Falstaff with the merry wives of Windsor.’ ‘Yes,’ rejoined Mr. Pitt, ‘and I think, whatever he may take you to be, he need not be so prim, with those two painted and patched ladies under his arm.’

“The same thing happened with Lord A.; and, when Mr. Pitt soon after came into office, Lord A. called on Mr. Pitt, who, being busy, sent him to me. Lord A. began with a vast variety of compliments about ancient attachments, and his recollection, when a boy, of having played with me: so I cut him short by telling him his memory then must have sadly failed him the other day, when he passed me and Mr. Pitt in his curricle with Lady ——. After many, ‘Really, I supposed,’ and ‘Upon my honours,—Sense of propriety on account of Lady ——, and not knowing who I was’—I laughed heartily at him, and he went away. When he was gone, Mr. Pitt came to me, and said, ‘I don’t often ask questions about your visitors, but I should really like to know what excuse Lord A. could offer for his primosity[2] to us, when he was riding with such a Jezebel as Lady ——.’

“Yet it might have been very natural for Mr. Pitt to do so.[3] How many people used to come and ask me impertinent questions, in order to get out his state secrets: but I very soon set them down. ‘What, you are come to give me a lesson of impertinence,’ I used to say, laughing in their faces. One day, one of them, of rather a first-rate class, began with—‘Now, my dear Lady Hester, you know our long friendship, and the esteem I have for you—now do just tell me, who is to go out ambassador to Russia?’ So I was resolved to try him; and, with a very serious air, I said, ‘Why, if I had to choose, there are only three persons whom I think fit for the situation—Mr. Tom Grenville, Lord Malmesbury,’ and I forget who was the third: ‘but you know,’ I added, ‘Lord Malmesbury’s health will not allow him to go to so cold a climate, and Mr., the other, is something and something, so that he is out of the question.’ Next morning, doctor, there appeared in ‘The Oracle,’ a paper, observe, that Mr. Pitt never read—‘We understand that Lord M. and Mr. T. G. are selected as the two persons best qualified for the embassy to Russia: but, owing to his lordship’s ill health, the choice will most likely fall on Mr. T. G.’

“I was highly amused the following days, to hear the congratulations that were paid to Mr. Grenville: but, when the real choice came to be known, which was neither one nor the other, oh! how black the inquisitive friend of mine looked; and what reproaches he made me for having, as he called it, deceived him! But I did not deceive him: I only told him what was true, that, if I had the choice, I should choose such and such persons.

“There are, necessarily, hundreds of reasons for ministers’ actions, that people in general know nothing about. When the Marquis —— was sent to India it was on condition that he did not take —— —— with him: for Mr. Pitt said, ‘It is all very well if he chooses to go alone, but he shan’t take —— —— with him; for—who knows?—she may be, all the time, carrying on intrigues with the French government, and that would not suit my purpose.’

“There might be some apparent levity in my manner, both as regarded affairs of the cabinet and my own; but I always knew what I was doing. When Mr. Pitt was reproached for allowing me such unreserved liberty of action in state matters and in affairs where his friends advised him to question me on the motives of my conduct, he always answered—‘I let her do as she pleases; for, if she were resolved to cheat the devil, she could do it.’ And so I could, doctor; and that is the reason why thick-headed people, who could never dive into the motives of what I did, have often misinterpreted my conduct, when it has proceeded from the purest intentions. And, in the same way, when some persons said to Lady Suffolk, ‘Look at Lady Hester, talking and riding with Bouverie and the Prince’s friends; she must mind what she is about’—Lady Suffolk remarked, ‘There is nothing to fear in that quarter; she never will let any body do a bit more than she intends: what she does is with connoissance de cause.’ And she was right; nobody could ever accuse me of folly: even those actions which might seem folly to a common observer, were wisdom. Everything with me, through life, has been premeditatedly done.

“Mr. Pitt paid me the greatest compliment I ever received from any living being. He was speaking of C******, and lamenting he was so false, and so little to be trusted; and I said, ‘But perhaps he is only so in appearance, and is sacrificing ostensibly his own opinions, in order to support your reputation?’—‘I have lived,’ replied Mr. Pitt, ‘twenty-five years in the midst of men of all sorts, and I never yet found but one human being capable of such a sacrifice.’—‘Who can that be?’ said I. ‘Is it the Duke of Richmond? is it such a one?’ and I named two others, when he interrupted me—‘No,—it is you.’

“I was not insensible to praise from such a man; and when, before Horne Tooke and some other clever people, he told me I was fit to sit between Augustus and Mæcenas, I suppose I must believe it. And he did not think so lightly of my lectures as you do: for one day he said to me, ‘We are going to establish a new hospital, and you, Hester, are to have the management of it: it is to be an hospital for the diseases of the mind; for nobody knows so well as you how to cure them.’ I should never have done if I were to repeat the many attestations of his good opinion of me: but it was no merit of mine if I deserved it: I was born so. There was a man one day at table with Mr. Pitt, an old friend of his—Canning told me the story—who, speaking of me, observed that he supposed I should soon marry, and, after some conversation on the subject, concluded by saying, ‘I suppose she waits till she can get a man as clever as herself.’ ‘Then,’ answered Mr. Pitt, ‘she will never marry at all.’

“In like manner, in the troublesome times of his political career, Mr. Pitt would say, ‘I have plenty of good diplomatists, but they are none of them military men: and I have plenty of good officers, but not one of them is worth sixpence in the cabinet. If you were a man, Hester, I would send you on the Continent with 60,000 men, and give you carte blanche; and I am sure that not one of my plans would fail, and not one soldier would go with his shoes unblacked; meaning, that my attention would embrace every duty that belongs to a general and a corporal—and so it would, doctor.”

After musing a little while, Lady Hester Stanhope went on. “Did you ever read the life of General Moore that I have seen advertised, written by his brother? I wonder which brother it was. If it was the surgeon, he was hard-headed, with great knowledge of men, but dry, and with nothing pleasing about him. His wife was a charming woman, brought up by some great person, and with very good manners.

“As for tutors, and doctors, and such people, if, now-a-days, mylords and myladies walk arm-in-arm with them, they did not do so in my time. I recollect an old dowager, to whom I used sometimes to be taken to spend the morning. She was left with a large jointure, and a fine house for the time being, and used to invite the boys and the girls of my age, I mean the age I was then, with their tutors and governesses, to come and see her. ‘How do you do, Dr. Mackenzie? Lord John, I see, is all the better for his medicine: the duchess is happy in having found a man of such excellent talents, which are almost too great to be confined to the sphere of one family.’—‘Such is the nature of our compact, my Lady, nor could I on any account violate the regulations which so good a family has imposed upon me.’—‘It’s very cold, Dr. Mackenzie: I think I increased my rheumatic pains at the Opera on Saturday night.’—‘Did you ever try Dover’s Powders, my lady?’ He does not, you see, tell her to use Dover’s Powders; he only says, did you ever try them? ‘Lord John—Lord John, you must take care, and not eat too much of that strawberry preserve.’

“‘How do you do, Mr. K.?—how do you do, Lord Henry? I hope the marchioness is well? She looked divinely last night. Did you see her when she was dressed, Mr. K.?’—‘You will pardon me, my lady,’ answers the tutor, ‘I did indeed see her; but it would be presumptuous in me to speak of such matters. I happened to take her a map,’ (mind, doctor, he does not say a map of what) ‘and, certainly, I did cast my eyes on her dress, which was, no doubt, in the best taste, as everything the Marchioness does is.’ Observe, here is no mention of her looks or person. Doctors and tutors never presumed formerly to talk about the complexion, and skin, and beauty, of those in whose families they lived or found practice. Why, haven’t I told you, over and over again, how Dr. W—— lost his practice from having said that a patient of his, who died, was one of the most beautiful corpses he had ever seen, and that he had stood contemplating her for a quarter of an hour: she was a person of rank, and it ruined him. Even his son, who was a doctor too, and had nothing to do with it, never could get on afterwards.

“Then would come in some young lady with her governess, and then another; and the old dowager would take us all off to some show, and make the person who exhibited it stare again with the number of young nobility she brought with her. From the exhibition, which was some monster, or some giant, or some something, she would take us to eat ices, and then we were all sent home, with the tutors and governesses in a stew, lest we should be too late for a master, or for a God knows what.

“I have known many apothecaries cleverer than doctors themselves. There was Chilvers, and Hewson, and half-a-dozen names that I forget: and there was an apothecary at Bath that Mr. Pitt thought more of than of his physician. Why, I have seen Sir H—— obliged to give way to an apothecary in a very high family. ‘We will just call him in, and see what he says:’ and the moment he had written his prescription and was gone out of the house, the family would consult the apothecary, who perhaps knew twice as much of the constitution of the patient. ‘You know, my lord, it is not the liver that is affected, whatever Sir H—— pretends to think: it is the spleen; for, did not we try the very same medicine that he has prescribed for above a week? and it did your lordship no good. You may just as well, and better, throw his draught away:’ and sure enough it was done. Sir Richard Jebb the same.

“Do you think,” continued she, “that the first physician in London is on terms of intimacy with the mylords he prescribes for? he prescribes, takes his guinea, and is off: or, if he is asked to sit down a little, it is only to pick his brains about whether somebody is likely to live or not: but I am not, and never was, so mean: I always liked people should know their relative situations. Ah! Dr. Turton, or some such man as that, would be perhaps asked now and then to dinner, or to take a walk round the grounds. A doctor’s business is to examine the grandes affaires, talk to the nurse, and see that his blister has been well dressed, and not to talk politics, say such a woman is handsome, and chatter about what does not concern him.”

Whilst Lady Hester was going on with her strictures on the poor doctors, a favourite theme with her, I produced from the back of a cupboard a miniature print of General Moore, which had been lying at Abra, neglected for some years. She took it from my hand, and, looking at it a little time, she observed that it was an excellent likeness of what he was when he became a weather-beaten soldier: “Before that,” said she, “those cheeks were filled out and ruddy, like Mr. Close’s at Malta.”

After a pause, Lady Hester Stanhope continued: “Poor Charles! My brother Charles one day was disputing with James about his handsome Colonel, and James, on his side, was talking of somebody’s leg being handsome, saying he was right, for it had been modelled, and nobody’s could be equal to it; when Charles turned to me, and asked with great earnestness if I did not think General Moore was the better made man of the two, I answered, ‘He is certainly very handsome.’—‘Oh! but,’ said Charles, ‘Hester, if you were only to see him when he is bathing, his body is as perfect as his face.’ I never even smiled, although inwardly I could not help smiling at his naïveté.

“I consider it a mark of vulgarity and of the association of bad ideas in people’s minds when they make a handle of such equivoques in an ill-natured way, as you recollect Mr. T. did when he was at Alexandria. People of good breeding do not even smile, when, perhaps, low persons would suppose they might show a great deal of affected primosity. Only imagine the Duc de Blacas to be announced;—what would my old servant, poor William Wiggins, have done? He would never have got out the word.” Here Lady Hester set up laughing most heartily, and then she laughed, and laughed again. I think I never saw anything make her relax from her composure so much.

“As for what people in England say or have said about me, I don’t care that for them,” (snapping her fingers); “and whatever vulgar-minded people say or think of me has no more effect than if they were to spit at the sun. It only falls on their own nose, and all the harm they do is to themselves. They may spit at a marble wall as they may at me, but it will not hang. They are like the flies upon an artillery-horse’s tail—there they ride, and ride, and buz about, and then there comes a great explosion; bom! and off they fly. I hate affectation of all kinds. I never could bear those ridiculous women who cannot step over a straw without expecting the man who is walking with them to offer his hand. I always said to the men, when they offered me their hand, ‘No, no; I have got legs of my own, don’t trouble yourselves.’ Nobody pays so little attention to what are called punctilios as I do; but if any one piques me on my rank, and what is due to me, that’s another thing: I can then show them who I am.”

October 16.—These conversations filled up the mornings and evenings until the 16th of October, when I went to Mar Elias for a day. Whilst there, a peasant arrived with an ass-load of musk grapes and mukseysy grapes that Lady Hester had sent. An ass-load in those happy countries is but a proof of the abundance that reigns there. A bushel-basket of oranges or lemons, a bunch of fifty or sixty bananas, ten or twelve melons at a time, were presents of frequent occurrence.

October 18.—I returned to Jôon, and employed myself busily in fitting up the cottage intended for our dwelling. The nearer the time approached for bringing my family close to her premises, the more Lady Hester seemed to regret having consented to the arrangement. Petty jealousies, inconsistent with a great mind, were always tormenting her. Of this a remarkable and somewhat ludicrous instance occurred during the latter part of the month of September. Most persons are probably aware that Mahometans have a religious horror of bells, and, in countries under their domination, have never allowed of their introduction even into Christian churches. It is not uncommon, by way of contempt, to designate Europe as the land of bells. This pious abhorrence penetrates the arcana of private life; and, in a Turkish house, no such thing as a bell for calling the servants is ever to be seen. A clap of the hands, repeated three times, is the usual summons; and, as the doors are seldom shut, the sound can be easily heard throughout every part of the dwelling.

Lady Hester, however, retained her European habits in this one particular; and perhaps there never existed a more vehement or constant bell-ringer. The bells hung for her use were of great size; so that the words Gerass el Syt, or my lady’s bell, echoing from one mouth to another when she rang, made the most indolent start on their legs; until, at last, as nobody but herself in the whole territory possessed house-bells, the peasantry and menials imagined that the use of them was some special privilege granted to her by the Sublime Porte on account of her exalted rank, and she probably found it to her advantage not to disturb this very convenient supposition.

On taking up our residence at Mar Elias, there were two bells put by in a closet, which were replaced for the use of my family, with bell-ropes to the saloon and dining-room, none of us ever suspecting that they could, by any human ingenuity, be considered otherwise than as most necessary appendages to a room: but we calculated without our host. This assumption of the dignity of bells was held to be an act of læsa majestas; and the report of our proceedings was carried from one person to another, until, at last, it reached Lady Hester’s ears, endorsed with much wonder on the part of her maids how a doctor’s wife could presume to set herself on an equality with a meleky (queen). Lady Hester, however, saw the absurdity of affecting any claim to distinction in such a matter, and, therefore, vexed and mortified although it appears she was, she never said a word to me on the subject. But, one morning in September, when we were all assembled at breakfast, on pulling the bell-rope no sound responded, and, examining into the cause, we discovered that the strings had been cut by a knife, and the bells forcibly wrenched from their places. Much conjecture was formed as to who could have done all this mischief. The maids were questioned; the porter, the milkman, the errand-boy, the man-servant, every body, in short, in and about the place, but nobody knew anything of the matter. Understanding Arabic, I soon found there was some mystery in the business; and answers, more and more evasive, from the porter, the harder he was pressed, led to a presumption, amounting almost to a certainty, that her ladyship’s grand emissary, Osman Chaôosh, had arrived late at night, armed with pincers, hammer, etcetera, and, before daylight, had carried off the bells to Lady Hester’s residence. I concealed my conjecture from my family, wishing to cause no fresh source of irritation; and, having occasion to write that day to Lady Hester, I merely added, as a postscript, “The two bells have been stolen during the night, and I can find no certain clue to the thief. For, although I have discovered that Osman el Chaôosh has been here secretly, I cannot think it likely that any one of your servants would presume to do such a thing without your orders; nor can I believe that your ladyship would instruct any one to do that clandestinely which a message from yourself to me would have effected so easily.”

When I saw Lady Hester a day or two afterwards, she never alluded to the bells, nor did I; and nothing was ever mentioned about them for two or three months, until, one day, she, being in a good humour, said, “Doctor, it was I who ordered Osman to take away the bells. The people in this country must never suppose there is any one connected with my establishment who puts himself on an equality with me, no matter in what. The Turks know of only one Pasha in a district; the person next to him is a nobody in his presence, not daring even to sit down or to speak, unless told to do so. If I had let those bells hang much longer, the sound of my own would not have been attended to. As it is, half of my servants have become disobedient from seeing how my will is disputed by you and your family, who have always a hundred reasons for not doing what I wish to be done; and, as I said in my letter to Eugenia, I can’t submit to render an account of my actions; for, if I was not called upon to do so by Mr. Pitt, I am sure I shan’t by other people; so let us say no more about it.” Of course, I complied with her whims; or rather, I should say, admitted the good sense of her observations: for I knew very well that she never did anything without a kind or substantial motive. So, after that, the exclamation of Gerass el Syt recovered its magical effect.

October 23.—I escorted my family to their new residence, which was called the Tamarisk Pavilion, from a tamarisk-tree that grew from the terrace. They were all delighted with it, and happiness seemed restored to its inmates.

October 25.—The very day on which my family came up, Lady Hester took to her bed from illness, and never quitted it until March in the following year. She had now laboured under pulmonary catarrh for six or seven years, which, subsiding in the summer months, returned every winter, with increased violence, and at this time presented some very formidable symptoms.

November 9.—About six o’clock, just as I had dined, a servant came to say that her ladyship wished to see me. On going into her bed-room, which, as usual, was but faintly lighted, I ran my head against a long packthread, which crossed from the wall, where it was tied, to her bed, and was held in her hand. “Take care, doctor,” said she; “these stupid beasts can’t understand what I want: but you must help me. I want to pull out a tooth. I have tied a string to it and to the wall: and you, with a stick or something, must give it a good blow, so as to jerk my tooth out.”

Knowing her disposition, I said, “Very well, and that I would do as she wished. But, if you like,” added I, “to have it extracted secundem artem, I fancy I can do it for you.”—“Oh! doctor, have you nerve enough? and, besides, I don’t like those crooked instruments: but, however, go and get them.” I had seen in the medicine-chest a dentist’s instrument, and, returning with it, I performed the operation; with the result of which she was so much pleased, that she insisted upon having another tooth out. The relief was so instantaneous, that the second tooth was no sooner gone than she commenced talking as usual.

The cough with which Lady Hester had been so long indisposed occasionally assumed symptoms of water in the chest. Sudden starts from a lying posture, with a sense of suffocation, which, for a moment, as she described it, was like the gripe of a hand across her throat, made me very uneasy about her. Her strong propensity to bleeding, to which she had resorted four or five times a year for the last twenty years, had brought on a state of complete emaciation, and what little blood was left in her body seemed to have no circulation in the extremities, where her veins, on a deadly white skin, showed themselves tumefied and knotty.

It was difficult to reason with her on medical subjects, especially in her own case. She had peculiar systems, drawn from the doctrine of people’s stars. She designated her own cough as an asthma, and had, for some time, doctored herself much in her own way. Such is the balmy state of the air in Syria, that, had she trusted to its efficacy alone, and lived with habits of life like other people, nothing serious was to be dreaded from her illness. But she never breathed the external air, except what she got by opening the windows, and took no exercise but for about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour daily, when, on quitting her bed-room to go to the saloon, she made two or three turns in the garden to see her flowers and shrubs, which seemed to be the greatest enjoyment she had.

She prescribed almost entirely for herself, and only left me the duties of an apothecary; or, if she adopted any of my suggestions, it was never at the moment, but always some days afterwards, when it seemed to her that she was acting, not on my advice, but on the suggestions of her own judgment. She was accustomed to say, if any doubts were expressed of the propriety of what she was going to do, “I suppose I am grown a fool in my old age. When princes and statesmen have relied on my judgment, I am not going to give it up at this time of life.”

But it was not for herself alone that she thus obstinately prescribed; she insisted also upon doing the same for everybody else, morally as well as medically. One of the prominent features in her character was the inclination she had to give advice to all persons indiscriminately about their conduct, their interests, and their complaints: and, in this latter respect, she prescribed for everybody. I was not exempt, and I dreaded her knowing anything about the most trifling indisposition that affected me. Greatly addicted to empiricism, she would propose the most strange remedies; and, fond of the use of medicine herself, she would be out of humour if others showed an aversion to it. There was no surer way of securing her good graces than to put one’s self under her management for some feigned complaint, and then to attribute the cure to her skill. Hundreds of knaves have got presents out of her in this way. For they had but to say that, during their illness, they had lost an employment, or spent their ready money, no matter what—they were sure to be remunerated tenfold above their pretended losses. Let it however be said to her honour, that, among the number she succoured in real sickness, many owned with gratitude the good she had done: and no surer proof of this can be given than the universal sorrow that pervaded half the population of Sayda, when, in the course of this her illness, she was reported to be past recovery.

It was in compliance with this foible of hers that, when I returned to Dar Jôon, after being laid up with a bad leg, she would insist on my wearing a laced cloth boot, which she ordered to be made, unknown to me; on my washing the œdematous leg in wine with laurel leaves steeped in it; and on sitting always, when with her, with my leg resting on a cushion placed on a stool. Her tyranny in such matters was very irksome; for it was clothed in terms of so much feeling and regard, and of such commiseration for one’s overrated sufferings, that, to escape the accusation of ingratitude and bad breeding, it was impossible to avoid entire acquiescence in every one of her kind commands.

She was ever complaining that she could get nothing to eat, nothing to support a great frame like hers: yet she seldom remained one half hour, from sunrise to sunset, or from sunset to sunrise (except during sleep), without taking nourishment of some kind. I never knew any human being who took food so frequently: but, from that very frequency, it might be doubted whether she had a relish for anything. And may not this, in some measure, account for her frequent ill-humour? for nothing sours people’s temper more than an overloaded stomach, and nothing promotes cheerfulness more than a light one.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In accordance with his republican principles, Lord Stanhope caused his armorial bearings to be defaced from his plate, carriages, &c. Nothing was spared but the iron gate before the entrance to the house. Even the tapestry given to the great Lord Stanhope by the king of Spain, with which one of the rooms in Chevening was ornamented, he caused to be taken down and put into a corner, calling it all damned aristocratical. He likewise sold all the Spanish plate, which Lady Hester said weighed (if I recollect rightly) six hundred weight.

[2] A friend has suggested that primosity is not in Johnson’s Dictionary; it was however a word of frequent recurrence in Lady Hester’s vocabulary; and it scarcely, I think, need be said, that it means prudery:

“What is prudery? ’Tis a beldam,

Seen with wit and beauty seldom.”

Pope.

[3] “In 1800, Mr. Pitt, for the third time, contemplated renewing his attempts to make peace with France, and he offered the mission again to Lord Malmesbury. Lord Grenville wished to appoint his brother, Mr. Thomas Grenville; and Lord Malmesbury, whose deafness and infirmity had much increased, readily consented.”—Diaries and Correspondence of the Earl of Malmesbury.

CHAPTER II.

Sir Nathaniel Wraxall’s Memoirs—The three duchesses—Anecdote of Mr. Rice—How Prime Ministers are employed on first taking office—The Grenville make—P—— of W—— at Stowe—Mr. Pitt and Mr. Sheridan—Duke of H—— —Mr. Pitt’s disinterestedness exemplified—His life wasted in the service of his country—Mr. Rose—Mr. Long—Mr.—— —Grounds at Walmer laid out by Lady Hester—Mr. Pitt’s deportment in retirement—His physiognomy—How he got into debt—Lord Carrington; why made a peer—Extent of Mr. Dundas’s influence over Mr. Pitt—Mr. Pitt averse to ceremony—Mr. Pitt and his sister Harriet—His dislike to the Bourbons—Lady Hester’s activity at Walmer—Lord Chatham’s indolence—Mr. Pitt’s opinion of Sir Arthur Wellesley.

On leaving Marseilles, in 1837, I ordered Sir Nathaniel Wraxall’s Memoirs to be sent after me to Syria, thinking that, as relating to Mr. Pitt’s times, and to people and politics with whom and in which both he and she had mixed so largely, these memoirs could not fail to amuse her. I received them soon after my arrival at Jôon, and many rainy days were passed in reading them. They served to beguile the melancholy hours of her sickness, and recalled the agreeable recollections of her more splendid, if not more happy, hours. She would say on such occasions, “Doctor, read a little of your book to me.” This was always her expression, when I had brought any publication to her: and, ordering a pipe, lying at her length in bed, and smoking whilst I read, she would make her comments as I went on.

“Let me hear about the duchesses,” she would say. After a page or two she interrupted me. “See what the Duchess of Rutland and the Duchess of Gordon were: look at the difference. I acknowledge it proceeds all from temperament, just as your dull disposition does, which to me is as bad as a heavy weight or a nightmare. I never knew, among the whole of my acquaintance in England, any one like you but Mr. Polhill of Crofton” (or some such place): “he was always mopish, just as you are. I remember too what a heavy, dull business the Duchess of R.’s parties were—the room so stuffed with people that one could not move, and all so heavy—a great deal of high breeding and bon ton; but there was, somehow, nothing to enliven you. Now and then some incident would turn up to break the spell. One evening, I recollect very well, everybody was suffering with the heat: there we were, with nothing but heads to be seen like bottles in a basket. I got out of the room, upon the landing-place. There I found Lady Sefton, Lady Heathcote, and some of your high-flyers, and somebody was saying to me, ‘Lady Hester something,’ when, half way up the staircase, the Duke of Cumberland was trying to make his way. He cried out, ‘Where’s Lady Hester? where’s my aide-de-camp? Come and help me; for I am so blind I can’t get on alone. Why, this is h—l and d——n!’—‘Here I am, sir.’—‘Give me your hand, there’s a good little soul. Do help me into this h—l; for it’s quite as hot.’ Then came Bradford; and, whilst he was speaking to me, and complaining of the intolerable heat and crush, out roared the Duke of Cumberland, ‘Where is she gone to?’—and up went his glass, peeping about to the right and left—‘where is she gone to?’ There was some life in him, doctor.

“Now, at the Duchess of Gordon’s, there were people of the same fashion, and the crowd was just as great; but then she was so lively, and everybody was so animated, and seemed to know so well what they were about—quite another thing.

“As for the Duchess of D.’s, there they were—all that set—all yawning, and wanting the evening to be spent, that they might be getting to the business they were after.”

It may be mentioned that Lady Hester was always very severe on the Duchess of D. and her friends, whenever her name or theirs was mentioned. She said she was full of affected sensibility, but that there was always a great deal of wickedness about her eyes.

The mention of the Duchess of Rutland’s name also led to an amusing anecdote. Lady Hester was speaking of the grand fête given by the duchess when her son came of age. The arrangements were entrusted to a person named Rice, and to some great confectioner. Mr. Rice had been maître d’hôtel, or in some such capacity, in Mr. Pitt’s family.

“Rice told me,” said Lady Hester, “that when he and the other man were preparing for the fête, he never lay down for ten nights, but got what sleep he could in an arm-chair. The duchess gave him three hundred guineas. One day she looked at him over her shoulder; and when one of the beaux about her said, ‘What are you looking after, duchess? You have forgotten something in the drawing-room?’—‘No, no,’ said she, pointing to Rice, ‘I was only thinking that those eyes are too good for a kitchen.’ And then one talked of the eyes, and the eyes, and another of the eyes and the eyes, until poor Rice quite blushed. He had very pretty eyes, doctor.”

But the anecdote I was going to relate was this. Most simple persons, like myself, imagine that prime ministers of such a country as England, when promoted to so elevated a station, are only moved by the noble ambition of their country’s good, and, from the first moment to the last, are ever pondering on the important measures that may best promote it. No such thing. Let us hear what Lady Hester Stanhope herself had to say on this subject.

“The very first thing Mr. Pitt did,” said she, “after coming into office the second time, was to provide for Mr. Rice. We were just got to Downing Street, and everything was in disorder. I was in the drawing-room: Mr. Pitt, I believe, had dined out. When he came home, ‘Hester,’ said he, ‘we must think of our dear, good friend Rice. I have desired the list to be brought to me to-morrow morning, and we will see what suits him.’—‘I think we had better see now,’ I replied. ‘Oh, no! it is too late now.’—‘Not at all,’ I rejoined; and I rang the bell, and desired the servant to go to the Treasury, and bring me the list.

“On examining it, I found three places for which he was eligible. I then sent for Rice. ‘Rice,’ said I, ‘here are three places to be filled up. One is a place in the Treasury, where you may fag on, and, by the time you are forty-five or fifty, you may be master of twenty or twenty-five thousand pounds. There is another will bring you into contact with poor younger sons of nobility: you will be invited out, get tickets for the Opera, and may make yourself a fine gentleman. The third is in the Customs: there you must fag a great deal, but you will make a great deal of money: it is a searcher’s place.’

“Rice, after considering awhile, said—‘As for the Treasury, that will not suit me, my lady; for I must go on plodding to the end of my life. The second place your ladyship mentioned will throw me out of my sphere: I am not fit for fine folks; and, if you please, I had rather take the third.’ So, the very next morning, I got all his papers signed by everybody except Mr. Long, and they made some excuses that he was not come, or was gone, or something; but I would hear of no delay, and desired them to find him.

“Rice went on swimmingly, doctor, for a long time, and made one morning a seizure that brought for his share £500. But I had given him some very long instructions, and he was not like you, for he listened to my advice. Sometimes, when I was teaching him how he was to act, he would say, ‘My lady, I believe that is enough for this time: I don’t think my poor head will contain more; but I’ll come again.’ I told him he was to learn the specific gravity of bodies, that when they told him (for example) it was pepper, he might know by the volume that it was not gunpowder or cochineal.

“When the Grenville administration wanted to introduce new regulations into the Customs, and diminish their profits, I wrote such a petition for them, that Lord Grenville read it over and over, and cried out—‘There is only one person could write this, and we must give up the point.’ He sent the Duke of Buckingham to me to find out if it was I, and the duke said, to smooth the matter—‘Lady Hester, you know, if you want any favour, you have only to ask for it.’—‘Indeed,’ said I, ‘I shall ask no favour of your broad-bottomed gentry; what I want I shall take by force.’—‘Now, Hester,’ cried the duke, ‘you are too bad; you are almost indelicate.’

“Oh, I made a man laugh so once when speaking of an officer, who, I said, would not do for an hussar, as he wanted a little more of the Grenville make about him.”

After a pause, as if reflecting, Lady Hester resumed—“Is there nothing in the book about the G********’s getting the Prince down to Stowe? They received him with extraordinary magnificence, and the most noble treatment possible: they fancied they were going to do wonders. But I said to them—‘Do you think all this makes the impression you wish in the Prince’s breast? You suppose, no doubt, that you gratify him highly with such a splendid reception: you are much mistaken. From this time forward he will be jealous of you, and will hate you as long as he thinks you can rival him.’ The event proved how justly I knew his character.

“There they were, shut up: and when they told me they had got their conditions in black and white, I told them how it would be. I said he would take them in; for what was a paper to a man like him? I wrote them such a letter, doctor, that they all thought it was Mr. Pitt’s—Mr. Pitt’s best style, too—until I swore he never knew a word about it. They fancied they had got all the loaves and fishes. One was to be Prime Minister, one First Lord of the Admiralty, and so on: but their ambition destroyed them. What have they been since Mr. Pitt’s death? Nothing at all. Who ever hears now of the Duke of B*********?”[4]

I turned over the pages, and next read Wraxall’s account of Mr. Sheridan, which Lady Hester said was very much to the purpose. “Mr. Pitt,” she added, “always thought well of him, and never disliked my talking with him. Oh! how Sheridan used to make me laugh, when he pretended to marry Mr. Pitt to different women!”

I came to the passage where Sir Nathaniel finds fault with Mr. Pitt’s having refused Sheridan’s generous offer of co-operating with him in suppressing the mutiny at the Nore. “Why,” interrupted Lady Hester, “what could Mr. Pitt do? He was afraid, doctor; he did not know how sincere such people might be in their offers: they might be only coming over to his side to get the secrets of the cabinet, and then turn king’s evidence. It required a great deal of caution to know how to deal with such clever men.”

Where Sir Nathaniel relates the history of the Burrell family, she spoke highly of all the daughters, but especially of Mrs. Bennett, and considered that the author was wrong in saying that all but Mrs. Bennett were not handsome.

Of the D. of H. she observed, that he never lived with the duchess. He was in love with Lady ——, and used to disguise himself as a one-legged soldier—as a beggar—assuming a hundred masquerades, sleeping in outhouses, &c. He would have married her, but he could not, for he had got one wife already. That was the woman F. M**** married. “Oh, doctor, there was a man!” (meaning the Duke of H——) “perfect from top to toe, with not a single flaw in his person.”

Lady Hester was so delighted with Sir Nathaniel’s Memoirs that she said, more than once, “How I wish I had known that man! I would have made him a duke. What an excellent judgment he has, and how well he knew everybody! But how was I to find out all those people, when the stupid and interested set that surrounded Mr. Pitt kept them all in the background.”

November 11.—This evening I remained with Lady Hester about three hours. She was better, but complained of great pain in the left hypochondrium, and could not lie easy on either side, or on her back. Yet, notwithstanding her ailments, talking was necessary for her; and from the incidental mention of Mr. Pitt’s name, she went on about him for some time.

“Nobody ever knew or estimated Mr. Pitt’s character rightly. His views were abused and confounded with the narrow projects of men who never could comprehend them; his fidelity to his master was never understood. Never was there such a disinterested man; he invariably refused every bribe, and declined every present that was offered to him. Those which came to him from abroad he left to rot in the Custom House; and some of his servants, after quitting his service, knowing he never inquired about them any more, went and claimed things of this sort: for Mr. Pitt would read the letter, and think no more about it. I could name those, who have pictures hanging in their rooms—pictures by Flemish masters, of great value—procured in this way.

“Mr. Pitt used to say of Lord Carrington, when he saw him unable to eat his dinner in comfort, because he had a letter to write to his steward about some estate or another—‘voilà l’embarras de richesses:’ but when he heard of some generous action done by a wealthy man—‘There’s the pleasure of being rich,’ he would cry. He did not pretend to despise wealth, but he was not a slave to it, as will be seen by the following anecdotes:—

“At one time a person was empowered by his city friends to settle on him £10,000 a year, in order to render him independent of the favour of the king and of everybody, upon condition (as they expressed it) that he would stand forth to save his country. The offer was made through me, and I said I would deliver the message, but was afraid the answer would not be such as they wished. Mr. Pitt in fact refused it, saying he was much flattered by their approval of his conduct, but that he could accept nothing of the sort.

“Yet these people,” added Lady Hester, “were not, as you might at first suppose, disinterested in their offer: I judged them to be otherwise. For if it had been to the man, and not to some hopes of gain they had by him, would they not, after his death, have searched out those he esteemed as angels, and have honoured his memory by enriching those he loved so much? (alluding to herself and brothers.) But no—they thought if Mr. Pitt retired from public affairs, the country and its commerce would go to ruin, and they, as great city men, would be the losers; whereas, by a few thousand pounds given away handsomely, if they got him to take an active part in the government, they would in turn put vast riches into their own purses, and make a handsome profit out of their patriotism.” She added, “There are no public philanthropists in the city.”

“I recollect once a hackney-coach drawing up to the door, out of which got four men: doctor, they had a gold box with them as big as that” (and she held her hands nearly a foot apart to show the size of it), “containing £100,000 in bank-notes. They had found out the time when he was alone, and made him an offer of it. It was all interest that guided them, but they pretended it was patriotism:—rich merchants, who were to get a pretty penny by the job. He very politely thanked them, and returned the present.

“I was once in the city at an Irish linen warehouse—very rich people, but such a nasty place—so dark! You know those narrow streets. They offered to buy Hollwood for him, pay his debts, and make him independent of the king, if he would contrive to take office; for he was out at the time. I mentioned it to him, as I thought it my duty to do so; but he would not listen to any such proposal.

“When I think of the ingratitude of the English nation to Mr. Pitt, for all his personal sacrifices and disinterestedness, for his life wasted in the service of his country!”—Here Lady Hester’s emotions got the better of her, and she burst into tears: she sobbed as she spoke. “People little knew what he had to do. Up at eight in the morning, with people enough to see for a week, obliged to talk all the time he was at breakfast, and receiving first one, then another, until four o’clock; then eating a mutton-chop, hurrying off to the House, and there badgered and compelled to speak and waste his lungs until two or three in the morning!—who could stand it? After this, heated as he was, and having eaten nothing, in a manner of speaking, all day, he would sup with Dundas, Huskisson, Rose, Mr. Long, and such persons, and then go to bed to get three or four hours’ sleep, and to renew the same thing the next day, and the next, and the next.

“Poor old Rose! he had a good heart. I am afraid he took it ill that I did not write to him. Mr. Long used to slide in and slide out, and slide here and slide there—nobody knew when he went or when he came—so quiet.”

I here interrupted Lady Hester: “It was a lamentable end, that of Mr. ——,” said I.[5] “So much the better,” answered Lady Hester. I thought she had not heard me well. “It was a lamentable end, that of Mr. ——,” I repeated with a louder tone. “So much the better,” said she again; “it could not be too bad for him. He died in bodily torment, and C—— had the torment of a bad conscience for his falsehoods, and W—— lived in mental torment. They all three deserved it.”

Lady Hester resumed. “When Mr. Pitt was at Walmer, he recovered his health prodigiously. He used to go to a farm near Walmer, where hay and corn were kept for the horses. He had a room fitted up there with a table and two or three chairs, where he used to write sometimes, and a tidy woman to dress him something to eat. Oh! what slices of bread and butter I have seen him eat there, and hunches of bread and cheese big enough for a ploughman! He used to say that, whenever he could retire from public life, he would have a good English woman cook. Sometimes, after a grand dinner, he would say, ‘I want something—I am hungry:’ and when I remarked, ‘Well, but you are just got up from dinner,’ he would add, ‘Yes; but I looked round the table, and there was nothing I could eat—all the dishes were so made up, and so unnatural.’ Ah, doctor! in town, during the sitting of parliament, what a life was his! Roused from his sleep (for he was a good sleeper) with a despatch from Lord Melville;—then down to Windsor; then, if he had half an hour to spare, trying to swallow something:—Mr. Adams with a paper, Mr. Long with another; then Mr. Rose: then, with a little bottle of cordial confection in his pocket, off to the House until three or four in the morning; then home to a hot supper for two or three hours more, to talk over what was to be done next day:—and wine, and wine!—Scarcely up next morning, when tat-tat-tat—twenty or thirty people, one after another, and the horses walking before the door from two till sunset, waiting for him. It was enough to kill a man—it was murder!”

Lady Hester reverted to Walmer, and went on, after musing a little thus—“I remember once what an improvement I made at Walmer, which arose from a conversation with some friends, in which Mr. Pitt agreed with them that Walmer was not certainly a beautiful residence, but that it only wanted trees to make it so. I was present, but did not seem to hear what was passing.

“Mr. Pitt soon after went to town. Mindful of what he had let drop, I immediately resolved to set about executing the improvements which he seemed to imply as wanting. I got (I know not how) all the regiments that were in quarters at Dover, and employed them in levelling, fetching turf, transplanting shrubs, flowers, &c. As I possess, in some degree, the art of ingratiating myself where I want to do it, I would go out of an evening among the workmen, and say to one, ‘You are a Warwickshire man, I know by your face’ (although I had known it by his brogue). ‘How much I esteem Lord Warwick; he is my best friend.’—‘Were you in Holland, my good fellow?’ to another. ‘Yes, my lady, in the Blues.’—‘A fine regiment; there is not a better soldier in the army than colonel so-and-so.’—‘He was my colonel, my lady.’ Thus a few civil words, and occasionally a present, made the work go on rapidly, and it was finished before Mr. Pitt’s return.

“When Mr. Pitt came down, he dismounted from his horse, and, ascending the staircase, saw through a window, which commanded a view of the grounds, the improvements that had been made. ‘Dear me, Hester, why, this is a miracle! I know ’tis you, so do not deny it: well, I declare, it is quite admirable; I could not have done it half so well myself.’ And, though it was just dinner-time, he would go out, and examine it all over, and then was so profuse in his praises!—which were the more delightful, because they applauded the correctness of my taste. Above all, he was charmed that I had not fallen into an error (which most persons would have done) of making what is called an English garden, but rather had kept to the old manner of avenues, alleys, and the like, as being more adapted to an ancient castle. Such was the amiable politeness of Mr. Pitt.

“When Mr. Pitt retired from office, and sold Hollwood, his favourite child, he laid down his carriages and horses, diminished his equipage, and paid off as many debts as he could. Yet, notwithstanding this complete revolution, his noble manners, his agreeable, condescending air, never forsook him for a moment. To see him at table with vulgar sea captains, and ignorant militia colonels, with two or three servants in attendance—he, who had been accustomed to a servant behind each chair, to all that was great and distinguished in Europe—one might have supposed disgust would have worked some change in him. But in either case it was the same—always the admiration of all around him. He was ever careful to cheer the modest and diffident; but if some forward young fellow exhibited any pertness, by a short speech, or by asking some puzzling question, he would give him such a set down that he could not get over it all the evening.”

In answer to a question I put, “By whom and how ministers effected their purposes in the city,” she told me that they got hold of one of the great squads, as Lloyd’s, the Angersteins, the Merchant Tailors, and so on; and by means of one body set the rest to work.

Lady Hester was saying of herself that she was very fit for a diplomatic character. “Nobody can ever observe in me any changes in my countenance; and when I am sitting still under a tree, nobody that passes and sees me, I will venture to say, would ever suppose what was in me, or say that’s a person of talent. Mr. Pitt’s face was somewhat the same. In regarding him, I should have said that he had a sort of slovenly or negligent look: and the same when he was in a passion. His passion did not show itself by knitting his brows or pouting his mouth, nor were his words very sharp: but his eyes lighted up in a manner quite surprising. It was something that seemed to dart from within his head, and you might see sparks coming from them. At another time, his eyes had no colour at all.

“That Mr. Pitt got into debt is no wonder. How could a man, so circumstanced, find time to look into his affairs? And of course there were many things I could not attend to, whatever disposition I might have had to do so. The bills that were given in by the cook, by the valet, and such people, I looked over. Merely the post-chaises and four were enough to run away with a moderate income. Every now and then I fixed on some glaring overcharge, and made some inquiry about it, just to put a check upon them; and on such occasions I would say, ‘Take care that does not happen again:’ but, what with great dinners, and one thing and another, it was impossible to do any good. As for your talking about English servants being more honest than those of other countries, I don’t know what to say about it.

“Where Wraxall, in his book, insinuates that Mr. Pitt gave Mr. Smith a title, and made him Lord Carrington, merely to discharge a debt for money supplied in his emergencies, he is wrong, doctor. Mr. Pitt once borrowed a sum of money of six persons, but Lord Carrington was not of the number, and the title bestowed on him was for quite another reason: it was to recompense the zeal he had shown in raising a volunteer corps at his own expense at Nottingham, and in furnishing government with a sufficient sum to raise another. Mr. Pitt had also found Mr. Smith a useful man in affording him information about bankers’ business, which he often stood in need of, and in making dinner parties, to enable Mr. Pitt to get rid of troublesome people, whom he otherwise would have been obliged to entertain at his own table. But Mr. Pitt never knew what I heard after his death, by mere accident, that the principal part of the loan, which Mr. S. presented to government in his own name, was in reality the gift of an old miser at Nottingham; who, being unable or unwilling to go to town to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer in person, and to be put to the trouble of addressing the crown, got Mr. S., who was an active man, to do it for him. It suited Mr. Pitt very well, in making Lord Carrington governor of Deal castle, to have somebody near at hand who could take off the bore, and the expense too, of entertaining people from London.”

“Sir Nathaniel Wraxall speaks of Mr. Pitt’s supposed inclination for one of the Duke of Richmond’s daughters, and goes on to say that he showed one of them great attention.” Lady Hester Stanhope interrupted me at that passage, and said, “So he did to all.”

She denied that Mr. Dundas had any direct influence over Mr. Pitt, as Wraxall avers. Her words were, “Because Mr. Dundas was a man of sense, and Mr. Pitt approved of his ideas on many subjects, it does not follow, therefore, that he was influenced by him.” With the exception of Mr. Dundas, Lord —— and another that she named, “all the rest,” said Lady Hester, “were a rabble—a rabble. It was necessary to have some one at their head to lead them, or else they were always going out of the right road, just as, you know, a mule with a good star must go before a caravan of mules, to show them the way. Look at a flight of geese in the air: there must always be one to lead them, or else they would not know in what direction to fly.

“Mr. Pitt’s consideration for age was very marked. He had, exclusive of Walmer, a house in the village, for the reception of those whom the castle could not hold. If a respectable commoner, advanced in years, and a young duke arrived at the same time, and there happened to be but one room vacant in the Castle, he would be sure to assign it to the senior; for it is better (he would say) that these young lords should walk home on a rainy night, than old men: they can bear it more easily.

“Mr. Pitt was accustomed to say that he always conceived more favourably of that man’s understanding who talked agreeable nonsense, than of his who talked sensibly only; for the latter might come from books and study, while the former could only be the natural fruit of imagination.

“Mr. Pitt was never inattentive to what was passing around him, though he often thought proper to appear so. On one occasion, Sir Ed. K. took him to the Ashford ball to show him off to the yeomen and their wives. Though sitting in the room in all his senatorial seriousness, he contrived to observe everything; and nobody” (Lady Hester said) “could give a more lively account of a ball than he. He told who was rather fond of a certain captain; how Mrs. K. was dressed; how Miss Jones, Miss Johnson, or Miss Anybody, danced; and had all the minutiæ of the night as if he had been no more than an idle looker-on.

“He was not fond of the applause of a mob. One day, in going down to Weymouth, he was recognized in some town, and, whilst the carriage stopped to change horses, a vast number of people gathered round us: they insisted on dragging the carriage, and would do so for some time, all he could say. Oh, doctor! what a fright I was in!

“Mr. Pitt bore with ceremony as a thing necessary. On some occasions, I was obliged to pinch his arm to make him not appear uncivil to people: ‘There’s a baronet,’ I would say; or, ‘that’s Mr. So-and-so.’

“I never saw Mr. Pitt shed tears but twice. I never heard him speak of his sister Har-yet” (so Lady Hester pronounced it) “but once. One day his niece, Harriet Elliott, dined with us, and, after she was gone, Mr. Pitt said, ‘Well, I am glad Harriet fell to my brother’s lot, and you to mine, for I never should have agreed with her.’—‘But,’ observed I, ‘she is a good girl, and handsome.’—‘She ought to be so,’ said Mr. Pitt, ‘for her mother was so.’”

Lady Hester said, that those who asserted that Mr. Pitt wanted to put the Bourbons on the throne, and that they followed his principles, lied; and, if she had been in parliament, she would have told them so. “I once heard a great person,” added she, “in conversation with him on the subject, and Mr. Pitt’s reply was, ‘Whenever I can make peace,[6] whether with a consul, or with whosoever it is at the head of the French government, provided I can have any dependance on him, I will do it.’ Mr. Pitt had a sovereign contempt for the Bourbons, and the only merit that he allowed to any one of them was to him who was afterwards Charles X., whose gentlemanly manners and mild demeanour he could not be otherwise than pleased with. Mr. Pitt never would consent to their going to court, because it would have been a recognition of Louis XVIII.

“Latterly, Mr. Pitt used to suffer a great deal from the cold in the House of Commons; for he complained that the wind cut through his silk stockings. I remember, one day, I had on a large tippet and muff of very fine fur: the tippet covered my shoulders, and came down in a point behind. ‘What is this, Hester?’ said Mr. Pitt; ‘something Siberian? Can’t you command some of your slaves—for you must recollect, Griselda, Hester has slaves without number, who implicitly obey her orders’ (this was addressed to Griselda and Mr. Tickell, who were present)—‘can’t you command some of your slaves to introduce the fashion of wearing muffs and tippets into the House of Commons? I could then put my feet on the muff, and throw the tippet over my knees and round my legs.’

“When we were at Walmer, it is incredible what a deal I got through in the day. Mr. Pitt was pleased to have somebody who would take trouble off his hands. Every week he had to review the volunteers, and would ride home in such showers of rain—I have been so drenched, that, as I stood, my boots made two spouting fountains above my knees. Then there was dinner; and, if I happened to be alone, when I went to the drawing-room, I had to give the secret word for spies, to see the sergeant of the guard, and then the gentlemen would come in from the dining-room. But, if they were late, oh, how sleepy I got, and would have given the world to go to bed!

“One day, Lord Chatham had to review the artillery, and he kept them under arms from daylight until three o’clock. Bradford went to him several times to know if he was ready. ‘I shall come in about half an hour,’ was the constant reply; until, at last, seeing no chance of his appearance, I agreed with the aide-de-camps to go off together and settle matters as well as we could: so, getting Lord Chatham’s leave, off we went. Colonel Ford, the commanding-officer, was a cross man; and that day he had enough to make him so. But I managed it all very well: I told him that pressing business detained Lord C.; that he had commissioned us to apologize; and that I should have pleasure in saying the men looked admirably: then I added that Mr. Pitt hoped to see him in the course of a few days at the Castle, and so on. The colonel looked dreadfully out of temper, however, and Bradford and I rode back at a furious rate. It was one of those dark, wet days that are so peculiar to England. A day or two after, the colonel and some of the officers were invited to Walmer, and I behaved very civilly to them; so that Lord Chatham’s laziness was forgotten.

“Lord Chatham never travelled without a mistress. He was a man of no merit, but of great sâad (luck): he used to keep people waiting and waiting whilst he was talking and breakfasting with her. He would keep his aide-de-camps till two or three in the morning. How often would the servant come in, and say supper was ready, and he would answer, ‘Ah! well, in half an hour.’ Then the servant would say, ‘Supper is on the table;’ and then it would be, ‘Ah? well, in a quarter of an hour.’ An aide-de-camp would come in with a paper to sign, and perhaps Lord Chatham would say—‘Oh, dear! that’s too long: I can’t possibly look at it now: you must bring it to-morrow.’ The aide-de-camp would present it next day, and he would cry, ‘Good God! how can you think of bringing it now? don’t you know there’s a review to-day?’ Then, the day after, he was going to Woolwich. ‘Well, never mind,’ he would say; ‘have you got a short one?—well, bring that.’

“Doctor, I once changed the dress of a whole regiment—the Berkshire militia. Somebody asked me, before a great many officers, what I thought of them, and I said they looked like so many tinned harlequins. One day, soon after, I was riding through Walmer village, when who should pop out upon me but the colonel, dressed in entirely new regimentals, with different facings, and more like a regiment of the line. ‘Pray, pardon me, Lady Hester’—so I stopped, as he addressed me—‘pray, pardon me,’ said the colonel, ‘but I wish to know if you approve of our new uniform.’ Of course I made him turn about, till I inspected him round and round—pointed with my whip, as I sat on horseback, first here and then there—told him the waist was too short, and wanted half a button more—the collar was a little too high—and so on; and, in a short time, the whole regiment turned out with new clothes. The Duke of York was very generous, and not at all stingy in useful things.

“I recollect once at Ramsgate, five of the Blues, half drunk, not knowing who I was, walked after me, and pursued me to my door. They had the impertinence to follow me up-stairs, and one of them took hold of my gown. The maid came out, frightened out of her senses; but, just at the moment, with my arm I gave the foremost of them such a push, that I sent him rolling over the others down stairs, with their swords rattling against the balusters. Next day, he appeared with a black patch as big as a saucer over his face; and, when I went out, there were the glasses looking at me, and the footmen pointing me out—quite a sensation!”

During these conversations respecting Mr. Pitt’s times, Sir Nathaniel’s Memoirs were generally in my hand, and when there was a pause I resumed my reading. In giving Sir Walter Farquhar’s private conversation respecting Mr. Pitt’s death, the author says—“Mr. Pitt mounted the staircase with alacrity.” Here Lady Hester stopped me, with the exclamation of—“What a falsehood, doctor! Just hear how it was. You know, when the carriage came to the door, he was announced, and I went up to the top of the stairs to receive him. The first thing I heard was a voice so changed, that I said to myself, ‘It is all over with him.’ He was supported by the arms of two people, and had a stick, or two sticks, in his hands, and as he came up, panting for breath—ugh! ugh! I retreated little by little, not to put him to the pain of making a bow to me, or of speaking:—so much for his alacrity!

“After Mr. Pitt’s death, I could not cry for a whole month and more. I never shed a tear, until one day Lord Melville came to see me; and the sight of his eyebrows turned grey, and his changed face, made me burst into tears. I felt much better for it after it was over.

“Mr. Pitt’s bust was taken after his death by an Italian, named, I think, Tomino—an obscure artist, whom I had rummaged out. This man had offered me at one time a bust worth a hundred guineas, and prayed me to accept it, in order, as he said, to make his name known: I refused it, but recollected him afterwards. The bust turned out a very indifferent resemblance: so, with my own hand, I corrected the defects, and it eventually proved a strong likeness. The D. of C. happening to call when the artist was at work in my room, was so pleased, that he ordered one of a hundred guineas for himself, and another to be sent to Windsor. There was one by this Tomino put into the Exhibition.

“A fine picture in Mr. Pitt’s possession represented Diogenes with a lantern searching by day for an honest man. A person cut out a part of the blank canvas, and put in Mr. Pitt’s portrait.

“When Mr. Pitt was going to Bath, previous to his last illness, I told him I insisted on his taking my eider-down quilt with him. ‘You will go about,’ said I, ‘much more comfortably; and, instead of being too hot one day under a thick counterpane, and the next day shivering under a thin one, you will have an equable warmth, always leaving one blanket with this quilt. Charles and James were present, and could not help ridiculing the idea of a man’s carrying about with him such a bundling, effeminate thing. ‘Why,’ interrupted I, ‘it is much more convenient than you all imagine: big as it looks, you may put it into a pocket-handkerchief.’—‘I can’t believe that,’ cried Charles and James. ‘Do you doubt my word?’ said I, in a passion: ‘nobody shall doubt it with impunity:’ and my face assumed that picture of anger, which you can’t deny, doctor, is in me pretty formidable; so I desired the quilt to be brought. ‘Why, my dear Lady Hester,’ said Mr. Pitt, ‘I am sure the boys do not mean to say you tell falsehoods: they suppose you said it would go into a handkerchief merely as a façon de parler.’”

Lady Hester, when she told me this story, here interrupted herself—“And upon my word, doctor, if you had seen the footman bringing it over his shoulder, he himself almost covered up by it, you would have thought indeed it was only a façon de parler.”

She continued. “I turned myself to James. ‘Now, sir, take and tie it up directly in this pocket-handkerchief. There! does it, or does it not go into it!’

“This,” concluded Lady Hester, “was the only quarrel I ever had with Charles and James. James often used to look very black, but he never said anything.

“When Mr. Pitt was going to Bath, in his last illness, he told me he had just seen Arthur Wellesley. He spoke of him with the greatest commendation, and said the more he saw of him, the more he admired him. ‘Yes,’ he added, ‘the more I hear of his exploits in India, the more I admire the modesty with which he receives the praises he merits from them. He is the only man I ever saw that was not vain of what he had done, and had so much reason to be so.’

“This eulogium,” Lady Hester said, “Mr. Pitt pronounced in his fine mellow tone of voice, and this was the last speech I heard him make in that voice; for, on his return from Bath, it was cracked for ever.” Then she observed, “My own opinion of the duke is, that he is a blunt soldier, who pleases women because he is gallant and has some remains of beauty: but,” she added, “he has none of the dignity of courts about him.”

FOOTNOTES:

[4] This of course refers to the late Duke.

[5] “I dislike ——, both as to his principles and the turn of his understanding: he wants to make money by this peace.”—Diaries and Correspondence, &c.

[6] “Mr. Pitt has always been held up to the present generation as fond of war; but the Harris papers could furnish the most continued and certain evidence of the contrary, and that he often suffered all the agony of a pious man who is forced to fight a duel. The cold and haughty temper of Lord Grenville was less sensitive. Our overtures to France were synonymous with degradation, and he could not brook the delays of the directory.”—Diaries and Correspondence, v. iii., p. 516.

CHAPTER III.

Duchess of Gontaut—Duc de Berry—Anecdotes of Lord H.—Sir Gore Ouseley—Prince of Wales—The other princes—The Queen’s severity—Men and women of George the Third’s time—The Herveys—Lady Liverpool’s high breeding—Lady Hester’s declining health.

“One of Mr. Pitt’s last conversations, whilst on his death-bed, was about Charles and James. Mr. Pitt had called me in, and told me, in a low, feeble voice—‘You must not talk to me to-day on any business: when I get down to Lord Camden’s, and am better, it will be time enough then.’ He seemed to know he was dying, but only said this to console me. ‘But now, my dear Hester,’ he continued, ‘I wish to say a few words about James and Charles. As for Charles, he is such an excellent young man that one cannot wish him to be otherwise than he is; and Moore is such a perfect officer, that he will give him every information in his profession that he can possibly require. The only apprehension I have is on the score of women, who will perhaps think differently of him from what he thinks of himself: but with James the case is otherwise. He is a young man you must keep under; else you will always see him trying to be a joli garçon. For Charles’s steadiness, I do not fear; but the little one will one day or other fall into the hands of men who will gain him over and unsettle his political principles. You can guide him, and, so long as he is under your care, he is safe:’ and,” added Lady Hester, “Mr. Pitt was right, doctor; for the moment I quitted England he fell into the snares of Lord B. and his party, and instead of being in Mr. Canning’s place, which he might have been, he became nothing.”

Lady Hester went on: “When Charles and James left Chevening,[7] Mr. Pitt said to Mahon (the present Earl Stanhope), ‘You know that, when your father dies, you will be heir to a large property—whether £15,000 a-year or £25,000 it does not much signify. Now, as far as a house goes and having a table where your brothers may dine, I have got that to offer. But young men in the army have a number of wants, for their equipment, regimentals, &c., and for all this I have not the means. You, therefore, Mahon, must do that for them; and, if you have not money, you can always let their bills be charged to you with interest, as is very common among noblemen until they come to their fortune. You ought to raise a sum of money for them, and see to their wants a little: your two brothers should not be left to starve.’

“Mahon said he would. Charles one day told me that, as a poor captain of the army, the baggage warehouse and his tailor were rather shy of trusting him; and if Mahon would only go and say to them—‘Do you let my brothers have what they want, and I will be answerable for them;’ then I could get on. Mahon did that too; and, in reliance on this arrangement, they had clothes and other things, considering him as responsible for them. After Mr. Pitt’s death, several tradesmen applied for their bills.”

So, recollecting an old peer, who had been one of Mr. Pitt’s particular friends, I sent off James to him to his country-seat with a letter, relating the whole business: this person immediately gave James a draft for £2,000, with which he returned, and paid his own and Charles’s debts.

“Well, it was agreed between Charles, James, and me, that whoever had the first windfall should pay the £2,000. Charles died: James was not rich enough at any time to do it; and it fell to my lot to pay it since I have been in this country. And that was the reason of my selling the Burton Pynsent reversion, which, you know, I did in 1820 or thereabouts; and when Mr. Murray found fault with me for my extravagance, and said he would have no hand in the business, neither he nor anybody else knew then why I sold it.

“When Coutts wrote me word that my brother James had been very good to me in having given me £1,000, he did not know that the civility was not so disinterested as he imagined. James might think he did a great deal for me: but, let me ask you—did I not make a pretty great sacrifice for Lord Mahon and him? I sold a pretty round sum out of the American funds, and James took possession of about five hundred pounds’ worth of plate of mine, and of my jewels, and of Tippoo Saib’s gold powder-flask, worth £200, and of the cardinal of York’s present, which, to some persons who wanted a relic of the Stuarts, was invaluable. Then there was a portfolio, full of fine engravings of Morghen and others, that the Duke of Buckingham bought of him: so there was at least as much as he sent me.

“If I had not been thwarted and opposed by them all, as I have been, and obliged to raise money from time to time to get on, I should have been a very rich woman. There was the money I sold out of the American funds; then there was the Burton Pynsent money, £7,000; my father’s legacy, £10,000; the (I did not distinctly hear what) legacy, £1,000:” and thus her ladyship reckoned up on her fingers an amount of £40,000.

“Is it not very odd that General G. and Lord G. could not leave me a few thousand pounds out of their vast fortunes when they died? They knew that I was in debt, and that a few thousands would have set me up; and yet in their wills, not to speak of their lifetime, they never gave me a single sixpence, but left their money to people already in the enjoyment of incomes far exceeding their wants, and very little more nearly related to them than I am. Well, all their injustice does not put me out of spirits. The time will soon come when I shall want none of their assistance, if I get the other property that ought to come to me. Oh! how vexed Lady Chatham always was, when Lady Louisa V. used to point at me, and say—‘There she is—that’s my heir.’ Lady L. was deformed, and never thought of marrying; but Lord G. did marry her nevertheless, and she had a child that died.

“Then there is the reversion of my grandfather’s pension of £4,000 a-year, secured for four lives by the patent: the first Lord Chatham one, the late Lord Chatham the next, and I, of course, the third.”[8]

Nov. 14.—I saw that Lady Hester grew weaker every day, and I felt alarmed about her. Still, whenever I had to write to the person she, about this time, most honoured with her confidence, Mons. Guys, the French consul at Beyrout, she would not allow me to make any further allusion to her illness than to state simply that she was confined to her bed-room with a cold. “I see you are afraid about me,” she said, “but I have recovered from worse illnesses than this by God’s help and the strength of my constitution.”

My wife sent to her to say that she or my daughter would, with pleasure, come and keep her company, or sit up with her: this she refused. I then offered Miss Longchamp’s services: but Lady Hester’s pride would not allow her to expose to a stranger the meagreness of her chamber, so utterly unlike a European apartment. It was indeed an afflicting sight to behold her wrapped up in old blankets, her room lighted by yellow beeswax candles in brass candlesticks, drinking her tea out of a broken-spouted blue teapot and a cracked white cup and saucer, taking her draughts out of an old cup, with a short wooden deal bench by her bedside for a table, and in a room not so well furnished as a servant’s bed-room in England.

The general state of wretchedness in which she lived had even struck Mr. Dundas, a gentleman, who, on returning overland from India, staid some days with her: and, as Lady Hester observed, when she told me the story, “He did not know all, as you do. I believe he almost shed tears. ‘When I see you, Lady Hester,’ said he, ‘with a set of fellows for servants who do nothing, and when I look at the room in which you pass your hours, I can hardly believe it is you. I was much affected at first, but now I am more reconciled. You are a being fluctuating between heaven and earth, and belonging to neither; and perhaps it is better things should be as they are’” Lady Hester added, “He has visited me two or three times: he is a sensible Scotchman, and I like him as well as anybody I have seen for some years.”

November 15.—It was night, when a messenger arrived from Beyrout, and brought a small parcel containing a superbly bound book presented to her ladyship by the Oriental Translation Fund Society. It was accompanied by a complimentary letter from the president, Sir Gore Ouseley. The book was “The History of the Temple of Jerusalem, translated by the Rev. J. Reynolds.” After admiring it, and turning over the leaves, she said to me, “Look it over, and see what it is about,” and then began to talk of Sir Gore. “I recollect, doctor,” said she, “so well the night he was introduced to me: it was at Mr. Matook’s (?) supper.

“You may imagine the numbers and numbers of people I met in society, whilst I lived with Mr. Pitt, almost all of whom were dying to make my acquaintance, and of whom I necessarily could know little or nothing. Indeed, to the greater part of those who were introduced to me, if they saw me afterwards, when they bowed I might return the salutation, smile a little, and pass on, for I had not time to do more:—a person’s life would not be long enough. Well, I recollect it was at a party where Charles X. was present—I think it was at Lord Harrington’s—that somebody said to me, ‘Mr. —— wants to know you so much! Why won’t you let him be introduced to you?’—‘Because I don’t like people whose face is all oily, like a soap-ball,’ answered I. Now, doctor, upon my word, I no more knew he had made his fortune by oil, than I do what was the colour of the paper in your saloon at Nice; and when his friend said, ‘You are too bad, Lady Hester,’ I did not understand what he meant. However, they told me there would be all the royalties there, and so I consented.

“I have had an instinct all my life that never deceived me, about people who were thorough-bred or not; I knew them at once. Why was it, when Mr. H*******n came into a room, and took a long sweep with his hat, and made a stoop, and I said: ‘One would think he was looking under the bed for the great business;’ and all the people laughed, and when at last Mr. Pitt said, ‘Hester, you are too bad, you should not be personal,’ I declared ‘I did not know what he meant?’ Then he explained to me that the man was a broken-down doctor, a fact which, I honestly assured him, I never heard of before. But my quickness in detecting people’s old habits is so great, that I hit upon a thing without having the least previous intimation.

“As I passed the card-table that evening where the Comte d’Artois was playing, he put down his cards to talk to me a little, so polite, so well-bred—poor man! And there were the other three old dowagers, who were playing with him, abusing him in English, which he understood very well, because he had stopped the game. After he had resumed his cards, I was leaning over the back of a chair facing him, reflecting in one of my thoughtful moments on the uncertainty of human greatness in the picture I had then before me, when I gave one of those deep sighs, which you have heard me do sometimes, something between a sigh and a grunt, and so startled the French King, that he literally threw down his cards to stare at me. I remained perfectly motionless, pretending not to observe his action; and, as he still continued to gaze at me, some of the lookers-on construed it into a sort of admiration on his part. This enraged Lady P., and her rage was increased when, at every knock at the door, I turned my head to see who was coming, and he turned his head too; for I was expecting the royalties, and so was he: but she did not know this, and she took it into her head that the Prince and I had some understanding between us.

“I never thought any more of the matter; but, in the course of the evening, somebody brought Lady P. to me, and introduced her. ‘I have longed,’ said Lady P. ‘for some time to make your acquaintance: I don’t know how it is that we have never met; it would give me great pleasure if I sometimes saw you at my parties,’ and so on. The next day I had a visit from Lady P., and the day after that came her card, and then an invitation; and, day after day, there was nothing but Lady P. So, at last, not knowing what it meant, I said to an acquaintance, ‘What is the reason that Lady P. is always coming after me?’—‘What! don’t you know?’ she replied: ‘why, the King of France is in love with you?’ And this is the art, doctor, of all those mistresses: they watch and observe if their lovers are pleased with any young person, and then invite her home, as a lure to keep alive the old attraction.”

Here Lady Hester paused, and, after a moment, added: “How many of those French people did I see at that time, especially at Lord H.’s! There was the Duchess of Gontaut, who was obliged to turn washerwoman; and even to the last, when she was best off, was obliged to go out to parties in a hackney-coach. Why, the Duc de Berry himself lodged over a greengrocer’s in a little street leading out of Montague Square, and all the view he had was to lean out of his window, and look at the greengrocer’s stall. I have seen him many a time there, when he used to kiss his hand to me as I passed. The Duchess of Gontaut afterwards brought up the Duke of Bordeaux. That was a woman quite admirable; so full of resources, so cheerful, she kept up the spirits of all the emigrants: and then she was so well dressed! She did not mind going in a hackney-coach to dine with the Duke of Portland.

“Lord H********** scraped up a reputation which he never deserved,” continued Lady Hester, as her reflections led her from one person to another. “Insincere, greedy of place, and always pretending to be careless about it, he and my lady lived in a hugger-mugger sort of a way, half poverty half splendour, having soldiers for house servants, and my lady dining at two with the children (saying my lord dined out), and being waited on by a sergeant’s daughter. How often have I seen a scraggy bit of mutton sent up for luncheon, with some potatoes in their skins, before royalty! The princes would say to me, ‘Very bad, Lady Hester, very bad; but there! he has a large family—he is right to be saving.’ And then Lady H**********, with her little eyes, and a sort of waddle in her gait (for she once had a paralytic stroke), with a wig all curls, and, at the top of it, a great bunch of peacock’s feathers—then her dress, all bugles, and badly put on—horrid, doctor, horrid! and why should they have lived in such a large house, half furnished, with the girls sleeping altogether in large attics, with a broken looking-glass, and coming down into their mother’s room to dress themselves!

“But to go back to Sir Gore Ouseley: it was at Mr. M.’s supper, when getting up from the card-table, and advancing towards me, he made a diplomatic bow, accompanied with some complimentary speech. That was the old school, very different from the fizgig people now-a days. Just before, the Prince had been standing in the middle of the room, talking to some one I did not know, first pulling up the flap of his coat to show his figure, then seizing the person he spoke to by the waistcoat, then laughing, then pretending to whisper; and this he continued for nearly an hour. ‘What can the Prince be talking about?’ said some one next to me: ‘He does not know himself,’ said I. Soon after, the person who had been talking to the Prince approached the sofa, when the mylord, who was sitting next to me, observed, ‘We have been looking at the Prince and you; what in the world was he talking about?’—‘He don’t know himself,’ answered his friend, ‘and I’m sure I don’t know.’—‘That’s just what Lady Hester said,’ rejoined the first speaker. ‘I have been wishing to make my bow to Lady Hester all the evening,’ said the friend, who then sat down by me.”

Lady Hester went on: “What a mean fellow the Prince was, doctor! I believe he never showed a spark of good feeling to any human being. How often has he put men of small incomes to great inconvenience, by his telling them he would dine with them and bring ten or a dozen of his friends with him to drink the poor devils’ champagne, who hardly knew how to raise the wind, or to get trust for it! I recollect one who told me the Prince served him in this way, just at the time when he was in want of money, and that he did not know how to provide the dinner for him, when luckily a Sir Harry Featherstone or a Sir Gilbert Heatchcote or some such rich man bought his curricle and horses, and put a little ready money into his pocket. ‘I entertained him as well as I could,’ said he, ‘and a few days after, when I was at Carlton House, and the Prince was dressing between four great mirrors, looking at himself in one and then in another, putting on a patch of hair and arranging his cravat, he began saying that he was desirous of showing me his thanks for my civility to him. So he pulled down a bandbox from a shelf, and seemed as if he was going to draw something of value out of it. I thought to myself it might be some point-lace, perhaps, of which, after using a little for my court-dress, I might sell the remainder for five or six hundred guineas: or perhaps, thought I, as there is no ceremony between us, he is going to give me some banknotes. Conceive my astonishment, when he opened the bandbox, and pulled out a wig, which I even believe he had worn. ‘There,’ said he, ‘as you are getting bald, is a very superior wig, made by—I forget the man’s name, but it was not Sugden.’ The man could hardly contain himself, and was almost tempted to leave it in the hall as he went out. Did you ever hear of such meanness? Everybody who had to do with him was afraid of him. He was sure to get a horse, or a vis-à-vis, or a something, wherever he went, and never pay for them. He was a man without a heart,[9] who had not one good quality about him. Doctor,” cried Lady Hester, “I have been intimate with those who spent their time with him from morning to night, and they have told me that it was impossible for any person who knew him to think well of him.[10]”

“Look at his unfeeling conduct in deserting poor Sheridan! Why, they were going to take the bed from under him whilst he was dying; and there was Mrs. Sheridan pushing the bailiffs out of the room. That amiable woman, too, I believe, died of grief at the misery to which she was reduced. The Prince had not one good quality. How many fell victims to him! Not so much those who were most intimate with him—for they swallowed the poison and took the antidote—they knew him well: but those were the greatest sufferers who imitated his vices, who were poisoned by the contagion, without knowing what a detestable person he was. How many saw their prospects blasted by him for ever!”

Lady Hester continued: “Oh! when I think that I have heard a sultan” (meaning George IV.) “listen to a woman singing Hie diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon, and cry, ‘Brava! charming!’—Good God! doctor, what would the Turks say to such a thing, if they knew it?

“There was Lord D., an old debauchee, who had lost the use of his lower extremities by a paralytic stroke—the way, by the by, in which all such men seem to finish; nay, I believe that men much addicted to sensuality even impair their intellects too—one day met me on the esplanade, and, in his usual way, began talking some very insipid stuff about his dining with the Prince, and the like; when James, who overheard the conversation, made an impromptu, which exactly described one of the Prince’s dinners; and, though I don’t recollect it word for word, it was something to this effect:—

‘With the Prince I dine to-day:

We shall have prodigious fun.

I a beastly thing shall say,

And he’ll end it with a pun.’

“I remember the Prince’s saying to Lord Petersham, ‘What can be the reason that Lady Hester, who likes all my brothers, does not like me?’ Lord P. told me this, and I replied—If he asks me, I will have an answer ready for him, and that is, ‘When he behaves like them I shall like him, and not before.’ I loved all the princes but him. They were not philosophers, but they were so hearty in their talking, in their eating, in all they did! They would eat like ploughmen, and their handsome teeth would” (here she imitated the mastication of food, to show me how) “at a pretty rate.

“The Prince is a despicable character. He was anxious enough to know me whilst Mr. Pitt was alive; but the very first day of my going to court, after Mr. Pitt’s death, he cut me, turning his back on me whilst I was talking to the Duke of Richmond.

“As for the princesses, there was some excuse for their conduct: I do not mean as regards myself—for they were always polite to me—but as to what people found fault with them for. The old queen treated them with such severity, shutting them up in a sort of a prison—at least the Princess Sophia—that I rather pitied than blamed them.

“But look at the princes: what a family was there! never getting more than four hours’ sleep, and always so healthy and well-looking. But men generally are not now-a-days as they were in my time. I do not mean a Jack M. and those of his description, handsome, but of no conversation: they are, however, pleasant to look at. But where will you see men like Lord Rivers, like the Duke of Dorset? Where will you find such pure honour as was in the Duke of Richmond and Lord Winchelsea? The men of the present generation are good for nothing—they have no spunk in them.

“And as for women, show me such women of fashion as Lady Salisbury, the Duchess of Rutland, Lady Stafford, and” (three or four more were named, but they have slipped my memory). “However, doctor, I never knew more than four fashionable women, who could do the honours of their house, assign to everybody what was due to his rank, enter a room and speak to everybody, and preserve their dignity and self-possession at all times: it is a very difficult thing to acquire. One was the old Duchess of Rutland, the others the Marchioness of Stafford, Lady Liverpool, and the Countess of Mansfield:[11]—all the rest of the bon ton were bosh” (in Turkish, good for nothing). “The Countess of Liverpool was a Hervey; and men used to say, the world was divided into men, women, and Herveys—for that they were unlike every other human being. I have seen Lady Liverpool come into a room full of people; and she would bow to this one, speak to that one, and, when you thought she must tread on the toes of a third, turn round like a teetotum, and utter a few words so amiable, that everybody was charmed with her. As for the Duchess of D*********, it was all a ‘fu, fu, fuh,’ and ‘What shall I do?—Oh, dear me! I am quite in a fright!’—and so much affectation, that it could not be called high breeding; although she knew very well how to lay her traps for some young man whom she wanted to inveigle into her parties, and all that. Then there were some, with highly polished manners, who would pass along like oil over water, smooth and swimming about: but good breeding is very charming, doctor, isn’t it?

“The last time I saw Lady Liverpool was at Lord Mulgrave’s. The dinner was waiting: Mr. Pitt and I had got there; but Lord Liverpool, being long in dressing, was still behind. Everybody was looking at the door or the window. At last his carriage was seen, and dinner was ordered. If you had been present when Lady Liverpool entered the room, and had marked the grace with which, whilst we were standing, she slipped in and out among the guests, like an eel, when she turned her back, turning her head round, speaking to this person and to that, and all with such seasonable courtesies and compliments, it was really wonderful. But Lady Liverpool was a Hervey, and the Herveys, as I told you before, were a third part of the creation.

“Oh, Lord! when I think of some people, who fancy that abruptness is the best way of approaching you—how horrid it is! I recollect one man, a sensible man too, who came into the room with—‘Lady Hester, I understand you are a very good judge of a leg; you shall look at mine: see, there are muscles! they say it is an Irish chairman’s; but isn’t it the true antique?’ Another would enter, and begin—‘What a horrid bonnet Lady So-and-so wears; I have just seen her, and I never shall get over it.’ A third would cry, on seeing you—‘Do you know Lord Such-a-one is given over? He has tumbled down from a terrible height, and is so hurt!’—‘Good God! what’s the matter?’—‘Why, don’t you know? He has tumbled from his government:’ and then they fancy that wit.

“Such conversations as we hear in people’s houses are, in my mind, no conversations at all. A man who says, ‘Oh! it’s Sunday; you have been to church, I suppose?’—or, ‘You have not been to church, I see;’ or another, who says, ‘You are in mourning, are you not? what, is the poor Lord So-and-so dead at last?’—and is replied to by, ‘No, I am not in mourning; what makes you think so? is it that you don’t like black?’—all this is perfect nonsense, in my mind. I recollect being once at a party with the Duchess of Rutland, and a man of some note in the world stopped me just as we entered the room. ‘Lady Hester,’ said he, ‘I am anxious to assure you of my entire devotion to Mr. Pitt:’ so far he got on well. ‘I had always—hem—if you—hem—I do assure you, Lady Hester, I have the sincerest regard—hem—G—d d—n me, Lady Hester, there is not a man for whom—hem—I esteem him beyond measure, and, G—d d—n me—hem—if I were asked—hem—I do assure you, Lady Hester—hem and here the poor man, who could not put two ideas together, coming to a stand-still, the Duchess of Rutland, to relieve his embarrassment, helped him out by saying, ‘Lady Hester is perfectly convinced of your sincere attachment to Mr. Pitt’s interests.’ He had a beautiful amber cane, doctor, worth a hundred guineas, that he had sent for from Russia.”

November 16.—Lady Hester Stanhope’s features had a very pallid and almost a ghastly look. The fits of oppression on her lungs grew more frequent, when, from a lying posture, she would start suddenly up in bed and gasp for breath. As she had not been beyond the precincts of her house for some years, I suggested the increased necessity of her getting a little fresh air, by going into her garden at least every day. She said, ‘I will do as you desire, and if you will ride my ass a few times to break her in, and make her gentle, I will try and ride about in the garden: but, as for going outside my own gates, it is impossible; the people would beset me so—you have no idea. They conceal themselves behind hedges, in holes in the rocks, and, whichever way I turn, out comes some one with a complaint or a petition, begging, kissing my feet, and God knows what: I can’t do it. I can ride about my garden, and see to my plants and flowers: but you must break her in well for me; for, if she were to start at a bird or a serpent, I am so weak I should tumble off.’

November 18.—I had taken some physic without consulting her, upon which she launched out into a tirade against English doctors. Impoverishment of the blood is a very favourite theme among people who are well off, and who shut their eyes to the robust health of many a labourer, whose whole sustenance amounts not to the offals of their table. So she began—“What folly you have been guilty of in impoverishing your blood! Look at a stupid Englishman, who takes a dose of salts, rides a trotting horse to get an appetite, eats his dinner, takes a cordial draught to make him agreeable, goes to his party, and then goes to bed:—for worlds, I would not be such a man’s wife! where is he to get a constitution? But the fault is not all their own—part is you doctors: you give the same remedies for everybody. If I look at the mouthpiece of my pipe” (Lady Hester was smoking at the time) “I know it is amber; and, when I know it is amber, I know how to clean it: but, if I did not know that, I might attempt to clean it in some way that would spoil it: so it is with you doctors. Not half of you can distinguish between people’s nijems [stars], and what you do often does more harm than good. The constitution you take in hand you do not well examine; and then how can you apply proper remedies for it?”

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Lady Hester, soon after she went to live with Mr. Pitt, was anxious that her three half-brothers should be removed from their father’s roof, to be under her own guidance: fearing that the line of politics which Earl Stanhope then followed might be injurious to their future welfare and prospects. To this end, Mr. Rice, a trusty person, of whom mention is incidentally made elsewhere, brought them furtively to town in a post-chaise, and they afterwards remained under Mr. Pitt’s protection until his death.

[8] Whether Lady Hester Stanhope was justified in entertaining expectations of the G. property and title, I am unable to say; but having by me a copy of the grant to the first Lord Chatham, it is inserted here as conclusive against her ladyship, as far as regards the pension. The circumstances were these:—the day following his (then Mr. Pitt’s) resignation of office, a pension of £3,000 a-year was settled on himself and two other lives, and at the same time a title was conferred on his lady and her issue. He resigned office Oct. 9th, 1761, and the next published Gazette announced all these transactions. The notification ran thus:—That a warrant be prepared for granting to the Lady Hester Pitt, his wife, a Barony of Great Britain, by the name, style, and title of Baroness Chatham, to her heirs male, and also to confer upon the said William Pitt an annuity of £3,000 sterling during his own life, that of Lady Hester Pitt, and her son, John Pitt. Shortly after his death, May 11th, 1778, His Majesty sent a message to the Commons thus:—George R.—His Majesty having considered the address of this house, that he will be graciously pleased to confer some signal and lasting mark of his royal favour on the family of the late William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and being desirous to comply as speedily as possible with the request of his faithful Commons, has given directions for granting to the present Earl of Chatham, and to the heirs of the body of the late William Pitt, to whom the Earldom of Chatham may descend, an annuity of £4,000 per annum, payable out of the Civil List revenue; but his Majesty, not having it in his power to extend the effects of the said grant beyond the term of his own life, recommends it to the house to consider of a proper method of extending, securing, and annexing the same to the Earldom of Chatham in such a manner as shall be thought most effectual to the benefit of the family of the said William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.

Signed “G. R.”

On May 20th, in the House of Commons, Mr. Townsend moved in a committee on the king’s message—“That the sum of £4,000 be granted to his Majesty out of the Aggregate Fund, to commence from 5th July, 1778, and be settled in the most beneficial manner upon the present Earl of Chatham and the heirs of the body of the late William Pitt, to whom the Earldom of Chatham shall descend.” The resolution was agreed to without opposition, and a bill was ordered to be brought in thereon, which passed the Commons without debate.

[9] “The second day of the king’s illness, and when he was at his worst, the P. of W. went in the evening to a concert at Lady Hamilton’s, and there told Calonne (the rascally French ex-minister) ‘Savez vous, Monsieur de Calonne, que mon pere est aussi fou que jamais.’”—Diaries and Correspondence, v. 4, p. 20.

[10] Audi alteram partem is a maxim that holds good wherever accusations are levelled against individuals, illustrious or mean. Lady Hester may have maligned the Prince from personal pique or from some other cause; and, whilst she placed his foibles and failings in a conspicuous point of view, may have studiously concealed the good qualities which he possessed. Sir Walter Scott, who read men’s characters if any body could, has left upon record a very different opinion of him; and, unless we suppose that Sir Walter had motives of his own for eulogizing him, we must place his testimony in the balance against Lady Hester’s spite. In a letter, he describes George IV. as—“A sovereign, whose gentle and generous disposition, and singular manners, and captivating conversation, rendered him as much the darling of private society, as his heart felt interest in the general welfare of the country: and the constant and steady course of wise measures, by which he raised his reign to such a state of triumphal prosperity, made him justly delighted in by his subjects.”—Letter from Sir W. Scott, p. 65, vol. ii., Mem. of Sir Wm. Knighton, Bart.—Paris edit. Sir Walter could not have written worse prose if he had tried. It shows how difficult it is to string words together on a subject where perhaps the convictions of the heart were not altogether in unison with the sentiments expressed.

[11] Louisa, in her own right Countess of Mansfield, is here meant.

CHAPTER IV.

Conscription in Syria—Inviolability of consular houses—Panic and flight of the people of Sayda—Protection afforded by Lady Hester—Story of a boy—Mustafa the barber—Cruelty to mothers of Conscripts—Conscription in the villages—Lady Hester’s dream—Inhabitants of Sayda mulcted—Lady Hester’s opinion of negresses—Severity necessary in Turkey—Case of Monsieur Danna—Captain Y.—Mustafa Pasha’s cruelty.

November 18, 1837.—The conscription for Ibrahim Pasha’s army, called the nizàm or regular troops, was going on at this time, and created much distress in the towns and villages. Forced levies were unknown previous to the conquests of that ambitious prince; as it was customary for the pashas to keep in their pay mercenary troops, composed chiefly of Albanians, a nation that for some centuries had sent its hordes into different parts of the Turkish empire, under the guidance of enterprising chieftains, to seek military service. There were also Bosnians, Kûrds, and some Mograbýns or Moors: these, with the Janissaries or standing militia, had exempted the inhabitants in general from enlistment; and, although the martial and turbulent disposition of the Mohametans had frequently manifested itself in their provincial insurrections and in the petty contentions between neighbouring chieftains, yet a man always went to the camp from choice and from the hopes of booty, and quitted it when tired of the service. But Ibrahim Pasha, among the innovations which he found it necessary or politic to introduce for the furtherance of his father’s views, saw that his whole dependance must be on the adoption of a conscription, after the manner of France and other European states. He had already drained Egypt, in this manner, of all her able-bodied youths; and, to supply the constant waste of men carried off by war and disease, he had, since his first taking possession of Syria, made an annual levy after harvest time.

At first, the idle, vagabond, thievish, and ardent part of the population supplied the numbers he required; and, as fast as they could be collected, they were shipped off to Egypt; where, marched to the Hedjàz and to distant wars, the major portion of them left their bones, whilst some gained rank and lucrative situations, and a few returned to tell the story of their exploits. For with Ibrahim there was no defined term of service; once a soldier, every man continued so until death or desertion broke the chain. In the same way the Egyptian conscripts were sent into Syria: so that no sympathy, in either case, existed between the troops and the people amongst whom they were quartered, which acted as a direct check upon the spirit of insurrection.

So far, everything had gone on peaceably, and the quiet portion of the inhabitants rejoiced in seeing their neighbourhood cleared of such troublesome rabble. But latterly the conscription had begun to fall on the families of shopkeepers, tradesmen, small farmers, and the like: and it will be seen that, of all the changes introduced by Ibrahim Pasha into the government of the country, the conscription became the most odious.

The first intimation people had of the levies this year was one evening, when, as the inhabitants of Sayda were coming out of their mosques, gangs of soldiers suddenly appeared at the doors, and laid hands on all the young men. At the same moment, similar measures had been taken at the coffee-houses, and nothing was to be seen but young fellows dragged through the streets, or running off in all directions to secrete themselves in some friend’s house, stable, vault, or the like. The city gates were closed, and there was no outlet for the fugitives: but Sayda, although walled in, has many houses with windows looking on the fields; and from these, during the night, some let themselves down and escaped to the gardens, or villages, or to Mount Lebanon. The next day the city wore the appearance of a deserted place: the shops were closed, and consternation reigned in every face. The panic became general.

It is customary in Turkish towns to consider consular residences as inviolable; a point on which, from apprehension of tumults and for personal safety, the consuls have ever been very tenacious. France possesses, from a long date, a khan or factory-house in Sayda, wherein the subjects of that nation reside. It is a square building with one gateway, containing a spacious quadrangle, surrounded by vaulted warehouses, and, over these, commodious habitations with a handsome corridor in front. It may be compared to a quadrangle of a college at the Universities. To this khan many of the young men fled, being admitted out of compassion, and in some cases for a consideration of a more tangible nature.

The number of conscripts for Sayda, as was made known afterwards, had been rated at one hundred and eighty. When the first press was over, the government found the quota had not yet been half supplied: but the secret of the deficiency was kept, and it was given out that no more would be wanted. A smiling face was assumed by the commandant and his staff, and every expression of sympathy was in their mouths, to demonstrate the cessation of all farther oppressive measures. By calming the people’s fears in this way, information was obtained as to those concealed in the French khan, and scouts were sent about the country to get tidings of the fugitives.

In the mean time, the caverns and excavations, once the beautiful sepulchres of the ancient Sidonians, in which the environs of Sayda abound, were converted into hiding-places, all well known to the peasantry and gardeners: but no soul was found capable of betraying the fugitives. Some were concealed by the Christian peasants in cellars, although the punishment of detection was a terrible bastinadoing. At the end of about a fortnight, when everything seemed calm again, all of a sudden the fathers of those who were known to be in the French khan were seized in their dwellings and shops, and brought before the motsellem or mayor. They were told that their sons’ hiding-places were known, and that means would be resorted to for forcing them to come out, if they, the fathers, did not immediately use their paternal authority to compel them. Anxious to save their children, they strenuously denied any knowledge of their places of concealment. Then it was that the dreadful work of bastinadoing began. From the windows of the east side of the khan was visible the open court in the front of the motsellem’s gate, where, according to the Eastern custom, he often sat to administer justice or injustice, as the case might be, and through those windows the sons might behold their aged fathers, writhing with agony under that cruel punishment, until pain and anguish extorted the appeal of, “Come forth, for mercy’s sake! and save a father’s life.” Some yielded to the call, and some thought only of their own safety.

As happens always in all Turkish matters, much bribery arose from this state of tribulation. Nobody in these countries is inaccessible to a bribe. Many were the men in office who received gratifications of vast sums to favour the exemption or escape of individuals. Substitutes could hardly be got, even at the enormous premium of 10,000 piasters each, or £100 sterling; such a dread had the natives of being expatriated and subjected to military discipline! for in Ibrahim Pasha’s army the drill is indeed a terrible ordeal. There, inadvertency, slowness of apprehension, or obstinacy, is not punished by a reprimand, a day’s imprisonment, or double drill; but the poor recruit is, at the moment, thrown on the ground, and lacerated without mercy by the korbàsh.

Among the fugitives, there were two young men, the sons of a respectable shopkeeper, who, during twenty years, had been employed, more or less, by Lady Hester: these two fled for refuge to Jôon. No notice was taken of the circumstance by the government; and, after remaining about six weeks under her protection, they returned to Sayda, where they remained unmolested. Her ladyship’s servants also enjoyed an exemption from the press; and, had she chosen to avail herself of the dilemma in which these unfortunate young men were placed, she might easily have ensured their servitude without pay, by the mere threat of turning them adrift: in which case they would have been compelled to remain upon any conditions she might have thought proper to propose.

An old Turk presented himself, one day, at my gate with his son, a boy about fourteen years of age, and, with earnest entreaties, begged me to take the son as my servant, no matter in what capacity, and for nothing. I asked him how he could be apprehensive for a stripling, too young to carry a musket; but he told me that his age was no safeguard. “Alas!” said he, “these unprincipled Egyptians will lay hold of him; for there are other kinds of service besides carrying a gun: you do not know them as well as we do.” I was very unwillingly obliged to refuse the man’s request; for how could a stranger violate the laws of a country in which he resided, any more than he could harbour a deserter in France, for example, where he would be brought to justice for so doing? But some of the agents of European powers do not scruple, in these parts, to enrich themselves by affording protection to Turkish deserters, contrary to the edicts of a sovereign prince, and then set up, as an excuse, the want of civilization in Mahometan countries.

A woman, the widow of Shaykh Omar ed dyn, came also on a donkey to beg Lady Hester’s intercession with the commandant for one of her sons, a lad, who had been pressed in the streets. Lady Hester sent out word to her that she could not mix herself up in the business, and desired me to give her 500 piasters—I suppose to help her to buy him off. This son, Lady Hester told me, was a beautiful boy, and that she once had him in her house, but could not keep him—he was too handsome! * * * A sad picture this of the morals of the Syrian Turks, and yet a true one!

November 20.—After a succession of sunny days, finer and warmer than an English summer, the wind got up at the change of the moon, and it blew a gale. The effect of gloomy weather in climates naturally so genial as that of Syria is perhaps more impressive than in one like that of England, where clouds and fogs are so common. I was therefore in a fit humour to listen to the melancholy stories of her ladyship’s secretary, Mr. Michael Abella, who had been absent a day or two to see his father and mother at Sayda. He told me that the press for recruits continued with unabated severity, and that the military commandant and motsellem were resorting to measures, which, I thank God, are unknown in England! From imprisoning and bastinadoing fathers, with a view to make them produce their children, a measure which had already induced several families to abandon their homes, they now proceeded to bastinado the neighbours and acquaintances of the fugitives, in order to wring from them the secret of their hiding-places.

The reader is already in some degree familiar with the name of Mustafa, the barber, well-known in Sayda for his skill in shaving, phlebotomizing, and curing sores and wounds. He had four or five sons, and he had taken his donkey and ridden up to Jôon to beg of Lady Hester Stanhope to admit one or two of them into her household, in order to save them from the conscription. In the interim, two others had taken refuge in the French khan, and one had fled to Tyr; but the father said he expected hourly to be seized and put to the torture, if some means were not afforded him for protecting his children. “A letter from the Syt mylady to the commandant,” added Mustafa, “would be sufficient to save my two boys who are in the French khan, and it is so easy for her to write it.” Lady Hester, being ill, could not see Mustafa, and I went to her and stated his supplication. She considered the matter over, and, as Mustafa was rather a favourite, she said at first—“I think I will write to the commandant; for poor Mustafa will go crazy if his children are taken away from him. I have only to say that I wish the commandant to bakshýsh” (make a present of) “these boys to me, and I know he will do it:” then, reflecting a little while, she altered her mind. “No, doctor,” says she, “it will not do: I must not do anything in the face of the laws of the country; and, besides, I shall have all the fathers and mothers in Sayda up here. Go, tell him so.” I did, and Mustafa returned very much dispirited to Sayda.

He had scarcely got back to his shop, when, as he had anticipated, he was summoned before the motsellem, and questioned about his children. With an assumed air of cheerfulness and submission, he answered that they were within call, and, if necessary, he would fetch them immediately. The motsellem, by way of precaution, was about to send a guard of a couple of soldiers, to see that no trick was played him; but Mustafa, laughing, exclaimed—“Oh! don’t be afraid of me: I shan’t run off. That man” (pointing to a small merchant of his acquaintance standing by)—“that man will be bail for my appearance.” The man nodded his head, and said—“There is no fear of Mâalem Mustafa: I will be responsible for him.”

Mustafa went towards his house, and, as soon as he was out of sight, looking round to make sure that he was not followed, he hurried to one of the outlets of the town, entered a lane between the gardens, and, mounting again on his own donkey, which he had left with a friend in case of such an emergency, rode off. Not appearing within the expected time, search was made for him, and, when he was not to be found, the man, who so incautiously vouched for his reappearance, was seized, bastinadoed, and thrown into gaol. Mustafa, in the mean time, had taken the road to Jôon,—not to Lady Hester’s residence, but to Dayr el Mkhallas, the monastery, where he had a good friend in the abbot, and was immediately sheltered in a comfortable cell. Nor did he, when he heard what cruelties had been inflicted on his bail, move one inch from his retreat, but there remained for about six weeks, until, by negociations with the commandant and by the sacrifice of a good round sum, he was informed that his children were safe, and that he might return unmolested.

The secretary told me that, in some cases, mothers were suspended by the hair of their head, and whipped, to make them confess where their children were concealed. Surely such horrors are enough to make men hold these sanguinary tyrants in abhorrence, who, whatever their pretended advances towards civilization may be, never suffer it to soften the barbarity of their natures. Of civilization, they have borrowed conscription, custom-houses, quarantines, ardent spirit and wine-drinking, prostitution, shop licensing, high taxation, and some other of our doubtful marks of superiority; but whatever is really excellent in an advanced state of society they have forgotten to inquire about. The secretary added that, when down at Sayda, he had seen a lad, nursed in the lap of luxury, the only child of respectable parents, at drill on the parade outside of the town, with two soldiers who never quitted him. The drilling was enforced by cuts of the korbàsh. So long as the recruits remain in Sayda, their parents are allowed to supply them with a meal and other little comforts; but, when transported to Egypt, and perhaps to the Hedjàz, they are exposed to hardships unknown to European troops. Their pay is fifteen piasters (3s. 2d. English) a month.

After the expiration of two or three weeks, the shaykhs or head-men of the villages in Mount Lebanon, received orders to levy their contingent of recruits, and pretty much the same scenes were acted over again. From the village of Jôon eight conscripts were required; for, although the population might be five hundred persons, there were but few Mahometan families. No sooner had the estafette, who brought the order, alighted at the Shaykh’s door, than the mussulman peasants to a man seemed to guess what its contents were, and every one who thought himself liable to serve made off to the forests. Among the lads put down on the roll were two, the brothers of Fatôom and Sâada, Lady Hester’s maids. The girls fell on their knees, kissed her feet and the hem of her robe, and prayed her, for God’s sake, to save them. Lady Hester returned the same answer she had done to Mustafa, the barber, and to the other applicants, that she could not act contrary to the laws of the country, and that they must take their chance.

Three or four days had elapsed, when, quitting my house in the morning to go to Lady Hester’s, I found that all her people were full of an extraordinary dream she had had. She had seen in her vision a man with a white beard, who had conducted her among the ravines of Mount Lebanon to a place, where, in a cavern, lay two youths apparently in a trance, and had told her to lead them away to her residence. She attempted to raise them, and at the same moment the earth opened, and she awoke. As soon as I saw Lady Hester, she recounted to me her dream to the same effect, but with many more particulars. Being in the habit of hearing strange things of this kind from her, I thought nothing of it, although I well knew there was something intended by it, as she never spoke without a motive.

Next morning I saw, as I passed the porter’s lodge, two peasant lads sitting in it, and, as soon as I got to Lady Hester’s room, she asked me if I had observed them.—“Isn’t it wonderful, doctor,” said Lady Hester, “that I should have had exactly the same dream two nights following, and the second time so strongly impressed on my mind, that I was sure some of it would turn out true: and so it has. For this very morning, long before daylight, I had Logmagi called, and, describing to him the way he was to go in the mountain until he should come to a wild spot which I painted to him, I sent him off; and, sure enough, he found those two lads you saw, concealed, not in a cavern, but in a tree, just where I had directed him to go.

“They are two runaway conscripts, and, although I know nothing of them, yet I seem to feel that God directed me to bring them here. Poor lads! did you observe whether they looked pale? they must be in want of nourishment; for the search that is going on everywhere after deserters is very hot. Logmagi himself had no very pleasant duty to perform; for, if they had mistaken him for a man in search of them, one against two in the heart of the mountain ran some risk of his life. You know, one deserter the other day wounded three soldiers who attempted to take him, and another killed two out of five, and, although taken, was not punished by the Pasha, who exchanged willingly an athletic gladiator, who had proved his fighting propensities, for two cowards.”

These lads, whom Lady Hester pretended not to know, were the two brothers of Fatôom and Sâada: they were put into a room in an inner enclosure, where they had comfortable quarters assigned them, and were kept for two months hid from observation; by which means they escaped the conscription of that year. At the end of their term, they were one day turned out, told they might go home in safety, and warned that, if ever they made their appearance near the house, they would be flogged. Such were Lady Hester’s eccentric ways; and just as they were wasting their breath in protestations of gratitude, they were frightened out of their senses. No doubt, the reason was that, as from their long stay in the premises, they were more or less acquainted with every locality, it might be that they had formed plans to carry off stolen goods, which Lady Hester thus had the foresight to frustrate. She never told me that her dream was an invention, but I believe that it was.

In addition to the loss of a son, or a husband, or a brother, which the dozen families of Jôon (for there were no more) had to complain of, these same families were taxed at the rate of one, two, or three hundred piasters each, in order to furnish the equipment of the soldiers draughted from among them. For, under the pretext of sending off each recruit with a good kit and with a little money in his pocket, a benevolence tax was invented, the greatest part of which, after the parings of the collectors, went to the Pasha’s treasury, and the half-naked recruit was left to take his chance. Oh! that a European soldier could see what these men are compelled to live on—how they sleep, how they are flogged—and how they are left to die!—and yet suicide is unknown among them.

The bastinado in Sayda was succeeded by mulcts. An order was published by the Pasha, that those whose sons had concealed themselves, or did not appear by a certain day, should be taxed collectively 1,300 purses, a sum more than enough to pay for substitutes. An appeal was made to Ibrahim Pasha to lessen the fine, but the result never came to my knowledge.

November 19.—I had taken to my house to read the book that Sir Gore Ouseley had sent Lady Hester Stanhope, and I related to her the anecdote of the old woman and the copper dish.[12] This threw a gleam of satisfaction over her countenance. “Ah!” said she, and she made a sigh of pleasurable feeling, “these are the people I like; that’s my sort: but the people now-a-days, who call themselves gentlemen, and don’t know how to blow their nose!—when the first peer of the realm will go about bragging what a trick he has played some poor woman whom he has seduced! Cursed be the hour that ever the name of gentleman came into the language! I have seen hedgers and ditchers at my father’s, who talked twice as good sense as half the fine gentlemen now-a-days—a pack of fellows, that do little else than eat, drink, and sleep. Can one exist with such persons as these? or is it to be supposed that God can tolerate such brutalities?”

I sat by, as I was accustomed to do, on such occasions, mute; knowing that a word uttered at that moment would only increase her irritation, instead of appeasing it. She went on: “And whilst you show no more sensibility than that wall, here am I, a poor dying creature” (and then she wept so that it was piteous to hear her), “half killed by these nasty black beasts. Last night, instead of coming refreshed out of my bath, soothed by a gentle perspiration, I was drier than ever, with my mouth parched, my skin parched, and feebler than I was yesterday. But they will all suffer for it; not here, perhaps, but in the other world: for God will not see a poor miserable creature trampled under foot as I have been.”

As she grew a little calm, I expressed my regret to see her so annoyed and tormented by her servants. The conversation then turned on blacks: and I asked—“Are they then never susceptible of feeling: can kind treatment never work on their sensibility?”—“Doctor,” answered Lady Hester, “they have neither one nor the other: it is a bit of black skin, which the people of the country say you must work on with the korbàsh, and with nothing else. I recollect an aga, who told me that he had a black slave, who, when he first bought her, one day got hold of his poniard, and seemed as if she was going to stab him with it. He started up, seized his sabre, and gave her a cut or two; then, with a switch, beat her pretty handsomely. From that day she became fond of him, faithful, and so attached, that, when he wanted to sell her, she would not be sold, but always contrived that the contract should be broken by her swearing she would kill herself, throw herself over the terrace, or something, that made the buyer refuse to take her.

“I recollect another story. There were five European travellers coming down the banks of the Nile on horseback, when they saw an aga, who was sitting in the open air, lay hold of a black woman by the hair of her head, throw her down, and flog her most unmercifully with the korbàsh. One of the party was a German count, or something, who, being what you call a humane man, said he must interfere; but the others told him he had better not. However, he did: and what was the consequence? why, the woman immediately jumped up, called him an impudent rascal, slapped his face with her slipper, hooted him, and followed the party until she fairly frightened them by her violence.

“No, doctor, they do not like mild people. They always say they want no old hens, but a jigger” (I believe her ladyship meant some ferocious animal) “for their master. As for what you say, that the common people of this country stand in respect of nobody, I can tell you that they do. You should have seen the Shaykh Beshýr, how they respected him. When I was at his palace, I recollect, one day, one of his secretaries brought in a bag of money. ‘Is it all here?’ said the Shaykh, with a terrible, cross, frowning face. ‘It is, your felicity,’ said the man. ‘Very well,’ said the Shaykh, still with the same fierce countenance; and I asked him what he put on such a severe look for to a very pleasing-looking man. ‘Why,’ answered he, ‘if I did not, I should be robbed past imagination: if I said to him, I am much obliged to you, sir; you have given yourself a great deal of trouble on my account, and the like compliments, he would go away and chuckle in his own mind to think his peculations were not suspected; but now he will go, and say to himself, I will bet an adli some one has told the Shaykh of the five hundred piasters that were left for me at my house: I must send directly, and desire they may be returned—or, he knows about the tobacco that was brought me by the peasant; I had better get rid of it; and so on. Their peculations are past all bounds, and they must be kept under with a rod of iron.’

“There was Danna, the poor old Frenchman, who lost his trunk with all his doubloons in it: do you think he would ever have found them, if the Emir Beshýr had not sent Hamâady to that village about a league off—what do you call it?—where the robbery was committed? He assembled all the peasants, men and women, and he told them—‘Now, my friends, Monsieur Danna does not want anybody to be punished, if he can help it; therefore, you have only to produce the money, and nothing farther will be said: for the money was lost here, and some of you must know where it is.’ To see what protestations of innocence there were, what asseverations! and from the women more than the men. So Hamâady, finding that talking was of no use, heated his red-hot irons and his copper skull caps, and produced his instruments of torture; and, seeing that the women were more vociferous than the men, he selected one on whom strong suspicions had fallen, and drove a spike under her finger-nails. At the first thrust, she screamed out—‘Let me off! let me off! and I will acknowledge all.’ She then immediately confessed—would you believe it?—that the curate’s son had robbed Danna, and she had shared the money with him.

“Now, tell me, was it best that the old Frenchman should die of starvation, or that the rascally thief of a woman, who had induced the curate’s son to commit the robbery, should be punished, as a warning to others? If such severe punishments were not used among them, we should not sleep safe in our beds. How well is it known that they have with pickaxes opened a roof, and thrown in lighted straw to suffocate people, that they might rob in security.

“I recollect once, when Captain Y. was here, I was showing him the garden; and, seeing some lettuces which were badly planted, he said to me, ‘That’s not the way to plant lettuces: they should be so and so.’—‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I have told the gardener so a hundred times, and he will never listen to me.’—‘Oh! oh!’ said he, ‘won’t he? Let me bring a boatswain’s mate to him, and I’ll soon see whether he will or not?—‘You are very good,’ was my answer; ‘but then I should lose your company for half a day, and I had rather have no lettuces than do that.

“When I first came to this country, you know perfectly well that I never behaved otherwise than with the greatest kindness to servants. You ask me why I don’t now try gentle measures with them, rewarding the good, and merely dismissing the idle and vicious: my reply is, I did so for years, until I found they abused my forbearance in the grossest manner. Do you think it would frighten the rest, were I to turn away one or two? no such thing. Why, upon one occasion, four of them, after they had received their wages, and had each got a present of new shawls, new girdles, and new kombázes, all went off together, clothes, wages and all, in the night. It is by degrees I am become what I am; and, only after repeated trials and proofs of the inefficiency of everything but severity, that I am grown so indifferent, that I do nothing but scold and abuse them.

“But you talk of cruelty: it is such men as Mustafa Pasha, who was one of those who besieged Acre when Abdallah Pasha was firmanlee” (proscribed), “that you should call cruel; he was indeed a sanguinary tyrant. Doctor, he made a noise sometimes like the low growl of a tiger, and his people knew then that blood must flow. It was his custom, when the fit was on him, to send for some poor wretch from prison, and kill him with his own hand. He would then grow calm, smoke his pipe, and seem for a time quieted. But he was a shrewd man, and a clever pasha. He wrote with his own hand (which pashas never do, except on particular occasions) a letter to the Shaykh Beshýr, desiring him to pay marked attention to me. The Shaykh was highly flattered with the distinction shown him.”

The recollection of the Pasha’s civility and the Shaykh Beshýr’s letter recalled her thoughts to what she had proposed to do at the beginning of the evening, which was to write an answer to Sir Gore Ouseley, and to thank the Oriental Translation Fund Society for their present. This was done in a letter from which the following are extracts:—

To the Right Hon. Sir Gore Ouseley, Bart.

Djoun, on Mount Lebanon,
November 20, 1837.

Forgotten by the world, I cannot feel otherwise than much flattered by the mark of attention which it has pleased the society of learned men to honour me with. I must therefore beg leave, in expressing my gratitude, to return them my sincere thanks. You must not suppose that I am the least of an Arabic scholar, for I can neither read nor write one word of that language, and am (without affectation) a great dunce upon some subjects. Having lived part of my life with the greatest philosophers and politicians of the age, I have been able to make this observation, that all of them, however they may dispute and ingeniously reason upon abstruse subjects, have, in moments of confidence, candidly declared that we can go no farther. Here we must stop—all is problematical: therefore I have wished, however it may appear presumptuous, to go farther and remove some of these stumbling-blocks, not by erudition, but by trusting to some happy accident.

It is extraordinary that many of this nature have occurred to me during my residence in the East. First, many proofs of the fallacy of history; next, the denial of many curious facts, which are even scouted as gross superstitions, and are pretended to be doubted, because no one knows how to account for them, but which real knowledge can clearly substantiate. Then there is a gap in history which ought to be filled up with the reign of Malek Sayf (a second King Solomon), and his family, and after him with that of Hamzy, the sort of Messiah of the Druzes, who is expected to return in another form. I once saw a work, which clearly proved the Pyramids to be antediluvian, and that Japhet was aware the deluge was to be partial, as he placed that which was most valuable to him in another quarter of the world.

The Bedoween Arabs may be divided into two distinct classes, original Arabs, and the descendants of Ismael, whose daughter married the ninth descendant of the great Katàn, out of which germ sprang the famous tribe of the Koreish, subdivided into many tribes, and which are a mixture of Hebrew blood. One of the most famous tribes was that of the Beni Hasheniz, from which spring the Boshnàk and the Beni Omeyn, the Irish, always famed for the beauty of their women. The Scotch are likewise Koreish—the nobility descending from the King Al Yem (and his court), father of Gebailuata, who headed the 50,000 horse, when they took their flight from the Hedjáz, after a quarrel with the Caliph Omar. They resided some time in Syria; but, when the town of Gebeili became inadequate to contain their numbers, many took themselves off to the Emperor Herculius,[13] towards Antioch and Tarsus.

You must look over the Scotch titles and names of persons and places, and you will see how many there are, who, it is plain to perceive, are of Arabic origin; and you will soon observe the relation they bear either to circumstances, former employments, propensities, or tastes.

You cannot expect, as when a Frenchman remains forty years in England, and can neither pronounce nor spell a name, that, during such a lapse of time, many of these names should not have undergone changes; but their origin is yet evident.

The Duke of Leinster’s motto (Croom Aboo—his father’s vineyards) has a grand signification, alluding to the most learned of works, of which only two copies exist, and which was not well understood even by the great Ulemas until about five hundred years afterwards, when Shaikh Mohadeen of the Beni Taya found out the key.

If the philosopher of chance should have presumed to have offered a little heterogeneous information to the learned, you, sir, must forgive me. Your star denotes you to be of admirable good taste and great perspicuity, and therefore well calculated to investigate the subjects I have had the honour to lay before you.

You will forgive me for having used the pen of another, but my sight and state of health will not at all times allow of my writing a long letter.

I salute all the philosophers with respect,
Hester Lucy Stanhope.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] See the History of the Temple of Jerusalem, translated from the Arabic by the Rev. Mr. Reynolds, p. 403.

[13] Heraclius?

CHAPTER V.

Rainy season—Lady Hester’s despondency—Her Turkish costume—Turkish servants—Terror inspired by Lady Hester in her servants—Visit of Messieurs Poujolat and Boutés—Lady Hester’s inability to entertain strangers—Her dejected spirits and bad health.

November 24.—Still rain, rain! The courtyards were deep in mud and puddles, and the men-servants walked about in wooden clogs, such as are worn in breweries. The flat roofs, which cover the houses in most parts of Syria, are made of a cement of mortar and fine gravel, in appearance like an asphaltum causeway. In the hot months fissures show themselves; and it rarely happens, when winter comes on, that, during the first heavy rains, the wet does not filter through. Lady Hester, therefore, had to suffer, as well as all the house, from this annoyance, hardly bearable when a person is in health, but extremely distressing and even dangerous in sickness. For some days past pans had been standing on the bedroom floor to catch the droppings, and it continued to rain on. The sloppy communications from door to door, where every door opens into a courtyard, gave likewise a damp to the apartments only supportable in a climate as mild as that of Syria. Snow had covered the upper chain of Mount Lebanon in great abundance, and the wind blew furiously. Everybody was out of humour, and many of the servants were labouring under bad coughs and colds: but the women, notwithstanding, always moved about the house with naked feet. It was a wonder to see how, with coughs that might be heard from one courtyard to another, they constantly went barefoot, and yet got well; and a servant, if sent to the village, was sure to leave his shoes at the porter’s lodge, and, drawing his sherwáls or trousers up above his knees, to set off as light as a deer through the pelting storm, careless of wet, if he could but cover his head.

I saw Lady Hester about two in the day: she was in low spirits, lying in her bed with the window and door open from a sense of suffocation which had just before seized her.

“Would you believe it,” said she, as I entered, “those beasts would leave me to die here before they came to my assistance! and, if I happen to fall asleep, there is not one would cover my shoulders to prevent my taking cold.”

Poor Lady Hester! thought I, the contrast between your early days and your present sufferings is almost enough to break your heart. So I abused the maids handsomely; and then, being satisfied with the warmth of my expressions, and having vented her own anger, she began to talk composedly.

I remained until near dinner-time, and, after dinner, went to her again. She observed that the nights were dreadfully long, and that she should be obliged to me if I would read to her. Her stock of books, and mine too, was very small, and, after naming a few, which did not please her, I recollected she had asked me once if I had by me a heathen mythology, and she immediately fixed on that. So, writing on a slip of paper to my daughter to send me hers, Lady Hester said, “First let me order a pipe for you:” for this was usually the preliminary to all business or conversation. Every sitting was opened with a pipe, and generally terminated with one; as her ladyship would say, “But, before you go, doctor, you must smoke one pipe more.” When the book came, she desired me to turn to the part about Jupiter Ammon, and it will be seen farther on why she did so. After a page or two, she began to talk of the coming of the Mahadi, and the conversation was prolonged far into the night. She afterwards ordered tea—for I now drank tea with her almost every evening—and I then returned to my house, covered with my thick capote, which, in the short distance of a few hundred yards, could hardly save me from being wet through.

November 25.—The annual fast of the Mahometans, called Ramazàn, had begun on the preceding day. It is customary for persons of rank to make presents of clothes and other things to their dependants, during the lunar month that the Ramazàn lasts, in order that they may appear dressed up in finery on the first day of the succeeding new moon, at the holyday of the Byràm, which succeeds it, as Easter-day does Lent among Christians. Lady Hester, who never was behindhand in beneficence, made it a rule to clothe all her Mahometan servants anew at this season, as she did all her Christian ones on New Year’s Day or at Easter. New capotes, pelisses, sherwáls, shirts, shifts, turbans, gowns, &c., were always bought previous to the time; and, the best being given to the most deserving, the worst to the least so, with none at all to the lazy and worthless, some sort of activity was observable in their service previous to the expected time. But the objects they coveted once in their possession, they soon relapsed into their customary sloth.

Some of these articles of dress were lying on the floor, Lady Hester having had them brought for her to look at. She said to me, “You must take home one of these abahs[14] to show to your family. You must tell them,” continued she, “that once I had all my servants clothed in such abahs as that: but they played me such tricks, I have given it up. Some sold them; and, on one occasion, four of them marched off within twenty-four hours after I had dressed them from head to foot, and I never saw them again: isn’t it abominable? At the time that I dressed them so well, and rode out myself with my bornôos, crimson and gold, the gold lace being everywhere where silk tape is generally put, I did not owe a shilling in the world.”

“Once,” she continued, “when riding my beautiful Arabian mare Asfoor, near a place called Gezýn, in that crimson bornôos, with a richly-embroidered dress under it, and on my crimson velvet saddle, I happened to approach an encampment of the Pasha’s troops. Several benát el hawa” (street ladies), “who were living with the soldiers, ran across a field to come up with me, thinking I was some young bey or binbashi. Every time, just as they got near, I quickened my horse’s pace, that they might not see I was a woman: at last, two fairly came and seized my knees, to make me turn and look at them. But what was their confusion (for such women are not so hardened as in Europe) when they saw I had no beard or mustachios, and was one of their own sex!”

Lady Hester related this droll adventure to me more than once, to show, I believe, what a distinguished and real Turkish appearance she made on horseback, which was perfectly true: but to return to the servants.

A Turk for work is little better than a brute animal: he moves about nimbly, when roused by vociferation and threats, and squats down like a dog the moment he is left to himself. England produces no type of the Syrian serving-man. He sets about his work as a task that is given to him, and, when it is over, sits down immediately to smoke his pipe and to gossip, or seeks a snug place near at hand, and goes to sleep. You call him, and set him to do something else, and the same practice follows. The next day you expect he will, of his own accord, recommence what was shown to him on the preceding one; but no such thing: you have to tell him over again, and so every day. He is a thief from habit, and a liar of the most brazen stamp, as no shame is ever attached to detection. In plausible language, protestations of honesty and fidelity, he has no superior; and, if beaten or reviled, he will smother his choler, nay, kiss the hand that has chastised him, but waits a fit opportunity for vengeance, and carefully weighs kicks against coppers. He is generally so servile as to make you bear with his worthlessness, even though you despise him; and, when your anger appears to threaten him with the loss of his place and is at the highest, he smooths it down with an extraordinary day’s activity, making you hope that a reformation has taken place in him: but it is all delusion. And think not that you, a Christian, can raise your hand against the meanest servant, if a Mahometan: when you would have him beaten, you must employ another Mahometan to do it, who will, however, lay on to your heart’s content.

What has been said above applies to the menials of towns and cities. Of another class of servants taken from the villages, Lady Hester used to say, “I have tried the Syrian fellahs” (peasants) “for twenty years as servants, and I ought to know pretty well what they are fit for. It is my opinion that, for hard work, lifting heavy things, going with mules and asses, for foot messengers across the country, and for such business, you may make something of them, but for nothing else. The women are idle, and prone to thieving; and it is impossible to teach them any European usages.”

One day, in walking through the back yard, I observed two stakes, about six feet high and sharply pointed, stuck deep and firmly into the ground, which had before escaped my notice. I inquired what they were for, but got no satisfactory answer, the dairyman, to whom I addressed myself, using the reply so common throughout the East, Ma aref (I don’t know); for no people in the world have so quick a scent of the danger of being brought into trouble by professing to know what is inquired about as the Orientals. A Jew, in a street in Turkey, and a Christian likewise, is sure to answer the most simple question by an “I don’t know”—“I have not heard”—“I have not seen;” for he fears what that question may lead to, and that, if he knows a little, a bastinadoing may be resorted to to make him know more: so I afterwards asked Lady Hester. “Oh!” replied she, “I’ll tell you how those stakes came there: I had forgotten all about them. One day, at the time they were robbing me right and left, I ordered the carpenter to make two stakes, such as people are impaled upon, and to erect them in the back yard. I spoke not to any one why or wherefore I had given the order; but if you had seen the fright that pervaded the house, and for weeks how well the maids behaved, you would then have known, as I do, that it is only by such terrible means that these abominable jades can be kept under. From that time to this it appears the stakes have remained; for, as I never go into that yard, I had forgotten them: but since they are there still, there let them be.”

Thus Lady Hester was dying in a struggle to cure her men and maids of theft, lying, and carelessness, whilst they ended the month with the same indifference to honesty, truth, and cleanliness, as they began it.

Each one was a sycophant to those who had authority over him; each one distrusted his comrade. Lady Hester might say with truth, “If I did not act so, they would cut your throat and mine:” but why did she keep such wretches about her? why not turn them away, and procure European servants? or why continue to live in such a wild mountain, and not make her dwelling-place in or near a city, where consular protection was at hand? The first three questions I have endeavoured to answer already; and, as for the last, respecting consular protection, he that had dared to suggest such an expedient of safety to her would have rued the observation. To name a consul in that sense to her was to name what was most odious; and the epithets that were generally coupled with their names were such as I have too much respect for that useful body of magistrates to put down in writing.

Saturday, November 25.—As I was returning from the village about four in the afternoon, on ascending the side of the hill on which Lady Hester’s house stands, I met four persons mounted on mules, and conjectured them, by their boots, which were black, and reached up to the calf of the leg, not to be of the country; for in Syria either red or yellow boots are always worn. They had on Morea capotes, and their dress was that of the more northern provinces of Turkey. In passing them, I said, “Good evening!” in Arabic, but, on receiving no answer from the two nearest to me, I looked hard at them, and immediately saw they were Europeans.

On alighting at my own door, I asked the servant if he had seen anybody go by, and his reply was, that three or four Turkish soldiers had passed. I then inquired of one of Lady Hester’s muleteers, who was unloading some provisions he had brought from Sayda, if he knew who the four men were whom I had seen; and he answered that, at the foot of the hill, they had inquired of him the road to Jôon, and that they were Milordi travelling: Milordo being the term applied to every European who travels in the Levant with a man-servant, and has money to spend.

I went in to Lady Hester a few minutes afterwards, and told her that some travellers, as I thought, to get a nearer view of her house than could be had from the high road, had made a round, and had just ridden past the door. About a quarter of an hour afterwards, the maid brought in a message from the porter to say that two Franks, just arrived at the village of Jôon, had sent their servant with a note, and the porter wished to know whether the note was to be taken in. For Lady Hester had been so tormented with begging letters, petitions, stories of distress, &c., that it was become a general rule for him never to receive any written paper, until he had first sent in to say who had brought it, and from whom it came; and then she would decide whether it was to be refused or not. The note, accordingly, was fetched.

Lady Hester read it to herself, and then the following conversation took place, which will explain some of the reasons why she did not always receive strangers who presented themselves at her gate. “Yes, doctor,” said she, “you were right: they are two travellers, who have been to Palmyra and about, and want to come and talk to me concerning the Arabs and the desert. Should you like to go to Jôon, and tell them I can’t see them, because I have been confined to my room for several days from a bad cold?” I answered, “Certainly; I would go with the greatest pleasure.” She then rang the bell, and desired the servant to order my horse. She continued, “One of the names, I think, is a man of a great family.”—“What is it?” I asked. She took up the note again. “Boo, poo, bon—no—Boo—jo—lais—Beaujolais, I think it is. No, Pou—jo—lat; it is Poujolat.”—“Then,” interrupted I, “I guess who they are: there was a Monsieur Poujolat, who came into the Levant six or seven years ago, to make researches respecting the crusades: I saw him at Cyprus; he and Monsieur Michaud were together. They were considered men of talent, and I believe were contributors to some Paris newspaper during Charles the Tenth’s time. They had published already some volumes of their travels before I left Europe, and the greatest part of the ground was travelled over, as I surmise, in the saloons of their consuls, during the long evenings when they were shut in by the plague of 1831 and 1832; for they speak of many places where they could hardly have gone. But this is not unusual,” I added, “with some writers; for Monsieur Chaboçeau, a French doctor at Damascus, told me, in 1813, when I was staying in his house, that Monsieur de Volney never went to Palmyra, although he leads one to suppose he had been there; for, owing to a great fall of snow just at the period when he projected that journey, he was compelled to relinquish the attempt. Monsieur Chaboçeau, an octogenarian, had known him, and entertained him as his guest in his house; and he answered me, when I reiterated the question, that Volney never saw Palmyra.”

“Oh! if they have written about the crusades,” said Lady Hester, paying no attention to what I said about Volney, “tell them that all the crusaders are not dead, but that some of them are asleep only; asleep in the same arms and the same dress they wore on the field of battle, and will awake at the first resurrection. Mind you say the first resurrection; for I suppose you know there are to be two, one a partial one, and the last a general one.[15]

“But there, doctor, I must not detain you. Now, just listen to what you have got to do. Mohammed shall take to them two bottles of red wine, and two bottles of vino d’oro” (ding, ding.) “Zezefôon, tell Mohammed to get out four bottles of wine, two of each sort; of my wine—you understand—and he is to put them in a basket, and be ready to go with the doctor to Jôon.” Then, addressing herself again to me, “You must say to them that I am very sorry I can’t see them, but that I am not very well, and that I beg their acceptance of a little wine, which, perhaps, they might not find where they sleep to-night. Say to them, I should be very much pleased to talk over their journey to Palmyra with them; and add that the respect I bear to all the French makes me always happy to meet with one of their nation. Say that the wine is not so good as I could wish it to be, but that, since Ibrahim Pasha and his soldiers have been in the country, they have drunk up all the good, and it is now very difficult to procure any. If they talk about Ibrahim Pasha, say that I admire his courage, but cannot respect him; that I am a faithful subject of the Sultan, and shall always be so, and that I do not like servants that rise against their masters; for whether Cromwells, or Buonapartes, or people in these countries, it never succeeds. If they allude to the horrors of the recruiting service, and to the nizàm troops, tell them that I never interfere in matters like that; but that, when heads were to be saved and the wounded and houseless to be succoured, as after the siege of Acre, then I was not afraid of Ibrahim Pasha, or any of them. Well, I think that’s all:” then, musing a little while, she added, “I ought, perhaps, to ask them to pass the night here; but, if I did, it would be all confusion: no dinner ready for them—and, before it could be, it would be midnight, for I must have a sheep killed: besides, it would be setting a bad example. There would be others then coming just at nightfall to get a supper and be off in the morning, as has happened more than once already. So now go, doctor, and” (ding, ding) “Fatôom! who is that woman that lodges strangers sometimes at Jôon?”—“Werdy, Sytty, the midwife.”—“Ah! so; very well. Tell them, doctor, that they had better not think of going to Sayda to-night, as the gates will be shut; and that they will be nowhere better off for sleeping in all the village than at Werdy, the midwife’s: for she has good beds and clean counterpanes: so now go.”

I half rose to go, still hanging back, as knowing her ladyship would, as usual, have much more to say. “Oh! by the bye,” she resumed, “if they inquire about me, and ask any questions, you may say that sometimes I am a great talker when subjects please me, and sometimes say very little if they do not. I am a character: what I do, or intend to do, nobody knows beforehand; and, when done, people don’t always know why, until the proper time, and then it comes out.” Here she paused a little, and then resumed. “I dare say they came here to have something to put in their book, so mind you tell them about the crusaders; for it is true, doctor. You recollect I told you the story, and how these sleeping crusaders had been seen by several persons; and I don’t suppose those persons would lie more than other people; why should they?”—“Why should they indeed?” I answered. “They were martyrs,” resumed her ladyship, “and those who sleep are not only of the Christians who fought, but of the Saracens also; men, that is, who felt from their souls the justice of the cause they fought for. As for yourself, if you don’t believe it, you may add you know nothing about it; for you are lately come into the country, and all these are things which are become known to me during my long residence here.”

At last I went, mounted my horse, and rode out of the gate, Mohammed following with the basket of wine. But, instead of having to go to the village, I found the strangers waiting on their mules about two or three hundred yards from the porter’s lodge. My horse, taken from his feed, for it was near sunset, and seeing the mules, jumped and pranced so that I was obliged to dismount before I could approach them. I delivered Lady Hester’s message to them, and in answer they expressed, in polite terms, their regret at not seeing her, and their still greater regret that the reason was from her ill state of health. Unlike what some Englishmen have done on similar occasions, they uttered not the slightest murmur about her want of hospitality, nor the least doubt of the veracity of the excuse; but, as soon as they found that they should not be admitted, they cut short all further conversation; lamenting, as night was fast approaching, that they could not stop, and that they were under the necessity of bending their way somewhere as fast as possible to get a night’s lodging. I pointed to the village, recommended them to go there, and repeated Werdy, the midwife’s name, two or three times, as a cottage where they would be comfortably lodged. But, yielding to the advice of their servant, who, as is the case with all travellers ignorant of the language in a strange country, seemed to lead his masters pretty much where he liked, they were induced to set off for Sayda, where they could not arrive in less than three hours, instead of passing the night at Jôon, where they would have been housed in ten minutes. So, presenting them with the wine, and having informed them of the name of the French consular agent at Sayda, where they would do well to demand a lodging, I wished them good night, and took my leave. They mounted their mules, and descended the bank by the narrow path that led under the hill to the Sayda road; when, as I was going back to the house, I heard one of the gentlemen calling out to me, “But the empty bottles?” Now the interview had been conducted, on my part, with all the etiquette I was master of, and on theirs, up to the moment of saying good night, with the politeness so natural to the French nation. But the exclamation, “What’s to be done with the empty bottles? you gave us the wine, but did you give us the bottles too?” sounded so comic, and in the vicinity of that residence too, where it was customary to give in a princely way, that the speaker fell a degree in the scale of my estimation on the score of breeding, how much soever he might be commended for his intended exactitude and probity.

I returned to Lady Hester. During my short absence, one of her maids had informed her that the Franks, although they had made a show of going to Jôon when first they passed the gate, had in fact only retired into the valley between the two hills, where they had unpacked their saddle-bags and shifted themselves, in order to make a decent appearance before her. This increased her regret at the trouble they had so uselessly put themselves to. The rain came on soon after, and their unpleasant situation was the subject of conversation for a good half hour. The name of the other gentleman who accompanied Monsier Poujolat was Boutés.

Much has been said of Lady Hester Stanhope’s rudeness to her countrymen and others in refusing them admittance when at the door, and probably Messrs. Poujolat and Boutés might have complained at Sayda of her inhospitable conduct: but it is scarcely necessary for me to say that her real motives for acting as she did were not from a dislike to see people, since nobody enjoyed half-a-day’s conversation with a stranger more than she did. A few days after,

December 2.—I had taken a long ride in the morning, and had seen a frigate under her studding sails running towards Sayda. The arrival of a ship of war was always an event to set the house in commotion; for it was very well known that, if her colours were English or French, the chances were ten to one that either the captain or some of the officers would come up to Jôon. Accordingly, on returning home at about 4 o’clock, I told Lady Hester Stanhope of it: but she was not well, had passed the night badly, and all she said was,—“Well, if they come, I shall not see any of them.” Now, it is not improbable, if any of the officers had presented themselves, and had been told that her ladyship was unable to receive them, owing to the state of her health, that they would have gone away discontented, and disposed to attribute her refusal to any other cause than the real one: but let any one, who reads what follows, say if she was in a fit state to hold conversation with strangers.

Her health was still very far from good, and this day was a day of sorrow. Her maids had been sulky and impertinent, and her forlorn and deserted situation came so forcibly across her mind, that she raised up her hands to heaven, and wept. “Oh!” said she, “if these horrid servants would but do as they are told, I could get on by myself, and should not want anybody to help me: but they are like jibbing horses, and the only good horse in the team is worked to death. Were I well, I would not care for a thousand of them; I should know how to manage them: but, sick as I am, hardly able to raise my hand to ring the bell, if anything were to happen to me, I might die, and nobody would come to my assistance.”

I offered, as I had done almost daily, to have my bed removed to the room next to hers, and to sleep there, in order to be at hand if she should want my assistance: but she would not admit of it; and I could only use my best efforts to soothe her, which was no easy matter. I remained six hours with her, sitting the whole time in a constrained posture, that I might catch her words, so low was her voice. And I could not move without sensibly annoying her, as she was sure to construe it into a wish to be gone, or a disregard of her situation, and to say she was neglected by everybody.

It is incredible how Lady Hester Stanhope used to torment herself about trifles. People, who never happened to meet with a person of her peculiar character, would be amazed at the precision with which she set about everything she undertook. The most trivial and fugitive affairs were transacted with quite as much pains and exactitude as she brought to bear upon the most important plans. This was, in fact, the character of her mind, exhibiting itself throughout her entire conduct. I have known her lose nearly a whole day in scolding about a nosegay of roses which she wished to send to the Pasha’s wife. For the purpose of sending nosegays safely to distant places, she had invented a sort of canister. In the bottom part was placed a tumbler full of water, in which the flower-stalks were kept moist; and the nosegay was thus carried to any distance, suspended to the mules, saddle, or in a man’s hand. The servants, who could not understand why such importance was attached to a few flowers, were remiss in keeping the canisters clean, nor would the gardener arrange the flowers as Lady Hester wished. For a matter like this she would storm and cry, and appeal to me if it was not a shame she should be so treated.

December 3.—To-day, a servant, who was ill, had become the object of her immediate anxiety. “As for myself,” cried she, “I care not how ragged, how neglected I am; but I am in a fever if I think a poor creature is in want of such comforts as his illness may require. Such is my despotism: and I dread every moment of the day lest his necessities should not be attended to. Who is to see his room warmed, to take care he has proper drinks, to give him his medicine? I know nobody will do it, unless I see to it myself.” I assured her he should have every attention possible.

It was in vain to expect any sentiment or feeling from servants and slaves, who had no prospect before them but one constant round of forced work, against their habits and inclinations. Although Lady Hester Stanhope had adopted almost all the customs of the East, she still retained many of her own: and to condemn the slaves to learn the usages of Franks was like obliging an English housemaid to fall into those of the Turks. Thus, the airing of linen, ironing, baking loaves of bread instead of flat cakes, cleaning knives, brightening pots, pans, and kettles, mending holes in clothes, and other domestic cleanly usages, were points of contention which were constantly fought over and over again for twenty years, with no better success at the last than at the first.

Her conversation turned one day on Sir G. H. “What can be the reason?” said she, “I am now always thinking of Sir G. H. Seven years ago, when you were here, you spoke about him, and I thought no more of him than merely to make some remarks at the moment; but now I have dreamed of him two or three times, and I am sure something is going to happen to him, either very good or very bad. I have been thinking how well he would do for master of the horse to the Queen, and I have a good way of giving a hint of it through the Buckleys: for I always said that, next to Lord Chatham, nobody ever had such handsome equipages as Sir G.: nobody’s horses and carriages were so neatly picked out as theirs. Sir G. is a man, doctor, from what you tell me, that would have just suited Mr. Pitt. That polished and quiet manner which Sir G. has was what Mr. Pitt found so agreeable in Mr. Long. It is very odd—Mr. Pitt always would dress for dinner, even if we were alone. One day, I said to him, ‘You are tired, and there is no one but ourselves; why need you dress!’ He replied, ‘Why, I don’t know, Hester; but if one omits to do it to-day, we neglect it to-morrow, and so on, until one grows a pig.’”

December 7, 1837.—Poor Lady Hester’s appearance to-day would have been a piteous sight for her friends in England. I saw her about noon: she was pale, very ill, and her natural good spirits quite gone. “Doctor,” said she, in a faint voice, “I am very poorly to-day, and I was still worse in the night. I was within that” (holding up her finger) “of death’s door, and I find nothing now will relieve me. A little while ago, I could depend on something or other, when seized with these spasmodic attacks; but now everything fails. How am I to get better, when I can’t have a moment’s repose from morning till night? When I was ill on former occasions, I could amuse myself with my thoughts, with cutting out in paper;—why, I have a closet full of models, in paper, of rooms, and arches, and vaults, and pavilions, and buildings, with so many plans of alterations, you can’t think. But now, if I want a pair of scissors, they can’t be found; if I want a needle and thread, there is none forthcoming; and I am wearied to death about the smallest trifles.”