Hester Stanhope

“ Whilst melting the wax in the candle, Lady Hester went on:—“Doctor, you never now can seal a letter decently: you once used to do it tolerably well, but now you have lost your memory and all your faculties, from talking nothing but rubbish and empty nonsense to those nasty women; and that’s the reason why you never listen to anything one says, and answer ‘yes,’ and ‘no,’ without knowing to what.” ”

“ There is no doubt that, by prolonging my stay on Mount Lebanon, I might have been of considerable service to her ladyship. She was about to shut herself up alone, without money, without books, without a soul she could confide in; without a single European, male or female, about her; with winter coming on, beneath roofs certainly no longer waterproof, and that might fall in; with war at her doors, and without any means of defence except in her own undaunted courage; with no one but herself to carry on her correspondence ”

“ You are in darkness, and I have done my best to enlighten you: if I have not succeeded, it is not my fault. As for pleasing or displeasing me, put that out of your head: there is no more in that than in pleasing or displeasing that door. I am but a worm—a poor, miserable being—an humble instrument in the hands of God. But, if a man is benighted, and sees a light in a castle, does he go to it, or does he not? Perhaps it may be a good genius that guides him there, perhaps it may be a den of thieves: but there he goes.”
In this mournful strain Lady Hester went on for some time. ”

“ Pierre was a man exceedingly thin, with an aquiline nose, and a steady eye, full of gasconade to be mistaken for courage, wonderfully loquacious, and deeply imbued with all the mystic doctrines that Lady Hester sometimes preached about. But Pierre’s chief merit lay in his star, which, she assured me, was so propitious to her, that it could calm her convulsions, and lay her to sleep, when books, narcotics, and everything else failed. ”

“ I shall give up everything for life, that I may now or hereafter possess in Europe, to my creditors, and throw myself as a beggar upon Asiatic humanity, and wander far without one para in my pocket, with the mare from the stable of Solomon in one hand, and a sheaf of the corn of Beni-Israel in the other. I shall meet death, or that which I believe to be written, which no mortal hand can efface. There is nothing else to be done. ”

“ 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? 68 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? ”

“ To this her ladyship said nothing at the time; but to-day, being in a state of excitement, the word insult recurred to her recollection. “Do you not know,” she asked, “that people of my rank and spirit are incapable of insults towards their friends: it is only the vulgar who are always fancying themselves insulted. If a man treads on another’s toe in good society, do you think it is taken as an insult? It is only people like —— and —— who take such things into their heads. I never have hurt a person’s feelings in my life intentionally, except, perhaps, by my wit. ”

“ Everybody who has visited Lady Hester Stanhope in her retirement will bear witness to her unexampled colloquial powers; to her profound knowledge of character; to her inexhaustible fund of anecdotes; to her talents for mimicry; to her modes of narration, as various as the subjects she talked about; to the lofty inspirations and sublimity of her language, when the subject required it; and to her pathos and feeling, whenever she wished to excite the emotions of her hearers. There was no secret of the human heart, however studiously concealed, that she could not discover ”

“ The aristocracy is a proud, morose, inactive class of men, having no great fundamental principles to guide them, and not half the power that they give to themselves—very little more worthy of being trusted by their Sovereign than by the people—full of ideas, all egotistical, and full of their own importance and weight in a country, which may differ from an ounce to a pound in twenty-four hours by the wavering political line of conduct that they may observe during that time, and which neither secures the confidence of the people, nor the friendship of their Sovereign. ”

“ I was pleased to find, my dear little Eugenia, that you inherit your father’s good-will towards me. I must thank you and Mademoiselle Longchamp for your kind offers of assistance, but I must decline them, having taken a determination not to have anything more to do with the doctor’s family than if it did not exist in the country. I should forget my situation and rank in life were I to condescend to dispute and make daily explanations to my inferiors. ”

“ Lady Hester one day said, “I have a little angel under my command, the angel of my star—such a sweet little creature!—not like those ridiculous ones who are fiddling in Italian pictures. What fools painters are, to think angels are made so!” ”

“ The marked characteristic of Lady Hester Stanhope’s mind was the necessity she was under of eternally talking. This is a feature in her life to which justice can hardly be done by description. Talking with her appeared to be as involuntary and unavoidable as respiration. So long as she was awake, her brain worked incessantly, and her tongue never knew a moment’s repose. It might be supposed that such a perpetual flow and outpouring of words must lead to the unconscious disclosure of every thought and feeling; but it was not so with Lady Hester Stanhope. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have been bred in the work of revolutions since I was first with Mr. Pitt. How many plots did he crush, within two or three days of their consummation, of which not a syllable was ever known! The great freemasons, doctor, exist all over the world: they know I am the person they want. ”

“ January 17, 1838.—What a day of anxiety and sorrow for me, and of anguish for Lady Hester! From morning until midnight to see a melancholy picture of a never-dying spirit, in an exhausted frame, wrestling with its enemy, and daring even to set the heaviest infirmities of nature at defiance. Yet, who does not bend under the power of disease? Lady Hester held out as long as a human being could do ”

“ He received his orders from Lady Hester herself to this effect. “Osman, you will say to each horse, before you shoot him, putting your mouth close to his ear, ‘You have now worked enough on the earth; your mistress fears you might fall, in your old age, into the hands of cruel men, and she, therefore, dismisses you from her service.’” This order, strange as it may appear, was actually executed to the letter, with imperturbable gravity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I can see an idle fellow or a rascal get a beating with the same tranquillity that I smoke my pipe: but nobody is more tender than I am, even when an animal suffers unjustly. I never shall forget how two or three of the servants turned as pale as death on hearing me on a sudden utter a cry, because a lazy villain was driving an ass with foal, heavily laden, down a steep bank. ”

“ Pitt would stop, perhaps, until a person was gone out of the room to say, ‘That man is the most egregious ass I ever saw;’ but I, were he a king, must say it to his face. I might, if I chose, flatter and deceive you and a hundred others. There is no one whom I could not lead by the nose, if I chose to do it; I know every man’s price, and how to buy him: but I will not stoop to the baseness of making you run your head through a wall, even though I saw some advantage for myself on the other side. ”

“ Gerardin to acquaint you with the great loss I had sustained in the faithful Miss Williams.
After two years of plague, there broke out, over almost all Mount Lebanon, a kind of fever, which I do not know precisely how to name. Whether it was a sort of yellow or malignant fever, poor Miss Williams fell a victim to it, as well as a servant, named Môosa, the only one in whom I had any confidence; and I but just escaped death from it myself. I am, as it were, come to life again by a miracle, owing to the attentions of a rich peasant, who came from a considerable distance to assist me. ”

“ There will rise up evil tongues against her, and a sovereign will try to put her down; but the voice of the people will cry aloud, and nations will assemble to protect her.’ Now, doctor,” said Lady Hester, “does not that mean just what has happened? Is not the Queen trying to put me down, and going to deprive me of my pension?—and you will see, when I have written my letter, how many persons will turn on my side. But isn’t it very extraordinary how that man in a coffee-house knew what was going to happen?—yet so it is: they have secret communications with spirits. ”

“ On another occasion, one of the Emir Beshýr’s people came on some message to her, but, before he entered her room, laid by his pistols and his sabre, which in Turkey these myrmidons always wear on their persons. Lady Hester’s maid whispered to her what the man was doing, when her ladyship, calling him in, bade him gird on his arms again. “Don’t think I am afraid of you or your master,” she said; “you may tell him I don’t care a fig for his poisons—I know not what fear is. It is for him, and those who serve him, to tremble. ”

“ Now, doctor, let the friend of the fair Ellen come to me, and I will receive her to my bosom, and she shall be my friend; for such sentiments as hers will I honour and respect wherever I find them.” She went on: “How strange it is that immorality, in England, is met in some persons by such severity—much too great; and, in others, escapes animadversion! * * * * * The poor are spurned for errors not half so gross as what the wealthy my lords do in the open face of day, and set people at defiance to boot.” ”

“ I have embodied thus much in Lady Hester Stanhope’s own words of what may give a tolerable idea of her notion of planetary influence. What her own star was may be gathered from what she said one day, when, having dwelt a long time on this, her favourite subject, she got up from the sofa, and, approaching the window, she called me to her—“Look,” said she, “at the pupil of my eyes; there! my star is the sun—all sun—it is in my eyes: when the sun is a person’s star, it attracts everything.” ”

“ Her screams awoke the children, the governess, the cook, the gardener, and Abdhu, who slept in the gardener’s shed close by. They seized the man, who did not attempt to escape, but told them his story; and as all the lower classes were suffering from the oppressive conscription, and other onerous burthens imposed by Ibrahim Pasha, whose rule they abhorred, they furnished the poor deserter with a little covering, and directed him by a lane, through the gardens, towards the mountains, where he would find holes in the rocks to secrete himself, until he could obtain succour from the peasantry. ”

“ In the most common concerns, Lady Hester’s servants made much bustle and did little. They ran in different directions, jostled and crossed each other half a dozen at a time for the same thing, entirely reversing one of her favourite maxims, that everything in a great person’s house should be done as if by magic, and nobody should know who it was set it a going. ”

“ Fair or foul means, it is all alike to her. She has been so flattered in her lifetime, that no praise can turn her head. Money she thinks no more of than dirt; and as for fear, she does not know what it is. As for me, your Highness, I wash my hands of her.’
“Oh, doctor, if you were to feel the bump behind my ear, it is bigger than any thing you ever saw! And they say of the lions, that the more their ears are buried in bone the bolder they are. ”

“ You, who have read and thought a great deal upon men and manners, must be aware that there are situations almost unknown in Europe from which persons, in what is called a semi-barbarous country, cannot extricate themselves with honour without taking a part either for or against humanity: besides, there are extraordinary gusts of knowledge—of extraordinary information—which, if you do not take advantage of them at the moment, are lost to you for ever. ”

“ She talked of her debts, her illnesses, her trials and sufferings, and never finished a day without picturing to herself a brighter futurity, when her worth would be more appreciated, when the clouds that overspread her existence would be dissipated, and when the neglect in which she was left by her friends would meet with its just punishment, and her magnificent star rise again, with renewed splendour, to gladden the world, and those, more particularly, who had been faithful to her cause. ”

“ 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 123 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. ”

“ Therefore, it is better to be like a true Turk, and do our duty to the last, and then beg of the believers in one God a bit of daily bread, and, if it comes not, die of want, which perhaps is as good a death as any other, and less painful. But never act contrary to the dictates of conscience, of honour, of nature, or of humanity. ”

“ I must observe that, on the preceding day, at Lady Hester’s request, I had ridden over to Mar Elias to see General Loustaunau, the decayed French officer, who had now lived on her bounty for a period of more than twenty years. And although, from being of a choleric and violent temper, he had, on more than one occasion, embroiled himself with her, yet the only difference it made in her treatment towards him was merely to keep him at a distance from herself: but she had never, for one day, ceased to occupy herself with his wants and to provide for his comforts. ”

“ A woman sixty years old, with impaired health, inhabiting a spot removed many miles from any town, amidst a population whom their own chiefs can hardly keep under control, was no fit object, one would think, for molestation under any circumstances; but, when the services of Lady Hester’s family are put into the scale, it seems wonderful how the representations of interested money-lenders could have had sufficient weight with those who guided the State to induce them to disturb her solitude and retirement. ”

“ This Pasha was so afraid, in the midst of all his power, of being poisoned, that he had the dishes brought to his table under padlock. When he travelled, a horseman in his suite had the office assigned him of carrying the implement that makes such a distinguished figure in the farce of Pourceaugnac. When he was shaved, he always had some of his guards standing round the barber with their pistols cocked, and he himself had a drawn sabre lying across his lap. Fancy the situation of a man who, in the midst of these formidable preparations, is obliged to keep his hand steady. ”

“ August 4.—“The people of Europe,” said Lady Hester, “are all, or at least the greater part of them, fools, with their ridiculous grins, their affected ways, and their senseless habits. In all the parties I was in during the time I lived with Mr. Pitt—and they were a great many—out of thousands of people, I hardly saw ten whose conversation interested me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The weather was beautiful; and, although the sides of Mount Lebanon, only a few miles off, were covered with snow, we sat until sunset with the windows open. The climate of Syria is, probably, one of the most pure and balmy in the world.
Lady Hester, from one thing to another, returned to the subject of Mr. Pitt’s amiable disposition. “It is wonderful,” said she, “what a man Mr. Pitt was. Nobody would have suspected how much feeling he had for people’s comforts, who came to see him. Sometimes he would say to me, ‘Hester, you know we have got such a one coming down. ”

“ Your Grace’s long residence in the East will have taught you that there is no common rate character in England an adequate judge what manner of living best answers among a semi-barbarous people, and how little possible it is to measure one’s expenses where frequent revolutions and petty wars are carried on without any provision for the sufferers, from its being considered the duty of every one to assist them as his humanity may dictate or as his circumstances may afford. ”

“ Every man smokes his pipe; and a good story-teller (for such a one is rarely wanting in a party of a dozen,) relates some traditionary tale, which absorbs for the time all the faculties of his hearers. The cook was one of this sort, a Christian of the village of Abra, a shrewd fellow, who went by the name of Dyk, or the Cock, from his rather strutting air, or from the vigorous exercise of his authority over his wife, whom he beat every now and then to keep her in proper discipline—a redeeming quality in the eyes of Lady Hester, who otherwise would have dismissed him from her service. ”