Stanhope

“ Mrs. Stanhope gazed on the suffering face with tearful pity, and turned away. On opening the hall door, she encountered Col. Malcome, pacing to and fro on the icy piazza. He started suddenly on beholding her, and asked if she came from Mrs. Edson. Mrs. Stanhope answered affirmatively.
"And how have you left her?" inquired he, with an expression of strong anxiety and emotion on his features.
"She seems deeply afflicted," returned Mrs. Stanhope.
"Does she still persist in refusing to see her friends?" asked he.
"She is thus disposed, I regret to say," was Mrs. Stanhope's reply. ”

“ In the midst of the general discontent, however, a ripple of merriment passed over Paris. Madame mère, who, of course, could not avoid following the new fashion, presented her horses as an offering to her son. They were at once, to the delight of the Parisians, returned to her as good for nothing! "Whether," says Stanhope, "she had selected her gift with a view to this verdict, or whether it represented the general state of her stud, I know not, but, from what I have seen, I conclude that the latter is not an unlikely case." ”

“ Leave me, now, young man," he added, after a brief silence; "your duty calls you hence; and why linger you here, and dream away those fleeting moments, which can never be recalled?"
"Perhaps I merit that reproof," said Stanhope, coloring highly; "but I have not been inattentive to my duty, and I am, even now, in readiness to depart."
"Pardon me, my son, if I have spoken harshly," returned the priest; "but I would urge you to hasten your departure. La Tour, ere this, has reached Penobscot; he is too rash and impetuous to delay his purpose, and one hour may turn the scale to victory or defeat." ”

“ The North was deemed unsafe, and, abandoning all thoughts of visiting it, Mrs Stanhope, whose former home in Grosvenor Square had been sold, decided to settle in Langham Place. She therefore took a large house in that locality, which was entered by great gates and stood in the midst of a fine garden, and there her family swiftly resumed the old routine of their London life. Despite the mourning for the late King, Mrs Stanhope wrote: "Mrs Malcolm who called yesterday tells me there is a great deal of quiet society & that if you get into a set, you may be engaged every night." ”

“ STANHOPE, JOHN, first Baron Stanhope of Harrington (1545?–1621) , born probably about 1545, was third son of Sir Michael Stanhope [q. v.] by his wife Anne, daughter of Nicholas Rawson of Aveley-Bellhouse, Essex. His father's attainder in 1552 did not affect his estates, and John was brought up at Shelford, Nottinghamshire, where his mother's household was noted for hospitality and piety. He is probably the John Stanhope who was returned to parliament for Marlborough on 22 April 1572, for Truro in October 1586, and for Rochester on 14 Oct. ”

“ They immediately tacked about and returned to the ship they had just quitted, and thence young Stanhope watched the stately Ville de Paris as she approached over the shining water, while he thought sadly of the gallant life which had thus ended, and of the grief which the news that had thus strangely become known to him would be learnt, many weeks later, by his family in Grosvenor Square. ”

“ Stanhope reminded her friend that she had been immured at Malta since leaving the Riviera.
“Oh, well, of course her fame has reached there by this time. Why, all Paris is talking about her—and you know yourself”—observed that astute lady, impressively—“how much it takes to make Paris stop and look at you.” Mrs. Stanhope said “Yes,” and wanted to know who The Beauty’s people were, and where she had come from.
“Oh, I don’t know,” declared her friend. “No one seems to inquire. She is so beautiful and sufficient in herself that one does not care much for the rest. ”

“ His tenure of the Canterbury deanery brought Stanhope into the lower house of convocation at a period of bitter conflict with the upper house under Atterbury's leadership. As a man of peace, in friendship with Robert Nelson [q. v.] on one side, and with Edward Tenison [q. v.] and Burnet on the other (Burnet's son William afterwards married Stanhope's daughter Mary) , Stanhope was proposed by the moderate party as prolocutor in 1705, but was defeated by the high churchman, Dr. William Binckes [q. v.] . ”

“ Stanhope did not answer. “And you kept silence all these years—” He stopped again. The light was dawning faster, and his hardened, calculating nature stood bewildered before the revelation of sacrifice.
Stanhope looked up, his features relaxing into a painful smile. “He was my friend,” he said, “and his wife—but I do not expect you to understand all that. The point is this—Mrs. Atherton must have the papers back. They can only be of value to one of us if the other consents to keep silence. These are my strong cards. First, you do not know the secret by heart. I do. ”

“ Long before his son's year in Italy was completed, Chesterfield began preparing him for Paris. For the first six months Stanhope was to live in an academy with young Frenchmen of fashion; after that, to have lodgings of his own. The mornings were to belong to study, or serious conversation with men of learning or figure; the afternoons, to exercise; the evenings to be free for balls, the opera, or play. These are the pleasures of a gentleman, for which his father is willing to pay generously. But he will not, he points out frequently, subscribe to the extravagance of a rake. ”

“ Stanhope saw the girl take the Minister’s arm, and, followed on the other side by the Comte de la Tour, start toward her. For some inexplicable reason she felt annoyed, and half wished to avoid the introduction. The newspaper man was interested. Mrs. Stanhope had never posed as a professional beauty, and she was too noble a woman to have her head turned by flattery, but that did not alter the fact that she had been considered the handsomest woman in the American colony at Paris, and, of course, she knew{240} it. ”

“ CHAPTER V ANECDOTES FROM A PRISONER OF NAPOLEON 1810-1812
John Stanhope had early evinced a desire to travel. His most youthful venture had been a tour in Wales, whilst his next excursion, the tour to the Hebrides already referred to, had been of a more daring nature; indeed, a man, in those days, who had made such a journey, was looked upon as a traveller of some experience. Not content, however, with having acquired this reputation, young Stanhope, when not yet twenty-three years of age, determined to extend his researches further afield. ”

“ Stanhope married, on 10 July 1834, Emily Harriet, second daughter of General Sir Edward Kerrison, bart., and by her, who died on 31 Dec. 1873, had issue one daughter Mary Catherine, who married, on 18 Feb. 1868, Frederick Lygon, sixth earl Beauchamp and four sons, of whom Arthur Philip is the present Earl Stanhope; Edward Stanhope, the second son, is separately noticed.
Few men have deserved better of the world of letters and art than Stanhope. ”

“ Thus, while the circle of acquaintance with which the lives of Stanhope and his family at this date mingled serves to throw into sharper relief his own divergence of character from that of many of his contemporaries— those men who to great abilities, and sometimes to great achievement, joined the pettiness of a fop and the follies of a mountebank—still more did the typical man-about-town, with his whims and his foibles, his shallow aims and his lost opportunities, compare strangely with the larger souls of his generation. ”

“ The eighteen-year-old Stanhope is to have his coach, his two valets and a footman, the very best French clothes--in fact, everything that is sensible. But he shall not be allowed money for dozens of cane-heads, or fancy snuff-boxes, or excessive gaming, or the support of opera-singers. One handsome snuff-box, one handsome sword, and gaming only when the presence of the ladies keeps down high stakes; but no tavern-suppers--no low company which costs so much more than dissipations among one's equals. ”

“ Stanhope was one of the great preachers of his time, and preached before Queen Anne at St. Paul's in 1706 and 1710 on two of the great services of national thanksgiving for Marlborough's victories. In 1719 he had a friendly correspondence with Atterbury, which dealt partly with the appointment of Thomas Sherlock [q. v.] ”

“ Stanhope particularly regretted the loss of their fire-arms and ammunition, though he had fortunately obtained a small supply from the people at the island. Early in the afternoon they entered the bay of Penobscot, and Stanhope directed his course immediately towards the fort; he ventured, at no great distance, to reconnoitre, and was surprised that he had, as yet, seen nothing of La Tour. The sun at length declined behind the western hills, leaving a flood of golden light upon the waveless deep. ”

“ You are like the sun when he first comes over the plain, or the moon at night, when it floats, white and shining, through the blue spaces!"
She sat sedately still, but her breast heaved under the straight, white tunic: her eyes were full of soft fire: her voice was low, and quivered with enthusiasm. Stanhope flushed scarlet. Confused and startled, he stared into her eyes, and so they sat, silent, gazing at each other.
That same afternoon there was a big fair or bazaar in the trampled mud square in the centre of the Soudanese village that lies higher up the river at the back of Khartoum. ”

“ While acquiring these sentiments, Lord Stanhope was at the same time pursuing a course of training which subsequently made him so remarkable, as a man of science and letters. Natural philosophy was his chief study; and the knowledge which he acquired of this subject was decisively shewn by his gaining, at the early age of eighteen, a prize offered by the Stockholm Society of Arts for the best essay, written in French, on the pendulum; and this essay was the more remarkable, as being the fruit not only of mere reading, but of numerous original experiments, performed by him in person. ”

“ Only a certain Mr and Mrs S. who belonged to the class of détenus were allowed, on sufferance, occasionally to mingle with the French families; and in this connection Stanhope relates one more story.
"My fair countrywoman, who is sharing the captivity of her husband, formerly an officer in the army, is singularly attractive. If her features were not too pronounced and her form much too thin, she would be a very pretty woman. As it is, there is something remarkably airy and graceful in her figure, and very lively in her countenance. Still more lively is she in her manners. ”

“ Stanhope. “I’m going over to dine with our club at the Old Boar, and I want you just to cast your eye on those fellows in my home close; you can see them out of your parlour window.”—“Yes, to be sure, Sir,” replied Jacob “Hem!” quoth Mr. Stanhope, “have you any body indoors?”—“Yes, Sir, we have,” replied Jacob, “a strange gentleman, who seems to know a pretty deal about mining and them sort of things. I think he’s some great person in disguise, he seems regularly edicated, up to every thing.”—“Eh, ah! a great person in disguise!” exclaimed Mr. Stanhope ”

“ LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
Genius was the only inheritance she received from her father. Upon the death of her mother, which happened when she was young, she was received into the house of her uncle, William Pitt, the younger, and was there brought up. Between this minister and his brother-in-law there was little sympathy of opinion. Stanhope was an enthusiast for the improvement of social institutions, and hailed the French revolution as the beginning of the change which he hoped for. ”

“ Stanhope, without being a model of grace, had the air of a man who had been well brought up, and was polite and agreeable. But do you not think that that is the most grievous part of all? It would have been better worth while, almost, to have totally failed, and to have only succeeded in making an original in the inverse sense, rather than with so much care and expense to have produced nothing more than an ordinary and insignificant man of the world, one of those about whom it suffices to say, there is nothing to be said of them ”

“ As she sank back, Stanhope gently released her hands, and stepping aside to make way for Mrs. French and Winnie, said in a low tone to Alan:
“She has been terribly tried; do not let her talk until she is stronger. She needs a physician’s care.”
“She shall have it,” returned Alan, moving with Stanhope toward the door. “Mr. Stanhope, I—I know, through Mr. Follingsbee, of the interest you have taken in my welfare, but I realize to-day, as I could not before, how much your protection has been worth. ”

“ She had quarrelled with her neighbours, the Stanhopes, and not being able to defy them with sword and buckler, she sent one of her gentlemen, properly attended, with a message to Sir Thomas Stanhope, to be delivered in presence of witnesses, in these words—"My lady hath commanded me to say thus much to you: that though you be more wretched, vile, and miserable than any creature living, and for your wickedness become more ugly in shape than the vilest toad in the world ”

“ Young Stanhope is advised by his Father to avoid asserting any thing which, though he might himself know it to be perfectly true, was too surprising to be credible without authentic support, and would expose his veracity to be questioned, which no man likes. ”

“ Stanhope, isn't he?"
"Yes, Dr. Stanhope. He is one of our prebendaries—a good, quiet sort of man himself. But I am surprised that he should let his daughter conduct herself as she does."
"I suppose he can't help it," said the countess.
"But a clergyman, you know, Lady De Courcy! He should at any rate prevent her from exhibiting in public, if he cannot induce her to behave at home. But he is to be pitied. I believe he has a desperate life of it with the lot of them. That apish-looking man there, with the long beard and the loose trousers—he is the woman's brother. He is nearly as bad as she is. ”