Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope

ILLUSTRATIONS.

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Introductory remarks—Correspondence.

The Author’s departure from England to join Lady Stanhope—Voyage from Leghorn to Syria—The vessel plundered by a Greek pirate—Return to Leghorn—Signor Girolamo—Letter from Lady Stanhope to Mr. Webb, merchant at Leghorn—Lady Stanhope persecuted by the Emir Beshýr—Letter from Lady Stanhope to the Author, describing her position in 1827—Her reliance on Providence—Second Letter to Mr. Webb—Her opinion of the Turks and Christians in Syria, and of the wild Arabs—Terror of the Franks in Syria, on occasion of the battle of Navarino—They take refuge in Lady Stanhope’s house—The Franks in Syria—Her letter to the Author, urging him to rejoin her—Her advice—Her ladyship’s illness—The Author sails for Syria.

On the 23rd of January, 1827, I crossed over to Calais with my family. Here the severity of the weather and the sale of some landed property in England detained us until the 9th of May, when we prosecuted our journey to Paris, Lausanne, and Pisa, where we arrived on the 14th of June, with the intention of embarking from Leghorn by the first vessel that sailed for the Levant. It must be borne in mind by the reader that there were no steamboats in those days, and that, moreover, the navigation of the Mediterranean sea was rendered dangerous by the predatory warfare carried on by the Greeks.

At Leghorn I received another letter from Lady Hester Stanhope, wherein, as if in despair about her affairs, and knowing, from a letter of mine, that I was leaving England to join her, she winds up the X. intrigue in a summary way, and gives me instructions how I am to conduct myself on my arrival in Syria.

Lady Hester Stanhope to Dr. ——.

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No eligible opportunity offered for sailing until the end of August, when, having concluded an agreement with the owners of a merchant brig, we betook ourselves to Leghorn, and set sail in the Fortuna, Lupi master, for Cyprus, on the 7th of September, 1827. There were four Franciscan friars passengers besides ourselves, bound to the Holy Land, with money annually sent from some of the Italian states for the maintenance of the sacred places.

On the 15th of September, being about thirty leagues from the island of Candia, a tall-masted schooner was seen bearing down upon us, and was soon recognized as a Greek. On nearing us, she hoisted Greek colours, and ran under our stern, presenting a formidable battery of twelve guns, with the heads of sixty or eighty fierce-featured fellows eyeing us over the gunwale. A scaramouch-looking mate hailed us in good Italian, and ordered our captain to hoist out his boat and come on board. Whilst the boat was getting ready, our captain told us to do the best we could for ourselves, for that he had no doubt we should be plundered. “As for you,” he added, addressing himself to me, “make yourself as smart as you can, assume an air of authority, and pass yourself off as a consul.” We were all greatly alarmed. I hastened to follow the captain’s advice, whilst the friars were busy in stuffing their gold, their watches, and their small valuables, into their under-garments and other hiding-places.

The Greeks, however, gave us little time; for, in a quarter of an hour, fifteen or twenty were on board, headed by their lieutenant. On getting over the side, he advanced towards me, and, in a very civil way, told me that, as Cyprus was blockaded, and as our vessel was bound to that place, no doubt with succours to the Turks in some shape or other, his captain found himself under the disagreeable necessity of taking possession of the cargo. “You,” he added, “being an Englishman, will meet with no molestation; the English are our friends, and we are not incapable of gratitude.”

In an instant the hatches were forced open; and, as quick as stout shoulders and tackles could do it, the Greeks hoisted upon deck, and cut or broke open every bale, cask, or case that was in the hold, whilst the lieutenant, holding the bill of lading in his hand, noted off every one according to its mark. I had various articles of luggage, and as each was hoisted up, I had to say it was mine, when it was put aside on the quarter-deck. The same was done with the effects of the friars. Each launch-load of goods that was sent off to the schooner brought back a launch-load of stout Greeks, who, with hammers and hatchets, broke down the wainscoting, cut through the ceiling, searched the berths, and left not a single cranny of the vessel unransacked.

When the cargo was out, the lieutenant summoned the four, as I supposed, poor friars to the quarter-deck, and told them their trunks must next undergo an examination. Each trunk had a cross on its lid. What was my surprise when, on opening them, the Greeks found fifty or sixty pounds of chocolate, bottles of rum and rosolio, hams, tongues, Bologna sausages, sugar, and a large box of sugared almonds; also seven or eight veils, (such as are worn in the Levant) for women, fine flannel waistcoats and drawers, good calico shirts, &c.; 200 Venetian ducats, three or four rouleaus of doubloons, and 5,000 Spanish dollars. The way in which the Greek sailors scrambled for the sugared almonds was really quite laughable, making a strange contrast to the ruin they were perpetrating at the moment on these inoffensive individuals; but, when they discovered the money, amounting in all, with what was taken from the friars’ persons, to no less than 14,000 dollars, they set up a shout, which so effectually frightened the poor friars, that they fell down on their knees, and invoked all the saints in the calendar to their aid. But the cupidity of the Greeks was excited rather than satisfied by the sight of so much gold and silver, and they immediately proceeded to strip their victims, an office which they performed with greater agility than could have been exhibited by the most expert valet. This humiliating operation disclosed fresh booty; the capacious sleeves, drawers, and hoods, all afforded something. One had a repeater-watch, and all had money.

Unfortunately, there were a few casks of wine in the hold, which the Greeks tapped; and thus, becoming intoxicated in the midst of their pillage, a few of the most ferocious proposed beating the captain to make him confess if there was more money concealed. They accordingly gave him some very hard blows with a rope’s end; then they served the cabin-boy in the same manner (as being generally privy to the captain’s hiding-places), and then two sailors. Lastly came the mate’s turn. Him they bound with a cord, and beat severely; and, finding blows made them confess nothing, they dragged him to the gunwale, held his head over the side of the ship, and, one putting a knife across his throat, swore he would kill them instantly, if he did not disclose where the captain’s money was hid, as well as Turkish letters, which were conveyed in the brig. The poor man, with loud cries, appealed to me to save his life; and, whilst I addressed myself to the lieutenant, Mrs. ——, who was sitting on the quarter-deck with our little girl, an infant, in her arms, rushed forward, undismayed by the ferocious looks of the Greeks, and, with more than a woman’s courage, arrested the pirate’s arm, and implored him to spare his victim. Whether it was their intention to murder the mate it is impossible to say; but the man who held the knife let him go, and threw the key of the mate’s chest at Mrs. ——’s feet.

This scene being over, the lieutenant informed me that he was bound to examine my luggage, whispering to me, at the same time, that, as his men had become very riotous, it would be prudent to propitiate them by a present of a few dollars. I gladly took his advice, and presented them with twenty dollars, which they accepted thanklessly enough. My luggage was then overhauled; but they took nothing, although, amongst other things, they were grievously tempted by discovering a bag of dollars. In the confusion which ensued I lost only a few trifles. The lieutenant begged a pair of pantaloons, which I gave him, and other things, which I assured him I could not spare, and which he very obligingly allowed me to retain. Considering that we were wholly in his power, I had reason to be grateful for his forbearance.

But let me, as an act of justice, bear witness to the wrongs which this nation, in the regeneration of its liberties, had to endure, and none of which were greater than those inflicted by the Austrian and Sardinian navies, whose flag our vessel bore. Whenever the merchant-ships of these two powers appeared in the Levant, it was, under the cloak of trade, to transport materials of war to their mortal enemies the Turks; and whenever the injured Greeks, availing themselves of the rights of nations, molested these pretended neutrals in their unjust traffic, the Austrian ships of war made cruel reprisals on them. In the German war, about the middle of the last century, when the Dutch, calling themselves neutrals, became carriers for the enemies of England, we were accused of committing piratical enormities on the Dutch, equal to any that the Greeks are charged with, and we sought our justification in the same rights: so that we may ask if the laws of blockade are to be held good only when exercised by the hands of the strong? In excuse for beating the master and mate, it may be alleged, that the Genoese crews, when they had the mastery, were not backward in using the same violence. As for the money which was transferred on this occasion, all that need be said is, that, setting aside the question of piracy, it passed from the hands of those who had made a vow of poverty into the pockets of an oppressed people, whose families had been driven from their homes, and perhaps were starving, until some son or husband could bring them the fruits of their dangerous enterprises.

Piracy on the high seas, in the open day, has something very awful and formidable in it. You seem to be utterly defenceless in the midst of the wide ocean, with the arbitrators of your destiny standing there to hurl you, if you utter a murmur, into the fathomless deep. They demand your money, your goods, or whatever else may chance to excite their cupidity, and you give up everything with as smiling a face as you can. You offer them refreshments, as if they were welcome guests, who have honoured and delighted you by their presence; and, until they burst out into the frantic delirium of drunkenness or butchery, the whole scene wears the appearance of the visit of an obliging consignee, who has come to take possession of his property.

At seven at night the schooner’s crew left us to pursue our voyage. The beds and blankets that lay scattered on the cabin-floor were replaced in the berths, a little order was restored, and a wretched supper was made on hard biscuit and cold water; for everything good to eat, from the chickens down to the lemons, walnuts, figs, raisins, &c., had either been taken away or devoured. It was calm through the night; and, when the morning of Sunday broke, the schooner was still in view. Our fears were revived, when we saw the enemy’s boat manned, and soon afterwards coming towards us. But it was only a complimentary visit from the lieutenant, who, with smiles and an amiability that only a Greek can put on towards those whom he has plundered, expressed his hopes that we had passed the night comfortably, and begged of the master to have the goodness to look for a box of jewels that was marked on the ship’s bill of lading, but which had been overlooked the day before; for the lieutenant spoke and read Italian perfectly, and was supposed to be a native of the Ionian isles: so that, having examined the manifest during the night, he was enabled to discover what valuables there were on board which had escaped personal scrutiny. The master reluctantly gave up the casket; and the lieutenant, having requested him to prick down on the chart the longitude and latitude, to see if they corresponded with his own reckoning, politely took his leave, squeezing my hand on parting, just as if we had been old acquaintances bidding each other adieu. A breeze sprang up; the schooner put her head towards Candia, and we soon lost sight of her.

A council was then called as to what was to be done. The friars, who had lost their all, were for putting back: but I objected to that course, seeing we were now two-thirds of our way to our destination. The friars, however, having, as I afterwards learned, agreed, in writing, to give the captain 250 Spanish dollars if he would return, carried their point; and all that remained to be done was to bear the disappointment with patience.

In returning to Leghorn, it was necessary to put into the first port we could reach for provisions; and, accordingly, on the 19th of September, we cast anchor at Zante. Here I made known our misfortune to the government secretary, Colonel Maclean, who very obligingly came down to the health-office to see me, our vessel being in quarantine: and I had reason, from what he told me, to be well satisfied with having escaped as we did; for I learned from him that it was quite a miracle that any respect had been paid to the English name, since many piracies, accompanied with violence and outrage, had been lately committed on English vessels. At Zante I saw in the quarantine ground hundreds of wretched Greeks, in rags and misery, driven from their country, and not knowing where to find a place to lay their heads.

On the 27th of September we weighed anchor, and, when off Sicily, nearly lost our masts in a gale of wind. The next day we were alarmed by the kitchen’s catching fire, and by a passenger falling ill of fever; after which, we ran on the island of Elba in a fog, and finally arrived at Leghorn on the 12th of October, 1827.

The passenger I have named was an Italian, one Signor Girolamo ——, a young man, who, after very successful studies at Padua, thought to turn his talents to account in Mahomet Ali’s service; but, on his arrival in Egypt, he was nearly starved. He was a clever mathematician, and of great literary attainments; but he forgot that, to teach, one must be enabled to explain, which, from his ignorance of Arabic, was impossible, and that Mahomet Ali wanted officers, mechanics, and engineers—practical men—but not schoolmen. Having in vain essayed to find an employment, he was at last told he might take service, if he would pronounce himself competent for the situation of hospital-mate and apothecary to an infantry regiment. In this his medical employment, according to what he told me, he saw so much peculation going forward, that, being ordered to Navarino, with his regiment, in disgust, he made his escape to Zante, determined to have done with Pashas and Eastern civilization for ever. Anxiety, fatigue, and blasted prospects, threw him into a malignant fever; and his deplorable situation, in the empty hold of a vessel, without bed or blanket to sleep on, could not but excite our sympathy.

There was one of the friars, named Fra’ Buonaventura, who, after the plunder of the vessel, when we were on our passage back, was guilty of a breach of confidence so base, that I hardly know how to designate it. He was the one to whom the bag of letters from Europe for the monks of the different monasteries in the Holy Land had been entrusted. These letters, being of no use to the Greeks, were left; and Fra’ Buonaventura used to lie on his back in his berth, and, breaking the seals, read them one by one, and then destroy them. His conduct appeared to me so culpable, that I wrote to the Neapolitan ambassador (he belonging to a monastery at Naples), and requested his Excellency to make this violation of trust known to his superiors.

We remained in quarantine until the 17th of November, during which time the news of the battle of Navarino reached Leghorn. From the Lazaretto I took my family to Pisa and Rome; and, the bad weather being now set in, I resolved to await the return of spring, and the arrival of fresh letters from Lady Hester Stanhope, before venturing again on so dangerous a voyage. Besides, the shock had been very great, and Mrs. ——’s health was seriously impaired by continued sea-sickness and the horrors of the scenes she had witnessed, which for many months often recurred in her dreams, so as to bring on a nervous affection, which did not entirely leave her for two years.

What Lady Hester Stanhope’s situation was at this particular date may be gathered from a letter which she wrote to the late Mr. John Webb, her banker, at Leghorn, and of which I annex a copy.

Lady Hester Stanhope to Mr. John Webb.

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Some time in the spring, but the exact day is not noted, I received the following letter from Lady Hester Stanhope:—

Lady Hester Stanhope to Mr. Webb, banker, at Leghorn.

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It was immediately after the date of this letter that the news of the battle of Navarino must have reached Sayda and Beyrout. On that occasion, all the Franks at Sayda, in a single hour, fled precipitately from their homes, the greater part of them taking refuge with Lady Hester Stanhope. In the narrative of her subsequent conversations, some account of the expense she was put to by this unforeseen event will be found; for, in her correspondence with me, she was particularly careful not to make any allusion to the universal alarm which prevailed amongst the Europeans, lest it might possibly have some influence upon the fears of my family, and deter us from prosecuting our journey.

Some private business requiring my presence in England, I left Italy in June, 1828, for London, and returned to Pisa in the following October. Up to this time (now nearly a year), I had had no answer from Lady Hester to my letters (one from Zante, and one from Leghorn), in which I had given an account of the piracy. At that time there were no steamboats on those waters, and correspondence was necessarily carried on, at great risk and uncertainty, by merchant-vessels, many of which were plundered by the Greeks, while others frequently consumed two or three months, returning from the Levant to Marseilles or Leghorn. At last, a letter reached me, in the handwriting of Miss Williams, dictated by Lady Hester Stanhope.

Lady Hester Stanhope to Dr. ——.

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On the 15th of November of the same year I received another letter, which was also in Miss Williams’s handwriting.

Lady Hester Stanhope to Dr. ——.

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In compliance with Lady Hester Stanhope’s wishes, I resolved to await the coming of spring, in order to conduct my family to England, and, leaving them there, to set off alone for Syria. But new difficulties had arisen, and Lady Hester’s situation had become more painful by a severe loss which she unexpectedly sustained in the death of her long-tried and affectionate companion, Miss Williams. It was some time in December that Mr. Webb, of Leghorn, communicated to me a letter from Lady Hester Stanhope, giving him the melancholy news of this sad event. The letter was in French, dictated to some secretary whom she had found to carry on her correspondence, and it is here translated for the convenience of the general reader.

Lady Hester Stanhope to Mr. John Webb, merchant,
at Leghorn.

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The distressed situation in which Lady Hester Stanhope found herself by such a severe calamity as the loss of Miss Williams, who, in sickness and in health, had been all in all to her, induced me to set aside every other consideration, and to resolve on making the voyage to Syria without loss of time, even in the depth of winter, although the navigation of the Mediterranean is exceedingly boisterous in the months of January, February, and March. I accordingly went over to Leghorn, and entered into an agreement with the master of a merchant-vessel, who was to sail in a few days for Beyrout. Nothing remained but to sign it; but, previously to so doing, I had to overcome the repugnance which Mrs. —— felt to being left behind, if she remained, and the apprehension of fresh piracies, if she accompanied me. Between the two she hesitated and wavered until the opportunity was lost, and, being unable to make up her mind one way or the other, spring came, and then summer, until it was finally settled that I should take her back to England, and, leaving her there, return and perform the voyage alone.

We accordingly set off for Marseilles in August, 1829, and traversed France as far as Paris. But there her womanish fears, and the dread of losing me in a foreign country by plague, and a thousand ills, which persons, who have not visited the East, fancy to be more common in distant countries than at home, still preyed on her mind, and a fresh resolution was formed to accompany me. We therefore returned to Marseilles: but not until November, 1830, could I prevail upon her to set her foot in a vessel.

On the 3rd of November, we set sail from Marseilles, in the Belle Sophie, Coulonne master, a brig of 220 tons or thereabouts. We had secured the state-room, and one berth out of four which the cabin contained. Two others were occupied by two English ladies, and the fourth by the captain. Temporary berths were fitted up for three Englishmen adjoining the companion-ladder, who, in society with these pious ladies, had embarked on the wide world in the holy mission of making proselytes among Jews and Mahometans.[26] On the floor and lockers of the cabin was an Arab woman with three daughters and a son, whilst her husband, with a Cypriot Greek, were tenants of the hold. Thus we were twelve cabin-passengers, where six only could have been comfortably accommodated: but no scruples of this kind would appear to have ever crossed the conscience of the master of the vessel or the owners.

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Lady Stanhope’s reception of Dr. —— —Her residence described—Supposed reasons for her seclusion—Her extraordinary influence over her dependants—Her violent temper—Dress and appearance—Her influence in the country—Abdallah Pasha guided by her—Her hostility towards the Emir Beshýr—Her defiance of his power—Her opinion of him—Flight of the Emir—His return—Death of the Sheykh Beshýr.

We reached Beyrout, after a prosperous voyage, on the 8th of December, having anchored eight days at Cyprus to disembark some merchandize, the Arab family, and the English party. In pursuance of Lady Hester Stanhope’s injunctions, I dressed myself in an old faded suit of Turkish clothes, and thus presented myself at the English and French consuls’ residences. My appearance certainly was not calculated to make her ladyship’s creditors suppose I came loaded with money to pay her debts; and I felt, as I passed through the streets, that my old Bedouin manteau or abah, and indeed my whole dress, in which I had twice traversed the desert to Palmyra, was of a hue and age to dissipate the hopes of the most sanguine.

I lost no time in sending off a messenger to announce my arrival to Lady Hester Stanhope; and received a note from her on the 11th, in which, after congratulating us on our safety, she expressed the pleasure it would give her to see me; she added that, as for my family, they must not expect any other attentions from her than such as would make them comfortable in their cottage; that they were not to take this ill on her part, as she had long before apprized me that she did not think English ladies could make themselves happy in Syria, and that therefore I, who had brought them, must take the consequences. This reception was not very agreeable to my feelings, but it was highly characteristic of Lady Hester.

With the bearer of the letter her ladyship sent camels for our luggage, donkeys for my family, and a horse for me. At Nebby Yôoness, where we slept the first night, we found another of her servants, who had been sent thither to prepare our dinner and beds; and, on the following day, two miles from her house, we met Mr. Jasper Chasseaud, her secretary, who had come thus far to welcome us. Placing my family under this gentleman’s guidance, I hurried forward alone, and reached Lady Hester Stanhope’s residence about noon. A cottage had been provided for us in the village of Jôon, with two black slaves for servants, and, so far as the accommodation was concerned, we had no reason to be discontented. Mr. Chasseaud accompanied my family to their new home, but it was twelve at night before I was able to join them.

I found Lady Hester in good health and excellent spirits, and looking much the same as when I left her some years before. She received me with great apparent pleasure, kissing me on each cheek, ordering sherbet, the pipe, coffee, and a finjàn[27] of orange-flower water; all which civilities, at meeting, are regarded in the East as marks of the most cordial and distinguished regard. I myself was truly astonished at all this, but more especially at her salutation on the cheeks after the Oriental fashion; for, in the early part of her travels, when I was with her for seven years together, I do not recollect that she had often even taken my arm—an honour she seldom vouchsafed to any body less than a member of the aristocracy. My astonishment was increased, when, for several days in succession, she insisted on my always sitting by her on the sofa—a privilege she rarely, indeed, I believe never, allowed to any one afterwards.

The conversation turned at first on such inquiries as are common, after a long separation, to persons who have known each other before. I remained with her from noon until midnight, in vain endeavouring to get away, during which time I hardly moved from the sofa, except to sit down to dinner. A description of the dinner appointments of this lady, who once presided at Mr. Pitt’s table in the splendour of wealth and fashion, may be considered both curious and interesting. She sat on the sofa, and I opposite to her, on a common rush-bottom chair, with an unpainted deal table (about three feet by two and a half between us), covered with a scanty tablecloth, of the kind usually spread on a bed-room table at an inn. Two white plates, one over the other, French fashion, were placed before each of us, and in the centre of the table were three dishes of yellow earthenware (common in the south of France), containing a pilàf, a yackney, or sort of Irish stew, and a boiled fowl, swimming in its broth. There were two silver table-spoons for each of us, which, she said, were all she had, and two black bone-handled knives and forks. One spoon was for the broth, one for the yackney; and, when the pilàf was to be served, we helped ourselves with the same spoons with which we had been eating. The arrangements were completed by a black bottle with Mount Lebanon wine in it, of exquisite flavour, it is true, and a common water-decanter. She said that in this style the young Duke of Richelieu had dined with her; adding, however, that her destitute state as to dishes and table-service was not quite so deplorable previously to the long illness she had gone through; but that, at that melancholy period, her slaves and servants had robbed her of everything, even to the cushions and covers of her sofa.

At length, after frequently pleading the anxiety my family must feel at being left so many hours in a strange habitation, I contrived to make my escape, and found Mrs. ——, on my return, sitting disconsolate in the midst of her trunks, under a conviction that I must either have been lost, or devoured by the wolves and hyænas, with whose neighbouring depredations, for want of other subjects of conversation, the secretary had endeavoured to entertain her. There was no great difficulty in appeasing her fears on such occasions, of which we had afterwards so many repetitions; but it was not quite so easy to reconcile her to the undisguised slights which Lady Hester Stanhope put upon her from the very moment of our arrival, in retaliation, as we supposed, for the repeated delays, of which Lady Hester believed her to have been the cause, in the prosecution of my journey. Her ladyship’s resentment was probably rendered still more severe by her general want of sympathy towards her own sex.

The reader will pardon these extraneous details. They are introduced for the sake of preserving entire the thread of the narrative, and certainly with no acrimonious feeling towards Lady Hester Stanhope, whose motive, as she afterwards told me, for adopting this strange line of conduct towards my family, was to check in the bud the womanish caprices, which she anticipated might otherwise disturb the harmony of our intercourse.

Before we commence our diary, it is necessary to give a description of the residence which Lady Hester Stanhope had chosen, in order to avoid the confusion which an ignorance of localities is sometimes calculated to produce.

Her first retreat, when she settled in Syria in 1813, was an old monastic house, about two miles from the ancient city of Sidon: but this she found much too small for her establishment; and having observed, in one of her rides whilst living there, a small house near the village of Jôon,[28] or Djoun, as the French spell it to accommodate the sound to their pronunciation, she resolved to hire it, and remove thither. It belonged to one Joseph Seweyah, a Damascus merchant, who very readily let it to her for 1,000 piasters, or £20 a-year, as the exchange was then, on condition that, on quitting it, the buildings and improvements she might make were to revert to him and his heirs, without any consideration on his part. The house was, and is, called Dar Jôon (see the view), dar signifying a Hall, or gentleman’s dwelling, as when we say Boxwood Hall, Wortley Hall. Dar also means a mount, or elevated hunch. In which of the two senses the word is applied in Dar Jôon I could not learn, as some Arabs told me one way, and some the other.

The mount on which the house stands is shaped like a half orange, with a flat on the summit, which afforded room for exercising ground, a garden, stabling, and any other additional buildings that might be thought necessary. The garden, entirely of her own creation, was richly diversified with covered alleys, serpentine walks, summer-houses, pavilions, arbours, and other embellishments, in which she displayed such admirable taste, that it would not be easy, even in England, to find a more beautiful garden within similar limits.[29]

Around the house Lady Hester built small rooms, stables, cottages, offices, and entire dwellings. The rooms and dwellings were intended for lodging those who, she expected, would fly to her for refuge, during the revolutions which she believed were then impending, not only over the country in which she resided, but the whole world; and, anticipating that many individuals, whose lives would be eagerly sought after by their persecutors, might ask for an asylum at her hands, she contrived several detached rooms, in such a way, that persons dwelling within the precincts of the same residence should be ignorant who their neighbours were; whose vicinity, in like manner, should be unknown to others. The whole was surrounded by a wall more than ten feet high to the north and east, and about six or seven feet high on the other two sides. The entire space within the wall was a parallelogram.

Length of the Outside Wall 180 paces.
Breadth of d° ... 100 d°
The Dots mark the way from the Doctor’s Pavilions to the inner Courts.

REFERENCE:

• 1_Lady Hester Stanhope’s Bed Room.
• 2_Saloon, converted into a Store Room.
• 3_Divan, open to the air.
• 4_Entrance to the Garden.
• 5_Lady H. S.’s Drawing Room.
• 6_Store Room.
• 7_Major domo’s Room.
• 8_Men servants’ Hall.
• 9_Baroness Fériat’s Room.
• 10_Arbour, Covered with Jessamine.
• 11_Glass Room with Cistern under it.
• 12_Maid servants’ Room.
• 13_Miss Williams’s Room.
• 14_China Closet.
• 15_Pantry.
• 16_Kitchen for Lady H.S. only.
• 17_Bath.
• 18_Inner Court.
• 19, 19_Dairy.
• 20_Back yard for Lady H.S.’s maids.
• 21, 21, 21._Granaries.
• 22, 22._Loolo’s Stable.
• 23._Best Store Room.
• 24, 24._Offices & Kitchen for the Household.
• 25, 25._Strangers’ Rooms (second class.)
• 26, 26._Provision Rooms with immense Jars.
• 27, 27._Strangers’ Garden.
• 28, 28._Strangers’ Room (first class).
• 29._Cow Houses.
• 30. 30._Still Rooms.
• 31._Servants’ Gardens.
• 32, 32._Stables & Stable Yard for Horses.
• 33, 33._Mule Yard & Stables.
• 34._Terrace.
• 35._Carpenter’s Stores.
• 36._Wine Cellars.
• 37._Prison.
• 38._Warehouse.
• a, a, a, a._Different Court Yards.
• o, o._Secretary’s Rooms.
• p, q._Doctor’s Rooms.
• Ω_Doctor’s Pavilion—extra muros.
• z, z, z._Porters’ Lodges.

London. Published by H. Colburn, 13 Gᵗ. Marlboro St.

The buildings were, in some instances, composed of a number of walls, one within the other like the palace of the kings of the Medes (see the annexed ground-plan); and owing to the different enclosures wherein servants with different occupations lived, a person attempting to enter, or to escape, was certain of being seen, and almost equally certain of being stopped. Two gateways opened into the buildings, one for the men servants and visitors, and the other for the women, and those who were introduced secretly to her ladyship’s apartment. On entering by either of these two gates, a stranger would be seriously perplexed, and his first question would be, Where am I going? Is this a labyrinth, with a door here, and a dark passage there; a garden on one side, a screen on the other; here a courtyard, there another? what does it all mean? Some passages afforded an immediate communication with parts which, to one unacquainted with the building, and judging by the roundabout approach from one to another, would seem to be at least fifty or one hundred yards apart. In the garden were two pavilions, with trap-doors in the floor leading to steps which descended to a room under ground, from which opened doors through the wall upon the open country. More than one individual has been indebted for his safety, if not for his life, to these secret means of escape and shelter.

Her constant outlay in building arose not from the love of brick and mortar witnessed in many persons as they advance in years, but from the one predominant idea, that to her the distressed, the proscribed, the rich, the poor, would fly for protection, succour, and concealment. And however erroneous the fancy might have appeared at first (for events in some sort proved she was right), nobody who really knew her character could have suspected for a moment the generosity and pure disinterestedness of her motives. Her asses, mules, camels, and horses, were kept principally with the same view; and her servants were taught to look forward, with a sort of awe and religious expectation, to events and catastrophes, where their services and energies would be tasked to the utmost.

Besides the additions which Lady Hester Stanhope was constantly making to her own residence, she had hired four or five cottages in the village of Jôon, and had bought an old ruined house there. This, she said, she should repair, and convert into a sort of inn, where she might conveniently lodge a number of those persons who would be passing backward and forward on the important affairs in which she was soon to play so conspicuous a part. “And do not think,” she one day observed, “when the time comes, that I shall let your family, or that of my secretary, reside in the houses you now occupy: these I shall want; and I have in my eye, in a village about three leagues off, an asylum for all the women and children, and useless members of my establishment. There I shall send them; and you will have to give up all the spare room you can to the people who will take refuge with me.”

It often formed a source of strange reflection with me, what could have made Lady Hester Stanhope select such a locality, so remote and solitary, instead of living in a city, where the conveniences of life were readily accessible; and I at last came to the conclusion, in my own mind, that it proceeded from her love of absolute power, which could not be so thoroughly gratified in the midst of a numerous population as in a lonely and retired residence. She chose to dwell apart, and out of the immediate reach of that influence and restraint, which neighbourhood and society necessarily exert upon us. Arbitrary acts may lose at a distance some of their odiousness, or admit of being explained away. Servitude also becomes more helpless in proportion as it is removed from the means of escape or appeal. Mar Elias, at Abra, where she had previously resided six or eight years, was scarcely two miles distant from Sayda; so that her servants, when they were tired of her service, could abscond by night, and take refuge in the city; and her slaves, rendered low-spirited by the monotony of their existence, could at any time run away, and secrete themselves in the houses of the Turks. By removing to Jôon, she cut off their retreat; for a poor slave could rarely muster courage enough to venture by night across lonely mountains, when jackalls and wolves were abroad; or, if he did, by the time he reached Sayda, or Beyrout, or Dair-el-kamar, the only three towns within reach, his resolves had cooled, the consequences of the step he had taken presented themselves forcibly to his mind, or there was time to soothe him by promises and presents; all which palliatives Lady Hester Stanhope knew well how to employ. The love of power made her imperious; but, when her authority was once acknowledged, the tender of submission was sure to secure her kindness. Unobserved escape was well nigh impracticable by day, in consequence of the situation of the house on the summit of a conical hill, whence comers and goers might be seen on every side; yet, notwithstanding this, on one occasion all her free women decamped in a body, and on another her slaves attempted to scale the walls, and some actually effected their object and ran away.

In addition to these artificial barriers, she was known to have great influence with Abdallah Pasha, to whom she had rendered many services, pecuniary and personal; for to him, as well as to his harým, she was constantly sending presents; and he, as a Turk, fostered despotism rather than opposed it. The Emir Beshýr, or Prince of the Druzes, her nearest neighbour, she had so completely intimidated by the unparalleled boldness of her tongue and pen that he felt no inclination to commit himself by any act which might be likely to draw either of them on him again. In what direction, therefore, was a poor unprotected slave or peasant to fly? Over others, who were free to act as they liked, as her doctor, her secretary, or her dragoman, and towards whom she had more menagemens to preserve, there hung a spell of a different kind, by which this modern Circe entangled people almost inextricably in her nets. A series of benefits conferred on them, an indescribable art in becoming the depositary of their secrets, an unerring perception of their failings, brought home in moments of confidence to their bosoms, soon left them no alternative but that of securing her protection by unqualified submission to her will.

As a proof of this we may take the case of an English gentleman, of acknowledged abilities and of good professional education, who, about the years 1827 or 1828, after having remained attached to Lady Hester Stanhope as her medical attendant for a certain period, felt an insurmountable anxiety to quit her service. The village of Jôon furnished beasts of burden for hire, and Lady Hester Stanhope’s own mules went two or three times a week to Sayda for corn, provisions, &c. A horse was at the doctor’s call for his own riding, and the means of conveyance for so short a distance as two leagues were always therefore at hand. What, then, under such circumstances, could have induced him to set off on foot, without giving notice of his intention to anybody, if it were not that he was aware he could not get away in any other manner? When his absence was discovered, and it was known that he was gone to Sayda, a letter from Lady Hester Stanhope could not bring him back, neither could all the exhortations of her man of business, sent for that purpose, make him alter the determination he had taken not to return under her roof.

Yet, that the doctor’s emotions at the step he had twice hurriedly ventured upon produced a painful mental conflict cannot be doubted; for, in the room at Sayda where he was found, he sat with his head between his hands for some hours, weeping and sobbing, as one who considered that an injurious interpretation might be put on his flight, or as if Lady Hester’s conduct towards him had driven him to it, when he knew in his own heart, as his own letter to her proved, that she had been a benefactress to him at moments when it was not easy to find a friend.

As for consular interposition, under any circumstances, most of the consuls along the coast had found what a dangerous enemy she was: therefore, few of them, perhaps not one, would have risked a contention with her on any grounds. To have appealed to them, the legitimate protectors of Franks, would, therefore, have been fruitless.

At the time of my arrival, Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment consisted of Mr. Chasseaud, her secretary (a nephew of Mr. Abbot’s, then the English consul at Beyrout), who, with his wife and two infant children, occupied, like ourselves, a cottage in the village—of Paolo Perini, a Roman, her maître d’hôtel, seven black slaves, (five women, a man and a boy) and a Metoûaly girl, named Fatôom, the daughter of a peasant woman in the village, who principally waited on her. There were besides a Mahometan groom, two stablemen, a porter, a cook, and a scullion, three or four men as muleteers and water-carriers, and two, whose chief employment was to carry messages, letters, &c., to distant places, and who had been in Lady Hester Stanhope’s service ten or fifteen years. In addition to all these, she gave employment to a score of workmen, who were constantly occupied in different constructions.

Independently of these, there were two persons who might be considered as her men of business in matters that particularly regarded the natives. One was what would be called a small farmer in England, and the other a tailor by trade: they both lived in the village, were sent for when they were wanted, received no regular salary, but were paid for their services from time to time in money, presents of corn, raiment, &c., as is the custom in the East. The tailor was a cringing knave, fit for a great person’s parasite. He had somehow found his way into Lady Hester’s establishment, from having married the daughter of a Syrian woman, named Mariam, or Mary, a creature of incomparable suavity of manners and considerable beauty, who had been housemaid during her ladyship’s stay at Latakia, some years before. This woman had two daughters, one of whom, on becoming the tailor’s wife at about twelve years of age, interested Lady Hester Stanhope so far as to make her extend her favours to the husband: he was named Yûsef el Tûrk. The other was a man of a different description: he was club-footed; and it was usually one of Lady Hester’s physiognomical remarks that all club-footed people had something of the Talleyrand in them—something clever in their composition: he was called Girius Gemmal. On this man’s character she would often dilate with much commendation; but she always finished by calling him a designing knave and a rogue. “He serves me well,” she would say. “At whatever hour of the night I ring my bell, he is always on his legs. If I want to be talked to sleep, he has a number of amusing stories to tell. He moves about so gently, that I hardly hear him, although he is lame and hobbles on one leg. There is sure to be hot water on the fire at any hour, and he makes the girls look about them somehow or other; but he is the greatest rascal that ever walked the face of the earth.”

As to her health, she was better perhaps than when I left her in 1820. Her pulse and her movements indicated considerable vigour of body. Although she had not stirred beyond the precincts of her residence, as far as I could learn, for nearly four years,[30] still she took the air and some exercise in her garden, and in attending to and overlooking the building and improvements that were constantly going on.

She was become more violent in her temper than formerly, and treated her servants with severity when they were negligent of their duty. Her maids and female slaves she punished summarily, if refractory; and, in conversation with her on the subject, she boasted that there was nobody could give such a slap in the face, when required, as she could.

Lady Hester Stanhope had adopted a particular mode of dress, to which she adhered without much variation, on all occasions, from the time she fixed her abode at Jôon. It was a becoming one, and, at the same time, concealed the thinness of her person, and the lines which now began slightly to mark her face. Lines, that mark the habitual contraction of the features into a frown, a smile, or a grin, she had none; and the workings of her mind were never visible in her lineaments, which wore the appearance of serene calm, when she chose to disguise her feelings. But age will, without furrowing the brow or the cheeks, bring on that soil of network which we see on the rind of some species of melons. This, however, was so very faintly traced, that it could not be detected without a little scrutiny: and, by means of a dim light in her saloon, together with a particular management of her turban, she contrived to conceal the inroads that years were now making on what her bitterest enemies could not deny was always a fine and noble face. It was this kind of pardonable deceit that made me exclaim, on meeting her again, after a long separation of several years, that I saw no alteration in her appearance.

Her turban, a coarse, woollen, cream-coloured Barbary shawl, was wound loosely round, over the red fez or tarbôosh, which covered her shaved head; a silk handkerchief, commonly worn by the Bedouin Arabs, known by the Arabic name of keffeyah, striped pale yellow and red, came between the fez and the turban, being tied under the chin, or let fall at its ends on each side of her face. A long sort of white merino cloak (meshlah, or abah in Arabic, ابه) covered her person from the neck to the ancles, looped in white silk brandenburgs over the chest; and, by its ample and majestic drapery and loose folds, gave to her figure the appearance of that fulness which it once really possessed. When her cloak happened accidentally to be thrown open in front, it disclosed beneath a crimson robe, (joobey) reaching also to her feet, and, if in winter, a pelisse under it, and under that a cream-coloured or flowered gown (kombàz), folding over in front, and girded with a shawl or scarf round the waist. Beneath the whole she wore scarlet pantaloons of cloth, with yellow low boots, called mest, having pump soles, or, in other words, a yellow leather stocking, which slipped into yellow slippers or papouches. This completed her costume; and, although it was in fact that of a Turkish gentleman, the most fastidious prude could not have found anything in it unbecoming a woman, excepting its association, as a matter of habit, with the male sex.

She never wore pearls, precious stones, trinkets, or ornaments, as some travellers have affirmed: indeed, she had none in her possession, and never had had any from the time of her shipwreck. Speaking of her own dress, she would say, “I think I look something like those sketches of Guercino’s, where you see scratches and touches of the pen round the heads and persons of his figures, so that you don’t know whether it is hair or a turban, a sleeve or an arm, a mantle or a veil, which he has given them.” And, when she was seated on the sofa, in a dim corner of the room, the similitude was very just.

It was latterly her pride to be in rags, but accompanied by an extraordinary degree of personal cleanliness. “Could the Sultan see me now,” she would say, “even in my tattered clothes, he would respect me just as much as ever. After all, what is dress? Look at my ragged doublet, it is not worth sixpence; do you suppose that affects my value? I warrant you, Mahmôod would not look at that if he saw me. When I think of the tawdry things for which people sigh, and the empty stuff which their ambition pursues, I heartily despise them all. There is nothing in their vain-glorious career worth the trouble of aspiring after. My ambition is to please God. I should be what I intrinsically am, on a dunghill. My name is greater than ever it was. In India, I am as well known as in London or Constantinople. Why, a Turk told one of my people who was at Constantinople that there is not a Turkish child twenty miles round that place who has not heard of me.”

There might, nevertheless, be perceived, under all this assumption and display of tattered raiments, a feeling of profound indignation at the neglect she had experienced from her former friends and acquaintances; and, for the purpose of affording evidence of the way in which she had been left, as she called it, to rot, she carefully preserved a bag of her old ragged clothes, which she would not suffer to be given away.

The frequent alarm she expresses in her letters of approaching blindness seems to have been nothing more than the defective vision incident to the decline of life. Spectacles in silver-gilt or tortoiseshell rims, which I sent her from time to time in parcels containing other small commissions, without hinting that they were intended for her, she affected to consider, when she got them, as only useful for presents to old people to whom she was charitable. I now found that she had taken to wear them, but of that kind worn by poor old women in England, without branches, such in fact as are stuck on the nose, and vulgarly called barnacles.[31] Her voice on such occasions became nasal from the compression of the nostrils, and at first she was very reluctant to betray her use of these glasses before me; but, after a short time, her objections wore away: yet she never could be persuaded to wear any other kind of spectacles, invariably giving away all gay and handsome ones that were sent to her.

The influence she had enjoyed in Syria, during the first years of her residence there, had been merely that sort of consideration which is accorded to a person of high descent and connections, who had made a great figure in England, and who had acquired a romantic celebrity by her travels: it was the homage paid to an illustrious name. But when, by degrees, her extraordinary talents came to be known, more especially her political abilities, and when it was observed that Pashas and great men really valued her opinion and feared her censure, she obtained a positive weight in the affairs of the country on her own account, independently of the prestige of birth and notoriety.

Speaking of this, she one day said, “What offers have not been made me! which, had I chosen not to be clean-handed, would have put pretty sums into my pocket.” Among the rest, she mentioned one man, who had offered her a vast sum, if she would lend her name and protection in some extensive mercantile speculation. The Sheykh Beshýr (the acknowledged chief of the Druze nation, and the powerful rival of the Emir Beshýr, the reigning prince) sent her, when he was proscribed and in flight, at three different times, carte blanche to settle with Abdallah Pasha or the Porte the amount of the sum which would save his life: “but,” she said, “knowing the Sheykh was not clean-handed, I could not undertake to buy him off; yet the whole of his treasures would have been at my disposal.”[32]

In relating this story, Lady Hester Stanhope added, “How odious has Abdallah Pasha rendered himself by his extortions and confiscations, because none of his people will speak the truth to him! When he wants money, his secretaries tell him he has only to sign an order for it, and then perhaps half a dozen families are driven into exile, or half ruined. But I speak plainly to him; and once, when I wrote to him how he was making himself hated by a particular act of oppression about money, he tore the buyurdee[33] in pieces, which gave force to that act, and drove his secretaries out of his presence for having flattered and deceived him. Why, doctor, when he receives a letter from me, if there are half a dozen others at the same time, he will let them lie on his sofa whilst he reads mine, and then will put that alone into his pocket, and take it into his harým to read over again.”

But Lady Hester’s nearest neighbour among Pashas and Princes, and the one who, consequently, was the most frequently mixed up in her affairs, was the Emir Beshýr, prince of the Druzes; and, as his name will necessarily occur very often in this diary, it is desirable to give a sketch of his career and character. At a remote period, his ancestors had migrated from the neighbourhood of Mecca to this part of Syria, and their origin was acknowledged to be noble. In the course of time, his family had attained to great consideration in Mount Lebanon, and stamped him, who sprung from it, as an Emir, or Prince.

The Emir Beshýr was now the reigning prince of the Druzes, himself a Mahometan born, but, as it is said, professing Christianity, whenever it answered his wicked ends to do so. In the annals of no country, according to Lady Hester Stanhope, can be found a man who has practised more barbarities, considering the small extent of his principality, than he has done. Not content with emasculating, he cut out the tongues and put out the eyes of five young princes, nephews and relatives of his own, whose contingent prospects to the succession gave him uneasiness. His atrocities transcend belief. All those who were obnoxious to him, high or low, were sure, in the course of his protracted despotism, to be removed, either by secret machinations or overt acts. On Mount Lebanon it was common to hear whispers that some one had been made away with, but nobody dared to give utterance to their suspicions of the agency.

This man was Lady Hester’s determined enemy. She was living within his principality—within his reach—and yet she braved him! and the greatest proofs of personal courage that she had occasion to show, perhaps, during her life, were manifested in her bold and open defiance of his power; which is the more extraordinary in a woman, apparently neglected by her country and friends, towards a prince, who has been certainly one of the most perfidious as well as bloodthirsty tyrants that ever governed a Turkish province.

Lady Hester, as I said, was domiciled within his territory, and many were the petty vexations with which he harassed her, in the hope of finally driving her away; for he considered her as a very dangerous neighbour, seeing that she openly cultivated the friendship of the Sheykh Beshýr, his rival, and made no disguise of her bad opinion of him, the Emir. Finding, however, that she was determined to remain at Jôon, some of his emissaries were employed to insinuate the peril to which she would inevitably expose her life if she persisted in her hostility to so powerful a prince. But Lady Hester Stanhope was not a woman to be frightened; and, when she found a fit opportunity, in the presence of some other persons, of getting one of the Emir’s people before her, so as to be sure that what she said must reach his ears and could not well be softened down, she desired the emissary to go and tell his master that “She knew very well there was not a more profound and bloody tyrant on the face of the earth; that she was aware no one was safe from his poisons and daggers—but that she held him in the most sovereign contempt, and set him at defiance. Tell him,” she added, “that he is a dog and a monster, and that, if he means to try his strength with me, I am ready.”

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. And tell the Emir Khalyl” (the Emir Beshýr’s son) “that if he enters my doors, I’ll stab him—my people shall not shoot him, but I will stab him—I, with my own hand.”

Lady Hester, after relating this to me, thus proceeded: “The beast, as I spoke to him, was so terrified, doctor, that he trembled like an aspen leaf, and I could have knocked him down with a feather. The man told the Emir Beshýr my answer; for there was a tailor at work in the next room, who saw and heard him, and spoke of it afterwards. The Emir puffed such a puff of smoke out of his pipe when my message was delivered—and then got up and walked out.

“Why, what did Hamâady[34] say to the Emir, when he was deliberating how he should get rid of me?—‘You had better have nothing to do with her. 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. Why, at the time I am speaking of, there were five hundred horsemen about in the neighbouring villages, and they killed three men, one between the house and the village, one at the back of my premises, and one other farther off, just to let me know what they could do, thinking to terrify me; but I showed them I was not to be frightened. I always slept with a khanjàr” (a poniard) “by my side, and slept as sound as a top. Poor Williams was terrified out of her senses: she used to get up in the night and come to me. Why do I keep Seyd Ahmed but on account of his courage? because, in these dangerous times, you must have servants of all sorts. I remember when I and Miss Williams were left without a farthing of money, and the Emir had surrounded the house with the intention of murdering us, that Seyd Ahmed remained at his post, when all the rest were so frightened they did not know what they did; and we had nothing to eat too, but he never complained. Once, when we were at Abra, all the black slaves formed a plot to run away in the night to Sayda, which they executed. I had rung my bell several times, and, as nobody answered it, I went out to look, thinking they were all asleep, for it was two in the morning. Not a soul was to be found except the little black boy. I awoke Seyd Ahmed, called Miss Williams; and, although Seyd Ahmed was in a terrible fury, and wanted to set off in search of them in the middle of the night, I would not let him: for I thought it was a plot of the Emir’s to get the men out of the house, and then to have us murdered. But all these matters never disturbed my equanimity—I was as collected as I am now.”

Once some camels, that Lady Hester had sent with a load to a neighbouring seaport, were returning light, when some persons, who were employed by the Emir Beshýr, and who were accustomed to see the richest individuals of the province eager to embrace any opportunity of obliging him, thinking that she would be delighted that her camel-drivers should have rendered any assistance to their prince, stopped the camels, and loaded them with marble slabs, that were intended for the floor of a part of the Emir’s new palace, then building. These the drivers were ordered to deposit on Lady Hester’s premises, where they would be sent for. As soon as she heard that the slabs were lying near her porter’s lodge, she went out, and had them broken to pieces. “You may guess,” said she, when she told the story, “what a face the Prince made when this was related to him.”

There was a man, named Girius Baz, who was prime-minister to the Emir Beshýr; and, being an ambitious man, who sold his services to the injury of his master, he was strangled by him, and his goods and property, as far as they could be come at, were confiscated. The widow was left in poverty and destitution, as it was generally believed; and Lady Hester, having one day desired me to give two hundred piasters to her son, a lad, who had come begging in a genteel way, told me the following story:—

“That son,” said she, “was about eight or ten years old when his father was killed, and, since he has grown up, he maintains his mother by weaving. To succour this distressed family was a dangerous business with a man so cruel and jealous as the Emir; but I did it. One day, I asked one of the Emir’s officers why his master had so little compassion on Baz’s widow! ‘Because,’ answered the officer, ‘she goes about, saying she does not like the Emir.’—‘Like him!’ said I; ‘how can she like the man who murdered her husband? If she said she liked the Emir, it must be a lie, and therefore she only speaks the truth. Why did the Emir put it out of her power to like him?’—‘Because,’ replied the officer, ‘the minister became more powerful than his master, and then it was necessary to get rid of him.’—‘If he was too powerful,’ resumed I, ‘it was the Emir’s fault: he should have kept him under.’—‘But he could not,’ retorted the man.—‘Then, by your own confession,’ continued I, ‘he rode on the Emir’s shoulders; but that was no reason why he should have had him killed in a——.’—‘He was not killed in a——,’ interrupted the officer; ‘he was only seized there, and afterwards killed in his room.’—This was precisely what I wanted to get out,” added Lady Hester; “I made the man confess that the Emir had murdered Girius Baz, and it was of no consequence to me when, how, or where.

“Poor woman!” cried Lady Hester, after a pause, returning to the widow’s case, “I once had her for four months with me here, but she was so overwhelming in her gratitude and thanks, and kept so constantly about me, to attend upon me, that I was obliged to send her home again. Would you think it, that even in this case the sufferers proved themselves almost as bad as the tyrant! for this very woman carried on the farce of abject poverty for two years, and, at the end of that time, all of a sudden, appeared the diamonds, shawls, and money, she had hitherto concealed; in fact, she turned out almost as rich as I was myself. There is no believing a word you hear from any of them. Even Gondolfi[35] assured me that, in all his life, and in no other country, had he seen a people so full of lying, theft, and all kinds of vice as these are; and this, to crown all, is what he said of the Emir himself:—‘I have known him,’ said he, ‘twenty years, and never was there a more heartless, cruel man. I took an opportunity of talking to him in private, after he had put out his nephews’ eyes, and told him what an execrable thing it was. He beat his breast, and professed such repentance for what he had done, that I was quite moved, and thought to myself, perhaps the man acted from what he considered necessity, and that surely he would be more humane in future. But, soon after, I heard of the murder of Girius Baz, and of half a dozen more enormities, and I felt persuaded that his hypocrisy was as great as his cruelty.’

“You are shocked,” continued Lady Hester, “and say you are sick at your stomach from hearing of the atrocities of Ibrahim Pasha’s governors in getting recruits. Oh, they are nothing to what the Emir Beshýr has done in his time! Think of women’s breasts squeezed in a vice; of men’s heads screwed into a tourniquet until their temple-bones were driven in; of eyes put out with red-hot saucers; and a hundred other barbarities, worse than any you ever heard of! Wasn’t it extraordinary, that the same day that I sent the Emir’s man away with such a message to his master, one of the house-dogs pupped, and one of the puppies was blind?—not blind, as puppies usually are, but with his eyes burnt out, just as if they had been seared with a red-hot iron. I said to the man, ‘The demon of your Prince has entered the very dogs.’ The man almost fainted away before I had done with him, for I was not afraid of them; and even now, weak as I am, I do believe I could strangle the strongest of them.

“The Emir Beshýr has duped everybody. He duped the Pasha with the Sultan, and duped the Sultan with the Pasha. He cheats the English, cheats the French, and cheats all round. There is not a greater hypocrite on the face of the earth; and, although he sends his compliments to me by every traveller that passes, he is only waiting to see what turn matters will take, to fall on me, if he can; and, if he cannot, to lie and cringe, until a safer opportunity occurs of taking his revenge.

“You knew Aubin, the French navy surgeon, who had been a prisoner in the hulks at Portsmouth, and used to abuse the English so. Well, he was made the Emir’s doctor, because he procured him a ship to fly to Egypt in; the events on the mountain here succeeded each other so rapidly after your first leaving me! About 1820, Abdallah Pasha having hostile intentions against the Emir Beshýr and the Sheykh Beshýr, they both fled to the Horàn; and, after some time, when the Pasha pretended to be pacified, they both returned. Soon after that, the Emir, not being quite sure of what Abdallah Pasha meditated, thought it safest to fly a second time; and it was by the assistance of Monsieur Aubin that he embarked for Egypt, on board of a French merchant-vessel, commanded, I believe, by a Captain Allard. The Sheykh Beshýr, finding his former domineering rival fled, assumed the supreme authority in the mountain, and told the Emir Beshýr, by letter, that, if he ventured to return, he, the Sheykh, should be obliged to have him arrested, and sent prisoner to the Pasha.

“The Emir Beshýr, on arriving in Egypt, was coldly received at first, as it was said, by Mahomet Ali; but afterwards, having induced the Viceroy to believe that he could put him in possession of Acre and all Syria, he was, by Mahomet Ali’s money and mediation, restored to his principality. It was then that the plan for the conquest of Syria was concocted in secret between them. The Emir, on his return, contrived to recover his ascendency over the Sheykh Beshýr; and, picking a quarrel with him, he succeeded in taking him prisoner, and sent him in chains to Acre, where Abdallah Pasha finally cut his head off. At the same time, the Emir, to complete the ruin of the Sheykh’s party, mutilated the young Princes, who had shown themselves the Sheykh’s partisans. The Sheykh’s wife fled; and Aâlm-ed-dyn, a Druze, whom he employed in the execution of his bloody barbarities, was sent after her, and told to bring her son, a little boy, cost what it would. ‘Let me see him cut in pieces before my eyes,’ said the sanguinary wretch. The tyrant! he never sleeps without a number of guards round his person. His wife died soon after, and he sent a confidential agent to Constantinople, and bought two young Georgian slaves, he then being past eighty; and, after having both with him to see which he liked best, he took one of them as his favourite. It was for them that the mâalem[36] you saw at Cyprus, looking after canary-birds, was sent.”

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Lady Hester Stanhope’s hours of sleep—Her night-dress—Irksomeness of her service—Her bed-room—Her dislike to clocks—Her frequent use of the bell—Her aptitude in discovering and frustrating plots—Blind obedience required by her—Anecdote of Lord S.—Lady Hester’s colloquial powers—Interminable length of her conversations—Peculiar charm of them—Her religious opinions—Her belief in supernatural agencies, and also of revealed religion—Certain doctrines of the sect of the Metoualis adopted by her.

For the last fifteen years of her life, Lady Hester Stanhope seldom quitted her bed till between two and five o’clock in the afternoon, nor returned to it before the same hours the next morning. The day’s business never could be said to have well begun until sunset. But it must not be supposed that the servants were suffered to remain idle during daylight. On the contrary, they generally had their work assigned them over-night, and the hours after sunset were employed by her ladyship in issuing instructions as to what was to be done next day; in giving orders, scoldings, writing letters, and holding those interminable conversations which filled so large a portion of her time, and seemed so necessary to her life. When these were over, she would prepare herself to go to bed, but always with an air of unwillingness, as if she regretted that there were no more commands to issue, and nothing more that she could talk about. When she was told that her room was ready, one of the two girls, Zezefôon or Fatôom, who by turns waited on her, would then precede her with the lights to her chamber.

Her bedstead was nothing but planks nailed together on low trestles. A mattress, seven feet long and about four and a half broad, was spread on these planks, which were slightly inclined from head to foot. Instead of sheets, she had Barbary blankets, which are like the finest English ones, two over her, and one under. There was no counterpane, but, as occasion required, a woollen abah, or cloak, or a fur pelisse would be used for that purpose. Her pillow-case was of Turkish silk, and under it was another covered in coloured cotton. Behind this were two more of silk, ready at hand, if wanted.

Her night-dress was a chemise of silk and cotton, a white quilted jacket, a short pelisse, a turban on her head, and a kefféyah tied under her chin in the same manner as when she was up, and a shawl over the back of her head and shoulders. Thus she slept nearly dressed.

As it had become a habit with her to find nothing well done, when she entered her bed-room, it was rarely that the bed was made to her liking; and, generally, she ordered it to be made over again in her presence. Whilst this was doing, she would smoke her pipe, then call for the sugar-basin to eat two or three lumps of sugar, then for a clove to take away the mawkish taste of the sugar. The girls, in the mean time, would go on making the bed, and be saluted every now and then, for some mark of stupidity, with all sorts of appellations. The night-lamp was then lighted; a couple of yellow wax lights were placed ready for use in the recess of the window; and, all things being apparently done for the night, she would get into bed, and the maid, whose turn it was to sleep in the room, (for, latterly, she always had one) having placed herself, dressed as she was, on her mattress behind the curtain which ran across the room, the other servant was dismissed.

But hardly had she shut the door and reached her own sleeping-room, flattering herself that her day’s work was over, when the bell would ring, and she was told to get broth, or lemonade, or orgeat directly. This, when brought, was a new trial for the maids. Lady Hester Stanhope took it on a tray placed on her lap as she sat up in bed, and it was necessary for one of the two servants to hold the candle in one hand and shade the light from her mistress’s eyes with the other. The contents of the basin were sipped once or twice and sent away; or, if she ate a small bit of dried toast, it was considered badly made, and a fresh piece was ordered, perhaps not to be touched.

This being removed, the maid would again go away, and throw herself on her bed; and, as she wanted no rocking, in ten minutes would be sound asleep. But, in the mean time, her mistress has felt a twitch in some part of her body, and ding dong goes the bell again. Now, as servants, when fatigued, do sometimes sleep so soundly as not to hear, and sometimes are purposely deaf, Lady Hester Stanhope had got in the quadrangle of her own apartments a couple of active fellows, a part of whose business it was to watch by turns during the night, and see that the maids answered the bell: they were, therefore, sure to be roughly shaken out of their sleep, and, on going, half stupid, into her ladyship’s room, would be told to prepare a fomentation of chamomile, or elder flowers, or mallows, or the like. The gardener was to be called, water was to be boiled, and the house again was all in motion. During these preparations, perhaps Lady Hester Stanhope would recollect some order she had previously given about some honey, or some flower, or some letter—no matter however trifling—and whoever had been charged with the execution of it was to be called out of his bed, whatever the hour of the night might be, to be cross-questioned about it. There was no rest for anybody in her establishment, whether they were placed within her own quadrangle, or outside of it. Dar Jôon was in a state of incessant agitation all night.

These details are unimportant in themselves, but they are significant in a high degree of her ladyship’s peculiarity of character; and, as we have touched upon the incidents of her bed-room, which was, for most purposes, her principal apartment, it may be as well to complete the description by a few additional particulars. The room bore no resemblance to an English or a French chamber, and, independently of its rude furniture, it was, in another sense, hardly better than a common peasant’s. Its appearance, when illness confined its occupant to her bed, was something of this sort; for I often entered it, early in the morning, before breakfast. On the floor, which was of cement, the common flooring of Syria, lay, upon an Egyptian mat, a large oblong bit of drab felt, of the size of a bedside carpet, called in Arabic libàd, and a thick coarse chintz cushion, from which her black slave, Zezefôon, had just risen, and where she had slept by her mistress’s bedside; the slave having this privilege over the maid, who always slept behind the curtain. This dirty red cotton curtain was suspended by a common cord across the room, to keep off the wind when the door opened, most of the curtain-ring tapes being torn off: so that the curtain hung, alternately suspended here, and dangling there, a testimony of the little time the maids found for mending. There were three windows to the room; one was nailed up by its shutter on the outside, and one closed up by a bit of felt on the inside: the third only was reserved for the admission of light and air, looking on the garden. In two deep niches in the wall (for the walls of houses in Syria are often three feet thick), were heaped on a shelf, equidistant from the top and bottom, a few books, some bundles tied up in handkerchiefs, writing-paper—all in confusion, with sundry other things of daily use; such as a white plate, loaded with several pair of scissors, two or three pair of spectacles, &c.; and another white plate, with pins, sealing-wax, wafers; with a common white inkstand, and the old parchment cover of some merchant’s day-book, with blotting-paper inside, by way of a blotting-book, in which, spread on her lap, as she sat up in bed, she generally wrote her letters. These places were seldom swept out, and dust and cobwebs covered the books, into none of which, I believe, she ever looked, excepting Tissot’s Avis au Peuple, another medical book, the title of which I have forgotten, the Court Calendar, a Bible, and a Domestic Cookery. The ground was strewed with small bundles; gown-pieces of silk, or coloured cotton, which she destined as presents; bits of twine, and brown paper, left from day to day, from packages which had been undone, &c.

She had no watch, clock, or timepiece; and generally the last words, when I left her in the evening, were, “Doctor, tell me what it is o’clock before you go.” I took the liberty of asking her why she had not sent for a watch or timepiece during the number of years she had remained on Mount Lebanon, a thing so necessary every where, but especially in a solitary house, where the muezzim[37] could not be heard, as in towns. “Because I cannot bear any thing that is unnatural,” was her answer; “the sun is for the day, and the moon and stars for the night, and by them I like to measure time.” Upon another occasion, she said, “I never should be induced to go into a steamboat; I, who have seen five men killed by the explosion of a boiler, and I don’t know how many more wounded and scalded, have always a dread about me. Besides, I like nothing but nature.”

On a wooden stool, which served as a table, by the bedside, stood a variety of things to satisfy her immediate wants or fancies; such as a little strawberry preserve in a saucer, lemonade, chamomile tea, ipecacuanha lozenges, a bottle of cold water, &c. Of these she would take one or other in succession, almost constantly. In a day or two they would be changed for other messes or remedies. There would be a bottle of wine, or of violet syrup; aniseeds to masticate, instead of cloves; quince preserve; orgeat; a cup of cold tea, covered over by the saucer; a pill-box, &c.; and so thickly was the wooden stool covered, that it required the greatest dexterity to take up one thing without knocking down half a dozen others. And, in this respect, the noiseless movements and dexterity of the Syrian and black women pass all imagination. For months together nothing of this assemblage would be upset or broken; whilst a blundering Frank (Lady Hester would often say) could not come into a room without tumbling over her pipe, hooking his foot in the carpet or mat, pitching forward against the table, and manifesting all that European clumsiness, upon which she so delighted to expatiate.

Her bed had no curtains, no mosquito net. An earthenware ybrick, or jug, with a spout, stood in one of the windows, with a small copper basin, and this was her washing apparatus. The room had no table for the toilet, or any other purpose; and, when she washed herself, the copper basin was held before her as she sat up in bed. There were no curtains to the windows; and the felt with which one of them was covered was kept in its place by a faggot-stick, stuck tightly in from corner to corner, diagonally. Such was the chamber of Lord Chatham’s grand-daughter! Diogenes himself could not have found fault with its appointments!

I see I have omitted, in the enumeration of the furniture, to mention a necessary appendage, often so ornamental in English rooms—I mean, bellropes. Lady Hester Stanhope’s room had one, a common hempen cord, such as is customarily used for cording boxes. It was reeved through a wooden pulley, screwed into the centre of the ceiling, and came down slanting to the wall, where it was tied to a rusty hook; the bend, within her reach, was thickly knotted, so that she might the more easily lay hold of it. Nor was it made so strong and stout without good reason; for she lugged at it sometimes with a degree of violence and vigour, that would have snapped whipcord in two; and seldom did a servant leave her room without being rung back again, once, twice, or thrice—so impatient was her ladyship’s temper, and in such quick succession did her ideas rise in her mind upon every order she had to give.

Worn out with the fatigue of ringing, talking, and scolding, at length Lady Hester Stanhope would fall asleep; all would be hushed, and so the silence would continue for three, four, or five hours. But, soon after sun-rise, the bell would ring violently again, and the business of the morning would commence. This was a counterpart of the night, only that the few hours’ sleep gave her a fresh supply of vigour and activity. As she seldom rose until four or five in the afternoon, the intervening hours were occupied in writing, talking, and receiving people; for, as she then sat up in her bed, her appearance was pretty much the same as if she had been on a sofa, to which her bed bore some resemblance. She would see, one after another, her steward, her secretary, the cook, the groom, the doctor, the gardener, and, upon some occasions, the whole household. Few escaped without a reproof and a scolding; her impatience, and the exactitude she required in the execution of her commands, left no one a chance of escape. Quiet was an element in which a spirit so restless and elastic could not exist. Secret plans, expresses with letters, messengers on distant journeys, orders for goods, succour and relief afforded to the poor and oppressed—these were the aliments of her active and benevolent mind. No one was secure of eating his meals uninterruptedly; her bell was constantly ringing, and the most trifling order would keep a servant on his legs, sometimes a whole hour, before her, undergoing every now and then a cross-examination worse than that of a Garrow.

In the same day, I have frequently known her to dictate, with the most enlarged political views, papers that concerned the welfare of a pashalik; and the next moment she would descend, with wondrous facility, to some trivial details about the composition of a house-paint, the making of butter, the drenching of a sick horse, the choosing lambs, or the cutting out of a maid’s apron. She had a finger in everything, and in everything was an adept. Her intelligence really seemed to have no limits; the recesses of the universe, if one might venture to say so, absolutely seemed thrown open to her gaze. In the same manner that she frustrated the intrigues and braved the menaces of hostile Emirs and Pashas, did she penetrate and expose the tricks and cunning of servants and peasants, who were ever plotting to pilfer her. It was curious to see what pains she would take in developing and bringing to light a conspiracy of the vile wretches, who, from time to time, laid their deep schemes of plunder—schemes to which European establishments have no parallel, and machinations which Satan himself could hardly have counteracted. She used to say, “there are half a dozen of them whom I could hang, if I chose;” but she was forbearing to culprits, when she once had them in her power, although unwearied and unflinching in her pursuit of them.

No soul in her household was suffered to utter a suggestion on the most trivial matter—even on the driving of a nail into a bit of wood: none were permitted to exercise any discretion of their own, but strictly and solely to fulfil their orders. Nothing was allowed to be given out by any servant without her express directions. Her dragoman or secretary was enjoined to place on her table each day an account of every person’s employment during the preceding twenty-four hours, and the names and business of all goers and comers. Her despotic humour would vent itself in such phrases as these. The maid one day entered with a message—“The gardener, my lady, is come to say that the piece of ground in the bottom is weeded and dug, and he says that it is only fit for lettuce, beans, or selk, [a kind of lettuce] and such vegetables.” “Tell the gardener,” she answered vehemently, “that when I order him to dig, he is to dig, and not to give his opinion what the ground is fit for. It may be for his grave that he digs, it may be for mine. He must know nothing until I send my orders, and so bid him go about his business.”

The consequence of all this was, she was pestered from morning till night, always complaining she had not even time to get up, and always making work for herself. Here is another example. A maid, named Sâada, was desired to go to the store-room man, and ask for fourteen sponges. She went, and added, out of her own head when she delivered the message, “fourteen to wipe the drawing-room mats with”—it being customary in the Levant (and an excellent custom it is) to clean mats with wet sponges. In the course of the day, this slight variation in the message came to Lady Hester’s ears, and she instantly sent for the culprit, and, telling her that she would teach her for the future how she would dare to vary in a single word from any message she had to deliver, she ordered the girl’s nose to be rubbed on the mats, while this injunction was impressed on her, that, whatever the words of a message might be, she was never to deviate from them, to add to them, or to take from them, but to deliver them strictly as she received them. In fact, she maintained that the business of a servant was, not to think, but simply to obey.

Truly did old General Loustaunau say sometimes that, with all her greatness and her talents, there was not a more wretched being on earth. People have often asked me how she spent her life in such a solitude: the little that has already been related will show that time seldom hung heavily on her hands, either with her or those about her.

In reference to the blind obedience she required from servants, Lady Hester Stanhope one day said to me, “Did I ever tell you the lecture Lord S******* gave me? He and Lady S—— had taken me home to their house from the opera. It was a cold snowy night; and, after I had remained and supped tête-à-tête with them, when it was time to go, owing to some mistake in the order, my carriage never came for me; so Lord S—— said his should take me home. When he rang for the footman to order it out, I happened to observe, ‘The poor coachman, I dare say, is just got warm in his bed, and the horses are in the middle of their feed; I am sorry to call him out on such a night as this.’ After the man had left the room, Lord S—— turned to me and said, ‘My dear Lady Hester, from a woman of your good sense, I should never have thought to hear such an observation. It is never right to give a reason for an order to a servant. Take it for a rule through life that you are never to allow servants to expect such a thing from you: they are paid for serving, and not for whys and wherefores.’”

When Lady Hester Stanhope got up, increasing attention to her own personal wants through long years of bad health had rendered her a being of such sensitiveness, that a thousand preparations were necessary for her comfort; and herein consisted the irksomeness of the service for those about her. Yet this, if ever it was pardonable in any person, was surely so in her; for her nature seemed to lay claim to obedience from all inferior creatures, and to exact it by some talismanic power, as the genii in Eastern tales hold their familiar spirits in subjection.

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. Her control over her expressions was wonderful, in spite of her impetuous volubility. Her tongue was anything but the frank interpreter of her thoughts; it seemed rather to be given to her, upon Talleyrand’s principle, to conceal them; it was the tongue of a syren, always employed in misleading the hearer, and in conducting him to some unexpected conclusion by a roundabout road, or through a labyrinth of words, in which she would inextricably entangle him, until, at length, to his amazement, he found himself at some point, which he had never thought of before, or which he had been all along trying to avoid.

Her conversations lasted six and eight hours at a time, without moving from her seat; so that, although highly entertained, instructed, or astonished as the listeners might be, it was impossible not to feel the weariness of so long a sitting. 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; no workings in the listener’s mind that she would not penetrate; no intrigue, from the low cunning of vulgar artifices to the vast combinations of politics, that she would not unravel; no labyrinth, however tortuous, that she would not thread.

It was this comprehensive and searching faculty, this intuitive penetration, which made her so formidable; for, under imaginary names, when she wished to show a person that his character and course of life were unmasked to her view, she would, in his very presence, paint him such a picture of himself, in drawing the portrait of another, that you might see the individual writhing on his chair, unable to conceal the effect that her words had on his conscience. Everybody who heard for an hour or two retired humbled from her presence; for her language was always directed to bring mankind to their level, to pull down pride and conceit, to strip off the garb of affectation, and to shame vice, immorality, irreligion, and hypocrisy.

In the latter years of her life, social and unrestrained conversation was out of the question—it was difficult to unbend before her—to spend a couple of hours with her was to go to school. She was unceasingly employed in laying bare the weaknesses of our common nature. Mercy, in the sense of tenderness for people’s foibles, she had none; but, to her honour be it said, although she was constantly drawing a line between the high and low born, good qualities in the most menial person bore as high an estimation in her mind, as if she had discovered them in princes.

It was wonderful how long she would hold a person in conversation, listening to her anecdotes and remarks on human life; she seemed entirely to forget that the listener could possibly require a respite or even a temporary relief. It may be alleged that nothing was more easy than to find excuses for breaking up a parley of this sort; but it was not so—for her words ran on in such an uninterrupted stream, that one never could seize a moment to make a pause. I have sat more than eight, ten—nay, twelve and thirteen hours, at a time! Lady Hester Stanhope told me herself, that Mr. Way[38] remained, one day, from three in the afternoon until break of day next morning, tête-à-tête with her; and Miss Williams once assured me that Lady Hester kept Mr. N. (an English gentleman, who was her doctor some time) so long in discourse that he fainted away. Her ladyship’s readiness in exigencies may be exemplified by what occurred on that occasion. When she had rung the bell, and servants had come to her assistance, she said very quietly to them, that, in listening to the state of disgrace to which England was reduced by the conduct of the Ministers (this was in 1818-19), his feelings of shame and grief had so overpowered him, that he had fainted. Mr. N., however, declared to Miss W. that it was no such thing, but that he absolutely swooned away from fatigue and constraint.

Her conversations were generally familiar and colloquial, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes rising to eloquence so noble and dignified, that, like an overflowing river, it bore down everything before it. Her illustrations were drawn from every sensible or abstract thing, and were always most felicitous. Her reasoning was so plain, as to be comprehended and followed by the most illiterate person, at the same time that it was strictly logical, and always full of strength and energy. She had read all subjects without books, and was learned without lore; and, to sum up all, if she was mad, as many people believed, she was, like the cracked Portland vase, more valuable, though damaged, than most perfect vessels.

These dialogues may not, perhaps, read so well upon paper as they sounded to the ear when she spoke them. The flexibility of her features, the variety of her tones, her person, her dignified manner, her mimicry—all contributed towards the effect. Sometimes, after being deeply impressed with her discourse, I have gone from her, and immediately put it down in writing, word for word; but it never seemed to me the same thing.

It was often necessary to bear with great superciliousness and arrogance in her manner, and she might be said to be the most deliberately affronting person that ever existed, for she would say anything to anybody. Few, however, thought proper to put themselves in a passion, for she generally hit right. I have known her call a prince a coquin to his face. Nobody could despise her powers of argument, and her superiority of intellect. Her quickness of perception between right and wrong was indubitable; but, when she chose it, her sophistry was no less subtile and irresistible.

In the following diary, as much as possible of what fell from her on different subjects has been preserved. To have written down all would have required as many scribes as there are reporters for a daily newspaper. “Thoughts come into my head as wind comes in at the window,” Lady Hester used to say. Topic succeeded topic, one thing followed another, and it required a tenacious memory to retain such a profusion of matter, and much leisure to put it on paper.

The religious opinions of a person like Lady Hester Stanhope may probably be an object of curiosity to those who consider a man’s mode of faith the true criterion by which to estimate him. As far, however, as professed creeds went, it is doubtful whether she ever subscribed to any. She was accustomed to say, “What my religion is nobody knows. Jews and Christians have tried me hard, and questioned me pretty closely, but they were not wiser when they ended than when they began.”

“Doctor,” one day she said to me, “you have no religion—what I mean by religion is, adoration of the Almighty. Religion, as people profess it, is nothing but a dress. One man puts on one coat, and another another; but the feeling that I have is quite a different thing, and I thank God that he has opened my eyes. You will never learn of me, because you cannot comprehend my ideas, and therefore it is of no use teaching you. Nobody opens a book to an idiot, that would spit and splutter over it; for you never could make him read. Ah!—I see my way a little before me, and God vouchsafes to enlighten me perhaps more than other people.

“I know my own imperfections and my own merits; and I hope, by rendering myself pure in thought and deed, to become acceptable in the eyes of God. In all my gaieties, I was always the same as I am now. I saw there was a system of mythology, a system of medicine, of politics, of all sorts of things; but they did not satisfy me, and I used to say to myself I must find all this out. I know now a great deal more than I did then; and, if I were to sit down to dictate all I know, it would take me two years to do it. Yet, after all, when I look round and see the boundless extent of knowledge, I feel my own littleness. But what are half the people in the world? I hold them in the most sovereign contempt. Sir J. Mackintosh, who makes a speech, and makes a talk at a dinner-table, and then says he doesn’t know what about witchcraft—he may say what he likes, but there are evil spirits in mankind. Go into a madhouse!—all madnesses are not alike—and where you suspect the presence of an evil spirit.... But there, you will go and speak of these things to common persons, who will make fun of it, just as Dr. Madden and Dr. Clarke did....”

She went on, “I never can imagine that all the celebrated Greeks and Romans were a pack of old women; and therefore what they believed in must be as good as what other people believe in. But many, who see these things with the same eyes as I do, are still in the dark. It is like that looking-glass—everybody knows it reflects his face, but many do not know how and in what manner that is effected. Now I understand all the heathen mythology, not from reading about it, or hearing people talk about it, but from my own penetration and the depth of my reflections. And, if I could but get hold of some books that would give me the opinions and doctrines of all the ancient philosophers, I would then write down my own, and would support them by quotations; as thus—such a thing is so and so, and Plato, or Socrates, or Cicero, or somebody else, has such a passage in confirmation of what I assert.

“It was ever an object with me to search out why I came into the world; what I ought to do in it, and where I shall go to. God has given me the extraordinary faculty of seeing into futurity; for a clear judgment becomes matter of fact. It has ever been my study to know myself. I may thank God for my sufferings, as they have enabled me to dive deeper into the subject than, I believe, any person living. The theory of the soul, doctor, what an awful thing!

“My religion is to try to do as well as I can in God’s eyes. That is the only merit I have: I try to do the best I can. Some of the servants sometimes talk about my religion—dyn es Syt,[39] as they call it—and I let them talk; for they explain it to people by saying, it is to do what is right, and to avoid all uncleanliness.

“My views of the Creator are very different. I believe that all things are calculated, and what is written is written; but I do not suppose that the devil is independent of God: he receives his orders. Not that God goes and gives them to him, any more than the big my lord goes and gives orders to his shoeblack. There is some secondary being that does that—some intendant.

“There are angels of different degrees, from the highest down to the devil. It must be an awful sight to see an angel! There is something so transcendent and beautiful in them, that a person must be half out of his senses to bear the sight. For, when you are looking down, and happen to raise your head, and there is the angel standing before you, you can’t say whether it came up through the earth, or down from the sky, or how—there he is, and may go in the same way. But angels don’t appear to every body. You know, doctor, you can’t suppose that, if you were a little dirty apothecary, keeping a shop in a narrow street, a prime minister would waste his time in going to call on you; or that, if a man is sitting over his glass all the evening, or playing whist, or lounging all the morning, an angel will come to him. But when there is a mortal of high rectitude and integrity, then such a being may be supposed to condescend to seek him out.

“God is my friend—that is enough: and, if I am to see no happiness in this world, my share of it, I trust, will be greater in the next, if I am firm in the execution of those principles which he has inspired me with.”

Such were the religious opinions which Lady Hester Stanhope expressed from time to time. There may be observed in the lives of persons of extraordinary political talents a disposition to believe in the possibility of a class of agencies, which are generally considered visionary by common capacities. This may arise from the comparison they make between their own intellectual faculties and those of common minds. For, when they reflect how much superior they are to the generality of mankind, how much farther they can see into men’s projects, and what numberless agents, unknown and unsuspected by the vulgar, they call into action to effect their own plans and purposes, they then set no bounds to the range of an omnipotent being, and they fancy such a power to be served by spirits as much invisible to themselves, as their spies and creatures are unseen and unobserved by those whom they influence.

It was so with Lady Hester Stanhope. She managed whatever affair she undertook with impenetrable mystery; and the hand that weighed down the guilty or lifted up the oppressed was, when she stretched it out, oftener felt than perceived. Hence, probably, it was that her all-powerful mind had taken a strong bias towards dæmonology, necromancy, and magic. She seemed to entertain a firm belief that the elements were filled with spirits, who watched over and guided the steps and actions of men. The air we move in, and the earth we tread on, she considered as filled with delicate and aërial beings, by whom the gentle and sage were rewarded and protected for the amenity and prudence of their every-day movements and actions, but who, in return, avenged themselves on the wicked, nay, even on the awkward, by causing the numberless bodily accidents which such persons are liable to. “Never do I move a foot,” Lady Hester would sometimes say, “but I ask these guardian sylphs to watch over me; and never do I see a blundering fellow knock his head against the top of a doorway, but I think he is breaking some of their delicate members. For, as a piece of valuable china is generally set in a place where it may not be easily knocked down, so do these spirits generally perch where our steps may not molest them: and, as a man who spits about a room commonly aims his saliva where he will not spoil the furniture, so should we look that our motions and gestures do not injure these unseen creatures; and hence it becomes us, in what we do violently, to give them a kind of warning to get out of the way.”

In this belief, Lady Hester still acknowledged the Holy Scriptures as inspired writings; she quoted from them as such, and may be said to have looked into them oftener than into any other book. Thus, in speaking of the resurrection, she drew her argument from the New Testament. “There will be two resurrections,” she used to say; “for the Scripture mentions somewhere the first resurrection, and people don’t talk of their first wife unless they have had a second. The first resurrection will be such, that the dead will rise, and walk on the earth, with the people of it, in their accustomed forms and raiment; but, at the second, they will all appear before the Murdah,[40] and then will be the day of judgment.”

On another occasion, she exclaimed, “What wonderful things those prophecies are in the Bible! To think they should foretel events, and even people’s names, so many hundred years before a thing happens!”

When the missionary, Mr. Way, was at Jôon, Lady Hester and he talked together on religion for several hours. “Mr. W.,” she said, “was clever and learned; but he, like the rest, fancied he was to effect the conversion of men by his own efforts: they are all mistaken. My scheme is quite different. I am but an instrument in the hands of God, and, when he pleases that the great change is to take place, he will bring it to pass as he likes. My duty is to prepare people’s minds; and, if I were to die to-morrow, I should be contented if I thought I had made some persons, at least, reflect.”

In some things, Lady Hester Stanhope had adopted portions of the Jewish law, or perhaps of that of the Mussulman sect of the Shyites. Several of her maid-servants were taken from the neighbouring villages, where there are a great many schismatic Mahometans, called Metoualys; and in them she probably remarked certain observances, about which she obtained fuller explanations from the learned Sheykhs who occasionally visited her; and she seems to have copied these observances as useful rules of life, but not as religious duties. The Metoualys have the terms nidjez and halal, synonymous with unclean and lawful, constantly in their mouths, and most of the laws respecting uncleanliness in the Levitical code are followed by them. Lady Hester Stanhope had imbibed many of these prejudices, as will be seen from an example or two.

A gentleman, irreproachable on the score of cleanliness and of refined manners, having arrived somewhat unexpectedly at Jôon, the servants, in their hurry to get his dinner, made use of some things which belonged to her ladyship’s service. After dining, the guest paid his visit to her, and then retired to go to rest. It was nearly one in the morning. From a word, casually dropped by the slave, she discovered that some of her own dinner napkins had been given out for her visitor. Such an uproar began, as few people can imagine would ever spring from so trifling a cause, and was hardly over by daylight.

“What! is there no possibility,” she cried, “of keeping anything to myself? I do insist, that everything which regards other people may never be mixed with what is for me. Neither shall water be boiled in my kitchen, nor cooking go on there, nor saucepan, dish, nor glass, that has once gone out for any one, ever return there again.” The confusion lasted for some hours after midnight; she had all her pots, pans, tumblers, dishes, towels, knives and forks, every article of the table or kitchen, brought in, and spread before her, to teach them, as she said, by the trouble they had, not to violate her orders again. But there was reason to suppose that all these minute and exclusive regulations were not attended to. She was the dupe of the servants’ lies; and she once said, as if in despair at not being able to enforce obedience, “Doctor, they wipe their noses, then the ..., and then the drinking-glasses, in the same towel; and lie, and lie, with an assurance that sets detection at defiance.”

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Buoyancy of Lady Hester Stanhope’s spirits—Death of Miss Williams—Mrs. ——’s first visit to Lady Hester—The Author is summoned to Damascus to attend Hassan Effendi: declines going—Discussions between Lady Hester and Mrs. —— thereupon—Lady Hester’s hatred of women—She sends her maid to revile Mrs. —— —The Author resolves to return to England—Alarm from soldiers on their march—Lady Hester assists Abdallah Pasha in laying out his garden—Anecdotes of the first Lord Chatham—Fresh discourses about the Journey to Damascus—Anecdotes of Mr. Pitt—His attachment to Miss E.—His admiration of women—His indulgence towards other people’s failings—Lady Hester and the fair Ellen—Strange history—Mr. Pitt’s attention to the comfort of his guests, and of his servants—Strange rise of one of them—Lady Hester’s pathos—Paolo Perini’s expected post of artilleryman.

Her ladyship, in several conversations, took great pains in acquainting me with all the material events that had occurred during my absence in Europe, and in what relation she stood with the pashas and governors of the neighbouring towns and provinces, proceeding, in succession, from occurrences relating to the most exalted individuals, to those connected with the lowest persons that surrounded her. 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. This buoyancy of spirits saved her from the despondency which others, in her deserted state, must inevitably have felt. The work of years to come was chalked out in her active imagination; plans were sketched; new channels of correspondence were to be opened; her household was to be remodelled; fresh buildings were to be raised; learned researches were to be made: valuable manuscripts were to be procured. It is impossible to say what was not projected; but her faithful Miss Williams still rose uppermost in her mind, and her first care was to see the last duties, yet remaining, paid to her memory.

As that excellent person occupied an important position in Lady Hester Stanhope’s house and affairs, I will here make room for the following account of her sickness and death, as it was given me by Um Ayôob, a respectable widow of Jôon. This woman was in the habit of doing needlework at Lady Hester’s, when she would pass whole days together at the house. One day, as she and Miss W. were sitting in the same room sewing (it was on a Friday), Miss W. said to her, “Dear me, how cold I am—I am all in a shiver!” The season (it being autumn) was very sickly, and many of the servants were lying ill, one being at the very time dangerously so with continued bilious fever. The shivering, however, passed over. Um Ayôob went home at night, and the following day returned to her work. Miss W. was on her legs again. The day after she had an attack of intermittent fever. This was Sunday, and on Monday she was pretty well again. Expecting the return of the fit on Tuesday, the good widow asked Miss W. whether she should remain with her; but Miss W. said “No: your daughter has got an ague as well as myself; so go, and attend upon her—she may want you in the night; and come to me on Thursday, as to-morrow I shall not require your services, for I intend to remain quiet all the day.” So, on Wednesday, Um Ayôob did not go. On Thursday she was baking, when a servant came to her, and said, “Make haste, for God’s sake! you are wanted to attend on Miss W.” As the old lady’s bread was just baked, she thought she would take a couple of hot cakes in a clean towel, with the idea that Miss W. might like them buttered for her breakfast. “So,” said Um Ayôob, when she told me the melancholy story, “as I was hastening along the bottom which divides the village from the Dar, I was met by little Gayby, crying, ‘Oh, come, come—run, run!’—‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.—‘Oh, oh! she’s dead! she’s dead!’ sobbed Gayby.—‘Who’s dead?’ cried I, terrified out of my senses.—‘Miss Williams,’ answered she. I was struck with horror, and, quickening my pace as fast as I could, I arrived out of breath, and found the tale but too true—Miss Williams had breathed her last.”

It appeared that, on Wednesday morning, Lady Hester, who was herself ill in bed, had given orders to the little girl, Gayby, to prepare, from the medicine-chest, a dose of salts and senna, she being too ill to see to it herself. This dose, according to the assertion of Nasara, one of the maids, who waited on Miss W., produced an extraordinary effect through the day and night, and Miss W. was not free from its action until she expired. Besides the black dose, she took also three pills, but of what nature I could not learn. The persons who attended on her were Nasara, Gayby, and Fatôom, the Fatôom so often named in these pages, who was at that time eleven or twelve years old. Um Ayôob, who loved and regretted Miss Williams (as indeed did almost everybody), sat by her corpse the remainder of the day. In the course of the afternoon, she was surprised to find that the body, so far from becoming cold, retained almost its natural living heat. There happened to arrive at Lady Hester’s the preceding day a doctor of the country, who had been sent for to attend on Moosa, the man-servant, then lying dangerously ill, and who died two days after Miss W. Um Ayôob called him into the room, and begged him to feel the body, and say whether there was not yet life in it. He was equally of opinion with the widow that the appearances were very surprising, and the more especially as the cheeks retained some colour, and (according to Um Ayôob’s expression), as something kept continually bubbling inside of her like boiling water. The doctor went to Lady Hester and told her what he had seen, and asked her permission to open a vein. Lady Hester, who was overwhelmed with affliction at the loss of a person so dear to her, said, “Do what you please.” He accordingly opened a vein in the foot, and the blood spirted out, said Um Ayôob, as from a living person. After having taken what he thought a sufficient quantity, he bound up the incision; but life never returned, and on Sunday she was buried in the burying-ground of the monastery of Dayr el Mkhallas, the coffin being followed by the French vice-consul and some merchants of Sayda.

I must here observe that the letting of blood was an ill-judged expedient for restoring the living action, because it only completed the exhaustion already carried to its utmost point by the previous depletion of the bowels. The case is not the same as when, after a fall or an attack of apoplexy, the opening of a vein may give an impulse to the suspended circulation, just as a touch of the finger to the balance of a watch will set it going when it has stopped. But here the vital warmth should have been nourished and promoted by every available means, and nature should have been left to husband her internal resources until reanimation had been effected.

In company with my family, I visited Miss Williams’s grave, and could not forbear shedding tears over it; for I had known her many years. She was a creature of remarkable singleness of mind, of unstained purity, and so universally beloved that the people of the neighbourhood and the peasantry talk of her to this day as a model of virtue and goodness. The only monument raised over her grave was a rude, oval-shaped wall, topped with thorny shrubs, to keep the jackalls from scratching for her corpse.

In the register of the monastery, they have (as I was told) put her down as a Catholic, and had spread a report that she had died in that faith, in order that popular prejudice might raise no objection to her lying in Catholic ground. Over the tomb a tamarisk-tree, with its delicate, evergreen, feathery branches, waves in the wind. A few tombs of venerable bishops, devout merchants, and holy monks, stand in relief from the rocky barrenness of the spot, with Arabic inscriptions commemorative of their piety and virtues. It is only to be regretted that some similar memorial has not been raised to Miss Williams.

Miss Williams had now been dead more than two years, and the room in which she died had never been entered, from the hour that her corpse was carried out of it. The door had been barred up by cross laths nailed over it; and, from the circumstance of Lady Hester Stanhope’s having repeatedly declared she never could pass by the door again, a sort of dread had crept over the maids and slaves, akin to that which is common in England when a chamber of some house is reported to be haunted. A breathless silence, and expectation of something supernatural, accordingly reigned in the quadrangle, when the carpenter proceeded to knock away the laths, and, through cobwebs and dust, I introduced, with some difficulty, the rusty key into the keyhole, and, with considerable effort, forced open the door. The floor was covered with dust, and thick, long cobwebs hung across from wall to wall: on the floor lay scattered in confusion a few books, a hair-brush, and various papers. A sort of disorder was apparent in the furniture, such as would arise in a room hastily left. A box of papers, containing a list of Lady Hester Stanhope’s debts and memoranda relating to them, lay open in a recess, and seemed the last thing that had occupied Miss W.’s attention; for, alas! the increasing embarrassment of Lady’s Hester’s money concerns might naturally be supposed to harass her mind, seeing that, at one time, her noble patroness, bred in the lap of luxury, had been reduced to the necessity of selling for their weight (since they would not pass current), forty English guineas, given to her by her brother James when they parted, and saved when she was ship-wrecked, not knowing, when they were gone, where to look for a penny. An empty work-basket lay turned upside down on the floor; and an air of desolation and disorder in the room and closets showed that whatever had been worth pilfering had been carried off by the wicked servants during the time which elapsed between her death and burial.

“Poor Miss Williams!” thought I; “what must have been your sufferings at that sad hour, with no one of your own country to close your eyes, and surrounded by slaves and peasant women, who robbed you instead of attending to your wants! Yet, with what fidelity and attachment did you not follow your benefactress from a comfortable home, where a happy circle regretted you, to endure the numberless privations which constant confinement, want of society, and a residence in an uncivilized country, necessarily bring with them! Even I, had my earlier arrival not been retarded, might have contributed to soothe your last moments, if not to save your life!”

On opening the closets that were locked, her linen, her writing-desk, her paint-box, and sundry other articles were seen neatly arranged, as one would suppose an English woman would place them. I unlocked the desk, removed the papers, which her relatives had written for, as well as some others that Lady Hester thought I should find there; and, shutting the closet again, withdrew with melancholy thoughts on the uncertainty of human hopes, resolved to defer until another day the inventory of her goods and effects.

The next day, I remained with Lady Hester Stanhope from eleven in the morning until ten at night, the greater part of the time being employed in looking over Miss W.’s papers, which consisted principally of rough copies of letters dictated by her ladyship.

When I and my family were comfortably settled in our little cottage in the village, Lady Hester appointed a morning to receive Mrs. ——, on the occasion of her first visit. On reaching the house, I conducted her to the saloon, where, after introducing her, and sitting a little while, I retired, in compliance with Lady Hester’s usual custom of never liking to have more than one person with her at a time. Here Mrs. —— remained about three hours, and then took her leave; and I, having sent her home under the care of a servant, presented myself to hear Lady Hester’s opinion about her, a necessary consequence that always followed when any person quitted her whom she had seen for the first time. Our conference lasted until past midnight. The night proved very tempestuous: the wind howled, the thunder rolled, the rain beat against the shutters; and, when I returned to the village, wet through, I found Mrs. —— sitting disconsolate, and terrified at the war of the elements, alone, as it were, in the midst of the horrors of the night, and unable to make herself understood by the slaves, who knew no language but Arabic.

Next morning, at breakfast, we talked over the conversation that had passed between her and Lady Hester Stanhope. Lady Hester had used the kindest expressions; and, at the close of her visit, getting up and ringing for a handsome Turkish spencer in gold brocade, had put it on her with her own hands, and had wound on her head a beautifully embroidered muslin turban. Mrs. ——, not understanding Lady Hester’s humours, who had in all this imitated the Eastern manner of robing people when they go away, had taken them both off and left them on the table, so that they were sent home the next day. This, I knew, would be a grievous offence in Lady Hester’s eyes.

Things, however, went on satisfactorily until the 25th of January, when a messenger came from Damascus, sent by a person of an ancient and noble family, named Ahmed Bey, beyt Admy,[41] with a letter to Lady Hester Stanhope, saying that, “her physician’s arrival from England having been reported to the Pasha, he, Ahmed Bey, had been solicited by his highness to write to her, and request she would spare the doctor, a short time, to cure a complaint with which a friend of the Pasha’s, called Hassan Effendi, Tâat ed Dyn, was afflicted in the roof of his mouth, which was peculiarly painful to him, and a source of deep regret to the faithful, in consequence of his being one of the most distinguished chanters of the Koran.”

This Ahmed Bey was a very old friend of Lady Hester Stanhope’s, and a nobleman who had honoured me with his particular notice some years before, during our stay at Damascus; she, therefore, laid great stress on my going, and wished me to prepare immediately for my departure.

As I did not think it right to leave my family for three weeks or a month alone in a cottage, where no human being could understand them, I suggested to Lady Hester the propriety of writing a polite excuse to Ahmed Bey, expressing my inability to comply with his wishes for the present. But she had my compliance so much at heart, that it was agreed she should see Mrs. —— herself, and endeavour to remove her scruples, flattering her she could contrive, with her accustomed fertility in expedients for all difficulties, some means to reconcile her to my departure, and show her the groundlessness of her fears. Mrs. —— accordingly paid a second visit to Lady Hester, who began by endeavouring to act on her pride, by telling her my reputation would be ruined among all the Pashas, if I refused to go to a great man, like Hassan Effendi, and that her own consequence would be lessened; moreover, that our ambassador at Constantinople would hear of it, and take it ill, with many arguments of the like sort. Finding this mode of reasoning had no effect, she tried to frighten her, by assuring her very gravely that there were dervises, who, interested in the well-being of holy men, and especially of a chanter of the word of the Prophet, would, by unknown charms, inflict all sorts of evils upon her, make hair grow on her face, bring out blotches on her body, &c. The reader will be surprised, when he is told that Lady Hester Stanhope affected to believe all this. Mrs. —— lent a civil but incredulous ear. Her ladyship then endeavoured to engage her consent by holding out the benefits that would accrue to me in a pecuniary light, and the shawls and brocades that I probably should bring back to her as presents from such grand folks. But the foretaste of solitude in a village during winter, which the many lonely evenings already passed there had given her, was too strongly impressed on her mind, and she respectfully but firmly answered, that, if I chose to go, of course she could not help it, but that it never could be without rendering her miserable: upon which they parted, with no good will on her ladyship’s side; and from that hour began a system of hospitality to Mrs. ——, which never ceased until our departure.

This leads me to say a word on the extraordinary hatred that Lady Hester Stanhope bore to her own sex, although from what cause I do not know: but during her travels and her residence on Mount Lebanon, in all the visits she received from persons of whatever condition, their wives, if travelling with them, seldom or never obtained access. She professed a general dislike to women, and said she had never known but three, among the hundreds she had been acquainted with, of whom she could speak with unreserved admiration. Hence it was that she considered married men as necessarily miserable, and how often did she quote Sir —— ——’s case to illustrate her views. That same evening she reproached me for yielding to the idle fears of a woman, and painted very ridiculous and amusing pictures of the henpecked husbands she had known in her time, of whom the most prominent was Lord ——, and the most suffering, the baronet alluded to above. In conclusion, she told me she should write an answer to Ahmed Bey, telling him I was governed by my wife, and could not come.

It was customary for her to send over to the village every morning a servant and horse to fetch me; but on the 26th, 27th, and 28th of January he did not come; and I very well knew that some explosion of anger would take place on her part: it being an unpardonable thing in her eyes for any living being to oppose her purposes, and much more for a woman to do so. In the evening of the 28th, her factotum, the bailiff, came with a message, requesting to know whether I had overcome Mrs. ——’s scruples, and, if not, desiring I would certify it in writing. Accordingly, I wrote a letter, in which I justified my own refusal to go to Damascus, on the ground that Mrs. —— was totally new to the country; had no soul to talk to; had, in compliance with Lady Hester’s wishes, brought no maid-servant who could understand her; and that I could not find it right to leave her, much as I regretted the disappointment and vexation that such a step caused her ladyship, and her friend and mine, Ahmed Bey.

February 3, 1831.—I heard no more of Lady Hester until this day, when the horse was sent, and, on entering her saloon, a stormy altercation took place between us, in the presence of her secretary. The final result was, that I signified my wish, as soon as I had done what I could for her, to take my family back again to Europe, regretting I had come so far to so little purpose. “I have given,” said she, “a good deal of advice to many persons in whom I have taken an interest, and you are the last of my disciples whom I thought I could make something of: but it is like cutting the hair off the legs of half-bred horses; it grows again, and you may often get a kick in the face for your pains. You know what a good opinion they had of you in this country, which I kept up; but your conduct now has spoiled all: for when a man gives his beard to a woman it is all over with him. Remember my words, and write them down.”

But she was not to be so easily foiled. She returned to the charge, and again urged me to undertake the journey to Damascus. She called my attention to the words of Ahmed Bey’s letter, describing Hassan Effendi’s malady: “His chest is without pain, and so is his throat, and the complaint seems to be in his mouth.” These expressions she interpreted as a clear indication that this great man was somebody who had a communication to make to her, which was of too much importance to be trusted to a letter, and that that was what was meant by the “complaint in the mouth.” Anxious, therefore, to know what this secret business was, she thought neither of the state of the weather (for the snow was lying deep on the upper chain of Mount Lebanon, over which the road to Damascus lay), nor of the complete loneliness in which my family would be left. It is true that, in another cottage in the village, Mr. Chasseaud and his wife lived, and they had shown every disposition in their power to enliven Mrs. ——’s solitude; but this was the rainy season, and there were days when it was impossible to get from house to house, owing to the violence of the wind and the torrents of water that fell from the heavens: and, when the rain abated, the mud, mixed with dung of cattle, so completely filled the paths, that it was impossible to walk five steps.

That there was cause for apprehension, when left alone, may be seen from what had occurred on the 24th of January. It rained heavily, and I was sitting writing in the evening, when the black slave told me that about two hundred soldiers had halted for the night in the village, on their way to join Abdallah, Pasha of Acre, who was besieging the castle of Nablôos, where the inhabitants were in a state of insurrection, brought on by the arbitrary exactions of the local government. In those days, soldiers in villages often committed many excesses. We had no bolt to our front door, nor any fastening but a hook to the window-shutters. About nine in the evening, the following note was brought me by Mr. Chasseaud’s servant:

But I had no arms, excepting my fowling-piece, which was nailed down in a case that I had not yet had time to open; so, putting my reliance on the respect which the name of Lady Hester Stanhope obtained for those belonging to her establishment, and on the heavy rains, I wrote on, not altogether free from alarm, when, sometimes, the blasts of wind shook the door and window-shutters, and made me uncertain whether the noise I heard was that of the elements or of man.

A truce seemed now to have been concluded between Lady Hester and ourselves, by a suspension of hostilities, but it was only to mature a fresh attack. Abdallah Pasha had been busied for some months in making a European garden in the environs of Acre, as a place of recreation for himself and his harým, and Lady Hester had given him many useful instructions in the laying of it out, and had from time to time sent her Italian servant, Paolo Perini, to lend a helping hand. The following day, therefore, was spent in writing a letter about the building of a pavilion, which was dictated in French, and then translated into Arabic by her Arabian secretary, Khalyl Mansôor, who, being a shopkeeper at Sayda, was sent for whenever there were Arabic letters to write. Much amusement arose about the construction of a phrase, in which pillars of the Ionic order were named. Mansôor hinted that the word Ionique had a signification in Arabic which rendered it impossible to use it. I had made a drawing of the five orders of architecture, and what was to be written was an explanation of their differences, so that a full hour was spent in getting over the difficulty.[42] Then a letter was written to Abd el Rahmàn Berber, a Turkish merchant, with a remittance of five hundred dollars, due for interest on money lent; and, as he was about setting off on his pilgrimage to Mecca, the remittance was accompanied with a supply of medicines and small stores for his journey, such as tea, chocolate, syrups, &c.

February 4.—This day was passed in writing letters of advice and bills of exchange on London, and a letter to the Emir Hyder, of Shumbalàn; also in arranging Miss W.’s papers. In addressing the bills of exchange to the house of Messrs. Coutts and Co., Lady Hester’s recollections were carried back to that opulent banker’s times. “One day,” said she, “on calling on Mr. Coutts, the old man happened to be very gay, and, on my entering his room, he addressed me thus:—‘I consider myself one of the most enviable of men: let me see—I have had the visit of one, two, three, four, five, six, and you make the seventh, of the handsomest women in London.’ The Miss Gubbinses had just been there—they went out as I entered; they were beautiful, doctor! On another occasion, old Coutts put his hands on each side of my face, and kissed me on the forehead, with an exclamation of ‘Good God! how like my old friend, your grandfather! You must forgive an old man, if he can’t refrain from almost embracing you—it is the exact sound of his voice. Ah!’ he continued, ‘I think I see him now, seated in that chair; and, after I had been explaining my views in politics, or on anything else, cutting them all up at once by something that was indisputable.’ That is, doctor, just as if a person had been going on explaining their views respecting a child, and another should say, ‘that’s all useless—the child is dead.’ My grandfather dived into futurity, as I do. Mr. Pitt, too, would often tell me how much I was like Lord Chatham, my grandfather. Sometimes, when I was speaking, he would exclaim, ‘Good God! if I were to shut my eyes, I should think it was my father! and, how odd! I heard him say almost those very words forty years ago.’ My grandfather, doctor,” said Lady Hester, going on, “had gray eyes like mine, and yet, by candlelight, from the expression that was in them, one would have thought them black. When he was angry, or speaking very much in earnest, nobody could look him in the face. His memory on things even of a common nature, and his observations, were striking. On passing a place where he had been ten years before, he would observe, that there used to be a tree, or a stone, or a something, that was gone, and on inquiry it always proved to be so; yet he travelled always with four horses, at a great rate.”

February 5.—The whole day was taken up in making a drawing to explain the nature of a forcing-pump, or engine, for watering the shrubs and flowers in Abdallah Pasha’s garden.

February 6.—From one in the afternoon until ten at night, not excepting the time we were at dinner, Lady Hester Stanhope talked of the Damascus affair, endeavouring to prove to me that my refusal would endanger my life, and embroil the government of Damascus with Mr. Farren, the new consul-general, who was expected from England; showing that, in her situation, where her consideration among the natives depended entirely on opinion, Mrs. ——’s opposition to her will, if not effectually put down, would be subversive of all her authority, and make it be supposed she was not the great personage she was held to be; inasmuch as, among Eastern nations, in all clans, communities, and separate governments, there was, and ought to be, but one will, which was that of the head. I admitted all this to be true; but told her, there seemed to be no other way of settling the affair than by our withdrawing at once to Europe. She gave me to understand we might certainly go if we liked, but that we should find it more difficult than I suspected. This was no idle threat of hers, and I knew it; for not a peasant would dare to let out his camels, mules, or asses, to one who was known to have incurred her displeasure; and to send to Sayda to hire them was equally impossible, seeing that no one would go willingly on such an errand; or, if he did, her influence extended far enough to frighten camel-drivers and muleteers from their engagement. The close of the conversation was a separation far from amicable; so that on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of February, I did not see her.

February 11, 1831.—My horse was sent over, and I remained from noon until my dinner-time. All was gentleness and urbanity. The conversation turned on Mr. Pitt, her father, and her brothers; on Tom Paine, Mr. Way, Mrs. Nash, and others. She seemed to be disposed to resort to her customary tactics, which were to make attacks at intervals, and then to wait a day or two, to see if they had taken effect. I will relate some of her anecdotes.

“Mr. Pitt loved ardently Lord A*******’s daughter,”[43] said Lady Hester Stanhope; “she was the only woman I could have wished him to marry. I had never seen her; and, as she frequented Beckenham church, I went on a visit to Mr. Grote’s, the banker, to get a sight of her. I went to church with Mr. Long’s brother, dean of somewhere, I forget now, a monstrous handsome man. As soon as we appeared in the pew, she knew who I was, and her whole body became of one deep red. A paleness followed; she drooped her head, put her hand to her face, and bent over her book, as if praying. When the service was over, I considered that the meeting with her was not a scene fit for the church-porch, but I was resolved to have a close look at her. As we approached her, she pretended to be talking in an animated manner with some of her party, but her attention was evidently turned towards me. When we saluted, I saw she was beautiful—very beautiful, doctor.

“Next day rat-tat-tat came a carriage and four to Mr. Grote’s door. ‘My dear Mr. Grote, we have long been neighbours, but I don’t know how it is, we have not seen so much of each other as we ought to have done.’ This was Lord A. and the mother. The young lady was more collected by this time, and the conversation went on very well. On the following day, Mr. Grote and I called at Lord A.’s; but, the porter not having received his instructions, we were rudely sent away. The carriage had hardly got twenty yards, when out came my lord, and a whole posse of them, with a thousand apologies for the blunders of servants; and we returned, and went in. She had been walking out, drawing, or something; and when she pushed up her bonnet, and turned her hair aside, oh, doctor, what a forehead was there!

“Poor Mr. Pitt almost broke his heart when he gave her up. But he considered that she was not a woman to be left at will when business might require it, and he sacrificed his feelings to his sense of public duty. Yet Mr. Pitt was a man just made for domestic life, who would have enjoyed retirement, digging his own garden, and doing it cleverly too. But it was God’s will it should be otherwise. I never saw her afterwards but once, when she was Lady B**************. Oh dear! how she was changed! I remember, it was at Lady Chatham’s. When I first knew her, she had a mouth no bigger than an eye. Well! on entering the room at Lady Chatham’s where she was, some years after her marriage, I recognized her no more than if I had never seen her. She saw it, and began speaking of persons with whom I was acquainted. This made me think the more who she could be; when, observing my embarrassment, she said, ‘I see, Lady Hester, you have forgotten me.’ Well, doctor, her mouth was grown quite large and ugly, and I have observed that it does, as people grow older;—I don’t know why: but look at mine, and you’ll see just the same thing.

“‘There were also other reasons,’ Mr. Pitt would say; ‘there is her mother, such a chatterer!—and then the family intrigues. I can’t keep them out of my house; and, for my king’s and country’s sake, I must remain a single man.’”[44]

Lady Hester said it was fine fun to see these match-making mothers bring their daughters down to Walmer to try to get Mr. P. into a scrape, and the extraordinary distance at which he contrived to keep them. Sometimes, if they approached him, or wanted to plant their daughters too near him, it was the fire was too warm, or the air from the window, or some excuse for removing his chair to a distance from them.

I observed, “it was not to be supposed that a man, buried in state affairs, could give a thought to the tender passion.”

“I beg your pardon,” she replied; “I have heard him talk in raptures of some women. He used to say, he considered no man ought to marry who could not give a proper share of his time to his wife; for, how would it be if he was always at the House, or in business, and she always at the opera, or whirling about in her carriage?”

“People thought Mr. Pitt did not care about women, and knew nothing about them; but they were very much mistaken. Mrs. B——s, of Devonshire, when she was Miss W——, was so pretty, that Mr. Pitt drank out of her shoe. Nobody understood shape, and beauty, and dress, better than he did; with a glance of his eye he saw it all at once. But the world was ignorant of much respecting him. Who ever thought that there was not a better judge of women in London than he? and not only of women as they present themselves to the eye, but that his knowledge was so critical that he could analyze their features and persons in a most masterly way. Not a defect, not a blemish, escaped him: he would detect a shoulder too high, a limp in the gait, where nobody else would have seen it; and his beauties were real, natural, beauties. In dress, too, his taste was equally refined. I never shall forget, when I had arranged the folds and drapery of a beautiful dress which I wore one evening, how he said to me, ‘Really, Hester, you are bent on conquest to-night: but would it be too bold in me, if I were to suggest that that particular fold’—and he pointed to a triangular fall which I had given to one part—‘were looped up so?’ and, would you believe it?—it was exactly what was wanting to complete the classical form of my dress. He was so in everything.

“Mr. Pitt used to say, when I went out in my habit and a sort of furred jacket, that women, when they rode out, generally looked such figures; but that I contrived to make a very handsome costume of it.

“He had so much urbanity, too! I recollect returning late from a ball, when he was gone to bed fatigued: there were others besides myself, and we made a good deal of noise. I said to him next morning, ‘I am afraid we disturbed you last night.’ ‘Not at all,’ he replied; ‘I was dreaming of the Mask of Comus, Hester, and, when I heard you all so gay, it seemed a pleasant reality.’

“To show you what an excellent heart Mr. Pitt had, and how full of sympathy he was for people whom others spurned, I’ll tell you what happened one day, when we were at Walmer. I said to him, ‘Who do you think is coming down to dinner to-night?’ ‘I don’t know, Hester: tell me.’ ‘Why,’ said I, ‘H**** D*****’s mistress:—oh! but I’ll pretty soon look her out of countenance.’ I was only in joke, doctor. H. D., who was by the same mother as Lord D., but born before the mother was married, had for his mistress a very excellent woman, whose meritorious conduct every body spoke of: so I thought I would have a little fun about her, and told Mr. Pitt that H. D. was going to bring her with him. ‘My dear Hester,’ cried Mr. Pitt, ‘for God’s sake, don’t distress the poor woman, if she is coming—now, pray, don’t!’ ‘Oh! yes, I will, I will,’ I replied. ‘Now, I entreat you,’ said Mr. Pitt. ‘Here she comes,’ cried I; and a post-chaise drove past us, near the drawbridge. Mr. Pitt turned his head towards me as it passed, pretending to be talking to me, ‘She is very pretty,’ said I. ‘Well,’ said Mr. Pitt, ‘I must go and give some orders about her room;’ and he was actually going to put her in the best room in the house, and to desire some other persons who were expected to be sent to the village, when I told him it was all a joke; for it was only H. D.’s post-chaise, with his man in it, come down before his master.”

Here Lady Hester Stanhope paused for a little time, as if musing; and, at length, led away by her reflections, when she resumed the conversation, she uttered certain sentiments, which, however startling in comparison with the mere conventional morality of society, I am emboldened to transcribe. “Doctor,” she said, in an impressive tone, “I saw in the newspapers an account of a poor creature found on the step of a door in some street in Westminster. She was named the Fair Ellen—a wretched outcast from society—and was in the last stage of starvation. A poor forlorn woman, like herself, found her there, took her home, sold her petticoat to relieve her, and, probably from her over-anxiety to give her something good for her weak stomach, fed her more than she was able to bear, and the Fair Ellen died. 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.”

She went on: “To get inmates for brothels, and mistresses for the rich, fancy a procuress to some great my lord, who sets off for Wales, or for some distant province of England. Down she goes, accompanied by a sort of confidential servant, whom she affects to retain from the great attachment that her poor dear husband had for him; and she places herself in handsome lodgings in a town, or in some pretty cottage in a village. There she visits the poor and the sick, or does some act of charity to make herself talked about, and, in the mean time, looks out for some handsome girl. When she has found one that she thinks will suit her purpose, she first takes her as her maid, treats her with great kindness, and, when the girl has conceived a liking for her, she all of a sudden pretends she has received news from London of the death of a brother, or the sickness of a dear friend, and says she must set off directly. The poor girl, whom she has fed with hopes of what she may become some day, by telling her that she has no relations that she cares for and perhaps may leave her something when she dies, desires to be taken with her; and the procuress, with a show of generous feeling for her, says she will not let her go, unless she can ensure her bettering herself, and begs that her parents will have a paper drawn up, that she is to remain five or seven years with her, or else she, the lady, is to give her fifty pounds. The parents, delighted with the disinterested offer of their child’s mistress, get the agreement legally drawn up, sign it, and sign their daughter’s ruin.

“As soon as they are in London, dress, pleasure, and other allurements, are offered her. She forgets her humble home, and becomes the dupe of her artful seducer. If any inquiry is made after her, perhaps the fifty pounds are paid; and the very agreement that was to secure her safety becomes the bond of her destruction.

“Lady Hamilton was brought from Wales in this manner, a fine, rosy-faced, and rather blowsy country girl. A set of virtuosoes wanted a model for a Venus, and some of them, who knew Lady H., fixed on her; but Sir W. H. took her out of their hands, and carried her to Naples. Yet how did she end?—with not money enough to bury her; and so did Mrs. Jordan.”[45]

February 12 to 18.—It rained so hard, that, for a week, we were almost confined to the house. Our good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Chasseaud, when it was possible, either came and passed the evening with us, or we went to their cottage. On awaking, on the morning of the 16th, we found the bed-room and the counterpane of our bed wet with the rain, which had penetrated the roof in every part, excepting, luckily, over the children’s bed. The bedding and carpets were obliged to be removed into another room. The day proved very stormy; and, for two or three days more, we were compelled to live and sleep in the same room, being the only one that was waterproof. The occasional squalls were so violent, that a gust of wind would whirl a large copper ewer to the distance of a yard. All the trelliscourt of our terrace was blown away, like chaff before the whirlwind.

February 21.—Nine hours were spent to-day in conversation with Lady Hester, from three in the afternoon until midnight. She spoke of Lord Stewart de Rothsay, of the Duke of Sussex, of Mr. Pitt, and many other persons. 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. I believe his wound is hardly well yet, and I heard him say, that he felt much relieved by fomentations of such an herb: perhaps you will see that he finds in his chamber all that he wants.’ Of another, he would say—‘I think he drinks ass’s milk; I should like him to have his morning’s draught.’ And I, who was born with such sensibility, that I must fidget myself about everybody, no matter whom, was always sure to exceed his wishes.

“Would you believe, doctor, that, in the last weeks of his last illness, he found time to think about his groom, in a way that nobody would have suspected in him? He had four grooms, who died of consumption, from being obliged to ride so hard after him; for they drank and caught cold, and so ruined their constitutions. This one I am speaking of, when first attacked in the lungs, was placed at Knightsbridge, and then sent to the seaside. One day, Mr. Pitt, speaking of him, said to me—‘The poor fellow, I am afraid, is very bad: I have been thinking of a way to give him a little consolation. I suspect he is in love with Mary, the housemaid; for, one morning, early, I found them talking closely together, and she was covered with blushes. Couldn’t you contrive, without hurting his feelings, to get her to attend on him in his illness?’

“Accordingly, soon after, when he was about to set off for Hastings, I went to see him. ‘Have you nobody,’ I asked him, ‘whom you would like to go to the sea-side with you?—your sister or your mother?’ ‘No, thank you, lady.’ ‘There is the still-room maid, would you like her?’ ‘Ah, my lady, she has a great deal to do, and is always wanted.’ From one to another, I, at last, mentioned Mary, and I saw I had hit on the right person; but, however, he only observed, he should like to see her before he went. Mary was, therefore, sent to him; and the result of their conversation was, that he told her he would marry her if he recovered, or leave her all he had if he died—which he did.

“Mr. Pitt once obtained a servant in a very odd way. Riding on the moors with a friend, they came to one of those flocks of geese, which, picked of their feathers, are driven about by a boy, with a bit of red rag at the end of a long stick. ‘We must ride round,’ said Mr. Pitt; ‘we shall never get through this immense flock.’ ‘Yes, but you may,’ cried a sharp-looking boy, who had heard him, ‘if you will only keep your horses quiet. Sh—sh—ee—ee—ayi—ayi!’ and the boy waved his stick here and there, and in a minute or two the flock opened, and, wheeling to the left and right in regular columns, made a passage, through which they rode. ‘That must be a clever lad,’ observed Mr. Pitt; ‘he manœuvres his little army in a wonderful manner—a general could not do it better;’ and he ordered the groom to inquire to whom he belonged. A day or two afterwards he was sent for, and put into the stables. Next, he was made an undergroom; then taken to town to wait on the upper servants, and afterwards made a footman; until, one day, Mr. Pitt, going down to Hollwood with Mr. Dundas, and three or four friends, to talk about some parliamentary business (a custom he had, when he wanted to discuss any particular plan in quiet), lo and behold! the cook fell down in an apoplectic fit, and died; and the butler, who saw it, was so affected that he was seized with a fit of the gout. This butler was also Mr. Pitt’s valet, on such occasions as when he was out of town for a day. Mr. Pitt was in a sad fidget about the dinner: but the young man in question said, ‘Don’t, sir, send off any express for a cook: if you think proper, the maid shall dress the dinner. These are all your intimate friends, and will take no notice: their servants as yet know nothing of the matter; for I thought they might be frightened to be where there is a dead man. Let me manage, and all will go well, without any alarm being spread.’ He, accordingly, dressed Mr. Pitt, saw to everything, and acquitted himself so well, that Mr. Pitt was more than satisfied with him, and soon afterwards made him his valet; but he did not live long enough to have his services recompensed. He died quite young, at twenty-seven. He was a man all fire and activity. Mr. Pitt would say to him, ‘You must go down to-day to such a place, and I shall be there the day after to-morrow.’ ‘You will excuse me, sir,’ the man would reply, ‘but I sha’n’t go; for, if I do, who will attend to you when you take your physic to-morrow? You will be busy, and put it off; and nobody knows how to give it but myself.’ ‘Well, well,’ Mr. Pitt would answer, ‘do so then;’ and would excuse him by an—‘Ah! he is very anxious about me—I must let him have his own way.’”

It was a remarkable proof of Lady Hester Stanhope’s memory, that, whatever subject she stumbled on, she had an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes ready; and, having got into the servants’ hall, she seemed as much at home there as in the drawing-room. She told me a pathetic history of a faithful servant, who, in the pecuniary distresses of his master, served him for several years with the purest disinterestedness. I was so touched by her eloquent and forcible manner of relating the story, and with the self-application that I made of it to my own tardiness in going to her in her distress, together with my present intention of leaving her, owing to our recent differences, that I burst into tears, and wept, as the expression is, bitterly. She soothed my feelings, endeavoured to calm my emotions, and disclaimed all intention of conveying any allusion to me. This led her to say, how little malice she ever entertained against any one, even towards those who had done her injury, much less against me, who had always shown my attachment to her: and she said that, even now, although she was going to lose me, still her thoughts did not run on her own situation so much as on what would become of me: and I firmly believed her.

February 23 to 26, 1831.—Another fresh trouble now harassed Lady Hester. Paolo, her Italian servant, who had been sent to Acre to assist in laying out the Pasha’s garden, made or received offers there to fill a good post in the Artillery, he having served as a soldier during Buonaparte’s campaigns. He, therefore, came back to her ladyship’s, to signify his intention of leaving his place, hoping she would, in consideration of his services, give him a character to the Pasha. There had been some shuffling in the business on Paolo’s part, so Lady Hester was determined to play him a trick, as he had tricked her. Instead, therefore, of a written good character, she put a blank sheet, undercover, to the Pasha; and, causing it to be directed with the customary titles and superscription to his highness, she gave it to Paolo, paid him his wages, and sent him off, exulting in the prospect of the lucrative post he was about to be promoted to. When he had obtained admittance to the Pasha, he presented his letter, and, the seal being broken, a blank sheet was all that the cover contained. Another letter to the Pasha, explaining what had been done, had been despatched by a special messenger, in which Lady Hester Stanhope showed Paolo’s unfitness for a gunner, and urged him not to expose his men to the chance of being blown to pieces at the cannon’s mouth by the ignorance of a man who would make a decent valet, but a very bad artilleryman. The Pasha took the hint, and sent Paolo about his business, who hastened back to Beyrout, and retreated, crestfallen, to Europe.

Nothing farther was said about the Damascus affair. A long letter, on the organization of a body of regular troops, was drawn up, and sent to Abdallah Pasha. This, with the trouble of translating it into Arabic, occupied three or four days. Letters were written to Dr. Dusap, of Cairo, relative to the purchase of some black slaves, to Lord Ebrington, and to some other persons, which filled up the time until March 7. The intervals of writing were devoted to conversations on the coming of the Murdah, or new Messiah, and Lady Hester laboured hard to make me a convert to her doctrines. She expressed her regret that the result of the fulfilment of her predictions would be for strangers, and not for her friends.

---

Lady Hester Stanhope’s belief in the coming of a Messiah—Her two favourite mares—Lady Hester’s destiny influenced by Brothers, the fortune-teller, and by one Metta, a Syrian astrologer—Duke of Reichstadt—Madame de Fériat—Story of a Circassian slave—Rugged paths in Mount Lebanon—Anecdote of Lord and Lady Bute—Anecdote of Mr. A., afterwards Lord S.—His father’s rise in the world—Lord Liverpool and the order of merit—Intimidation exercised over the Author’s household by Lady Hester—Sundry difficulties arising therefrom—Lady Hester’s opinion of X.’s mission—Mrs. Fry—Lady Hester’s defiance of consular authority, and confidence in her own resources—Lunardi recommended as a servant—The Author takes leave of Lady Hester—Conduct of the Franks at Sayda—The Author sails for Cyprus—Is hospitably received by Mr. Hanah Farkouah, a Syrian, and by Signor Baldassare Mattei—Marine villa at Larnaka—Mr. George Robinson—Captain Scott—Captain Dundas—Mr. Burns—The Author sails for Europe.

As many travellers have circulated the report that Lady Hester Stanhope had announced the coming of a Messiah, and that she had shown her two Arabian mares, as of a particular breed, which were never to be mounted until this second advent, making inferences therefrom little favourable to that lady’s sanity, it may not be amiss to state, in her own words, what she actually did say on this subject.

“All sects,” said her ladyship, “have predicted the coming of a Saviour or Messiah; this event, it is foretold, will be preceded by the overthrow of most of the kingdoms of Christendom: the work has already begun, and we may soon expect its completion. For is not the world in a state of revolution? Have not kings been driven from their thrones? Hundreds and thousands of distressed persons will come to me for assistance and refuge. I shall have to wade up to here” (pointing to her girdle) “in blood; but it is the will of God, and I shall not be afraid. The advent of the Murdah has occupied the minds of many people, and I think unsuccessfully. M. Lamartine talked about religion to me. I told him—‘Does not the Testament say, ‘But there is one shall come after me, who is greater than I am—who is that?’ He hummed and hahed, but could make no reply.[46] Is he not to appear as an earthly king, in honour and glory? The Jews expect him, the Turks expect him, the Ansarias expect him; all expect him but the Christians. What did Lord P********** shoot himself for, but from the impossibility of getting at the truth in this matter? And the great Duke de St. Simon, how did he puzzle his brain to no purpose! He knew a great deal—much more than Enfantin and all his followers. Enfantin got hold of his manuscripts, and Rodrigo, his secretary, copied them; but they could not make it out. The St. Simonians came to see me; they thought to get hold of me, but they were mistaken. I know the woman that will suit them; a great bint el hawa, a beautiful creature.

“You tell me of secret societies, which have risen up in Europe since the long war. Did not I know all that? 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. Many of them have been sent as spies on my actions; but I shall stand in no need of them—it is they who will want me. When the course of events shall have brought things to a point, I shall have assistance enough. All the people who come here after me, are sent to say something: Lord B******, who saw me at Tiberias, was a freemason, and one of them.”

It is pretty plain, from all this, that Lady Hester Stanhope had a persuasion of the coming of a new Messiah: but whether she entertained it as a matter of spiritual faith, or as the groundwork of some great scheme she was bringing to bear, others must decide. Sometimes, one was almost forced to conclude that the constant workings of her brain had impaired it. Add to this, the feverish greediness with which she received all reports of insurrections, revolts, and political changes. Even her servants knew her weakness on these points; and there was not a fellow in her establishment who did not return home every night with some cock and bull story, to feed her diseased imagination; and it was an every-day piece of flattery to say that they had heard that all the power of the Sultan and his Pashas was nothing now, but that the Syt’s protection alone was worth having. Still let it not be supposed that, on any other subject, her faculties were in the least impaired. On every concern of human life, on all other matters, whether common or abstruse, she conversed like an oracle. But she had talked so often of the coming of a Murdah[47] into the world, to chastise the wicked, subdue Christendom and the Moslem countries, and remodel the face of the globe, that even her maids were inclined to believe it, or pretended to do so. Fatôom, the least of them, if praised by her mistress, would ask whether, when the Murdah came, she thought such an humble being as herself might be saved? Whether this was cunning or simplicity, may be doubted; but, from the subsequent misconduct of this girl, in robbing her ladyship, it was most likely the former. Lady Hester, however, encouraged the belief of her future greatness, and would often hold it out as a present temptation for good behaviour to her servants.

Almost all such travellers as came to see her, and who have in their published books spoken of her, mention the two favourite mares, which she kept in expectation of the coming of the Mahedi, and which she never suffered any person to mount. They were called Läila and Lulu. Läila was exceedingly hollow-backed, being born saddled, as Lady Hester used to say, and with a double backbone: she was a chestnut, and Lulu a gray. They were both thoroughbred: they had each a groom, and were taken the greatest care of. The green plat of ground on the east side of the house-wall was set apart entirely for exercising them twice a-day; and round this the grooms, with longes, were made to run them until they were well warmed. This spot was sacred; and, whilst they were at exercise, nobody, neither servant nor villager, was allowed to cross it, or to stand still to look at them, under the penalty of being dismissed her service. Such an order, from its nature, would necessarily be violated very often, but unknown to Lady Hester; for, as she never went out of her house, and could not overlook that side of it, a tacit understanding among the people made them true to their own secrets: but, from time to time, accident, or the unguarded disclosures of some of the maids, made her aware that her orders had been slighted, and then her anger exceeded all bounds. Few were the travellers who were admitted to these mares in their stable; and never was the permission granted, until it had been ascertained that their star would not be baneful to them.[48]

Horses in Syria, for about seven months in the year, are tethered out of doors, where they are fed and littered down. It was under a shed, covered with thatch, shut in at the two sides by a treillage, with three parterres of flowers and shrubs behind them, that these two beautiful animals stood. Every morning, in the summer, the grooms washed their tails, legs, and manes, in soap and water, and watered the ground beneath their feet, to keep them cool; but, during the winter months, they were stalled in their stables, and warm felts covered their delicate limbs. Apis, in his most glorious days, and surrounded by his priesthood, could not have been better attended to.

Lady Hester Stanhope one day assured me that, when her pecuniary difficulties pressed hardest upon her, had it not been for the sake of those two creatures, she should have given up her house and everything to her creditors, sold her pension to pay them, and quitted the country: but she resolved to wait for the consummation of events on their account. “Ah, doctor,” added she, “I recollect, when I was at Rome, seeing, in a beautiful bas-relief, that very mare, with her hollow back made like a saddle. Two Englishmen were standing by, and were criticising the very same thing that caught my attention. ‘How very beautiful,’ said one, ‘is that basso-relievo! but the ancients, somehow, never could set about a good thing without spoiling it. There is that hollow-backed horse—did you ever see such a thing?’ I heard it all, but I made my own observations; and now, you see, I have got a mare of the very same breed.”

There is reason to think, from what her ladyship let fall at different times, that Brothers, the fortune-teller, in England, and one Metta, a village doctor, on Mount Lebanon, had considerable influence on her actions, and, perhaps, her destiny. When Brothers was taken up, and thrown into prison (in Mr. Pitt’s time), he told those who arrested him to do the will of Heaven, but first to let him see Lady Hester Stanhope. This was repeated to her ladyship, and curiosity induced her to comply with the man’s request. Brothers told her that “she would one day go to Jerusalem, and lead back the chosen people; that, on her arrival in the Holy Land, mighty changes would take place in the world, and that she would pass seven years in the desert.” Trivial circumstances will foster a foolish belief in a mind disposed to encourage it. Mr. Frederick North, afterwards Lord Guildford, in the course of his travels, came to Brusa, whither Lady Hester had gone for the benefit of the hot baths. He, Mr. Fazakerly, and Mr. Gally Knight, would often banter her on her future greatness among the Jews. “Well, madam, you must go to Jerusalem. Hester, queen of the Jews! Hester, queen of the Jews!” was echoed from one to the other; and probably, at last, the coincidence of a name, a prophecy, and the country towards which she found herself going, were thought, even by herself, to be something extraordinary. Metta took up the book of fate from that time, and showed her the part she was to play in the East. This man, Metta, for some years subsequent to 1815, was in her service as a kind of steward. He was advanced in years; and, like the rest of the Syrians, believed in astrology, spirits, and prophecy. No doubt, he perceived in Lady Hester Stanhope a tincture of the same belief: and, on some occasion, in conversation, he said he knew of a book on prophecy, which he thought had passages in it that related to her. This book, he persuaded her, could only be had by a fortunate conjunction connected with himself; and he said, if she would only lend him a good horse, to take him to the place where it was, he would procure her a sight of it, but she was never to ask where he fetched it from. All this exactly suited Lady Hester’s love of mystery. A horse was granted him; he went off, and returned with the prophetic volume, which he said he could keep only a certain number of hours. It was written in Arabic, and he was to read and explain the text. The part which he expounded was—“That a European female would come and live on Mount Lebanon at a certain epoch, would build a house there, and would obtain power and influence greater than a Sultan’s; that a boy, without a father, would join her, whose destiny would be fulfilled under her wing; that the coming of the Mahedi would follow, but be preceded by war, pestilence, famine, and other calamities; that the Mahedi would ride a horse born saddled, and that a woman would come from a far country[49] to partake in the mission.” There were many other incidents besides which were told, but which I did not recollect.

Certain it is, that Lady Hester Stanhope had, for a long time, a persuasion that the Duke of Reichstadt would some day visit her, and she imagined he was the boy pointed out in the prophecy. After his death, she fixed on another, who is alluded to in one of her letters to me.

Metta died, leaving three sons; and, on his death-bed, in the presence of his wife and children, said to them, “You will tell the Syt, my lady, that I bequeath you, my children, to her. I have no friend in the world but her: you are poor, and she will provide for you.” The reader will, no doubt, call to mind the dying legacy of the poor Grecian philosopher, who bequeathed his penniless daughter to his friend, and desired he would marry her. This appeal is understood in the East. Metta had made his calculations with subtilty, for Lady Hester Stanhope never deserted the orphans; and, although one proved a sot, she bore with his idleness and dissipation, and brought them all three forward in the world.

When Lady Hester Stanhope recounted this story to me, I had not the least doubt left in my mind of her conviction that all these things would be fulfilled. “You,” she said, “are of such a cold disposition, that nothing one can say makes any impression on you. I had thought, from your letters, that you liked this country, and that, seeing the dreadful events which will shortly take place in Europe, you wished to secure a safe retreat with me, and felt the impulse of the doctrines I had so often talked to you about. I let people here believe (as they had got such an idea into their heads) that you had been sent by my family to arrange my affairs. In doing this, I had no view to my own interest. When the time comes, thousands like you will be ready to serve me; and, indeed, I should have no leisure then to talk to you, occupied, as I shall be, in fulfilling my master’s orders. All I thought was, that, if I could be of any use to you in procuring you a safe asylum, I should have done my duty by you.”

Quitting this subject, Lady Hester Stanhope related some anecdotes of the royal dukes, of Lady Augusta Murray, Mrs. Jordan, Mrs. Nugent, &c. This led her to speak of the influence women exercise over the actions of men, and of the power they secretly exert in affairs where the ostensible actors are grave statesmen. She told me that the Turkish women, veiled and shut up in harýms, were not less the springs of action in Mahometan countries, than European women are, flouncing about in saloons. Nor were they a bit less self-willed, even down to purchased slaves, who are generally supposed to be mere mechanical beings, all submission to their master’s will. She related a story, in proof of her assertion, the substance of which was this:—

There was a Circassian, who had been in the Sultan’s seraglio, but, for some cause, was sold, and fell into the hands of the Dey of Algiers. When he went to see her, in his own harým, and approached her to use such familiarities as he thought himself entitled to, she slapped his face, nor would she ever moderate her open aversion to him. At last, he was obliged to resell her. The would-be purchaser was a gentleman (the narrator of these facts to Lady Hester Stanhope), who, on going towards her, as she sat on a sofa, was so electrified at the sight of her beauty as to lose the power of utterance for some moments. His emotion pleased her; she liked him. He bought her; and they lived long and happily together. Afterwards, chance took her back again to Constantinople, and she entered the seraglio a second time, being sold by the man she had liked, who married another woman, and, for prudential reasons, was obliged to part with her. She rose to great wealth and power, but she never forgot him; and her interest was always at his service for himself and those he recommended.

On returning to my own cottage in the village, (which was generally after midnight), I was accompanied by a servant, who carried a lantern. On these occasions, I rode an ass, as being the most sure-footed creature for mountainous paths in the dark. In England we have no idea of a road to a person’s house such as this was; in itself, however, in no wise different from that which led to the Emir Beshýr’s palace, or to any other principal or princely dwelling on Mount Lebanon. These paths are no wider than is requisite for a mule or a horse; and, where the sides of the mountains are unusually steep, they always run in zigzags, and sometimes in steps. A slip, in such places, might be attended with very serious consequences, especially as in no case is there any protection afforded by means of a parapet-wall or other defence. It is not without very natural apprehension, therefore, that a stranger to the country trusts himself for the first time, even in the daylight, upon these difficult mountain paths; and there were two instances of Frenchmen, who were actually on their way from Sayda to Lady Hester’s residence, when they turned back in alarm from the apparent impracticability of the road. But habit soon begets indifference to obstacles of this kind, and the animals of the country are so sagacious and sure-footed, that anybody, who trusts to their skill rather than his own, may traverse all such dangerous ways in perfect safety.

I was about to say that, in going home at night, three or four mastiffs, which lay in the courtyard, commonly came out of the gate with me. Their delight was to scour the distance between the house and the village in search of jackals, wolves, and a species of panther, found during the winter in the low parts, but more commonly in the forests of the higher chain of Mount Lebanon. In these nocturnal courses I often heard the jackals, but had hitherto only encountered one wolf; on one occasion, however, at about two after midnight, on my way home, the dogs set up a sharp bark, and, from a shelving terrace of the rock above my head, a wolf made a desperate leap across the path down the declivity, with the dogs at his heels, and, like dark shadows, swift as lightning they disappeared. I heard their rush for about ten or fifteen seconds, and then, in about as many minutes more, the dogs returned panting; but I was not able, in the obscurity of the night, to see by their jaws whether they had overtaken the wolf or not. Wild boars are found in these mountains, as also foxes, antelopes, and forest animals.

The following day, I walked out with my family into a deep valley, between two lofty mountains, wooded with low ilexes, locust-trees, oaks, arbutuses, &c. There was a goatherd leading a herd of goats; and, just as we reached them, we saw a large mastiff go down the side of the ravine in chase of some animal. The goatherd told me it was a panther, which he had roused in throwing a stone at one of his goats. The dog, after a pursuit of some hundred yards, came back. The man added, that these panthers were not dangerous in the daytime, but might be after dark, if very hard pressed for food. He and his companion, however, seemed very indifferent about it, as if accustomed to see them often. These goatherds remain, during the whole of the winter season, on some particular range of the lower mountains, and fold their herds by night in caverns in the rocks, of which there are many natural ones. Dogs, and a hedge of prickly brambles, form their protection. In the summer, they go back to their villages higher up. Those we met came from a village called Muzrat es Shoof, about three or four leagues off, and near the snow.

March 9.—We went to Dayr Mkhallas, to revisit Miss Williams’s tomb. I was entreated the same day, by a peasant woman, to go to her husband, who was lying ill of a malignant fever. He was then in the agonies of death, and died the same evening; but I had occasion to remark that he had six fingers on each hand. I was told this day, also, of the mode of curing sore throat as practised in the village. A handkerchief was drawn tightly round the neck, until the patient was half strangled, and this effected such a revolution in the circulation, that the inflammation subsided in a few hours. I had the information from the mouth of a respectable man who had recently been operated upon.

March 10 and 11 were spent with Lady Hester, who was at one time in a state of high irritation against her blacks, and, at another, busy as a housekeeper in directing the package of three cases of dried fruits, honey, syrups, snobars, or fir-apple pips, preserved apricots, and other delicacies, intended for Dr. Dusap, in Egypt.

March 11.—In the midst of her package she related the following anecdote to me; it happened at Malta, and I recollected the day very well. Her ladyship had said to me, “On such a day I am going to dine at Lord Bute’s; he has not invited you, and it will be a very good opportunity for you to see the medical and other acquaintances you may have made here: so invite whom you like to dinner, and I will give orders to François about it. You will lose nothing by not going to Lord B.’s; for he is a proud man, and expects that doctors and tutors should never speak but when spoken to. Mr. K. hardly opens his mouth in his presence, except when my lord asks him a question, or refers to him about a passage in Virgil, or some book or another: but then how easily is a clergyman, who has lived with great people, to be known, and what superior manners he has! Always possessing himself, and always unassuming, he is sure to be well received everywhere.”

“I was dining,” said Lady Hester, “at Lord B.’s on that occasion, and at dinner Lord B. asked me what I thought of D*******, the banker’s son. ‘Oh!’ cried I, ‘I think of him as I do of all bankers’ sons I see skipping about the continent, that they had much better be behind the counter; for, if they are intended to follow their father’s trade, this skipping about only unfits them for it, and they never after can be brought to sit in some dark room, in a narrow street in the city; and, if they are intended to be fine gentlemen, it is ten to one but they ruin themselves: or, if they do not, that their house gets a bad name:—am I not right, my lord?’ ‘Why, you know, Lady, Hester,’ answered Lord B., ‘I generally agree with you, but on this point I am not quite sure. Then you don’t like bankers, Lady Hester?’ ‘Not particularly, my lord,’ said I; but, as I looked up, I saw Lord Ebrington screwing up his mouth, and Lady B. looking very odd, whilst Lord B. looked very cunning; the butler, all the while, standing first on one leg and then the other, in a state of the strangest uneasiness. All of a sudden old C***** came into my head, and I saw what a blunder I had made.

“In going out of the room, Lady B. said, ‘Lady Hester, you are always wild as you have been, but I know you never mean any harm in what you say.’ And here the matter ended, as I thought. Lady B., however, did not forget it, as you shall hear. I kept up a correspondence with her for fifteen or twenty years, and her letters were full of protestations of service. In 1827 I found myself at one time, as I have already told you, very short of money, and I wrote to Lady B. to ask her to lend me three hundred pounds: the answer was, that she had not so much at her disposal, without inconveniencing herself. After this I never wrote to her again; but I had a great mind to send her a letter to say, I did not think the proud Lord B. would have left his widow so poor as to make three hundred pounds an object to her, when I recollected to have seen as much given away to an old butler or a poor housekeeper.”

March 12.—Lady Hester related another story. “Mr. A******** wanted to be made—would you believe it, doctor?—wanted to be made Lord Raleigh, and I was determined he should not, if I could help it. One morning, Mr. Pitt came into the drawing-room to speak to me, so I said to him, ‘What a pretty caricature they have made about A.;’ and I described, as if I had seen it, a caricature in which figured Queen Elizabeth and Mr. A. and the king; and, with as much humour as I could, made such a ridiculous picture that Mr. Pitt was quite amused. Just as I had finished my description, somebody came in, and interrupted the conversation; and, Mr. Pitt going out to dinner, I saw no more of him. He, thinking what I told him was a fact, repeated the story to Mr. A. and others. Immediately half-a-dozen people were despatched to all the caricature shops to buy up the whole impression at any price; but, as the whole was my invention, of course they found none: for I had intended to say, ‘Fancy how ridiculous a business it will appear, if such a caricature is published, which is very likely.’ So, when I saw Mr. Pitt next day, I told him; but the fright they had been thrown into was so great that another title was chosen. Subsequently, Mr. Pitt never would speak to Lord S.

“The rise of Mr. A.’s father in the world was this. Lord Chatham’s first coachman being taken ill, the postillion was sent to the town for the family doctor; but, not finding him, and not knowing what to do, he returned, bringing with him Mr. A., then a practitioner of the place, and excused himself to my grandfather by saying, he hoped his lordship would not be offended; for everybody told him Mr. A. was a good doctor. Lord Chatham spoke to him, and desired him to go and see the coachman, which he did, and then returned again to report what was the matter with him. Lord Chatham was so pleased with Mr. A., that he took him as apothecary for the servants, then for himself; and, finding he spoke good sense on medicine, and then on politics, he at last made him his physician.

“Mr. Pitt having some intention of creating an Order of Merit, desired the cabinet ministers each to give their opinions in turn upon the coloured ribbon that should be used for the decoration. Among the rest, Lord Liverpool said he had prepared his, and that he would call in the evening to show it to him and me. He accordingly came. ‘You see,’ he observed with much self-complacency, ‘I have endeavoured to combine such colours as will flatter the national vanity. Here is red for the English flag, blue for liberty, and white to denote the purity of motive.’ There were several persons present, and some of the toadies were full of admiration. One cried, ‘Twas excellent;’ another, that ‘The king would be greatly pleased with it;’ a third, ‘You had better take it down to Windsor;’ and so on. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘the king will be delighted with it. I myself think the colours charming; for I know exactly how they will look, as I have seen them very often.’ ‘Seen them!—where?’ asked Lord L. ‘Why, in the French soldiers’ cockades,’ answered I.

“Poor Lord Liverpool, who was a good sort of man, but who had been putting himself forward in a thing he was not fit for, and had stupidly overlooked the tri-coloured flag, was thunderstruck. ‘What shall I do, Lady Hester?’ cried he; ‘I have already got five hundred yards of ribbon made: what can I do with it?’ ‘Why,’ rejoined I, ‘it will serve, my lord, to tie up your breeches: for, you know, you have always such a load of papers in your breeches’ pockets, that I quite fear to see them some day fall down.’ And so it was, doctor; he used to ram his hands into his pockets, first on one side and then on the other, in search of some paper or another, just as if he was groping for an eel at the bottom of a pond.”

March 13.—The example set by Lady Hester Stanhope’s maid, the day she came and openly abused us, had a bad effect on Aysha, our black woman; and, at length, after putting up with much impertinence, we sent her back to her ladyship, with a note to say we could not manage her. Lady Hester seized the opportunity thus offered, of letting us feel how much our comfort would be rendered dependent on her pleasure: for we were informed, when looking out in the village for a maid to take the black’s place, that one of Lady Hester’s people had circulated a report that it would be dangerous for any one to serve us, because whoever did so ran a chance of being turned out of the village; adding, that great folks like her, when a thing displeased them, sometimes made an elephant of a flea. So we sent to a village about four miles off, and got a peasant girl; but she had not been with us twenty-four hours, when, frightened at what she heard, she went to the secretary to ask whether there was any danger likely to accrue to her by remaining in our service. A week passed on, and every day fresh reports were circulated, that some mischief was intended against us.

The reader will recollect that Lady Hester Stanhope, in one of her letters (see page 55), speaks of the repeated annoyances which the Emir Beshýr practised against her, by interdicting the village people from supplying her wants, and of the steps she was obliged to take, even of writing to our ambassador at Constantinople, in order to counteract them. It appears that his example was not lost upon her, and that she did not disdain to resort to the same measures against us. For a whole week she did not send the horse for me, nor hold any communication with me, so that I was precluded from making such representations to her as otherwise I could have done. In the mean time, we packed up our things, and resolved to depart as soon as we could.

March 21.—Our situation was now becoming more and more uncomfortable. We took long walks every day, talking over our troubles, and contriving how we should free ourselves from the thraldom under which we were suffering; for we were as effectually in prison as if we had been under bars and bolts. This may seem incomprehensible to Europeans; but, in the East, where the will of a powerful chieftain hangs like a spell over every individual within his reach, it is in vain to argue about people’s rights. Besides, out of consideration for Lady Hester Stanhope’s name, I did not wish to come to an open difference with her; and I could not say precisely that she sought to injure us, as, upon every occasion when I spent the day with her, she alleged the most plausible reasons for her conduct, invariably treating me individually with marked kindness. She was hostile to women; and, calling all their motives of action mere caprices, she engaged in a Quixotical warfare to set them down. “I would have done the same,” said she, “if it had been Sir —— —— and Lady ——, instead of you and Mrs. ——, had she been here, and chosen to lead him the same dance as she did when he took a house for her at Tunbridge Wells, and then she would not live in it, or when she rode across the lawn on a donkey during a dinner-party, just after he had excused her absence to the company on the score of indisposition. For what can be more absurd in a woman than to have followed you, as Mrs. —— has done, all this distance, when you came upon my affairs, and then to prevent you from acting in them in a way that would be useful to me and yourself?”

On the faith of Lady Hester’s long friendship for me, I had sailed from Europe with only money enough to pay our passage, and a few pounds over; I, therefore, was tied down to the spot until I had received a remittance from England, which after-reflection had made me order to be sent. On March 23rd, a letter from Cyprus announced the receipt, from Marseilles, of 2000 francs to my address. This sum was barely sufficient to defray our passage back; in addition to which, the personal opposition of Lady Hester Stanhope was yet to be overcome. No one in the village would dare to let his camels or mules to us, and I knew that, at Sayda, every consular agent would decline mixing himself up in any business against Lady Hester, apprehensive of the harassing consequences to which it would inevitably expose him: for it was well known that, in speaking of people who attempted to thwart her, her constant expression was, “If they want a devil, let them try me, and they shall have enough of it!”

March 24.—I was informed by Mr. Jasper Chasseaud, her ladyship’s secretary, that she had given him orders to say to such as applied for information, that she did not prevent any one from working for us; but that such as were employed by us in any capacity whatever were never to serve her again. This was tantamount to an excommunication.

April 1.—It was now ten or eleven days since I had seen Lady Hester, when I received a message from her to say she wished me to call on her; but, for the first time, she neglected to send a horse. However, I was resolved not to notice this omission, and so walked over to the Dar. She received me civilly. A long discussion began, during which her manner was haughty and her tone loud. It is not necessary to repeat all that passed; and the reader will already have become tired of these petty disputes, which can possess no general interest, except in so far as they help to illustrate the peculiar character of a lady, who, released from the control of law and opinion, which restrained the development of her natural temper in England, was here enabled to give free vent to her disposition with perfect impunity. After a time she grew calm. I then said I had made every preparation for my departure, and wished to set off before the season of the plague; for, as that malignant disease had been sporadic in the preceding year, it is well known in the Levant that, during the following one, it would probably prove general.

April 2.—I made out a list of medicines for Lady Hester Stanhope’s use, answered letters she had received from Europe, and remained with her until midnight. She related to me, at length, the whole of what she considered the mysterious affair of X.’s coming to this country. Her idea was, that the Duke of B******, together with the Duke of S***** and other arch-masons, having, at a meeting, talked over the neglect which Mr. Pitt’s friends and others showed her, and the loss which her political talents were of, in a place where she could not use them for the benefit of England, had resolved to send an emissary to see what her wants were, and to pay her debts. X. was chosen. “As to the man himself,” said Lady Hester, “I thought, by the manner in which he held his whip, that he must once have been a courier. When he was here, he took measurement of my rooms for paper, carpets, &c.; noted down my wants, and said they would all be attended to. I accordingly gave him a letter for the Duke of S*****, enclosing one for you, which was to be given to you only in the event of a proper provision being made for me. If X. took all these great people’s names in vain, it is odd that they never noticed it; for it might be, after all, nothing more than an intrigue of X.’s, who, having heard how successful Mr. F*****’s application had been, thought that, by means of letters from me, and by such interest, he could slip into a good place too.”

She then spoke of Lord St. Asaph, of Mr. Compton of Yorkshire, of Captain Blair, and others; also of her old servant, Mrs. Fry, who had served her so long and so faithfully, regretting she was not able to make her any allowance, owing to the unsettled state of her own affairs.

She discoursed on her health, and recapitulated the different illnesses she had got over. She told me that she used to say to Miss Williams—“‘Mind, if I die, you are not to let Mr. A. have anything to do with my affairs.’ ‘Oh! but, my lady, how could I help it?’ Miss Williams would reply; ‘the consular authority....’ ‘D—— the consular authority!’ I used to say to her; ‘hire some strong peasant to drive him away with a good stick, if he makes his appearance. Sell everything that I leave in the house, if you can’t raise money enough any other way, to pay somebody to do it, and let my body be thrown into the sea.’ But, doctor,” she continued, “I’ll take care he shan’t have anything to do with burying my body; for, sooner than that, I’ll order myself to be burned, without priest or prayer. I can’t bear that man. What right has he over me? as I said to him, ‘Show me your firman, if that authorises you to interfere with the nobility—you are here for merchants and such people!’[50] No! as long as I have breath in my body, no consul shall ever presume to enter my doors without my leave. I broke a good stick over the shoulders of a fellow he sent me, and told the rascal to tell his master I would have done the same to him had he come in person.”

Alluding to my departure, she observed—“Here I shall be left to myself and my own resources: but I am like a cork; and, though I may be kept down by my troubles for a little while, I soon come to the surface again. As for keeping slaves, I only do as all the great people here do; and as for being harsh to them, about which you talk so much, what am I to do? If they don’t mind me when I tell them to do a thing, I suppose I must do something more than talking, or else I should be murdered. And if I get rid of slaves, why then I must take the people of the country, who are all thieves—not thieves in great things, but light-fingered, so that nothing in a single room in the house is safe from them: such as will slip a wax candle, or the mouthpiece of a pipe, or any little thing, into their pocket, and sell it the next morning.”

April 3.—Our departure being no longer opposed, Lady Hester Stanhope requested me to take a vessel from Sayda to Cyprus, and not from Beyrout. “It is as well,” she observed, “to avoid the Franks there, who will bother you with a thousand questions: and, now the matter is settled between us, the less said of it the better.” As I assented to all this, she promised to send next day to engage a vessel; and M. Gerardin, the French consular agent residing at Sayda, was employed for the purpose. I begged her to accept the furniture, china, and glass, we had brought with us; but she refused, alleging that the sight of what had belonged to me would only give her pain. During our conversation there happened a violent storm of thunder and lightning, and the wet came through the roof into the room, so that it was necessary to place pans to catch the water. On returning home, my own bed-room was flooded, as if half-a-dozen pails of water had been thrown over it. The violent gusts of wind would render it dangerous to have tiled roofs[51] to the houses, although it is seldom that a winter passes without the water penetrating through the flat ones, which are general in most parts of Syria. The hurricane carried away one side of the matting that had been raised to screen our courtyard from the sun.

April 5.—Our passage was engaged in a shaktoor, Captain Hassan Logmagi, from Sayda to Cyprus, for three hundred piasters. I went to Lady Hester’s at eleven in the morning, and stayed until half-past twelve at night. She begged that all that had passed might be forgotten.

I had bethought myself of an excellent young man, named Lunardi, whose care of his master, Mr. John Webb, of Leghorn, I had witnessed in my professional attendance on that gentleman, during my residence at Pisa, and I recommended him to Lady Hester. She seemed to think, by the description I gave of him, that he would suit her, and I wrote immediately to the mercantile house of Webb, James, and Co., at Leghorn, offering him the place.[52]

April 6.—This was the last day I passed with Lady Hester Stanhope: she was in bed, not being very well, and I drank tea with her. It was the only time she had taken tea during the many evenings I had sat with her, and I thought she had abandoned it altogether: however, she had not wholly forgotten this part of English life. Although in bed, she did the honours, as ladies do in England, sitting up and pouring out the tea, handing the cup to me, presenting me the cakes, &c.; all which things surprised the black slave, in a country where they are not used to see great people do anything with their own hands: and it was the same when I dined with her. There were three sorts of excellent rich cakes, made of almond paste in different ways. Travellers in the East may perhaps recollect mâmool, gharyeby, and baklâawy. She asked me how I liked them, and, on my answering that they were delicious, she said I should find a chest of each sort prepared for the use of my family on the passage; and, true enough, they had been sent to Mrs. —— after I had come away from home.

After this, she produced the list of her debts, which I read over to her, she making observations as I proceeded, on the manner in which she had been led to contract them. Being on the eve of my departure, I had not time to write down what she said until I was in the vessel; but, as far as I recollected, the first was dated in 1827. The whole, however, originated in charitable and benevolent motives. Among the distressed persons whom she had assisted figured Abdallah Pasha himself, when, upon being amerced by the Porte, he had applied to her for a large sum of money, which she had lent him. The next were the wife and family of the Sheykh Beshýr, who, when the Sheykh was imprisoned, were driven from their princely palace, and compelled to wander and hide themselves in distant parts of Syria. To them she sent money and clothes. Then there was the widow of Girius Baz, principal secretary of the Emir Beshýr, who was reduced, by the decapitation of her husband, and the confiscation of his property, from affluence to poverty. Other individuals of less note had shared her bounty. All her debts bore interest at from 15 to 25 per cent. When once she got into the nets of the money-lenders, she had never been able to extricate herself again, and the evil had gone on increasing up to the present time, when she owed, according to a rough calculation, nearly £14,000.

As soon as she had done talking of her debts, she asked me to go and replace the list in Miss Williams’s writing-desk, from which it had been taken, and which was in an adjoining room. I did so; but, on returning to her chamber-door, to re-enter and take my leave of her, I found it bolted, and one of the maids waiting on the outside, who told me Lady Hester would see me no more, to spare both of us the pain of saying farewell. I was somewhat affected for the moment, but reflection told me she had acted rightly. Two of her black slaves, who had got intimation of what was passing, came and kissed my hand: the rest of the people were all asleep, except the porter, who let me out: and, mounting my donkey, I left the house, as I then thought, for ever.

It was midnight when I got home. I found that, during my absence, Lady Hester Stanhope had ordered to be sent, besides the cakes and baklâawy (which, of all pastry in the world, is, in many people’s estimation, as in mine, the most delicious), a very fine amber-headed pipe, and a large quantity of the best Gebely tobacco from her own store, and had, moreover, given numberless directions for our comfort on board; which acts of kindness, I trust, my family, as well as myself, appreciated as they deserved.

April 7.—In the morning, mounted on asses, having sent our baggage by camels, we set off for Sayda, where we arrived about noon, and were lodged in a spare room in the French khan. The French agent, with whom I had been on terms of acquaintance for some years, during my previous residence in Syria, well aware of our dispute with Lady Hester Stanhope, prudently resolved to pay his court to her by not being very courteous to us. All the Frank families imitated his example, and, instead of receiving ten or fifteen visits, which we should otherwise have expected, not one single person called upon us. So much for friendships in the Levant.

April 8.—At sunset, the time which Turkish mariners always choose for setting sail, we embarked on board of the shaktoor, abundantly furnished with provisions, which had also been supplied by Lady Hester Stanhope’s orders. We did not reach Cyprus until the morning of the 12th, owing to the extreme fineness of the weather; for, having stood along shore as far as Beyrout during the night, to profit by the land breeze, our vessel’s head being once put on her course, we had no occasion to alter a cord during the whole passage. Our räis, or skipper, behaved with great attention; but I little dreamed, at the time, that this räis was, at some future day, to cross my path again, as will be seen in a subsequent part of the diary.

On landing, I found that the inn, where we had lodged about four months before, was broken up; so that we were obliged to remain on the strand with our trunks and baggage, not knowing where to go. I wrote a pencil note to the English vice-consul, in whose house I had once lived two months; but he sent me word that he was unable to lodge us, or even to procure us a lodging. I addressed myself to his dragoman, who had brought this answer, and offered to pay handsomely for any place where we could be housed, knowing, from my former visit to the island, that he himself had a spacious dwelling; but he declared he knew not where to put us, nor could he find any one to take us in. These accumulated disappointments made me at last begin to apprehend that Lady Hester’s unkind interdict had reached even Cyprus, whose doors were thus inhospitably closed against us. We were almost in despair, when, at length, Mr. Hanah Farkouah, the Syrian, who had been passenger in the same ship with us from Marseilles, hearing accidentally of our situation, came down and conducted us to his own house, where he entertained us with great kindness for nine days. But, as we were somewhat confined for room, M. Balthazar Mattei, a rich merchant, who had a large mansion, which he had recently built close to the sea, made us an offer of it. It was then, and probably is still, the best residence in Cyprus; but, as it had never been inhabited, we felt, at first, some delicacy in availing ourselves of his friendly proposition, especially as it is considered a discourtesy in the East to leave the house of one host for that of another: but all our objections were finally overruled.

M. Mattei’s marine villa consisted of thirteen rooms, a kitchen, and offices, and had a corridor sixty feet long, where we could escape from the oppressive heat of the day, besides a spacious terrace, where we could inhale the sea-breeze in the evening. It stood about ten yards from the sea, which was checked in its nearer approach by a stone breakwater. The saloon was of black and white marble. Its windows projected, as a kiosk, almost over the waves; and from it we enjoyed an expanded view of the bay and the shipping; whilst, from a lofty belvidere, we had a charming panorama of the town and country. It would not be easy to find a more agreeable mansion for a hot climate in any country.

We remained here four months and a half, living on the most amicable terms with the inhabitants, and revelling in the abundance for which this happy island is famed. Not a drop of rain fell during the whole time. We were favoured, at different periods, with the visits of two English travellers, who touched at Cyprus: Mr. George Robinson, whose “Three Years Residence in the East” is, no doubt, familiar to the reader, and Captain Scott, who also has given a work to the public. Her Majesty’s ship, Belvidere, Captain Dundas, cast anchor in the roads, and I accompanied the English vice-consul in paying his respects to the British flag. Mr. Burns, the surgeon, as I believe of the frigate, left an agreeable impression on my memory; but these casual meetings in foreign countries are like the oases in the desert: it is refreshing to light on one, and, that left behind, with little chance of ever seeing it again, we go on until our good fortune presents us with another. It was thus that three more Englishmen were seen for half an hour, in their way from Syria to Anatolia; but they, too, sailed away, and, as their vessel was lost to view, I felt that regret which a lively conversation inspires, with no hope of its renewal.[53]

No merchant ship offered to take us to Europe until August; on the twenty-fourth of which month we embarked for the Gulf of Spezia, where, after a voyage of thirty-five days, we performed quarantine: and thus ended, apparently for ever, my connexion with Lady Hester Stanhope.

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Reflections—Letter from Lady Hester to the Author asking him to return—He revisits Syria—Changes which had taken place in Beyrout—M. Jasper Chasseaud, American consul—Divine service performed by the American missionaries—Letter from Lady Hester to the Author—Her continued hostility to Mrs. —.—The Author takes his family to Sayda—Dress and demeanour of a lady of Sayda—The Author’s reception at Jôon—His family frightened by a deserter—Settles at the convent of Mar Elias—Earthquake of January 1, 1837.

We now arrive at an epoch in Lady Hester Stanhope’s life, when it might be said that her European reputation had reached its height, and her domestic humiliations had sunk her to the lowest ebb. She had been visited in her retirement by so many travellers of all the nations of the Continent, that it might be supposed her singular mode of life was known to almost everybody. M. Lamartine’s account of his interview had spread abroad an undefined sort of wonder about her mystic and singular opinions, and the public read with avidity whatever details they could meet with respecting her.

Six years had now elapsed since our separation; and, although occasionally honoured with a letter from her, I had given up all idea of ever seeing her again, when, being at Nice, where I had furnished a house, with the intention of passing two or three years with my family, I received the following letter.

Lady H. S. to Dr. ——.

(Lady Hester seems to have been interrupted in her writing, and breaks off; but she thus resumes:)

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This summons from Lady Hester Stanhope took me a little unexpectedly. I had not much faith in a story like that on which she built her hopes of paying her debts; for I did not think it likely that property left to her could have been purposely concealed from her knowledge, or would be withheld from her by her relations: but, notwithstanding this, I did not hesitate to write immediately, and say I would come as soon as I could arrange my private concerns, which period I limited to the following spring.

Accordingly, having engaged a governess for my daughter, to be at the same time a companion for my wife in the long evenings during my sittings with Lady Hester Stanhope, we left Nice on the 24th of May, 1837, for Marseilles; and agreed there for our passage on board of the Zoave, Captain Robert, a tight brigantine, paying, for the exclusive use of the cabin and our provisions, 1000 francs. We embarked on the 6th of June, being my fifty-fourth birthday, and, after a prosperous voyage, landed at Beyrout on the 1st of July, 1837.

The city of Beyrout had undergone great changes since the conquest of Syria by Ibrahim Pasha; not in the tortuosity of its streets, not in its broken pavement and the filthy entrances to its houses, but in the appearance of its population. Formerly, a few straggling Europeans, or Levantines in European dresses, were seen hanging about the doors of a warehouse or two in the Frank quarter; and occasionally a European woman, the wife of a consul or a merchant, would steal from one house to another, as if afraid, in her way, of insult from a fanatic Turk. Now, the bustle of a crowded mart was visible, and Europeans and their ladies walked about with a freedom which showed that a strong arm kept the haughty Mussulman under control. In 1831, the appearance of a French lady in the streets, wearing a green silk gown, was signalized as a feat of great hardihood; such an assumption of the colour peculiar to the prophet Mahomet’s descendants generally entailing vexations on the wearer: and a gentleman would never have dared to give his arm to a lady out of doors: but now, both the one and the other passed on without any loud remark, although, internally, the grave Mussulmans cherished a feeling of vengeance against those who so openly violated their religious and moral institutions. Emboldened by these changes, I led my family through the bazars, and showed them the busy Christians and Turks, working with their fingers and toes those beautiful silk stuffs, purses, cords, ribbons, &c., which form the admiration of all persons who visit the Levant.

We were lodged at the inn kept by Pareschivà, formerly a servant of Mr. John Maddox, an English gentleman, who had made a stay of two or three years in Syria. This Greek, by his cleanliness and attention, had secured, in an album which he kept for the purpose, so many certificates of good entertainment from travellers who had put up at his inn, that it would have required some courage to raise a dissenting voice: but he maintained, by a continuance of the same attentions to his guests, the reputation he had justly acquired.

The environs of Beyrout had always been studded with small villas and garden-cottages, but some very handsome country-houses had now risen up among them. New houses had also been built in the town; and among them were two, the property of our old acquaintance, M. Jasper Chasseaud, now become American consul, one of which he inhabited. We had the pleasure of complimenting him on his new dignity, and partaking of his hospitality in a splendid saloon, overlooking the shipping and port, and commanding an extensive view of Mount Lebanon. M. Guys, the French consul, and his estimable lady, also entertained us; and, could our stay have been prolonged here, we should have had no great reason to regret the delightful society of Nice.

I hastened to inform Lady Hester Stanhope of our arrival, and, whilst waiting for the camels and mules which she would probably send, I made the necessary preparations for the road. A cook was hired, named Cabôor, who, some twenty or five-and-twenty years before, had been my servant boy. Great was his joy at seeing his old master. He was destined, however, to remain but a short time with us, as I discovered that he had been turned away from Lady Hester Stanhope’s service, a circumstance which, of course, rendered it impossible for me to retain him in mine.

We attended divine service, performed by the American missionaries in the great saloon of M. Chasseaud’s house, and were much edified by the exemplary piety of these good men, who were labouring to spread general information among the Syrians, by giving gratuitous instruction to the children of the inhabitants, by printing useful books of practical knowledge in Arabic, and by leading them, through reading and meditation, to work their own way to salvation; trusting that an acquaintance with the scriptures and with the advantages of civilization will silently effect the pious object they have in view, without those violent attempts at conversion which cause enmity between brethren, and defeat their own end.

M. Guys lent us a handsome green double marquee, and all preparations were made for our departure, when two servants arrived from her ladyship, with her own mules, and the following answer to my letter.

Lady Hester Stanhope to Dr. ——, at Beyrout.

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So then, thought I, the past is never to be forgotten; and, hardly have we set foot on the shores of Syria, but war is declared against my wife. Lady Hester Stanhope made no mystery of her likes and dislikes; and Botrôos Metta, in his confabulations with Cabôor (as servants in general talk about their masters and mistresses) dwelt on the rising storm, which probably would soon burst. Cabôor bore no good will to her ladyship. He had picked up a little French, and his reflections on my situation were not deficient in shrewdness. “Ah!” he would exclaim, “it will be just as it was six years ago—my mistress crying, my lady emportée, and my master trying to satisfy both—no easy task! He will have one woman saying one thing in one ear, and the other saying the contrary in the other ear; well! he will be a clever gentleman if he reconciles them!”

As it would not have been proper to leave my family in an inn, I resolved to take them with me at once to Sayda, notwithstanding Lady Hester’s suggestion to the contrary. On the 3rd of July, at sunset, we commenced our journey; for the weather was too hot to travel in the daytime. It was pitch dark; nothing whatever was visible; we could not even see the path before us: but Abdhu, the mule-driver, and Botrôos, led the way, and each person had a driver by his side. We were, therefore, spared the horrors of the surrounding scenery, which M. de Lamartine describes in such imaginative diction. In four hours we reached Khaldy, where the tent was pitched on the seashore; and, after supping on a pâté à la Perigord, with which Madame Guys had kindly provided us, and taking a cup of nice Mocha coffee, we lay down in our clothes, and slept until the morning star made its appearance: then, remounting, we marched four hours more, which brought us to Nebby Yuness, where we breakfasted on coffee and milk and the remains of our provision basket. Here we rested until three in the afternoon, and then proceeded along the seashore to Sayda. When within about a quarter of a mile of the town-gates, we met M. Conti, the French consular agent, and from him learned that the earthquake had so damaged the city, and the French khan in particular, that he could not give us lodging in it, but politely offered us his garden, where, under the shade of the trees, we might pitch our tent. The gardens, or rather orchards of Sayda, occupy a flat strip of land which intervenes between the seashore and the foot of Mount Lebanon, from a quarter to half a mile in width, and stretching a league along the shore. M. Conti’s garden was on the verge of the sands, and near the spot where we met him. His offer was accordingly thankfully accepted; and, turning in at the orchard gate, in about half an hour our camp arrangements were completed, and Cabôor, with his cooking utensils round a gipsy’s fire, was busily occupied in preparing our supper.

The lovely wife of M. Pierre Gerardin, who had also just returned to her home from Beyrout, astride on a kedýsh,[57] in the space of seven hours, alighted from her horse at the garden-gate, when she learned who was within, and paid us a visit. This lady was married to a son of that Gerardin who had treated us with such politic incivility in 1831, and who had since died. She was in the costume of a Syrian lady: her hair hung in strait tresses down her back, and black braids of silk fell intermingled with it, so as seemingly to lengthen it to the bend of her knees. The whole was bespangled with small gold money, called rubiahs, of which there might be two hundred or more; and a band, set with gold money, encircled her head, on a level with her forehead, in the fashion of a diadem: the whole being surmounted by a marone-coloured skull cap, richly embroidered in gold. A cream-coloured gown, open in front, and buttoned only at the waist, disclosed her silk gauze chemise, which overhung her pantaloons of silk brocade, and served as a handkerchief to her neck. Her feet were without stockings, and covered only by a pair of yellow papooches. She was a lively young creature; and, as it is common in the Levant to suppose that European ladies who go in public unveiled must, on that account, have much levity of conduct, she endeavoured to imitate what she fancied to be their manners by an assumed freedom, which certainly shocked the females of our party. Mulberries were brought, and eaten with little pointed wooden picks, not to stain the fingers. When our new friends were gone, we supped or dined, and passed the night beneath the tent, bitten most dreadfully by fleas and musquitoes.

July 4.—In the morning I walked into Sayda to see the house destined for us; but it was inconvenient, and was still in the possession of its tenants, a Turkish family; so that the idea of locating ourselves there was abandoned. Then, leaving my family under the tent, I set off for Jôon, where I arrived about sunset, it being three hours’ ride from Sayda.

Lady Hester Stanhope’s reception of me was kind and warm, but more serious than it had been in 1830; one would have said it was a welcome, as if I had left her a month before, and had just come back, for she proceeded, as she called it, immediately to business. She told me it would have given her pleasure if I had left my family at Beyrout, for she had no house to offer them; and, from the dreadful effects of the earthquake, which, on the 1st of January of this year, had thrown down or cracked a third of the houses throughout Palestine, it would be difficult for me to find one, if I could not content myself with that which had been fixed upon for us at Sayda.

July 5.—This discussion occupied the whole of the next day; when, towards evening, a letter came from my family to say they were in the greatest trouble and fright, and that my presence was required immediately. It was hastily determined, therefore, that I should take them to the convent of St. Elias, (Dayr Mar Elias, as it is called) which had been the first residence of Lady Hester Stanhope when she settled in this country.

July 6.—In the morning I rode down to the tent, and found my whole family in tears, and apparently inconsolable. To understand this, the reader must fancy himself transported from a comfortable and well-furnished home to a distant, half-civilized country, where he does not comprehend a word of the language, and planted under a tent in the outskirts of a city, without bar or bolt, without table or chair, and with nobody for an interpreter of his wants but two servants, one of whom speaks broken French, and even that hardly intelligible, and the other nothing but Arabic. It is true, the ladies of the French vice-consul’s family paid mine a visit, and assured them there was no danger to be apprehended: but, when I had left them, and had gone up into the mountains, the defiles, ravines, and precipices of which were visible from the tent, it required no very gloomy imagination to conjure up horrors of all sorts.

It so happened that, on the night of my quitting them, a deserter, who expected to be severely bastinadoed or shot next morning, made his escape from the barrack prison[58] which overhung the walls of Sayda towards the sea, by letting himself down through a sewer, which emptied itself into the surf. He ran for his life along the seashore, until, seeing a light burning in M. Conti’s garden, and a tent, he crawled through the hedge of prickly pear in the state he was in, and thought he might find pity, and a temporary hiding-place. A rustling and a noise awoke Mrs. ——, and she saw a man, in a nizàm dress, wet and filthy, standing at the opening of the tent. 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.

It is not extraordinary that such an apparition as this should have frightened them all; for, up to the hour of my return, from ignorance of the language, they had hardly comprehended the circumstances that gave rise to it. Entreaties and tears, even then, made it imperative on me to remove them forthwith; and, as the mules had been kept tethered on the ground in readiness for a removal, they were reloaded; and, threading the romantic lanes which wind through the gardens, where lilac-trees, bananas, vines, orange and lemon trees, of extraordinary height, with passionflowers, and other creeping plants, wantoning among the thick foliage, made a delicious shade, we emerged from them at the foot of the mountain. Then, passing the hamlet of Hellaléah, where, at the doors of their country bastides,[59] the Kheláts and Dubâanys, friends of my younger days, stood watching to hail my return among them, whilst the elders pointed to their children, now grown up, that I might notice them, we made a steep descent into a small torrent bed, and, again ascending a rough and zigzag path, reached the elevation on which stands, on a barren and unproductive cliff, the small monastery of Mar Elias Abra, or St. Elias, of the village of Abra, about an hour’s ride from the gates of Sayda.

Mar Elias had originally been the dwelling of a few monks, who performed the duties of a small chapel attached to it. Being a retired and healthy spot, it was chosen by the Bishop of the Schismatic Greeks (to whose see it now belonged) for his residence, and, in 1813, when Lady Hester Stanhope first went to live there, was inhabited by one of his successors to the see, Macarius, who was also Patriarch of Antioch. At the request of the Emir Beshýr, prince of the Druses, the patriarch[60] had given it up to Lady Hester, who lived there five or six years, until she removed to Dar Jôon. After that time she only occasionally visited it, and, since Miss Williams’s death, had never been there. General Loustaunau[61] occupied one of the rooms, and an old woman, the widow of Metta, the village doctor, with her son, lived in the lodge, and served as porters.

The injuries caused by the earthquake were very extensive. It seems to have begun somewhere near the sea of Tiberiàd, burying the town of that name, Suffad, and some others, in ruins, and throwing down or damaging the greater part of the dwellings in every city or village along the coast as far as Beyrout, which latter place did not suffer. The monastery of Mar Elias was shaken to its very foundations; and, on taking possession of our new residence, the state it was in sufficiently showed how terrible the terrestrial convulsion had been. General Loustaunau described it to me as follows:—He was sitting under the verandah which runs round a part of the small quadrangle, reading his Bible, when his chair gave a tilt under him. He raised his eyes from his book, and saw the side of the building facing him rock. A cloud of dust immediately rose above the roof. He knew it was an earthquake, but was not, or had not time to be, terrified; for, before he could well think about it, it was over, and he found himself unhurt. He never quitted the spot where he was, until his maid, the porter, and the porter’s mother, called to him with loud cries. When they came to examine the mischief that had been done, they found the store-room, which was the corner room of the quadrangle to the north-west, entirely fallen in, burying in its ruins more than two hundred weight of copper utensils. The wall of the room which formerly served as Lady Hester Stanhope’s bed-room, next to the store-room, had peeled from top to bottom—half having fallen, and half being left standing. The kitchen roof had fallen in. In the centre of the quadrangle, the parterre, bordered with oblong freestones, had been raised perpendicularly about two feet, with a zenzeluct tree, the rose-bushes, and a palm-tree on it; and so we found them still, the pavement giving a hollow sound to the tread. The arch of the gate of the stable-yard was lifted out of its curve, and the wood-house was down. The room inhabited formerly by Monsieur Beaudin, then her ladyship’s secretary, and now French vice-consul at Damascus, was a heap of ruins; and numberless rents and partial fissures manifested themselves everywhere. The chapel, General Loustaunau’s room, the saloon, and another large room of equal size, had escaped entirely, together with the bath, and two or three small rooms adjoining. The beams of what had been Lady Hester’s bed-room were now propped up by balks of wood; and thus we had three large rooms at our disposal.

Here then I fixed my family; and hiring two women, Tabithâ and Helôon, a girl, Werdy, and a boy, Habyb, from the village of Abra, which was about ten minutes’ walk from Mar Elias, as servants, there seemed a prospect of great comfort and tranquillity for us all, whilst I could give my undivided attention to Lady Hester’s health and affairs, passing my time alternately between the two places.

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History of Raïs Hassan—His influence with Lady Hester Stanhope—Number of persons in her service—Number of animals in her stables—Her manner of disposing of those which were superannuated—Her belief in Magic and Demonology—Examples—Anecdotes of Mr. Brummell—Mr. H.—The Duc de R********—Lord St. Asaph—Lady Hester’s strictness with menials—Justified by their misconduct and vices—Zeyneb, the black slave—Annoyances to which Lady Hester was subjected—Her service not tolerable for Europeans—Her reasons for using plain furniture—Her detestation of sentimentality—Her general interference in every department of housewifery—Irregularities of the servants—Chastity, how defined in Turkey—Lady H.’s measures for enforcing it—Her opinion of a French traveller, and of M. Lascaris.

Dismissing these personal details, which have been mentioned solely as connecting links of the main narrative, I now resume my diary.

July 7.—I returned to Dar Jôon.

July 8.—The day after my arrival, before breakfast, Lady Hester Stanhope being yet in bed, a servant came for me. “I hope I have not disturbed you,” said she, when I entered her room; “but I wanted you just for a minute to say a word about Logmagi, whom I am going to send home for a week or two. Poor man! he is all devotedness to my service, but I must not ride a willing horse to death. He is liberal-minded, too, and charitable; not as your fine my lord is, who gives his five guineas to a somebody, and never feels the loss of his money; but one who, if he sees an old captain that he has known in his younger days, or one of his messmates, in distress, will pull off his cloak, ay, and his jacket too, and give them to him. When he hears any one praise me, his purse is open to him immediately.”

It is necessary that I should introduce my readers to this person, who played a very conspicuous part in Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment, from the year 1832 until and after this my second visit to her in 1837 and 1838. It has already been related that, in returning to Europe in 1832, I took a passage from Sayda to Cyprus in a boat of the country, called a shaktôor, better known as a tartane lower down the Mediterranean. The master of this boat was a cheerful good-looking fellow, named Hassan el Logmagi, or Hassan the Diver, so called from his first outset in life as a sponge-diver. At the period when I engaged him, his employment lay in the coasting-trade from Sayda to Beyrout, Tripoli, Tyr, and the neighbouring ports. In the course of his motley existence he had been a porter, a fisherman, a diver, a common sailor, a slave, and a trader in small goods, visiting almost every port in the Mediterranean and Archipelago, buying at one what would sell at another, and thus become acquainted with many maritime cities of Turkey. Shortly subsequent to the date of his carrying us to Cyprus, Abdallah Pasha made him captain of an armed vessel in his service, and he then was entitled fully to the rank of Räis Hassan, or Captain Hassan, which he always afterwards bore.

Lady Hester Stanhope was accustomed to obtain information from all sorts of persons, as it suited her purpose; and, feeling some interest about our welfare after quitting her, she sent for Hassan, on his return to Sayda, to learn the particulars of the voyage. It would seem that his appearance and conversation pleased her: for, as soon as Abdallah Pasha was carried off a prisoner to Egypt, she took him into her service.

His person and manners were those of a handsome boatswain. He was boisterous and rude, entirely without education, for he could neither read nor write, but very shrewd, and, from his varied intercourse with mankind, a keen judge of character—at least, of the dark side of human nature. He was jovial in the highest degree, remarkably good-looking; and, for a day’s acquaintance, when matters of interest were out of the question, nobody who wished to be merry could desire a pleasanter fellow. Sinbad the sailor could not tell a more marvellous story.

It was matter of much surprise to the Europeans of Beyrout, and the natives in general, how such a man could be admitted for hours to Lady Hester Stanhope’s conversation, and the enjoyment of her intimate confidence; and it was a great marvel to all Sayda, Logmagi’s native place, and where, of course, his antecedents, as the French say, were well known, how he could have obtained so firm a footing where so many before him had slipped. The reason will be seen in the course of these pages, abundantly verifying what Lady Hester very often said, that it was in vain for people to attempt to investigate or speculate upon her motives for what she did; and that, if two people were placed in her room, one in one corner, and one in the other, all day long, she would manage her business in their presence so that they should be no wiser in the matter than if they had been a mile off. “Her intentions,” she would say, “were pure, but God only was the judge of that, and she cared not a fig what men thought.”

So it was; and on my arrival in Syria, I found Logmagi installed as purveyor, steward, emissary, and factotum. All transactions with the people of the country were carried on through his hands, and a most important part of his avocations was to keep Lady Hester constantly informed of all sorts of matters going on in Sayda and the surrounding country. Anecdotes of domestic affairs, of the government, news of every description, formed his budget every time he came up to Jôon; and, for this purpose, about half his time was spent in town, to be able to collect it. He was married, had two wives, and was building a new house principally at her ladyship’s expence.

The secret of Logmagi’s influence with Lady Hester might perhaps be traced to her reliance upon his apparent zeal in her service. She believed him to be thoroughly devoted to her, a belief which he well knew how to foster and sustain. He was too clever a courtier to eulogize her to her face, and, therefore, always made his advances by indirect means. He had been sent by her to Marseilles, to Constantinople, and to other distant places; and, according to Lady Hester’s account of what he told her on his return, there was not a person he came in contact with but had related some history of the Sultan’s admiration of her, of the Grand Vizir’s apprehension of her political influence, of the extent of her reputation, even in the very bazars, and of a hundred similar things calculated to flatter her vanity and love of fame. At Beyrout, at Tripoli, at Alexandria, he was sure to have met with a Tartar, or a sea-captain in some coffee-house, who said he had seen a pasha, or a great merchant, or a sheykh, or a somebody, who had declared he should not die contented, if he had not once beheld a woman of such extraordinary talents, or who had been so munificent to some distressed aga, or who had relieved, with such a liberal hand, some learned dervise: and, after having praised her charitable heart, he generally finished with a tale of distress of some family reduced almost to beggary, of some honest tradesman who wanted relief; and thus, striking the chords which always vibrated to Lady Hester’s generous heart, he was entrusted with large sums to distribute. He seldom went down to Sayda without being the bearer of one, two, three—nay, five thousand piasters at a time, to purchase provisions with, and to give away in donations.

Lady Hester had, at this time, in her service thirty-five persons. There was one Arabic secretary, an upper bailiff, three under ones, two men cooks, two porters, one for each gate, three grooms, two muleteers, two ass-drivers, whose sole occupation was fetching water from the spring, and occasionally an extra one; four maids and a girl for herself; three boys, and eight men-servants. She had two mares, which were never ridden, one horse for my riding, and five asses, also never used, as having completed a certain stated period of service, and being now placed on the superannuated list. There was a mule, also, which was never allowed to be worked, except by certain servants, and even then only on her ladyship’s special commission, for some reason connected with its star: it was afterwards given to Monsieur Guys. The remainder of the stock consisted of three cows and a flock of sheep. Formerly, a herd of goats had been kept (one hundred in number), but their throats were all ordered to be cut in one day, for some cause which I never clearly understood, but with the intention of defeating a scheme of the goatherd’s, who had been detected in turning their flesh and milk to his own account; and this slaughter, she told me, was made in imitation of her cousin, Lord Camelford, whose energetic character and abhorrence of knavery she greatly admired. It was, no doubt, also in emulation of his Lordship’s example that, if she ever discovered that any of her domestic animals had been put to any use contrary to her orders, she instantly had them shot, issuing her mandate, at the same time, that the human delinquents should be, at a moment’s notice, turned adrift.

There were also three amblers in the stables. These horses, very common in Syria, are trained by tying leaden weights to their legs until their trot becomes a run. Soon after my arrival, Lady Hester signified to me that she should have them shot, for her under-bailiffs did nothing but ride them when they ought to go on foot, and, moreover, treated them cruelly. Accordingly, Osman Chaôosh, an under-bailiff, who always carried a silver-headed stick in his hand, the emblem of the office of chaôoshes, of whom many are kept in the employ of Pashas as a sort of police-officers, was commissioned to be their executioner. 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. Lady Hester’s mysterious ways had given her an extraordinary ascendency over the minds of her people; and the Syrians, who are credulous, like all Eastern nations, were generally disposed to believe that her ladyship really did possess those undefined powers which are assigned to demonology and magic. That she herself believed in the transmigration of souls she frequently avowed, and her faith in aërial spirits also admits of no doubt.

Throughout Syria, and, I believe, the whole Ottoman empire, the belief in magic and charms is universal. There is not a single person who does not resort to some means for counteracting the effect of the evil eye—such as spells by written papers, enchantments, and the like. Impotence, estrangement of affection, the murrain in cattle, blight in fruit-trees, anything the cause of which is not immediately obvious, is universally accounted for by witchcraft. Lady Hester, indeed, had imbibed all these notions; and, to judge from the substance of many conversations she held on the subject, no reasonable doubt can be entertained of the startling fact, that she placed implicit faith in them.

“Astrology,” she would say, “is confined to the influence of the stars over people’s birth and actions; but magic has to do with the devil. Sometimes it is by compact; as when, for a certain price, I say, for example, to an evil spirit, ‘If you will tell me what they have written from the Porte to Abdallah Pasha, I will do so and so;’ or if, by means which I know to be powerful enough to bring devils under my command, I say to them, ‘You must do this, and that, and the other,’ they are obliged to obey, or I annihilate them.

“There are persons,” she continued, “who can write charms, by which they can effect the most diabolical purposes: but their charms are sometimes baffled by higher influences. I am an example: my star, more powerful than that on which they rely, renders their magic useless. So far, there is a connection between astrology and magic. But take care, doctor, there are men here who will slip a paper into your pocket unknown to you, and make you an idiot, or blind, or a hundred things. Always keep at a distance from Girius Gemmal—that man is an agent of the devil.

“Why, do you know that a woman’s evil eye once fell upon me? I felt a strange pricking just above my knee; and soon after there appeared, first, an oval black rim, then a bluish ground within it, and then a black spot in the centre, so that any one might have said, ‘There is an eye:’ after a few days it disappeared. There was a man near Cara, between Damascus and Aleppo, who possessed the faculty of the evil eye so strongly that he could kill a person, when he chose to use his power to the utmost.”

Now all this, the reader will say, looks like the grossest credulity. But, setting aside the observation that the greatest men among the ancients, as we know from their writings, entertained a similar creed, and that many eminent philosophers and jurisconsults, as Lord Bacon and Sir Matthew Hale, were actuated by similar convictions, it may be conjectured that Lady Hester Stanhope knew very well what a powerful weapon was this superstition, placed in the hands of those who understood how to make use of it. Whether premeditatedly or not, she more than once brought crafty and designing knaves into signal disrepute by attributing to them dealings of this sort, and thus punished or kept in awe those whose villanous machinations it might be impossible to detect, but of which there was little doubt, even though not tangible by the hand of justice.

Lady Hester Stanhope once built a new room; and, just before she was going to inhabit it, from some cause, imagined, or pretended to imagine, it was charmed. We may judge of the builder’s surprise, when she sent for him, and said, “To-morrow you must assemble your workmen, and pull down the new room.” The man, fancying some defect had been discovered in his workmanship, humbly begged her to say what it was that moved her displeasure, as, perhaps, he might be able to find a remedy for it, without destroying the whole. “Your business, sir,” answered Lady Hester, in that tone of voice which she made so terrible when she chose, “is to pull down if I like it, I suppose, as well as to build; so be so good as to obey my orders without farther question.” “When they were removing the arch of the door, doctor,” said Lady Hester, who related the story to me, “I saw a paper fall out. I took it up and sent it to a man versed in charms. He told me it was a charm, written by one of my deadly enemies: and, if I had dwelt in the room, I should have died. Only think, how lucky it was I did what I did!

“Another time, when I had been ill in bed for some weeks, I happened to be looking out from under my eyelids, as you know I have got a way of seeing everything when people think I see nothing, and I observed Girius Gemmal fumble a paper between his fingers, and dip it into a glass of lemonade that the slave was going to give me. I said nothing, but merely desired the slave to set the glass down. Had I drunk it, I have no doubt I should have been his victim. He is a terrible fellow! I warn you never to go to the village or take your family there, because I am afraid he would do some of you some harm. I don’t know how he might do it: he might slip a paper into your boot, or sprinkle a few drops of water on your clothes, and utter some incantation; for they have a hundred ways of inflicting maledictions.”

It may be as well to add here, although not occurring at this time, that on reading an article in a newspaper to her about vampires, she said, “I believe in vampires, but the people in England know not how to distinguish them. Such a being is not a mere creation of people’s fancies.”

From these, and a variety of other observations, which will be found scattered through these memoirs, Lady Hester’s professed opinions on the subject of charms and supernatural agency generally cannot be mistaken. Nor, indeed, seeing how she mixed up such opinions with the actual business of life, allowing them to exercise a direct practical influence over her conduct in numerous instances, can there be any reason for supposing that she did not entirely believe in them, to all intents and purposes, as sincerely as the Syrians themselves. But I leave the consideration of this curious problem to the sagacity of the reader, limiting my more appropriate province to the simple record of her ladyship’s actual life and conversations.

To return from this digression. It might be supposed that, immediately upon my arrival, Lady Hester would have opened the urgent business upon which she had summoned me. No such thing. After congratulating me upon my escape from Europe, which, she assured me, would soon be convulsed by revolutions from one end to the other, she entered at once on her favourite topic—the coming of the Murdah. But, as her opinions and proofs were pretty much the same as those she had entertained six years before, and which have already been related, it is not necessary to recapitulate them.

July 9.—In the afternoon, I rode down to Mar Elias to see my family, and returned the following day to dinner.

July 10.—Lady Hester this day asked me if I had ever known Beau Brummell. “I should like to see that man again, doctor,” continued she, without waiting for my answer. “He was no fool. I recollect his once saying to me, in Bond Street, riding with his bridle between his forefinger and thumb, as if he held a pinch of snuff, ‘Dear creature! who is that man you were talking to just now?’—‘Why,’ I answered, ‘that is Colonel ——.’—‘Colonel what?’ said he, in his peculiar manner; ‘who ever heard of his father?’—So I replied, ‘And who ever heard of George B.’s father?’—‘Ah! Lady Hester,’ he rejoined, half-seriously, ‘who, indeed, ever heard of George B.’s father, and who would have ever heard of George B. himself, if he had been anything but what he is? But you know, my dear Lady Hester, it is my folly that is the making of me. If I did not impertinently stare duchesses out of countenance, and nod over my shoulder to a prince, I should be forgotten in a week: and, if the world is so silly as to admire my absurdities, you and I may know better, but what does that signify?’

“Three of the wits of the day in my time,” observed Lady Hester, continuing the conversation, “were Mr. Hill, Captain Ash, and Mr. Brummell, all odd in their way—the one for dry wit, the other for solemn joking, and the last for foppery. Mr. Hill, for example, when at dinner at somebody’s house, would draw towards him a dish of mashed potatoes that had a mould mark on them, as if he was going to help himself; then, eyeing it with irresistible gravity, and looking at it very oddly with his quizzing-glass, he would turn to the servant and say, ‘I wish you would tell the housekeeper, my good fellow, not to sit down on the dishes;’ pretending that he saw a mark, as if she had sat down upon it.

“Brummell would commit similar freaks at the houses of parvenus, or people who were not exactly of haut ton, where, sometimes at dinner, he would all of a sudden make horridly ludicrous grimaces, as if he had found a hair in his soup, or would abruptly ask for some strange Palmyrene sauce, or any out-of-the-way name that nobody ever heard of, and then pretend he could not eat his fish without it.”

As a specimen of Brummell’s audacious effrontery, Lady Hester said that once, in the midst of a grand ball, he asked the Duchess of Rutland—“In Heaven’s name, my dear duchess, what is the meaning of that extraordinary back of yours? I declare I must put you on a backboard: you must positively walk out of the room backwards, that I mayn’t see it.”

Another time he marched up to Lady Hester, who was remarkable for the fine turn of her cheek, and the set of her head upon her neck, and coolly took out her ear-rings, telling her she should not wear such things;—meaning that they hid the best part of her face.

Upon one occasion he went about in a ball-room, asking everybody where he could find a partner who would not throw him into a perspiration, and at last crying out—“Ah! there she is!—yes, Catherine will do; I think I may venture with her.”—And this was the Duchess of Rutland’s sister.

Sometimes he would have a dozen dukes and marquises waiting for him, whilst he was brushing his teeth, or dressing himself, and would turn round with the utmost coolness, and say to them—“Well, what do you want? don’t you see I am brushing my teeth?” (all the while slowly moving his brush backward and forward across his mouth, and hawking and spitting:) then he would cry,—“Oh! there’s a spot—ah! its nothing but a little coffee. Well, this is an excellent powder, but I won’t let any of you have the receipt for it.”

On one occasion she spoke of Mr. B. in terms of regard, and said she should write to him, as a fellow-sufferer like herself from fallen greatness. “I shall tell him I understand the bedgown is in existence (alluding to his taste in dressing-gowns when he was a friend of the Prince of Wales). When he receives my letter, he will say: ‘There she is again, the dear creature! always the same:’” for I said I had seen him once or twice at Calais, dressed very quietly, and very much like a gentleman, with no appearance of foppery, except when he leaned out of his lodging window in a sort of a fine chintz dressing-gown. “Ah!” cried Lady Hester, “those are the patterns that the Prince sometimes used to give £100 for, to have them like his.”

There was a gentleman who visited Lady Hester Stanhope on Mount Lebanon, Mr. H*****, who, she said, would not be an unworthy successor of Mr. Brummell. She called him a gentlemanlike fop, who gave her a sort of a look from top to toe of ineffable insouciance, and used to cry out, when she was telling him some laughable story, “For God’s sake, don’t make me laugh so: I shall die, I vow and protest: I shall expire from laughing; now pray, Lady Hester!”

Something turned the conversation to the duc de R——, who had visited her once. “I told him,” said Lady Hester, “he had nothing like a duke about him. ‘Comment! est ce que je suis trop petit?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘it is not that; you neither look like one, nor act like one.’ Oh! I trimmed him,” she continued. “He wrote to me after he was gone, and said he had prayed for me at Jerusalem. I wrote him back a letter so impudent, doctor, and joked him about a belle marquise, who, by a shrewd guess, I fancied, was his chere amie, I bade him pray for her, and not for me, and sent him—what do you call it when there are four lines in rhyme?—ah! a quatrain, which I will try to recollect.” She mused a little, and then repeated four lines something to this effect:

Lady Hester added, “He was more like a militia officer than a French duke, and very stingy.”

“Did Lord St. Asaph publish anything?” she asked. I told her not that I knew of. “He was very active,” she added, “and went about seeking for antiquities everywhere: whenever he heard of anything, off he set, and visited it. When he saw my garden, he expressed great admiration of it, and assured me that it was not only well kept for this country, but better kept than many a gentleman’s grounds in England.”

Saturday, July 15.—I spent this day and the next at Mar Elias with my family, and returned to Jôon on Monday, July 17.

It has already been remarked, that there were thirty-four people in Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment at the time I am now speaking of, and yet she would complain that she could not get the slightest attendance. This, of course, was mere temper. Her five maids were constantly in motion, night and day; but she had become querulous to a degree scarcely imaginable, and was, beyond all example, exigeante in her demands on the services of everybody about her. But, if such excessive requisition was ever pardonable in anybody, it was in Lady Hester Stanhope; for her vast talents seemed to lay claim to submission from all inferior beings, and even to exact it as a matter of justice. It was always customary with her (as it generally is with people who overwork their servants) to appeal first to one and then to another, whether anybody could give less trouble than she did. “What have my maids got to do?” she would say: “they think themselves mightily put upon, if I only require as much from them as some shopkeepers wife insists upon from her housemaid:—a set of lazy beasts, that sleep and stuff all day, and then pretend they are mightily hard-worked. Doctor, Logmagi says, that nothing but the korbàsh will keep them in order; and, depend upon it, it is so. If I did not tell them I would have them punished, I should not get the bell answered.” It is true she was generous to them in giving them clothes, high wages, presents of money, new year gifts, &c.; but, whilst she bestowed with one hand, she tyrannized with the other. These mixed extremities of kindness and severity produced a strange effect upon her servants. I never knew one of them who, after a time, did not wish to leave her service, or who, having left it, did not wish to return. The desire to leave her was stimulated by her restless activity, which left nobody quiet day or night, and her determined hostility to indolence, lies, and all other vices common to menials in Syria: while the anxiety to get back again might be in a great measure traced to the dishonest gains which were so readily made in her service, and by which her domestics so frequently enriched themselves—to place nothing to the account of that spell which she infallibly cast over everybody who came within the sphere of her attraction.

It cannot be denied that Lady Hester Stanhope had great reason for her strictness. During her severe illness in 1828, when Miss Williams died and she was confined to her bed-room for three months, G. G. and another rascal induced the girl, Fatôom, to steal the keys of the store-room, and, whilst they waited outside of the window, the wooden bars of which they sawed through with the adroitness of a London housebreaker, she handed them out much valuable property. Every one of the trunks was opened and examined. Hinges were wrenched off, so as to leave the locks untouched, and the trunks were replaced against the wall, and the bars of the window refitted to lull suspicion. One night, as was afterwards revealed in a confession made by one of the maids, when Mr. Dundas, a traveller, who was on a visit at Dar Jôon, was sitting with Lady Hester, Fatôom took a key from one of her ladyship’s pockets, which had been left in her bed-room, opened a small closet, and out of that closet took a bunch of keys, by means of which she ransacked almost everything Lady Hester possessed. Her beautiful Albanian dress, covered with gold, was stolen; a gold medallion,[62] commemorative of her brother’s and General Moore’s death, at Corunna, shared the same fate; stuffs, brocades, and other articles of value, were all carried off.

But the servant who committed the heaviest robberies was Zeyneb, a black slave, who afterwards became a soldier’s trull. This woman, whose career throughout was marked by every sort of profligacy, robbed Lady Hester to the amount of many thousands of piasters.

Lady Hester related, on a subsequent occasion, the winding-up of Zeyneb’s history, in the following words, which I wrote down April the 9th, 1838. “When Zeyneb stole the gold medal, with General Moore’s and my brother’s name upon it, I procured all the documents relative to the theft from Cyprus, where one of her accomplices had fled, and then sent for Zeyneb and Farez into the saloon. I called in Logmagi and Khalyl Mansôor as witnesses, and then, telling the culprits what I knew, said I could hang them if I liked. The impudent slave, Zeyneb, listened with perfect indifference, and, in going out, stopped up the door, and, in an ironical tone, thanked Logmagi (who, she thought, had told me all about it). Logmagi, surprised at her insolence, went to push her out; when, at that moment, Abu Ali, the great black, who had, it appears, found his way into the court in order to support the black girl’s cause, and had been waiting outside the saloon door, seized Logmagi, and, with his muscular grasp, tried to throttle him. I heard a strange noise, and went out; and there I saw Logmagi, with his eyes starting out of his head, held down on the ground by the negro. I caught the fellow’s hand, although one of his pistols was directed towards me, and with my other arm gave a back-handed stroke across Zeyneb’s face (who was helping the black), that knocked her down. She got up, scaled the wall, and ran off to Sayda; and I never saw her more. I called the Albanians, and had Abu Ali turned out of doors directly.” After Zeyneb ran away, she threw herself into the arms of the nizam, or soldiers, where Lady Hester, to use her own emphatic language, left her to rot.

A short detail of the annoyances to which Lady Hester Stanhope was exposed may serve to show that she was not angry with these women without reason. The endless trifling acts of ignorance, awkwardness, carelessness, forgetfulness, falsehood, and impudence, which she used to relate to me, were quite sufficient upon the whole, although many of them were individually petty enough, to justify the severe control she found it necessary to exercise over them. But then it will be asked, why did a lady of her rank, accustomed to all the refinements of European life, keep such servants in her establishment?—why did she not send for Europeans? That was the question that everybody asked—that nobody could answer. The real fact, probably, was this—she preferred these poor creatures, with all their demoralization and filthy habits, to French or English servants, because, by the customs of the East, they were habituated to despotism and bursts of passion, which neither English nor French would be very likely to brook so patiently.

Besides, no European servants could have reconciled themselves to the melancholy seclusion of Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment, or to the never-ceasing activity, or, what is worse, the long vigils required of them. Here there was no moment of respite from doing or waiting to do. In England, the maid looks at least for some intervals of recreation, and expects, at all events, out of the four-and-twenty hours, that she shall be allowed six or eight for rest. But there was neither one nor the other at Jôon; for, even while her ladyship was engaged with her nightly conversations in the saloon, when little or no waiting was required, still there was no end to the work marked out for her servants—such as filling pipes every quarter of an hour—by which they were kept incessantly employed. Now, as Turkish servants turn in[63] almost universally in their clothes, only drawing a counterpane over themselves when they lie down, they are enabled thus to steal a short sleep at any hour they can get it, and are ready to rise at a moment’s call. This is a great advantage, especially to sick people: indeed, in Lady Hester’s case, it almost compensated for all their faults. In the twinkling of an eye, upon an emergency, the whole household, only a moment before buried in profound sleep, would start up on their feet; and, their duty once over, would suddenly drop again into a deep slumber.

One day, I went to Lady Hester’s bed-room door, without waiting to ascertain whether she was ready to receive me. It was a rule with her for many years never to see anybody, even in her saloon, whether coming from a distance or staying in her house, until she had sent for them—no matter who, prince or peasant; and she carried this species of regality to such a length, that, on one occasion, among twenty which might be mentioned, an English gentleman and his wife, for both of whom she entertained a high personal esteem, having arrived from Beyrout to within a league of her dwelling to pay her a visit, and having politely sent forward a servant with a letter to announce their approach, she returned a laconic answer, to say they would not be received. She, moreover, was accustomed to mark, not merely the day, but the precise hour, that persons coming to visit her were to present themselves. She would do so with Duke Maximilian, or with Matteo Lunardi. On the morning to which I have referred, Lady Hester was in bed. “What do you want?” said she, in rather an angry tone. I replied that I had brought her a cut-glass cup and stand for her sherbet and lemonade, as hers was so common that it gave me pain to see her use it. “No, doctor,” she said, “I am much obliged to you, but you must send it away again. If I had twenty fine things, those beasts of maids would break or steal them all. I had some beautiful cut-glass goblets, and they all disappeared, one after the other. Would you believe it? they broke one first of all, and then Miss Williams gave out another. So they kept the pieces of the broken one, and, every fortnight or three weeks, came to her first with one bit and then with another, with some plausible story of an accident, and each time got another goblet out of her, until all were gone. I found them out at last. The jades destroy everything: but it is not that which gives me pain; it is to think that I have not one person who will see me well waited on.”

Happening to observe, that perhaps some allowance should be made for their ignorance in that respect, as, after all, they were but peasant girls and slaves, who could not know what service was, seeing they were unacquainted with European customs, she exclaimed, “But my liver is destroyed by the passions I put myself in, and I dare say you, instead of helping me, will only make matters worse. They’ll only laugh at you and your sensibility. 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. I go then almost into convulsions.

“But, oh! how I detest your sentimental people, who pretend to be full of feeling—who will cry over a worm, and yet treat real misfortune with neglect. There are your fine ladies that I have seen in a dining-room, and when, by accident, an earwig has come out of a peach, after having been half killed in opening it, one would exclaim, ‘Oh! poor thing! you have broken its back—do spare it—I can’t bear to see even an insect suffer. Oh! there, my lord, how you hurt it: stop, let me open the window and put it out.’ And then the husband drawls out, ‘My wife is quite remarkable for her sensibility; I married her purely for that.’ And then the wife cries, ‘Oh! now, my lord, you are too good to say that: if I had not had a grain of feeling, I should have learnt it from you.’ And so they go on, praising each other; and perhaps the next morning, when she is getting into her carriage, a poor woman, with a child at her breast, and so starved that she has not a drop of milk, begs charity of her; and she draws up the glass, and tells the footman, another time, not to let those disgusting people stand at her door.”

The conversation, on a subsequent occasion, having fallen on the nasty servants, and I having assented to the truth of what she said, regretting that her acute feelings made her torment herself about things which were but trifles:—“Trifles!” she vociferated; “it is trifles, as you call them, that kill me. Everybody comes to me. There are the very maids—if you were only to see—when they have a hole to mend, how they sew it up all in a spong: they even ask me how their gowns must be cut out.”

This was the fact; but they came to her because she would have it so. Many a morning have I seen her cutting out gowns and pantaloons for them, and stitching the parts together with her own hands. Her talents were so versatile, that she always seemed to have served her time to the particular work, whatever it might be, in which you chanced to find her engaged. I have in my possession patterns, in paper, of gowns after the Turkish fashion, cut out by Lady Hester’s hand; and if any of the travellers who visited her may have had occasion to admire the dresses of her men or maid servants, they may be assured that, even down to the embroidery, the models for every one of them were first designed and cut out by their accomplished mistress.

Lady Hester Stanhope had another serious reason to be discontented with her servants. Her inner court, the gynœcium or harým, was separated from the outer one by a door, always, or which always ought to have been, kept locked. The key was entrusted to one of the two men-servants who lived in this inner court, but whose rooms were divided from the wing where the maids were by a screen of wainscoting, which neither party was allowed to pass. That was the rule, but the practice was far otherwise, and the men were constantly haunting the maids’ rooms and the kitchen with perfect security; because the locked door, at which everybody was obliged to knock to get admission, gave them time to arrange their matters so as to escape detection. Lady Hester herself was generally in bed, and perfectly incapable of checking their irregularities. It was not, therefore, to be wondered at, if, every now and then, the sad consequences were not slow in manifesting themselves. For in Turkey, where men are never allowed to associate with women—where the face of a female, even of the lowest class, cannot be uncovered before the other sex without a stain attaching to her modesty, and sometimes to her character—the idea of placing the two sexes in familiar juxtaposition is so foreign to all their notions, that both the one and the other, when such occasions present themselves, fancy all reserve is at an end, and use their opportunities accordingly. Chastity, in our sense of the word, social and moral, is perhaps unknown among Mahometans. The woman who is well guarded, or the maiden who lives strictly under her mother’s wing, is kept chaste; but she who is neglected thinks that there is no longer any reason for restraint, or believes, at all events, that she does no great wrong in thinking so.

Lady Hester, no doubt, knew all this better than any one; but there was no remedy. She did not feel sure of the good conduct of one single maid-servant. As long as Miss Williams was alive, the awe they all stood in of her made things go on with propriety; but, after her death, all these disorders crept in. One of the very European men-servants whom Lady Hester kept as a check on the people of the country, set them a profligate example himself, and then sought a pretext for leaving her service. In another instance, a black slave was found to have formed an illicit connection with a black man. Lady Hester Stanhope obliged the man to marry her, and gave them both their freedom. Her ladyship did not visit these untoward events with severity. Only, as it is a common practice in Turkey to procure abortion, and as there is no notice taken of such things by the public authorities, who often set the example openly in their own harýms, all that Lady Hester ever did in these cases was to call the offenders before her, and tell them she would have them hanged if they resorted to any secret means of that kind: and she was a person to be as good as her word. Her views in such matters were lenient and compassionate in reference to the circumstances in which these unfortunate creatures were often placed; but there was nothing she held in such utter detestation as mere animal vices.

It was naturally Lady Hester’s object to enlist me on her side into her plan of keeping her household regulated according to the rules of the strictest decorum; and I of course was most happy to lend my assistance. Previous to my arrival, I had been, both now and on my former visit in 1831, held up as a bugbear to all the servants, and the common exclamation in her mouth was—“Ah! when the doctor comes, he will very soon set you to rights.” But I was not at all, either from temperament or reflection, ambitious of filling a post of that sort; and, although she turned against me at different times the shafts of ridicule, and a never-ceasing battery of abuse, I passively but firmly declined all participation in the severity of her measures.

Sunday, July 23.—I rode over to Mar Elias, and returned again to the Dar on Monday night.

July 24.—Lady Hester Stanhope took a great deal of pains to make me acquainted with all that was going on both in the house and in the neighbourhood: still she never touched on the property left, or said to be left her; and it was not until August the 3rd that the subject was fairly entered upon. But, as what she communicated then will come in more appropriately when the correspondence which took place in reference to it shall be given, we will proceed to other matters.

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. I smiled when they spoke to me, and passed on; but they left no agreeable impressions on my mind.

“Look at Monsieur *********, getting off his horse half a dozen times to kiss his dog, and take him out of his bandbox to feed him on the road from Beyrout here: the very muleteers and servants thought him a fool. And then, that way of thrusting his hands in his breeches-pockets, sticking out his legs as far as he could—what is that like?

“Monsieur —— is no poet, in my estimation, although he may be an elegant versifier: he has no sublime ideas. Compare his ideas with Shakspeare’s—that was indeed a real poet. Oh, doctor, what inspirations there are in that man! Even his imaginary beings—his Ariels, his fairies, his Calibans—we see at once are such as they would be if they had really existed. You don’t believe in such things, but I do, and so did Shakspeare: he, I am sure, had great knowledge of Eastern literature, somehow or other.

“Monsieur ——, with his straight body and straight fingers, pointed his toes in my face, and then turned to his dog and kissed him, and held long conversations with him. They say he has £17,000 a year, and castles and villages. He thought to make a great effect when he was here, but he was grievously mistaken. I gave him a letter to Abu Ghosh, who received him very well; but when he talked about himself, and made out that he was a great man, Abu Ghosh said it was for my sake, and not for his own, that he showed him as much honour as he could.”

In speaking of M. Lascaris, of whom Monsieur L. has written a great deal,[64] Lady Hester said M. Lascaris had the heart of a Roman with the intrigue of a Greek.

---

Queen Caroline’s trial—In what manner the first inquiry was suppressed—Lady Hester’s opinion of the P——ss of W.—Young Austin—Lord Y.—P. of W.—His disgust at the slovenly habits of the P——ss.—Mrs. Fitzherbert—Mrs. Robinson—Mr. Canning—His person—His duplicity—and deceit—His incapability of acting without guidance—His disposition to babble—Lady Hester’s account of a great serpent—Mr. T. Moore—Lord Camelford—His liberality—Some anecdotes of that high-spirited nobleman—Arrival of Madame L.—She is seized with brain-fever, and dies raving mad—Visit of General Cass.

Some allusion having been made to Queen Caroline, Lady Hester asked me what they said in England about her trial. “Do,” said she, “tell me something about it: did you see her?—I suppose it was like Warren Hastings’s trial.” She continued: “I prevented the explosion the first time, and I will tell you how. One day, the Duke of Cumberland called on me, and, in his accustomed manner, began—‘Well, Lady Hester, it will be all out to-morrow: we have printed it all, and to-morrow it will be all out.’ I knew what he meant, and said to him, ‘Have you got the chancellor’s leave? I, for my part, don’t like the business at all.’—‘Why don’t you like it?’ asked the duke. ‘Because,’ answered I, ‘I have too much respect for royalty to desire to see it made a subject for Grub Street songs.’ I did not say this so much on the P. of W.’s account, as for the sake of the P——ss ——; I dreaded the other disclosures to which a business like this might lead. The duke turned away, as if in thought, and I saw that the same idea struck him; for, after a pause, he resumed his position, and answered—‘You are quite right, Lady Hester; by God! you are quite right: but what am I to do? we have gone too far: what am I to do?’—‘Why, I think,’ rejoined I, ‘the best thing you can do, is to go and ask the chancellor.’ So off he packed; and I fancy Mr. Percival, and the chancellor, and he, talked it over, and decided on quashing the business.

“Why, doctor, the papers were all printed, and it cost Mr. Percival £10,000 out of the secret service money to recover one copy which had been taken off his table. Going out in a hurry, and forgetting to lock it up, he had left the book open in his room. It was not a thing to escape. Somebody stole it; and I know, to a certainty, that it cost him £10,000 to get it back again.

“As for the P—ss of W., I did not care about her. She was a nasty, vulgar, impudent woman, that was not worth telling a lie about. I never could feel for her. If she had been a different kind of person, one might have made up one’s mind to swear that it was one’s self that was walking in one’s night-clothes from one bed-room to another, and not her royal highness. I always used to tell the ladies in waiting, if ever they saw me closeted with her, to contrive some excuse or other to come in and break up the conversation. I was determined she should never make a confidante of me. Sometimes she would begin, ‘You know, Lady Hester, that Sir Richard’—and then I was sure to begin to cough or to interrupt her with, ‘Oh! I am going out to walk,’ or whatever happened to come into my head, so as to put a stop to her revelations.

“I warned the D. of B*********, that if the commission examined me, I would make his old uncle blush finely. If they ask me an impudent question, I will always answer—‘I don’t understand,’ and so go on with ‘I don’t understand, I don’t understand,’ until I make them, by that, put their questions in such clear terms that their primosity will be finely puzzled: and then I’ll put the examination into the newspapers. This frightened them all so, that they did not know what to do. But it was I that was really frightened—terribly, doctor, and I pretended to be so bold about it, only to drive them from their purpose; and I succeeded too.

“Oh! what an impudent woman was that P—ss of W.! she was a downright ——. She had a Chinese figure in one of her rooms at Blackheath, that was wound up like a clock, and used to perform the most extraordinary movements. How the sea-captains used to colour up when she danced about, exposing herself like an opera girl; and then she gartered below the knee:—she was so low, so vulgar! I quarrelled with her at Plymouth, for I was the only person that ever told her the truth; and Lady Carnarvon assured me afterwards that they had never seen her moved so much as after a conversation I had with her. I plainly told her it was a hanging matter, and that she should mind what she was about. The Prince, I intimated to her, might do her a great deal of mischief when he became king. ‘Oh, he will never be kink!’ she would reply; for a German fortune-teller had told her she never would be queen, and, as she believed the fortune-teller, she thought she was safe.

“There was a handsome footman, who might have been brought into the scrape, if the trial had related to anybody but the Italian courier.” Then Lady Hester asked me what had become of young Austin. “I did not believe,” added she, “that the child was anybody else’s but the reputed mother’s at Greenwich; and, as for the P—ss of W.’s adopting it, and making such a fuss about it, it was only pure spite to vex the Prince. He was a nasty boy. Oh! how Mr. Pitt used to frown, when he was brought in after dinner, and held by a footman over the table to take up anything out of the dessert that he liked: and, when the P—ss used to say to Mr. Pitt—‘Don’t you think he is a nice boy?’ he would reply, ‘I don’t understand anything about children; your R. H. had better ask his nurse, for she knows those things better than I do.’ He was indeed a nasty, mischievous boy. I once saw him at Lord Mount Edgecumbe’s, turning over the leaves of a valuable book of plates backward and forward with his nasty fingers, that he had just before smeared in the ink. I told the P—ss it was a shame to let him dirt and tear books of such value, and she gave him another, a common one, but he cried and whimpered, and said he would have the first. I declared he shouldn’t, and said, if he dared touch it, he should see what I would do. My resolute manner frightened him. Once, he cried for a spider on the ceiling, and, though they gave him all sorts of playthings to divert his attention, he would have nothing but the spider. Then there was such a calling of footmen, and long sticks, and such a to-do! He was a little, nasty, vulgar brat.

“It was unpardonable in the P—ss to lavish her love upon such a little urchin of a boy, a little beggar, really no better. To see him brought in every day after dinner, bawling and kicking down the wine, and hung up by his breeches over the table for people to laugh at; and so ugly! Then she had five or six more, not one of whom was pretty, except a little midshipman, son of a beautiful woman in the Isle of Wight. It was supposed that she kept these little urchins to carry her love-letters: she certainly used to employ them in that way, sometimes as a sort of make-believe. I know that when she used to invite a sea-captain to dinner, instead of sending a scarlet footman in a barge, as she ought to have done, she would tell one of these boys to go on board and give her billet to Captain Such-a-one, and on no account to let it fall into anybody else’s hands; making people imagine there was a mystery, when there really was none.

“Indeed, when one thinks of Lady ——, of Lord ——, and such characters, the P—ss is not so much to blame, after all. There was no lack of bad example. In all London, you could not find a more abandoned character than Lord ——. He had exhausted every species of vice known in the Palais Royal, and was so notorious in that way that some gentlemen refused to meet him at dinner unless they were sure of having grave and weighty people present who could keep him in order. Yet he is a clever, sharp man; no person has carried on more intrigues in the very first classes: and then to finish by marrying a woman who really did not know who her father and mother were—strange enough, you will say. She left him for a Frenchman, and lives at Paris: but he is on very good terms with her. He says she is in the right, if she likes a Frenchman better. She came over to England sometimes, by means of a passport, during the war, to see him, and arrange matters about their children.

“The P. had always been used to women of such perfect cleanliness and sweetness, that it is no wonder he was disgusted with the P—ss of W., who was a sloven, and did not know how to put on her own clothes. Those kind of people should let themselves be dressed as you dress a doll. She did sometimes; but then she was sure to spoil it all again by putting on her stockings with the seam before, or one of them wrong side outwards: and then her manner of fastening them—it was shocking!

“Mrs. Fitzherbert had a beautiful skin; at sixty it was like a child’s of six years old: for I knew her well, having passed at one time six weeks in the same house with her: so had Lady —— and her daughters. There are some people who are sweet by nature, and who, even if they are not washed for a fortnight, are free from odour; whilst there are others, who, two hours after they have been to a bath, generate a fusty atmosphere about them. Mrs. Fitzherbert, likewise, had a great deal of tact in concealing the Prince’s faults. She would say, ‘Don’t send your letter to such a person—he is careless, and will lose it:’ or, when he was talking foolish things, she would tell him, ‘You are drunk to-night; do hold your tongue.’[65]

“Poor Mrs. Robinson was a woman of a different kind, naturally good and innocent; and, perhaps, there was personal love towards him in her composition: but then she had no cleverness. I don’t mean in politics, but none in common matters: she possessed no guiding influence over him, so that he scribbled and wrote to her things, that, if they had been brought to light, would have stamped him with infamy. When she died, she charged her daughter never to part with a certain casket; but they got it out of her for £10,000. I believe it was Lord M**** who got possession of it. But a peer told me that there were most abominable things in those letters, not of common debauchery, but of every nature. I, for my part, believe he was really married to Mrs. Robinson, and yet he left her to starve; and she would have starved, if it had not been for Sir Henry Halford.”

August 6.—This being Sunday, I spent it as usual with my family.

August 7.—Lady Hester Stanhope spoke of Mr. Canning. She said, “The first time he was introduced to Mr. Pitt, a great deal of prosing had been made beforehand of his talents, and when he was gone, Mr. P. asked me what I thought of him. I said I did not like him; for, doctor, his forehead was bad, his eyebrows were bad, he was ill-made about the hips; but his teeth were evenly set, although he rarely showed them. I did not like his conversation. Mr. C. heard of this, and, some time after, when upon a more familiar footing with me, said, ‘So, Lady Hester, you don’t like me.’—‘No,’ said I; ‘they told me you were handsome, and I don’t think so.’”

Upon this point I ventured to observe, that much admiration was generally expressed of Mr. C.’s features, more especially of the forehead. (The reader is probably familiar with Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of him.) “Good God!” she exclaimed, “what fools people are! A man in London does not even know what his next door neighbour is; but he sees him go in and out, and he says, he has a fine open countenance and a fine forehead. Some people thought Mr. C. had a fine forehead, because it was bald. There was not one feature or one limb in C. but what was vulgar, except his teeth, and I am not sure those were not false: and why I think so is, that once, in the House of Commons, he spit blood in his pocket-handkerchief, and said he had a dreadful toothache. People don’t spit blood with toothaches.

“I recollect once, when we were sitting at breakfast, C. began reading some advertisements about Macassar Oil and those sort of things, and pretended not to know what they meant; and afterwards my maid told me that she entered his dressing-room when he was at Putney, and was shown by his valet one of the finest dressing-cases she had ever seen, filled with all sorts of perfumes, which his man drew out one by one before her.”

Lady Hester went on (for of Mr. C. she could never speak calmly, and his name once introduced was sure to lead to an angry diatribe), “Oh! Lord, when I think of his duplicity! for it was not on matters of this sort only, but in everything that he was deceitful. I only regret that he ever took me in as he did. But he was so artful as to make me believe at last in his protestations of admiration for Mr. Pitt; and as Mr. Pitt was surrounded by such fools as C—tl—h and H—k—b—y,[66] I thought he might be useful to him in lightening his labours, for he was clever and wrote well, whilst Mr. Pitt could never trust Lord C. to draw up an official paper, without having to cross out and correct half of it. But the first time I saw him I thought him insincere, and told Mr. Pitt so, and I did not scruple to add how much I disliked him. ‘Oh!’ Mr. Pitt replied, ‘he is very amusing, and when you have seen more of him you will think so too.’—‘Well, we shall see,’ said I. ‘You must like him,’ rejoined Mr. Pitt, ‘he is so brilliant.’ I answered, ‘Well, if I must I must’—but I never did. It is true I took a great deal of pains to get him into favour again, when he was out of favour with Mr. Pitt, but it was because I really believed him to be Mr. Pitt’s friend, and thought he would be another strong horse in the stable. It was so with Sir H*** P*****. The first time I saw his face, I thought I had never seen so bad a countenance: it was the spirit of evil rising up before me; and I was not mistaken in his case any more than in the other.

“Oh! when I think of C.’s deceit: how he used to come to me, and cry out, ‘Ah, Lady Hester, what have I not done to please you? I have drunk a glass of wine with that fool H.; a glass of wine!—such a glass of wine!—’twas like physic to me.’ Why, I have seen him, at Mr. Pitt’s table, pretend not to hear when Lord H. spoke to him. Mr. Pitt used to say, ‘What does he mean by all this? If he does not like him, why does he come to my table when he is to be there? But I know how I could reconcile them; if I would but give C. a place in the cabinet, he would make it up directly; but he shan’t have it. No,’ said he, ‘C. shall never have a place in the cabinet whilst I have a voice.’

“His duplicity was perfect. He used to say to me, ‘My dear Lady Hester, how could I ever drink a glass of wine with a man whom I have so ridiculed, whom I have made verses on?’ and after that I have seen him professing the warmest friendship for this same man, the object of so much ridicule and contempt. I have still by me one of his letters—one of the only two I ever kept—that he wrote me, of four sheets, before Mr. Pitt’s death (and which I always kept, because I feared how it would be), in which he goes on, for ten pages I really think, with ‘My dearest Lady Hester, what is the meaning of all this? I know no more of all that is passing than the child unborn. Do write to me; do tell me; they have made Lord Mulgrave minister,’ &c.; and all this time he was...!

“One day Miss Williams saw the paragraph in the newspaper where Mr. C. was gazetted as prime minister, and she immediately brought it, and showed it to me. I said to her, ‘Was ever anything so monstrous? why, when he paces those rooms in Downing Street, which have witnessed his lies and his deceit, the very stones will rise up to crush him.’ I remember, when Mr. Pitt was lying ill at Bath, one day there were no letters. Charles came in, and Mr. Pitt said, ‘Are there no letters?’—‘None,’ replied Charles; ‘nothing but that C. is going on very well.’—‘Very well!’ was Mr. Pitt’s reply; ‘to be sure he will go on very well, as long as he has got your sister to guide him; but if ever she quits him, that ambitious —— of his—badly ambitious—will soon spoil all the good Hester has done for him.’ How could he live in Downing Street, and enter those rooms where I have had him before me, crying like a child—yes, doctor, I used to make him cry and blubber like a schoolboy—and making a thousand protestations, which he never kept! How could he dare to talk of Mr. Pitt’s principles![67]

“He sent me once a fine copy of verses—they were very well written—in which he compared Mr. Pitt to a bound eagle. Oh! how Lord Temple tried to steal them! He snatched them away from me one evening, when he, James, and I were together, and, jumping into a chair, held them out of my reach. I was so angry that I pulled a fine repeater out of his fob, and dashed it the ground. He then ran into the street without his hat, and James after him, and the watchman took him for a thief, and joined in the pursuit: but I got them back.” Lady Hester here made a pause, and then added: “I know C. would, if he could, he and all his creatures, have annihilated me.

“Another reason why Mr. Pitt disliked C. was, that he was not to be trusted. Mr. Pitt used to say, ‘I don’t understand what it is that people mean, when they go and repeat every word they hear in society to their intimate friend, their as myself.’ For he had seen in ‘The Oracle’ whole conversations:[68] not that C. put them in himself, but that he told them to some friend, and then, a week or a fortnight after, one saw, ‘We are credibly informed—we have reason to believe,’ with every syllable Mr. Pitt had talked about, put down as a piece of exclusive political information.”

August 10.—I went to Mar Elias, and remained a couple of days. In the morning of the 10th, Lady Hester Stanhope, in the course of conversation, said, “I must send you to the chief of the serpents. You don’t know what that means—I’ll tell you. There is a cavern in a distant part of this country, inhabited by a great serpent, who has hundreds of others at his command. He has got the head of a man, the body of a serpent, and wings: he has been seen by many persons, and it is all perfectly true: perhaps you don’t believe in such things?” This was an embarrassing question; but I tried to evade the difficulty, by observing, that nothing was impossible to the Almighty. “Well,” rejoined Lady Hester, “you shall go and take a drawing of the cave.”

She asked me what had become of Tom Moore. I said he had latterly made a profession of faith, and had written a book to prove himself a good Catholic. “I dare say it was very well written,” said she; “I always liked that man.”—“It might be well written,” I replied, “but his other works have been more read.”—“What are they?” she asked. I enumerated them; and, among the rest, his life of Sheridan, of Byron, and of Lord E. F. “Ah! those I should like to read,” observed Lady Hester; “we must get them.”[69]

Sunday, August 13.—I remained with Lady Hester, reading and talking, until midnight. She was greatly pleased with the “Penny Magazine,” a volume or two of which I had with me; and, some conversation having arisen respecting English poetry, I selected Lord Byron’s stanzas on the dying gladiator, Wolfe’s lines on the death of General Moore, Mr. Moore’s on his own birthday, and Pringle’s “Alone in the desert I love to ride.” Of Byron’s, she said, “I don’t see much in them;” Wolfe she extolled greatly, and thought his poetry finer than Lord Byron’s. Of Mr. Moore she said again; “I always liked that little man” and she laughed where he expresses a wish to live his life over again, exclaiming, in another sense, “Ah, I dare say he does.” Her remark on Pringle was, “That’s a good man, I’ll venture to say; there are some good thoughts there.” I then read the death of Mary Queen of Scots, of Lady Jane Grey—on the effects of tight-lacing, and on boarding-school mismanagement. “Oh!” observed she, “if I had time, I would write a book on Swiss governesses: they are the most artful, nasty creatures!—you can’t imagine.”

It may be recollected by some of my readers that in her correspondence with Lord Palmerston, Lady Hester Stanhope made use of this expression, “Whoever had been the bearer of a disagreeable message to me, would have found me to be a cousin of Lord Camelford’s. She admired Lord C.’s character, and, in some things, imitated him. His name happened to be mentioned, and she spoke of him in the following words:

“Lord Camelford was not such a man as you would have supposed. He was tall and bony—rather pale—with his head hanging generally a little on one side—so. What a fright people were in wherever he came! I recollect his taking me one evening to a party, and it was quite a scene to notice how the men shuffled away, and the women stared at him. At last there was a countess, then a little passée, with a ten years’ reputation for fashionable intrigues, who came and sat down by him on the sofa, and began talking to him. She was a woman who had seen a great deal of the world, and knew, as well as anybody, the true characteristics of men of high breeding and fashion. He went away before supper; and then how she broke out about him! she could talk of nothing else but Lord Camelford. Such delightful manners, such fascinating conversation! He was quite charming, irresistible; so well-bred, such a ton about him!—and so she ran on, in a perfect ecstasy of admiration.

“People were very much mistaken about him. His generosity, and the good he did in secret, passes all belief. He used to give £5,000 a-year to his lawyer to distribute among distressed persons. ‘The only condition I enjoin,’ he used to say, ‘is not to let them know who it comes from.’ He would sometimes dress himself in a jacket and trowsers, like a sailor, and go to some tavern or alehouse; and if he fell in with a poor-looking person, who had an air of trouble or poverty, he would contrive to enter into conversation with him, and find out all about him. ‘Come,’ he would say, ‘tell me your story, and I will tell you mine.’ He was endowed with great penetration, and, if he saw that the man’s story was true, he would slip fifty or a hundred pounds into his hand, with this admonitory warning—‘Recollect, you are not to speak of this; if you do, you will have to answer for it in a way you don’t like.’

“Mr. Pitt liked him personally as much as I did; but considerations of propriety, arising out of his position, obliged him to keep him at a distance. How frightened Lady Chatham was for fear he should marry me! Lord Chatham thought to have the Bowcourt estate (or some such name), but he was prettily taken in; for Lord Camelford paid £50,000 to cut off the entail, and left it to his sister. Mr. Pitt took little or no notice of him, out of absolute fear of the scrapes he was constantly getting into. He was greatly perplexed about him when he shot the lieutenant: but Lord Camelford did it from a quick perception of what was right to be done, which was a sort of instinct with him. He saw that the ship’s crew was ready to mutiny, and he stopped it at once by his resolute conduct. Everybody at home was open-mouthed against him, until the news came of Captain Pigot, of the Hermione, being thrown overboard, and then all the lords and the ladies began to tremble for their sons and nephews. Then nothing was too good for Lord Camelford, and the next mutiny which took place in our ships showed how well he had foreseen what would happen.

“I recollect once he was driving me out in his curricle, when, at a turnpike-gate, I saw him pay the man himself, and take some halfpence in exchange. He turned them over two or three times in his hand without his glove. Well, thought I, if you like to handle dirty copper, it is a strange taste. ‘Take the reins a moment,’ said he, giving them to me, and out he jumped; and, before I could form the least suspicion of what he was going to do, he rushed upon the turnpike-man, and seized him by the throat. Of course, there was a mob collected in a moment, and the high-spirited horses grew so restive that I expected nothing less than that they would start off with me. In the midst of it all a coach and four came to the gate. ‘Ask what’s the matter,’ said a simpering sort of gentleman, putting his head with an air out of the coach-window, to the footman behind.—‘It’s my Lord Camelford,’ replied the footman.—‘You may drive on,’ was the instant ejaculation of the master, frightened out of his senses at the bare apprehension lest his lordship should turn to him.

“The row was soon over, and Lord C. resumed his seat. ‘I dare say you thought,’ he said, very quietly, ‘that I was going to put myself in a passion. But, the fact is, these rascals have barrels of bad halfpence, and they pass them in change to the people who go through the gate. Some poor carter perhaps has nothing but this change to pay for his supper; and, when he gets to his journey’s end, finds he can’t get his bread and cheese. The law, ’tis true, will fine them; but how is a poor devil to go to law?—where can he find time? To you and me it would not signify, but to the poor it does; and I merely wanted to teach these blackguards a lesson, by way of showing them that they cannot always play such tricks with impunity.’

“Doctor, you should have seen, when we came back again, how humble and cringing the turnpike-man was. Lord C. was a true Pitt, and, like me, his blood fired at a fraud or a bad action.”

A messenger had arrived in the course of the day from Monsieur Guys, French consul at Beyrout, to announce the landing of an Italian lady we expected from Leghorn, whom I had engaged to join us in Syria. Mustafa, a Turkish servant, was immediately despatched to see to her wants; and the secretary, who spoke Italian, sailed in a shaktôor from Sayda to convey her by water, the heat rendering the land journey very oppressive.

August 12.—I rode over to Mar Elias to see my family, and make arrangements for the reception of the new comer; and, as Lady Hester Stanhope had some business at Beyrout, which required my presence, respecting an importunate creditor, it was decided that I should go thither, under the plea of thanking Monsieur and Madame Guys for the hospitality they had shown to the Italian lady.

Monday, August 14, 1837.—I departed an hour before sunrise, and reached Beyrout in the evening, meeting on the road the half-broiled secretary, who, in consequence of a calm, had not reached his destination until twelve hours after Signora L. had sailed, the little wind there was being fair for her and foul for him.

Our ultimate intention in forming an engagement with Signora L., whom we had known for some years struggling in adversity, was to place her with Lady Hester Stanhope as housekeeper, a situation for which she was extremely well qualified.

August 18.—I remained in Beyrout the 16th and 17th, and returned to Dar Jôon on the 18th. I had hardly dismounted from my horse, when Lady Hester put a letter into my hands, by which I was summoned in the greatest haste to Mar Elias, to attend on Signora L., who, as soon as she had reached that place, had been taken ill with a brain-fever, arising from the fatigue of the voyage, exposure to the burning sun, and the circumstances incidental to Eastern travelling, which are so strange and foreign to European habits.

A messenger had been despatched, on the first intimation that Lady Hester Stanhope had received of Signora L.’s indisposition, to one Mustafa, a barber at Sayda, to betake himself to Mar Elias, and bleed her, and, when I arrived some hours afterwards, Lady Hester strongly recommended me to leave her case in Mustafa’s hands, as he was a surgeon as well as a barber, and highly esteemed in Sayda for his skill. She hinted, also, that European physicians, who applied the same course of treatment in the East which they were accustomed to prescribe in the north, must inevitably do more harm than good. I acquiesced in these observations with the best grace I could.

Saturday, August 19.—On reaching Mar Elias, I was informed that, on the morning of the 14th, when Signora L. arrived, she showed a marked oddity in her actions, to which, at first, little attention was paid; but that, in the succeeding night, she walked about in an unseemly manner, almost undressed, first in her own room and then in the quadrangle, to the great scandal and consternation of the inmates. The following morning, she cut off her hair, close to the roots, with her own hand; and her conduct at last excited so much alarm, that it was considered necessary to send for me without loss of time. The next day, which was the 16th, left no doubt of her brain being disordered, as she sung, and danced, and laughed, without intermission, saying and doing the most extravagant things. She had already been bled when I saw her, and her bed had been removed into the chapel, the most airy part of the dwelling. The bleeding, although continued until she fainted, had produced no effect; and in the night she tore off the bandages, with the loss of a still greater quantity of blood. A blister was put on her head, and medicine was administered; but certain things which I observed on the 20th and 21st, such as putting ice, not only on her head, but on her abdomen, administering pepper in powder, and a written paper macerated in water, as a charm, to drink, together with sundry superstitious and empirical remedies, induced me to ride over to Lady Hester, and to tell her I could have nothing to do with the treatment, unless Mustafa was instantly sent about his business. But Lady Hester Stanhope had lived so long in the East that charms, popular remedies, and quackery, were more in unison with her notions than rational and scholastic rules of nosology. She therefore replied that, as Signora L. had come to be in her service, she presumed she might direct what she chose to have done, and that she should confide her wholly to Hadj Mustafa’s care. I told her I disclaimed all responsibility as to the consequences. Lady Hester then despatched two men-servants to fetch from Jôon or Sayda whatever Mustafa might require, retaining him, at the same time, to remain in constant attendance on the poor invalid, with strict injunctions to spare no trouble nor money which the case might require.

August 23.—I went back to Mar Elias to make these arrangements known, and to tell the governess, Miss Longchamp, and the maids to let the Signora L. want for nothing. Miss L. was, night and day, at her bedside, and the maids assisted in turn. Everything was done that could be thought of to make her situation comfortable: but her case was now become one of maniacal delirium. She raved without intermission: she knew nobody; she closed her teeth, and refused the admission of food. If her arms were free for a moment, she tore her bandages, her garments, and the bedclothes; sometimes laughing and sometimes singing (but with much taste and execution) an Italian song, Nel cor più non mi sento, or else Malbrook. When she could, she rose from her bed, and danced on the floor, being apparently pleased to get on the cold stones. Sometimes she appeared to be dandling a child in her arms. Her arms moved perpetually. Now and then, her actions indicated satyriasis. Generally, she showed by her manner that the light was disagreeable to her, but nothing could make her pay attention to what was said to her. There was a copious and frothy expectoration; but the grinding of her teeth and straining of her eyes almost out of their sockets was fearful: and, in such moments of excitement, she repeatedly execrated certain frati, or friars, by name. It was necessary to have the room completely stripped of everything; for, such was her violence, that, one night, being left but a moment to herself, she loosened her arms, leaped out of bed, and tore a Leghorn hat, a parasol, and half a dozen frills, bandbox and all, to fritters.

August 24.—It was found necessary to make a strait-waistcoat for her. The governess, who saw everything that was administered, told me that Hadj Mohammed received secret instructions from Lady Hester Stanhope, with sundry packets.

August 29, Tuesday.—I rode over to Dar Jôon, and again protested against these proceedings; but, finding my views did not accord with Lady Hester’s, and that she could not see me again the next day, which was Wednesday, I returned to Mar Elias.

September 1.—A priest was sent for, and administered extreme unction to Signora L., who was now evidently sinking. For the first time, and only for a moment, she recovered her reason so far as to ask for water, “aqua, aqua!”—and to utter, “oime, oime!” “I am dying;” but, immediately afterwards, her intellects became disordered again. I was informed by the governess that about noon she appeared at the last gasp, on seeing which Hadj Mustafa jerked her pillow from under her head, threw it to a distance, and pulled her legs straight, which pulling he repeated each time she drew them up. This I learned was in accordance with the usages of the Mahometans.

September 2.—At nine o’clock in the morning, Signora L. died, and at five the same afternoon was buried in the Catholic burying-ground at Sayda, Lady Hester Stanhope’s secretary and myself following as chief mourners, with the French vice-consul and some French merchants from Sayda, who paid the last tribute to her memory. Before the body was removed, a monk, of the order of Terra Santa, and eight Maronite priests, collected from the town and villages adjoining, performed a funeral service over her corpse in the chapel where it lay. Thus ended this sad tragedy, with every mark of respect that grief at her loss on our part, and sympathy from the European residents at Sayda, could testify.

The tenor of Lady Hester Stanhope’s mind, and the peculiarity of her actions and habits may be gathered from a note or two that were sent me from Dar Jôon to Mar Elias during this poor lady’s illness.

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Lady Hester Stanhope to Dr. ——.

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The same to the same.

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The consular seals were put on Madame L.’s effects, an inventory having been taken of them in the presence of General Loustaunau and Miss Longchamp. They were then carried to Sayda, and afterwards to Beyrout, to await the directions of her relatives as to their disposal. Other formalities were fulfilled, and on.

Sept. 7—I betook myself again to Jôon. It was about this time, but I forgot to note when, that General Cass, who was on a tour in the Mediterranean, paid a visit to Lady Hester, bringing with him his family. General Cass, it will be recollected, was, and is now (1839), ambassador from the United States to the Court of France. His visit, I believe, had not been previously announced. At all events, I knew nothing of it, and was absent at Abra, when it took place; so that I had not the honour of seeing him or his amiable daughters.

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Mrs. ——’s unwillingness to remain at Abra after Signora L.’s death—Beyrout fixed on as a residence—Lady H.’s account of her debts—Necessities to which she was reduced—Another version of her debts—Her extensive charities—Anecdote of Shaykh Omar-ed-dyn—Usurious discount on Lady H.’s bills of exchange—Loss from the fluctuating value of money in the East—Estates supposed to have been bequeathed to Lady H.—Letters from Lady H. to M. Guys—She employs Sir Francis Burdett to inquire into the nature of the supposed bequests—Her opinion of Sir Francis—Letter to him—Lady H.’s diatribes on women—Mr. C.—Letter to Miss —— —Letter to the Author.

Again the necessity occurs of introducing my personal affairs, in order to keep up the thread of our story. Madame L.’s melancholy disorder, and its fatal termination, had left such awful impressions on the females of my family, that they expressed an earnest wish to remove from a scene where every object excited some melancholy reflection. It was in vain they were told there was no other house in the country in which they could live so comfortably. Their answer was, that day and night they were haunted with the cries and frantic laugh of poor Madame L., and that they would prefer even the most wretched peasant’s cottage to remaining where they were. They represented also the forlorn state in which they were left during my absence at Lady Hester Stanhope’s for a week and a fortnight together, having nobody near them for a protector but General Loustaunau, a man now eighty-two years of age, impaired in intellect, and sinking into imbecility.

But Lady Hester had no consideration for all these womanish weaknesses. Her former animosity against Mrs. —— had not abated one jot. She held to our agreement, that my family was to be considered as strangers, with whom she had nothing to do; for, as I had brought them contrary to her wishes, I must look to them myself, without expecting any sympathy from her. I observed to her how much more convenient it would be for all parties if she would only lend me one of the cottages she had empty in the village of Jôon, which I could fit up for our temporary dwelling, and which, from its proximity, would save me so many journeys to and fro: but, as Cabôor had foretold, there was no reconciling these conflicting interests. At last she proposed an arrangement, to which I acceded much against my will, as I knew it would put her to great inconvenience. No news having yet arrived from England respecting the property supposed to have been bequeathed to her, she suggested that I should set off with my family to Beyrout or Cyprus, and live there until she had certain advice that money was forthcoming sufficient to pay her debts; when I could easily return and execute those services for her which she required of me. This plan was settled, as it appeared, finally.

In the mean time, Lady Hester had taken advantage of a leisure day to enter into the full particulars of her debts. I will therefore give some account of their origin, and show how it was that she who, during her residence in England after Mr. Pitt’s death, and during the many years I was with her in Turkey, was one of the most punctual and over-generous payers I ever knew, could have fallen into the opposite extreme, and have thus exposed herself to the degradation of having duns at her gate, and her name in the mouths of the moneyed men at Beyrout as a defaulter.

What I could recollect sufficiently well to write down the same night in Lady Hester’s own words was as follows:—“After the death of Mâalem Haym,” said she, “the celebrated Jewish seràf or banker to Abdallah Pasha of Acre, by whom he was strangled, all the Jews of the pashalik were amerced. Some of these came to me, and entreated me, for the love of God, to lend them money to satisfy the Pasha’s extortions, and save them from being bastinadoed, and perhaps worse. I was at that time low in purse myself, and could only give them 3,000 piasters, which was all I had. I subsequently lent them more, for which they gave me in payment damaged pieces of cloth, sixpenny pocket-handkerchiefs, and other goods, which of course I could not dispose of except at a ruinous loss. I knew I was cheated by them, but I was too proud to complain.

“Not long after this, Abdallah Pasha himself having been declared firmanlee (or outlawed) by the Porte, six pashas, with their combined forces, were sent to besiege him in Acre. Provisions and animals became so scarce, that I was obliged to send people to buy camels in the desert, and then despatch them under the care of a Jew, of whom I had scarcely any knowledge, to buy corn for myself and the house. When at last, and partly by my means, Abdallah Pasha had obtained his pardon from the Porte, but upon condition of paying an immense fine, he pretended to sell his pipes, shawls, carpets, and jewels, to raise the money; for he was, or affected to be, so low in his treasury, that the delàls, or auctioneers, were to be seen hawking even his wearing-apparel in the bazar. Among other ways of meeting the demands of the Sultan, he applied to me to lend him as much money as I could possibly raise; and I, not doubting that he would repay me honourably, after drawing for what money I had at my disposal in England, applied to a usurious Christian of Beyrout, who, at an exorbitant rate of interest, furnished me with what I required. No sooner was the rate known which I was to pay for what I had borrowed, than Turks, Christians, and Jews, presented themselves with offers of loans to whatever extent I wished, all professing that their purses were at my disposal; that it was beneath a lady of my rank to discuss matters so paltry as money concerns; and that all they required was merely my signature to a scrap of paper, just acknowledging the debt. In this way I signed small bits of paper, it is true, but well and legally worded in Arabic, or Armenian, or Hebrew, which I could not read, and by which I bound myself to pay enormous interest, varying from 25 to 50 per cent.

“This was the real beginning of my debts and difficulties; for Abdallah Pasha gave me bills at thirty-one days’ sight on Constantinople, payment of which was deferred under one pretence or another for a year, whilst I, in the interim, was in such want of money, that I was reduced to a single adlee.[70] The worst of all was that, I don’t think the Pasha wanted it, but only pretended poverty to deceive the Porte. However, in consequence of his failing to repay me at the time agreed on, which repayment would have placed me immediately in a state of solvency, I found myself reduced absolutely to destitution. On one occasion, as I said, I was left without a farthing, and M. Loustaunau went off to M. Beaudin, who was at Damascus, and told him that, as he owed his advancement in life in part to me, he was bound to assist me in my extremity. M. Beaudin at first hesitated; M. Loustaunau insisted; and B. lent me 4,000 Spanish dollars, which I afterwards paid him.

“But this is not all. I was even obliged to send my best pelisse to be sold or pawned in the bazar at Sayda, and to sell to an Albanian soldier forty English guineas, which my brother had given me on parting at Gibraltar, and which I had saved in the shipwreck.

“Oh! doctor, about six months before Miss Williams’s death, I was reduced so low, that, had she died then, I should not have had money enough to bury her. Môosa, one of the best servants I ever had, and who died of the same fever that carried off Miss Williams, out of his own pocket bought oil for two or three months’ consumption, without my knowledge; telling Miss W., who afterwards told me, that it was not proper mylady should send for oil by pints and quarts like poor people, which, just then, I was compelled to do. Oh, Lord! when I think of it! One day, when I was walking up and down, not knowing how or where to turn, thinking I must shoot my horses from having nothing to feed them with, I heard the jingling of camels’ bells, and presently a servant came to say that there were some camels at the gate laden with barley. This seasonable supply for the horses was sent by some strangers, who had heard the condition I was in; and the last adlee that I had I gave to the camel-driver.”

Another time, Lady Hester gave me, in writing, a little memorandum of the state of her finances to read, which varies somewhat from her account by word of mouth, although agreeing in the main. It was as follows:

“My debts began in 1822—from 1822 to 1823; and, in a couple of years, I owed £3,000, not that I had actually borrowed that sum. I was obliged to take up money, owing to the revolutions in the country; I speak of the time in which there were three pachas, with an army, encamped before the gates of Acre, and when the Emir Beshýr, the governor of the mountain, had fled to Egypt; and such a number of persecuted people took refuge under my roof, that this caused me great expense. Expecting remittances from England at that time, which I never received, I placed the date of the bonds for the money which I borrowed, for only four and six months, at twenty-five per cent. This, with their interest and compound interest, and the loss upon the money which I was obliged to take at the price they chose to give it, amounted in three years to £3,000. Now, God knows what it is! My income would now only simply suffice, after paying the interest of these bonds, to pay my servants and tradespeople, and put a little provision in my house. You must understand that, when I drew for my pension upon Constantinople, I paid the dollars at 6 piasters or 6½; I received them at Beyrout at 10½, and repaid them again in the Metouali country and at Sayda, where I got my provisions, at 8½: therefore, I often lost 100 per cent. The house of Coutts and Co., since old Coutts’s death, desired me only to draw my drafts upon them through a merchant’s house at Constantinople, and there was a serious loss and inconvenience to me in doing so.

“It is the custom of this country, when persons cannot pay their debts, to place them under arrest by quartering soldiers upon them, who help themselves to everything that comes in their way until the debt is paid. I was resolved to submit myself to the custom of the country, rather than allow the interference of the English consul at that time, whom I detested. I thought it would save me the trouble of telling my story, and cast the reflection on the English name which it deserved. As things seemed as if they must come to a crisis, if I had no means afforded me to avoid it, I thought the more unequivocal it was the better: for my peace of mind then would not be harassed by the misfortunes of others, when I was a beggar myself. The means by which I should become so carried no reproach with them; therefore, I prepared my mind to submit myself to my fate with them. The only thing that stopped me was, I was waiting for an answer respecting the sale of a reversion; and then, if my application did not succeed, I determined to shoot my mares, that they might never fall into other hands, to part with Miss Williams and the rest of my establishment as soon as possible, and to leave this part of the world to be never more heard of, first putting into the hands of my creditors documents to enable them to get all I possessed into their power, and my pension, if they could: but this counted for nothing, as English justice and liberality would of course have deprived me of that.

“Such were my intentions, founded upon a determination not to make any explanation to my family, or receive any more reproaches; as I had already received enough. Whatever I had to say was to be said to the Americans, among whom I thought of going, that they, at least, might feel convinced that I inherited my grandfather’s spirit and high sense of honour; for I never have been in the habit of taking half measures.

“The number of my servants had been much talked of; but as these people often set off, four and five together, in the night, and as several were constantly absent upon leave to look after their families, whilst others were always upon the sick list, giving themselves fevers by over-eating, I could not possibly get on with fewer than I had: for five men here cannot do the work of one in Europe. What are called dragomans and secretaries are a description of persons even worse than the lower class—the idlest and most inefficient of human beings.

“As for the persecuted people who took refuge at my house, you must have heard, of course, of the revolution in the mountain about 1822. For half a day’s journey around me, all the inhabitants abandoned their houses to Turkish and Druze soldiers. I remained alone, tormented to death with miserable fugitives. Terrible storms and an unusual fall of snow destroyed a vast number of houses, and I had only two rooms remaining in mine which were at all habitable. Buildings and walls fell, and all the rest were deluged with water. My health, which was very bad, was rendered worse by the uncommon inclemency of the season, as snow has not been known to have fallen in the lower part of the mountain for thirty years. The cattle died of want, and the next harvest could not be got in for want of beasts of burthen.

“This was enough, and the rest you may imagine; and if you never heard half of this whilst you were in France, you must always recollect that what passes in the interior is but little known upon the coast; and a consul or a merchant, by his fireside, is little better acquainted with the state of affairs than they are at Marseilles.

“An old Druse had his head chained to his feet, and was thrown into a dungeon. Several villages, like little towns, were burnt, many women killed, and the property of most of my friends totally destroyed; whilst the unfortunate wives of considerable men were hiding themselves in the snow-mountains in disguise, trembling for their infant sons, whose fate, if got hold of, was pretty certain. The two lads, Hanah and Bootroos, and one of whom I had then the greatest confidence in, were constantly wandering about in search of these unhappy fugitives. I will not say any more; you may judge of my feelings and situation.”

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Such was the rough statement Lady Hester gave me. She alludes in it to the persecuted people who took refuge under her roof: but, in her oral communication, she never said a word of having afforded an asylum to almost all the Franks in Sayda, who fled to her residence in a panic after the battle of Navarino, and many of whom she lodged and boarded until they could go back in safety: nor of the two hundred wretched beings whom she fed and clothed, housed, and protected, for nearly two years, after the sacking of Acre. She never said a word of her numerous acts of beneficence, nor of the indulgent forbearance she showed even to those who had wronged her. Here is an authentic case, among twenty similar ones which might be cited.

Shaykh Omar ed Dyn, a puritanical Mussulman, who kept a grocer’s shop in Sayda, was for many years her purveyor and bailiff; and when, for want of money, she had let her account run up to something considerable, he took her note of hand for the amount, and, at the end of the year, dunned her for payment. To quiet him, she gave him a fresh note of hand, which he required should be for double the amount. Then he begged of her a quarter of wheat, then another; then an entire piece of broad cloth; then this thing, then that, until he ultimately paid himself twice over. I well recollect, in 1831, when, one day, I was going down to Sayda, Lady Hester’s saying to me, “Don’t ride the chestnut horse,” (rather a valuable one) “for, if you do, as you must pass Shaykh Omar’s shop, he will beg it of me for his son, and I dare not refuse him.”

This man, on his death-bed—for he died some time during my absence—called his wife and children to his bedside, and said to them—“The Syt Mylady owes me a sum of money; you will find her note of hand among my papers: burn it. She has ever been a benefactress to me, and, if I die with a little property, it is from her generosity. You will here promise me never to urge the claim against her; for I have received double and treble its amount at her hands.” They made solemn asseverations, and, after his death, the eldest son went to Dar Jôon, and informed Lady Hester Stanhope of their father’s dying injunctions: often did the widow, too, repeat to her how sacred she held them. But it had come to Lady Hester’s certain knowledge that, notwithstanding all these professions, the duplicity and ingratitude which mark the natives of the country were exemplified in this instance, as well as in all others; for the widow had preserved the paper, and had twice attempted to sell it, once to an Englishman, and once to a townsman. Notwithstanding this, every year, at the Byràm, Lady Hester gave the widow, whom her son’s extravagance and inactivity in business had again reduced to narrow circumstances, a handsome sum of money.[71]

Lady Hester’s exceeding generous and charitable disposition was well known; and she was consequently besieged with tales of distress, with projects of important discoveries, which wanted nothing in the world to put them in motion but money, with secrets that could be entrusted only to her, with presents that were always sure to be paid for at treble their value. Her creditors assailed her with letters, messages, visits; and these she was obliged to silence by payments in part, and increase of interest.

But this was not all. During the Greek revolution, the Mediterranean was so infested by pirates, that it was dangerous for merchants in the Levant to make their remittances to Europe in specie, a state of things which so considerably increased the value of bills of exchange, that they were often bought up at a great premium. Yet, in the face of these notorious facts, Signor ——, a merchant at Beyrout, used to cash many of Lady Hester’s bills on Messrs. Coutts and Co., of London, or on Messrs. Webb and Co., of Leghorn, at 35, 25, and 20 per cent. discount, when such paper was actually at a premium in the market. Mr. —— took 15, then 10, then 5 per cent. discount. At various periods, likewise, Lady Hester had had severe illnesses. There was no person about her, in whom she could put confidence, but Miss Williams, who was totally unacquainted with pecuniary affairs, and, of course, incapable of remedying the mischief, even if her innocent mind and artless character had not prevented her from suspecting it. At one time, Lady Hester had an Armenian steward, who kept his accounts in his own language: at another time, she had a Piedmontese, who went to Beyrout to negociate the bills, and must have known the nature of such transactions. Who can wonder, therefore, if all her concerns proved ruinous to her, surrounded as she was by adventurers and intriguers? Add to this, that various sorts of money are current in Turkey, as many, perhaps, as thirty, all fluctuating in value, and contributing still more to the complication of her distresses. It would hardly have been a matter of wonder, even under ordinary circumstances, that she should have been plunged into embarrassments; but, in the peculiarly perplexing situation in which she was placed, it was unavoidable.

I was witness to her signing a list of her creditors’ names, with the amount of her various responsibilities, at her request, in case, as she said, anything should befall her, that her creditors might know she never had the smallest intention of defrauding them, even of their usurious and unlawful gains. “When I get the money,” she added, “I shall pay them all just double what they lent me, and I think nobody can say that is unjust.”

All her creditors took 25 per cent. for the money they lent. Supposing Lady Hester had not made any difficulty on that head, and was willing to receive pecuniary assistance even at that loss, why nothing could be said about the matter. Gold was the commodity these merchants had to sell, and they made as much of it as they could; but she did not always get what she had bargained for: some of the lenders sent a part of the loan in coffee, rice, and in other merchandize. In most cases, the gold was not of full weight; for never was there a country in which money-clipping is carried on to a greater extent than in Turkey. And it is not fair to say that Jews are the only usurers: Mussulmans and Christians are just as bad, when the law, or other considerations, do not coerce them into honesty. Let us take, as an example, a Christian merchant of Beyrout.

Lady Hester Stanhope wanted to borrow £600; and she applied to Mr. ——, in September, 1826, when the exchange was at 20 piasters the Spanish dollar: £200, consequently, are about equal to 1000 Spanish dollars; and £600 to 3000 or 60,000 Turkish piasters. Her ladyship drew on Messrs. Coutts and Co. for £600, at one year’s date. The merchant gives her for her bill, instead of 60,000 piasters, only 52,500, that is 17½ for the dollar instead of 20, which was the real exchange: he gains at once on the transaction, 7500 piasters, or £75. But the bill has a year to run: he, therefore, demands a bonus for his risk, and modestly requires 1000 dollars, or £200; and Lady Hester at last receives £325 for her £600. This sum is paid in adlees of 16 piastres, ghazis of 20, roobeyas of 9, and sundry other current moneys; but, a week or two afterwards, the pasha issues a tariff, fixing a lower value than the current one on all the coinage of the empire, a step customary every year just before the taxes are gathered, by which the government gains a considerable increase of revenue. This is known to the merchant beforehand, who, having on his books a memorandum of the customary rates at which the money is annually set, or, which is more likely, having, for a consideration, obtained private information from the government secretaries what money will be rated lowest, takes care to make his rouleaus consist of what he is most desirous of ridding himself of: and Lady Hester finds that what she has received at 20 will only pass at 17¾, those at 9 only at 8¼, and so on; by which another serious loss is added to all the rest. But in August, 1837, her bill is delayed payment because Messrs. Coutts and Co. have not the certificate of her life for Michaelmas of that year, (delayed, probably, in consequence of Lord Palmerston’s measures) and she is compelled to ask time for six months more, which is granted on her signing a promissory note for an additional number of dollars in the same usurious proportion.

After this statement of her debts, Lady Hester next proceeded to explain how it was she had written to me in such haste to come over to Syria. It has already been mentioned that, in 1836, she had been informed, by one of her friends in England, that a considerable estate had been bequeathed to her, the knowledge of which was concealed from her by those privy to the bequest.

The beginning of this erroneous belief seems to date from the spring of 1836. In some letters which passed about that time between her ladyship and the Chevalier Henry Guys, French consul at Beyrout, which that gentleman kindly allows me to make use of, and which will best explain her feelings on the subject, it will be seen that she entertained no doubt on the subject, and was firmly persuaded that her friends, for the purpose of forcing her to come to England, kept her in ignorance of her good fortune, thinking that distress must eventually drive her back to her native country. These letters were transmitted to me at Nice, after my manuscript had been sent to England; but the narrative will suffer no interruption by their introduction here, and they serve to corroborate many portions of it.

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Lady H. Stanhope to the Chevalier Henry Guys, French
Consul at Beyrout.

Translated from the French.

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The same to the same.

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The same to the same.

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The same to the same.

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The original letter is annexed, as a specimen of her ladyship’s French.

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The same to the same.

The same to the same.

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The same to the same.

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The same to the same.

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Lady Hester now told me that, having written ineffectually to a nobleman on the subject, she had turned over in her thoughts where she could find a fit person, in whom she could confide, to ascertain the truth of these matters, and to whom she could write, with the request that he would make the necessary inquiries. She had deliberated a long while whether it should be a lawyer, a man of business, or one of her old friends. Among the latter, from first to last, she added, “I have thought Sir Francis Burdett would be the one I could most assuredly confide in.” In speaking of him, she said, “He is a man of feeling, doctor, and he and I were always the best of friends. I recollect, when I told him how basely two or three people had behaved on Mr. Pitt’s death, he was ready to go beside himself: his hand went into the breast of his waistcoat and out again, as if he could not contain his indignation. What do you think?—would not he be the proper person? I always said Sir Francis was no democrat. He threw himself into the hands of the people merely that he might have an excuse of business to be out, or by himself. All the democrats that I have known were nothing but aristocrats at heart—ay, and worse than others. Even Horne Tooke was not a democrat—that I am sure of, by the court he always paid me, and by his constantly making so many civil speeches to me and of me. I have never known a man yet, if he was not to be bought, that was not a democrat from personal motives.”

In fine, it was resolved to write to Sir Francis, and a rough copy of a letter was drawn up by Lady Hester’s dictation, which, after some verbal alterations, she thought would do. Several remarks, quite foreign to the subject, were introduced, announcing the researches she had made as to the Eastern origin of the Irish and Scotch; and, as Lady Hester kept constantly saying to me, “Will this letter do? do you see anything that wants altering?” a question very usual with her when dictating letters, I forgot Gil Blas’s warning, and very distinctly expressed my apprehensions lest the introduction of the opinions about the affinity of the Irish and the Koreýsh should make Sir F. think her cracked. For, I observed, his studies, most probably, have never led him to investigate these subjects, which, thus introduced into a letter on business, might be made a handle for the ill-natured comments of people who disliked her. She thanked me, but retained them all, and only requested me to write them out fair. I did so, and inadvertently skipped a page, which, when the sheet was full, created some confusion in reading it. So, resolving to rewrite it, I merely submitted it to Lady Hester’s perusal, whilst I rode down to see my family. But I was there seized with a phlegmonous inflammation of my leg, which, in one night, from the irritation of the stirrup-leather (rudely made, as it always is in Turkey), assumed so alarming a character,[77] and was so painful, that I took to my bed and kept it eleven days. I wrote a note to Lady Hester, describing my situation, requesting her to send me the letter to Sir F. in order that I might write it over again: but, hearing that I suffered a great deal, she said it was not necessary; and, sealing the copy she had got, she despatched it by a foot-messenger to Beyrout to go by the steamboat.

September 12.—We were thus occupied until this day, with the exception of the many hours passed by Lady Hester in diatribes on women and their husbands; she endeavouring to prove that, in almost all possible cases, women should be simple automatons, moved by the will and guidance of their masters. Her fertile memory brought a vast number of cases to bear on her argument; cases which she had seen in high life during her time, where gentlemen, otherwise of estimable character, became the ridicule of society from suffering themselves to be ruled by their wives. But Lord F. was the one whose example she dwelt upon most strenuously.

“Women,” she would say, “must be one of three things. Either they are politicians and literary characters; or they must devote their time to dress, pleasure, and love; or, lastly, they must be fond of domestic affairs. I do not mean by domestic affairs a woman who sits working at her needle, scolding a couple of children, and sending her maid next door to the shop for all she wants: there is no trouble in that. What I mean is a yeoman’s wife, who takes care of the butter and cheese, sees the poultry-yard attended to, and looks to her husband’s comfort and interest. As for the advantage of passing your evenings with your family, which you urge as a reason for having them near you,” she remarked, “all sensible men that I have ever heard of take their meals with their wives, and then retire to their own room to read, write, or do what they have to do, or what best pleases them. If a man is a fox-hunter, he goes and talks with his huntsmen or the grooms, and very good company they are; if he is a tradesman, he goes into his shop; if a doctor, to his patients; but nobody is such a fool as to moider away his time in the slip-slop conversation of a pack of women.”[78]

I happened to observe that many clever men had not only passed their hours with their families, but even studied and wrote surrounded by them; and I named four or five that occurred to my recollection, one of whom was C——. “Did you ever hear me say there were not more fools than one in the world?”—She rejoined, “As for Mr. C——, I knew him; so you need not talk to me about him. Mrs. C——! there was a woman!—Charles C. was one of the greatest roués in London—always drunk. He was in the Blues, and took it into his head to fall in love with a Rt. Hble.—very ugly—but her relations would not let her marry him. Perhaps he wanted her money; he was very agreeable. Mr. C. lived in a very hugger-mugger sort of a way, with a maid of all work and a boy, and it was his daughter who did most things for him. Perhaps he was not rich enough to have another room to study in.”

In this sort of way would Lady Hester Stanhope argue on most subjects, running from one thing to another, and then, when you thought she had lost sight of her text, returning to it with some pithy observation, which generally settled the point to her own satisfaction.

September 29.—I remained at Mar Elias, confined with my bad leg, from the 13th until this day, when I returned to Jôon. Letters and messengers had, in the interim, been passing between M. Guys and Lady Hester Stanhope respecting a house which he was employed to hire for me and my family; but I had reason to think afterwards that she had no wish to get rid of us, as the house was reserved for the Baroness de Fériat, and the correspondence could tend to no other purpose than to throw odium upon Mrs. —— as a discontented and capricious woman.

During my confinement, Lady Hester Stanhope wrote the following letter to my daughter, then hardly out of her childhood.

To Miss ——

The frame of Lady Hester’s mind at this period may be further understood from the following letter, which was sent to me, with a secret injunction to read it to my wife.

To Dr. ——, at Mar Elias.

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On returning to the Dar, I remained there eight days. Our conversations turned principally, during this period, on her father’s seat at Chevening, the people in that neighbourhood, and the happiness of her early days there. She recollected the names of all the gentry thereabouts, of the farmers, as also of her father’s servants, and could tell anecdotes respecting them with such a minuteness of particulars, that the individuals, to their surprise, after the lapse of so many years, would have found she remembered more of them than they did of themselves.

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ADDITIONAL NOTES.

Page 78-87—The Emir Beshýr.

Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the end of the chapter. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated below. Obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged.

Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside down, or partially printed letters and punctuation, were corrected. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added. Letters missing at line endings were added.

The following items were changed:

• aad to and
• paralellogram to parallelogram
• unsustained to unstained
• inpressive to impressive
• steambout to steamboat