The Pitt nose has a curious history. One can watch its transmigrations
through three lives. The tremendous hook of old Lord Chatham, under
whose curve Empires came to birth, was succeeded by the bleak
upward-pointing nose of William Pitt the younger--the rigid symbol of an
indomitable _hauteur_. With Lady Hester Stanhope came the final stage.
The nose, still with an upward tilt in it, had lost its masculinity; the
hard bones of the uncle and the grandfather had disappeared. Lady
Hester's was a nose of wild ambitions, of pride grown fantastical, a
nose that scorned the earth, shooting off, one fancies, towards some
eternally eccentric heaven. It was a nose, in fact, altogether in the
air.
Noses, of course, are aristocratic things; and Lady Hester was the child
of a great aristocracy. But, in her case, the aristocratic impulse,
which had carried her predecessors to glory, had less fortunate results.
There has always been a strong strain of extravagance in the governing
families of England; from time to time they throw off some peculiarly
ill-balanced member, who performs a strange meteoric course. A century
earlier, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an illustrious example of this
tendency: that splendid comet, after filling half the heavens, vanished
suddenly into desolation and darkness. Lady Hester Stanhope's spirit was
still more uncommon; and she met with a most uncommon fate.
She was born in 1776, the eldest daughter of that extraordinary Earl
Stanhope, Jacobin and inventor, who made the first steamboat and the
first calculating machine, who defended the French Revolution in the
House of Lords and erased the armorial bearings--'damned aristocratical
nonsense'--from his carriages and his plate. Her mother, Chatham's
daughter and the favourite sister of Pitt, died when she was four years
old. The second Lady Stanhope, a frigid woman of fashion, left her
stepdaughters to the care of futile governesses, while 'Citizen
Stanhope' ruled the household from his laboratory with the violence of a
tyrant. It was not until Lady Hester was twenty-four that she escaped
from the slavery of her father's house, by going to live with her
grandmother, Lady Chatham. On Lady Chatham's death, three years later,
Pitt offered her his protection, and she remained with him until his
death in 1806.
Her three years with Pitt, passed in the very centre of splendid power,
were brilliant and exciting. She flung herself impetuously into the
movement and the passion of that vigorous society; she ruled her uncle's
household with high vivacity; she was liked and courted; if not
beautiful, she was fascinating--very tall, with a very fair and clear
complexion, and dark-blue eyes, and a countenance of wonderful
expressiveness. Her talk, full of the trenchant nonchalance of those
days, was both amusing and alarming: 'My dear Hester, what are you
saying?' Pitt would call out to her from across the room. She was
devoted to her uncle, who warmly returned her affection. She was
devoted, too--but in a more dangerous fashion--to the intoxicating
Antinous, Lord Granville Leveson Gower. The reckless manner in which she
carried on this love-affair was the first indication of something
overstrained, something wild and unaccountable, in her temperament. Lord
Granville, after flirting with her outrageously, declared that he could
never marry her, and went off on an embassy to St. Petersburg. Her
distraction was extreme: she hinted that she would follow him to Russia;
she threatened, and perhaps attempted, suicide; she went about telling
everybody that he had jilted her. She was taken ill, and then there were
rumours of an accouchement, which, it was said, she took care to
_afficher_, by appearing without rouge and fainting on the slightest
provocation. In the midst of these excursions and alarums there was a
terrible and unexpected catastrophe. Pitt died. And Lady Hester
suddenly found herself a dethroned princess, living in a small house in
Montague Square on a pension of £1200 a year.
She did not abandon society, however, and the tongue of gossip continued
to wag. Her immediate marriage with a former lover, Mr. Hill, was
announced: 'il est bien bon,' said Lady Bessborough. Then it was
whispered that Canning was 'le régnant'--that he was with her 'not only
all day, but almost all night.' She quarrelled with Canning and became
attached to Sir John Moore. Whether she was actually engaged to marry
him--as she seems to have asserted many years later--is doubtful; his
letters to her, full as they are of respectful tenderness, hardly
warrant the conclusion; but it is certain that he died with her name on
his lips. Her favourite brother, Charles, was killed beside him; and it
was natural that under this double blow she should have retired from
London. She buried herself in Wales; but not for long. In 1810 she set
sail for Gibraltar with her brother James, who was rejoining his
regiment in the Peninsula. She never returned to England.
There can be no doubt that at the time of her departure the thought of a
lifelong exile was far from her mind. It was only gradually, as she
moved further and further eastward, that the prospect of life in
England--at last even in Europe--grew distasteful to her; as late as
1816 she was talking of a visit to Provence. Accompanied by two or three
English fellow travellers, her English maid, Mrs. Fry, her private
physician, Dr. Meryon, and a host of servants, she progressed, slowly
and in great state, through Malta and Athens, to Constantinople. She was
conveyed in battleships, and lodged with governors and ambassadors.
After spending many months in Constantinople, Lady Hester discovered
that she was 'dying to see Napoleon with her own eyes,' and attempted
accordingly to obtain passports to France. The project was stopped by
Stratford Canning, the English Minister, upon which she decided to visit
Egypt, and, chartering a Greek vessel, sailed for Alexandria in the
winter of 1811. Off the island of Rhodes a violent storm sprang up; the
whole party were forced to abandon the ship, and to take refuge upon a
bare rock, where they remained without food or shelter for thirty hours.
Eventually, after many severe privations, Alexandria was reached in
safety; but this disastrous voyage was a turning-point in Lady Hester's
career. At Rhodes she was forced to exchange her torn and dripping
raiment for the attire of a Turkish gentleman--a dress which she never
afterwards abandoned. It was the first step in her orientalization.
She passed the next two years in a triumphal progress. Her appearance in
Cairo caused the greatest sensation, and she was received in state by
the Pasha, Mehemet Ali. Her costume on this occasion was gorgeous: she
wore a turban of cashmere, a brocaded waistcoat, a priceless pelisse,
and a vast pair of purple velvet pantaloons embroidered all over in
gold. She was ushered by chamberlains with silver wands through the
inner courts of the palace to a pavilion in the harem, where the Pasha,
rising to receive her, conversed with her for an hour. From Cairo she
turned northwards, visiting Jaffa, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. Her
travelling dress was of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, and, when on
horseback, she wore over the whole a white-hooded and tasselled burnous.
Her maid, too, was forced, protesting, into trousers, though she
absolutely refused to ride astride. Poor Mrs. Fry had gone through
various and dreadful sufferings--shipwreck and starvation, rats and
black-beetles unspeakable--but she retained her equanimity. Whatever
her Ladyship might think fit to be, _she_ was an Englishwoman to the
last, and Philippaki was Philip Parker and Mustapha Mr. Farr.
Outside Damascus, Lady Hester was warned that the town was the most
fanatical in Turkey, and that the scandal of a woman entering it in
man's clothes, unveiled, would be so great as to be dangerous. She was
begged to veil herself, and to make her entry under cover of darkness.
'I must take the bull by the horns,' she replied, and rode into the
city unveiled at midday. The population were thunderstruck; but at last
their amazement gave way to enthusiasm, and the incredible lady was
hailed everywhere as Queen, crowds followed her, coffee was poured out
before her, and the whole bazaar rose as she passed. Yet she was not
satisfied with her triumphs; she would do something still more glorious
and astonishing; she would plunge into the desert and visit the ruins of
Palmyra, which only half-a-dozen of the boldest travellers had ever
seen. The Pasha of Damascus offered her a military escort, but she
preferred to throw herself upon the hospitality of the Bedouin Arabs,
who, overcome by her horsemanship, her powers of sight, and her courage,
enrolled her a member of their tribe. After a week's journey in their
company, she reached Palmyra, where the inhabitants met her with wild
enthusiasm, and under the Corinthian columns of Zenobia's temple crowned
her head with flowers. This happened in March 1813; it was the apogee of
Lady Hester's life. Henceforward her fortunes gradually but steadily
declined.
The rumour of her exploits had spread through Syria, and from the year
1813 onwards, her reputation was enormous. She was received everywhere
as a royal, almost as a supernatural, personage: she progressed from
town to town amid official prostrations and popular rejoicings. But she
herself was in a state of hesitation and discontent. Her future was
uncertain; she had grown scornful of the West--must she return to it?
The East alone was sympathetic, the East alone was tolerable--but could
she cut herself off for ever from the past? At Laodicea she was suddenly
struck down by the plague, and, after months of illness, it was borne in
upon her that all was vanity. She rented an empty monastery on the
slopes of Mount Lebanon, not far from Sayda (the ancient Sidon), and
took up her abode there. Then her mind took a new surprising turn; she
dashed to Ascalon, and, with the permission of the Sultan, began
excavations in a ruined temple with the object of discovering a hidden
treasure of three million pieces of gold. Having unearthed nothing but
an antique statue, which, in order to prove her disinterestedness, she
ordered her appalled doctor to break into little bits, she returned to
her monastery. Finally, in 1816, she moved to another house, further up
Mount Lebanon, and near the village of Djoun; and at Djoun she remained
until her death, more than twenty years later.
Thus, almost accidentally as it seems, she came to the end of her
wanderings, and the last, long, strange, mythical period of her
existence began. Certainly the situation that she had chosen was
sublime. Her house, on the top of a high bare hill among great
mountains, was a one-storied group of buildings, with many ramifying
courts and out-houses, and a garden of several acres surrounded by a
rampart wall. The garden, which she herself had planted and tended with
the utmost care, commanded a glorious prospect. On every side but one
the vast mountains towered, but to the west there was an opening,
through which, in the far distance, the deep blue Mediterranean was
revealed. From this romantic hermitage, her singular renown spread over
the world. European travellers who had been admitted to her presence
brought back stories full of Eastern mystery; they told of a peculiar
grandeur, a marvellous prestige, an imperial power. The precise nature
of Lady Hester's empire was, indeed, dubious; she was in fact merely the
tenant of her Djoun establishment, for which she paid a rent of £20 a
year. But her dominion was not subject to such limitations. She ruled
imaginatively, transcendentally; the solid glory of Chatham had been
transmuted into the phantasy of an Arabian Night. No doubt she herself
believed that she was something more than a chimerical Empress. When a
French traveller was murdered in the desert, she issued orders for the
punishment of the offenders; punished they were, and Lady Hester
actually received the solemn thanks of the French Chamber. It seems
probable, however, that it was the Sultan's orders rather than Lady
Hester's which produced the desired effect. In her feud with her
terrible neighbour, the Emir Beshyr, she maintained an undaunted front.
She kept the tyrant at bay; but perhaps the Emir, who, so far as
physical force was concerned, held her in the hollow of his hand, might
have proceeded to extremities if he had not received a severe
admonishment from Stratford Canning at Constantinople. What is certain
is that the ignorant and superstitious populations around her feared and
loved her, and that she, reacting to her own mysterious prestige, became
at last even as they. She plunged into astrology and divination; she
awaited the moment when, in accordance with prophecy, she should enter
Jerusalem side by side with the Mahdi, the Messiah; she kept two sacred
horses, destined, by sure signs, to carry her and him to their last
triumph. The Orient had mastered her utterly. She was no longer an
Englishwoman, she declared; she loathed England; she would never go
there again; and if she went anywhere, it would be to Arabia, to 'her
own people.'
Her expenses were immense--not only for herself but for others, for she
poured out her hospitality with a noble hand. She ran into debt, and was
swindled by the moneylenders; her steward cheated her, her servants
pilfered her; her distress was at last acute. She fell into fits of
terrible depression, bursting into dreadful tears and savage cries. Her
habits grew more and more eccentric. She lay in bed all day, and sat up
all night, talking unceasingly for hour upon hour to Dr. Meryon, who
alone of her English attendants remained with her, Mrs. Fry having
withdrawn to more congenial scenes long since. The doctor was a
poor-spirited and muddle-headed man, but he was a good listener; and
there he sat while that extraordinary talk flowed on--talk that scaled
the heavens and ransacked the earth, talk in which memories of an
abolished past--stories of Mr. Pitt and of George III., vituperations
against Mr. Canning, mimicries of the Duchess of Devonshire--mingled
phantasmagorically with doctrines of Fate and planetary influence, and
speculations on the Arabian origin of the Scottish clans, and
lamentations over the wickedness of servants; till the unaccountable
figure, with its robes and its long pipe, loomed through the
tobacco-smoke like some vision of a Sibyl in a dream. She might be
robbed and ruined, her house might crumble over her head; but she talked
on. She grew ill and desperate; yet still she talked. Did she feel that
the time was coming when she should talk no more?
Her melancholy deepened into a settled gloom when the news came of her
brother James's death. She had quarrelled with all her English friends,
except Lord Hardwicke--with her eldest brother, with her sister, whose
kind letters she left unanswered; she was at daggers drawn with the
English consul at Alexandria, who worried her about her debts. Ill and
harassed, she hardly moved from her bedroom, while her servants rifled
her belongings and reduced the house to a condition of indescribable
disorder and filth. Three dozen hungry cats ranged through the rooms,
filling the courts with frightful noises. Dr. Meryon, in the midst of it
all, knew not whether to cry or laugh. At moments the great lady
regained her ancient fire; her bells pealed tumultuously for hours
together; or she leapt up, and arraigned the whole trembling household
before her, with her Arab war-mace in her hand. Her finances grew more
and more involved--grew at length irremediable. It was in vain that the
faithful Lord Hardwicke pressed her to return to England to settle her
affairs. Return to England, indeed! To England, that ungrateful,
miserable country, where, so far as she could see, they had forgotten
the very name of Mr. Pitt! The final blow fell when a letter came from
the English authorities threatening to cut off her pension for the
payment of her debts. Upon that, after dispatching a series of furious
missives to Lord Palmerston, to Queen Victoria, to the Duke of
Wellington, she renounced the world. She commanded Dr. Meryon to return
to Europe, and he--how could he have done it?--obeyed her. Her health
was broken, she was over sixty, and, save for her vile servants,
absolutely alone. She lived for nearly a year after he left her--we know
no more. She had vowed never again to pass through the gate of her
house; but did she sometimes totter to her garden--that beautiful garden
which she had created, with its roses and its fountains, its alleys and
its bowers--and look westward at the sea? The end came in June 1839. Her
servants immediately possessed themselves of every moveable object in
the house. But Lady Hester cared no longer: she was lying back in her
bed--inexplicable, grand, preposterous, with her nose in the air.
1919.