really fifty-six; she was still beautiful--beautiful with that beauty
which lies in the form itself, in the purity of the lines, in the
majesty, the thought which irradiate the countenance. On her head she
wore a white turban; from her forehead a veil, or yashmak, of purple
wool fell down to her shoulders. A long shawl of yellow cashmere, an
ample Turkish robe of white silk, with hanging sleeves, enveloped her
whole person in their simple and majestic folds; so that you could but
catch a glimpse, where this outer tunic opened on the bosom, of a second
robe of Persian stuff, which was fastened at the throat by a clasp of
pearls. Turkish boots of yellow morocco, embroidered in silk, completed
her costume.
"You have come a great distance," said Lady Hester to her visitor,[21]
"to see a hermit; you are welcome, I receive few strangers, but your
letter pleased me, and I felt anxious to know a person who, like myself,
loved God, and nature, and solitude. Something told me, moreover, that
our stars were friendly, and that our sympathies would prove a bond of
union. Be seated, and let us converse.
"You are one of those men," she said, "whom I await; whom Providence
sends to me; who have a great part to accomplish in the work that Fate
is getting ready. You will shortly return to Europe. Well, Europe is
worn out; France alone has a great mission before her; in this you will
participate, though I know not how, but I can tell you this evening if
you wish it, after I have consulted the stars."
* * * * *
"As yet," she continued--evidently her keen perception had detected her
visitor's vanity, and she skilfully played upon it--"as yet, I do not
know the names of all. I see more than three, however; I can distinguish
four, perhaps five, and--who knows?--still more. One of them is
certainly Mercury, which bestows clearness and colour upon intelligence
and speech. You will become a poet--I see it in your eyes, and in the
upper part of your face; in the lower you are under the sway of widely
different stars, almost all of them of opposite characters. I discern,
too, the influence of the sun in the pose of your head, and in the
manner in which you throw it back on the left shoulder. What is your
name?"
Lamartine, who had already won distinction as a poet, told her.
"I had never heard it," she exclaimed, with a convincing accent of
sincerity; "but, poet or not, I like you, and have hope for you."
"Go," she added; "dinner is served. Dine quickly, and return soon. I go
to meditate upon you, and to see more clearly into the confusion of my
ideas respecting your person and your future."
* * * * *
Lamartine had scarcely concluded his dinner when Lady Hester sent for
him. He found her smoking a long Oriental pipe, the fellow of which she
ordered to be brought for his own use. Accustomed to see the most
graceful women of the East with their tchibouques, he was neither
surprised nor shocked by the gracious, _nonchalant_ attitude, or the
light wreaths of perfumed smoke issuing from Lady Hester's finely curved
lips, interrupting the conversation without chilling it. They conversed
together for a long time upon the favourite subject--the unique,
mysterious theme of that extraordinary woman, or the modern Circe of the
Desert, who so completely recalled to mind the famous female magicians
of antiquity. The religious opinions of Lady Hester seemed to her guest
a skilful though confused mixture of the various creeds among which she
was condemned--or had condemned herself--to live.
"Mystical as the Druses, with whose mysterious secrets she alone,
perhaps, in the world, was acquainted, resigned like the Mussulman, and
as fatalistic; with the Jew, expectant of the Messiah's coming; with the
Christian, a worshipper of Christ, whose beneficent morality she
practised--she invested the whole in the fantastic colours and
supernatural dreams of an imagination steeped in the light of the East,
and, it would seem, the revelations of the Arabian astrologists. A
strange and yet sublime medley, which it is much easier to stigmatize as
lunatic than to analyze and comprehend. But Lady Hester Stanhope was no
lunatic. Madness, which reveals itself only too clearly in the victim's
eyes, was not to be detected in her frank, direct look--madness, which
invariably betrays itself in conversation, which it involuntarily
interrupts by sudden, irregular, and eccentric outbreaks, was nowhere
discernible in Lady Hester's exalted, mystical, and cloudy, but
sustained, connected and vigorous monologues.
"If," adds M. de Lamartine, "I were to offer an opinion, I should rather
say it was a voluntary and studied madness, which knew what it was
about, and had its own reasons for posing as madness. The patent
admiration which her genius has excited, and still excites, among the
Arab tribes, is a sufficient proof that this pretended insanity is only
a means to an end."
In the course of conversation, Lady Hester suddenly said to her guest:
"I hope that you are an aristocrat; but I cannot doubt it when I look at
you."
"You are mistaken, madam," replied the man of sentiment, "I am neither
aristocrat nor democrat; I have lived long enough to see both sides of
the medal of humanity, and to find them equally hollow. No, I am neither
aristocrat nor democrat; I am a man, and an ardent partisan of all which
can ameliorate and perfect the whole man, whether he be born at the
summit or at the foot of the social ladder. I am neither for the people
nor the great, but for all humanity; and I am unable to believe that
either aristocratic or democratic institutions possess the exclusive
virtue of raising humanity to the highest standard. This virtue lies
only in a divine morality, the fruit of a perfect religion! The
civilization of the peoples--it is their faith!"
We shall shortly see that Lady Hester, with her quick insight into
character, an insight sharpened by long and varied experience, took "the
measure" of her visitor very accurately, and lightly estimated the
vanity, self-consciousness, and inflated sentimentality which weakened
the genius of Lamartine and marred his career, both for his country and
himself.
She invited him to visit her garden--a sanctuary into which the
_profanum vulgus_ were never allowed to penetrate. Here is his
description of it, somewhat exaggerated in colouring:--
"Gloomy trellises, the verdurous roofs of which bore, like thousands of
lustres, the gleaming grapes of the Promised Land; kiosks, where carved
arabesques were entertwined with jasmines and climbing plants, the
lianas of Asia; basins, into which the waters--artificial they are
here--flowed from afar to leap and murmur in the marble jets of alleys
lined with all the fruit trees of England, of Europe, and of the sunny
Eastern climates; green leaves besprinkled with blossoming shrubs, and
marble beds enclosing sheaves of flowers."
She also exhibited to her famous guest, if, indeed, he may be implicitly
credited, the noted mare which realized ancient prophecy, in which
nature had accomplished all that is written on the animal destined to
the honour of carrying the Messiah--"She will be born ready saddled." He
says: "And in truth, I saw, on this beautiful animal, a freak of nature,
rare enough to encourage the illusion of a vulgar credulity among
half-barbarous peoples: instead of shoulders, she had a cavity so broad
and deep, and so exactly imitating the shape of a Turkish saddle, that
one might truthfully say she was born ready saddled, and, with stirrups
at hand, one might readily have mounted her without a saddle." This
magnificent bay mare was the object of profound respect and admiration
on the part of Lady Stanhope and her slaves; she had never been ridden,
and a couple of Arab grooms cared for her and watched her carefully,
never losing sight of her.
* * * * *
A few years later, and the brilliant author "Eoethen," Mr. A. W.
Kinglake, while travelling in the East, made his way to Lady Hester's
Lebanon retreat. She had been the friend of his mother, and consequently
he had no difficulty in obtaining admission.
In the first court which he entered a number of fierce-looking and
ill-clad Albanian soldiers were hanging about the place, a couple of
them smoking their tchibouques, the remainder lying torpidly upon the
flat stones. He rode on to an inner part of the building, dismounted,
and passed through a doorway that led him at once from an open court
into an apartment on the ground floor. There he was received by Lady
Hester's doctor, with a command from the doctor's mistress that her
visitor would rest and refresh himself after the fatigues of the
journey. After dinner, which was of the usual Oriental kind, but
included the wine of the Lebanon, he was conducted into a small chamber
where sat the lady prophetess. She rose from her seat very formally,
uttered a few words of welcome, pointed to a chair placed exactly
opposite to her sofa, at two yards' distance, and remained standing up
to the full of her majestic height, perfectly still and motionless,
until he had taken his appointed position. She then resumed her
seat--not after the fashion of the Orientals--but allowing her feet to
rest on the floor or footstool, and covering her lap with a mass of
loose white drapery.[22]
The woman before him had exactly the person of a prophetess; not,
indeed, of the divine Sibyl, imagined by Dammichino, but of a good,
business-like, practical prophetess, long used to the exercise of her
sacred calling. Her large commanding features reminded him of the great
statesman, her grandfather, as he is seen in Copley's famous picture;
her face was of surprising whiteness; she wore a very large turban,
composed of pale cashmere shawls, and so arranged as to conceal the
hair; her dress, from the chin down to the point at which it was
concealed by the drapery on her lap, was a mass of white linen loosely
folding--an ecclesiastical sort of affair--more like a surplice than any
of those blessed creations which our souls love under the names of
"dress," and "frock," and "bodice," and "collar," and "habit-shirt," and
sweet "chemisette."
Such was the outward seeming of Lady Hester Stanhope, the grand-daughter
of Chatham, the adviser of Pitt, the Queen of Palmyra, the prophetess of
the Lebanon--she who, in her life, had played so many parts, but in all
had given full rein to her master-passion, pride. And assuredly the
moralist who, commenting on the disastrous effect of this passion,
should need an illustration to point his moral and adorn his tale, could
find none more striking than Lady Hester Stanhope's career affords.
* * * * *
A couple of black slaves appeared at a signal, and supplied their
mistress and her visitor with lighted tchibouques and coffee.
"The custom of the East sanctions, and almost commands, some moments of
silence whilst you are inhaling the first few breaths of the fragrant
pipe. The pause was broken, I think, by my lady, who addressed to me
some inquiries respecting my mother, and particularly as to her
marriage; but before I had communicated any great amount of family
facts, the spirit of the prophetess kindled within her, and presently
(though with all the skill of a woman of the world) she shuffled away
the subject of poor, dear Somersetshire, and bounded onward into other
spheres of thought....
"For hours and hours this wondrous white woman poured forth her speech,
for the most part concerning sacred and profane mysteries; but every now
and then she would stay her lofty flight, and swoop down upon the world
again. Whenever this happened I was interested in her conversation."
* * * * *
In reference to her mode of life, she informed her guest that for her
sin, or sins, she had subjected herself during many years to severe
penance, and that her self-denial had not been without reward. "Vain and
false," she declared, "was all the pretended knowledge of the Europeans.
Their doctors asserted that the drinking of milk gave yellowness to the
complexion; yet milk was her only food, and was not her face white?" Her
intellectual abstemiousness was not less severe than her physical
self-denial. Upon book or newspaper she never cast a glance, but trusted
wholly to the stars for her sublime knowledge. Her nights she usually
spent in absorbed communion with these silent but eloquent teachers, and
took her rest during the daytime. She spoke contemptuously of the
frivolity and benighted ignorance of the modern Europeans, and gave as a
proof their ignorance not only of astrology, but of the common and
every-day phenomena produced by the magic art. She evidently desired her
hearer to believe that she had at her command all the spells which
exercise control over the creatures of the unseen world, but refrained
from employing them because it would be derogatory to her exalted rank
in the heavenly kingdom. She said that the charm by which the face of an
absent person is thrown upon a mirror lay within the reach of the
humblest magicians, but that the practice of such arts was unholy as
well as vulgar.
Reference was made to the divining rod or twig (Virgil's "Aurea
virga"[23]), by means of which precious metals may be discovered.
"In relation to this," says Kinglake, "the prophetess told me a story
rather against herself, and inconsistent with the notion of her being
perfect in her science; but I think that she mentioned the facts as
having happened before she attained to the great spiritual authority
which she now arrogated. She told me that vast treasures were known to
exist in a situation which she mentioned, if I remember rightly, as
being near Suez; that Napoleon, profanely brave, thrust his arm into the
cave containing the coveted gold, and that instantly his flesh became
palsied. But the youthful hero (for she said he was great in
his generation) was not to be thus daunted; he fell back,
characteristically, upon his brazen resources, and ordered up his
artillery; yet man could not strive with demons, and Napoleon was
foiled. In latter years came Ibrahim Pasha, with heavy guns and wicked
spells to boot, but the infernal guardians of the treasure were too
strong for him. It was after this that Lady Hester passed by the spot;
and she described, with animated gesture, the force and energy with
which the divining twig had suddenly leaped in her hands. She ordered
excavations, and no demon opposed her enterprise. The vast chest in
which the treasure had been deposited was at length discovered; but, lo
and behold! it was full of pebbles! She said, however, that the times
were approaching in which the hidden treasure of the earth would become
available to those who had 'true knowledge.'"
Among the subjects on which Lady Hester discoursed, with equal fluency
and earnestness, were religion and race. On the first head she
announced that the Messiah was yet to come; on the second, she
expressed her low opinion of Norman, and her high opinion of ancient
French, blood. Occasionally she descended to inferior topics, and
displayed her conspicuous abilities as a mimic and satirist. She spoke
of Lord Byron, and ridiculed his petty affectations and sham
Orientalism. For Lamartine she had still less mercy. His morbid self
consciousness and exaggerated refinement of manner, had excited her
contempt. Indeed, she seems to have cherished an abundant scorn of
everything approaching to exquisiteness or "aestheticism."
* * * * *
Next day, at her request, he paid her a second visit. "Really," said
she, when he had taken his seat and his pipe, "we were together for
hours last night, and still I have heard nothing at all of my old
friends; now do tell me something of your dear mother and her sister; I
never knew your father--it was after I left Burton-Pynsent that your
mother married." Kinglake began to furnish the desired particulars; but
his questioner could not long attend to them. She soared away to loftier
topics; so that the second interview, though it lasted two or three
hours, was all occupied by her mystical, theological, transcendental,
necromantical discourse, in which she displayed the expressiveness, if
not the glowing eloquence, of a Coleridge.
In the course of the afternoon, the captain of an English man-of-war
arrived at Djoun, and Lady Hester resolved on receiving him for the
same reason as that which had governed her reception of Mr. Kinglake,
namely, an early intimacy with his family. He proved to be a pleasant
and amusing guest, and all three sat smoking until midnight, conversing
chiefly upon magical science.
"Lady Hester's unholy claim to supremacy in the spiritual kingdom was,
no doubt, the suggestion of fierce and inordinate pride, most perilously
akin to madness; but I am quite sure," says Mr. Kinglake, "that the mind
of the woman was too strong to be thoroughly overcome by even this
potent feeling. I plainly saw that she was not an unhesitating follower
of her own system; and I even fancied that I could distinguish the brief
moments during which she contrived to believe in herself, from those
long and less happy intervals in which her own reason was too strong for
her.
"As for the lady's faith in astrology and magic science, you are not for
a moment to suppose that this implied any aberration of intellect. She
believed these things in common with those around her; and it could
scarcely be otherwise, for she seldom spoke to anybody, except crazy old
dervishes, who at once received her alms and fostered her extravagances;
and even when (as on the occasion of my visit) she was brought into
contact with a person entertaining different notions, she still remained
uncontradicted. This _entourage_, and the habit of fasting from books
and newspapers, was quite enough to make her a facile recipient of any
marvellous story."[24]
* * * * *
After Lady Hester's death, a visit was paid to the place which had been
her residence for so many years, by Major Eliot Warburton, the
accomplished author of "The Crescent and the Cross." He speaks of the
buildings, that constituted the palace, as of a very scattered and
complicated description, covering a wide space, but only one story in
height; courts and gardens, stables and sleeping rooms, halls of
audience and ladies' bowers, all strangely intermingled. Heavy weeds
clambered about the open portals and a tangle of roses and jasmine
blocked the way to the inner court, where the flowers no longer bloomed
and the fountains had ceased to play in the marble basins. At nightfall
when Major Warburton's escort had lighted their watch-fires, the lurid
gleam fell strangely upon masses of honeysuckle and woodbine; on the
white, mouldering walls beneath, and the dark, waving trees above; while
the quaint picture seemed appropriately filled up by the group of wild
mountaineers, with their long beards and vivid dresses, who gathered
around the cheerful blaze.
Next morning, Major Warburton explored the spacious gardens. "Here many
a broken arbour and trellis bending under masses of jasmine and
honeysuckle, showed the care and taste that were once lavished on this
wild but beautiful hermitage: a garden-house, surrounded by an
enclosure of roses run wild, stood in the midst of a grove of myrtle and
bay trees. This was Lady Hester's favourite resort during her life-time,
and now, within its silent enclosure,
"'After life's fitful fever she sleeps well.'"
It is painful to know that in her last illness she was shamefully
deserted. Mr. Moore, the English consul at Beyrout, on hearing that she
was stricken, rode across the mountains to visit her, accompanied by Mr.
Thompson, the American missionary. It was evening when they arrived, and
silence reigned in the palace. No attendants met them. They lighted
their own lamps in the outer court, and passed unquestioned through
court and gallery until they reached the room where she lay--dead. "A
corpse was the only inhabitant of the palace, and the isolation from her
kind which she had sought so long was indeed complete. That morning,
thirty-seven servants had watched every motion of her eye; its spell
once darkened by death, every one fled with such plunder as they could
secure. A little girl, adopted by her, and maintained for years, took
her watch and some papers on which she had set peculiar value. Neither
the child nor the property was ever seen again. Not a single thing was
left in the room where she lay dead, except the ornaments upon her
person: no one had ventured to take these; even in death she seemed able
to protect herself. At midnight, her countryman and the missionary
carried her out by torchlight to a spot in the garden that had been
formerly her favourite resort, and there they buried the self-exiled
lady."
Some curious particulars of Lady Hester Stanhope's mode of life in its
closing years are recorded by her physician. She seldom rose from her
bed until between two and five in the afternoon, and seldom retired
before the same hours in the morning. It was sunset before the day's
business really began. Not that the servants were permitted to remain
idle during daylight. On the contrary, their work was assigned to them
over-night, and their mistress employed the evening hours in arranging
their occupations for the following day. When this was done, she wrote
her letters and plunged into those endless conversations which seem to
have been her sole, or, at all events, her chief pleasure. She always
showed a reluctance, an air of unwillingness, to retire; not an unusual
characteristic in persons of her peculiar temperament. When the room was
ready, one of her two girls, Zezeforn or Faloom, would precede her to
it, bearing wax tapers in their hands.
Her bedstead might have suited a veteran campaigner; it consisted simply
of a few planks nailed together on low tressels. On these planks, which
sloped slightly towards the foot, was spread a mattress, seven feet long
and about four and a half feet broad. Instead of sheets, she had Barbary
blankets, which are like the finest English, two over and one under her.
There was no counterpane, but, as occasion required, a woollen abak or
cloak would be used or a fur pelisse. Her pillow-case was of Turkish
silk, and under it was another covered with coloured cotton. Behind this
were two more of silk, ready at hand, if needed.
Her dress for the night was a chemise of silk and cotton, a white
quilted jacket, a short pelisse, a turban on her head, and a keffeyah
tied under her chin in the same manner as when she was up, with a shawl
over the back of her head and shoulders. It is rather a puzzle how she
could enjoy in this full panoply any sound or refreshing repose.
No man is said to be a hero to his valet; I suppose the proverb may be
applied in the case of his physician. Certainly, Lady Hester Stanhope's
medical attendant does not forget to expose her weaknesses. "As it had
become," he says, "a habit with her to find nothing well done, when she
entered her bedroom, it was rare 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 meantime, 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."