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.
[Illustration: _Ground Plan of Lady Hester Stanhope’s Residence at
Joon._
_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.”
FOOTNOTES:
[27] A finjàn is a small hemispherical coffee-cup, a little
bigger than an egg-cup.
[28] The Arabic word is جون _Gún_ with the soft
G, or Gwn. The pronunciation is Jôon.
[29] Prince Pückler Muskau, who saw the garden seven years
afterwards, and who is perhaps as good a judge of
gardens, grounds, and parks, as any man, did not
seem so much delighted with it as I had expected. He
bestowed excessive praise on that of the Pasha of
Egypt at Shôobra, one of the finest, he said, that he
had ever seen, and better kept than the best English
ones.
[30] In 1837 she said to me, “I have never been out of the
doors of my house since my brother’s death. For five
years I have not been farther than the outer door,
once with M. Lamartine, and once to the bench at the
first door with the Americans. Since that time, I have
not seen the strangers’ garden, nor your little room;
for, if I should put my head outside of my own court,
I should certainly fall into such a passion with some
of the people, that it would make me ill.”
[31] Probably from the French, _besicles_.
[32] This chieftain, after having lingered in prison for
a year in Acre, lost his head in 1828, or near that
time, by the order of Abdallah Pasha.
[33] A government edict.
[34] Hamâady, the executioner.
[35] The Abbate Gondolfi was the Pope’s legate to the
Maronites of Mount Lebanon.
[36] _Mâalem_ means Master or Mister: as Mâalem Yusef, Mr.
Joseph. Mâalem is never applied but to Christians; a
Turk would repudiate such an appellation: he is Sheyk,
Aga, Effendi, &c., which additions to his name a
Christian in Turkey dares not assume.