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.”
FOOTNOTES:
[37] The man who cries the hour of prayer from the
minaret-top.
[38] Mr. Way, a gentleman who owed his large fortune to a
peculiarity in spelling his name, and his well-merited
reputation to the way in which he spent it.
[39] Syt, (in Arabic سَيت) signifies Dame, in
the acceptation of a high-born lady; Sytty, Madam;
the _ty_ being the pronoun affixed, _my_. This was
the title generally given to Lady Hester by the
servants: dyn es Syt therefore means Madam’s religion.
Sometimes, however, they would address her as Her
Felicity, _Sáadet-es-Syt_, and visitors generally used
that term.
[40] Murdah or Mahedi, the expected Messiah of the Turks.