History of Raïs Hassan――His influence with Lady Hester Stanhope――Number
of persons in her service――Number of animals in her stables――Her
manner of disposing of those which were superannuated――Her belief in
Magic and Demonology――Examples――Anecdotes of Mr. Brummell――Mr. H.――The
Duc de R********――Lord St. Asaph――Lady Hester’s strictness with
menials――Justified by their misconduct and vices――Zeyneb, the black
slave――Annoyances to which Lady Hester was subjected――Her service not
tolerable for Europeans――Her reasons for using plain furniture――Her
detestation of sentimentality――Her general interference in every
department of housewifery――Irregularities of the servants――Chastity,
how defined in Turkey――Lady H.’s measures for enforcing it――Her
opinion of a French traveller, and of M. Lascaris.
Dismissing these personal details, which have been mentioned solely as
connecting links of the main narrative, I now resume my diary.
July 7.――I returned to Dar Jôon.
July 8.――The day after my arrival, before breakfast, Lady Hester
Stanhope being yet in bed, a servant came for me. “I hope I have not
disturbed you,” said she, when I entered her room; “but I wanted you
just for a minute to say a word about Logmagi, whom I am going to send
home for a week or two. Poor man! he is all devotedness to my service,
but I must not ride a willing horse to death. He is liberal-minded,
too, and charitable; not as your fine my lord is, who gives his five
guineas to a somebody, and never feels the loss of his money; but one
who, if he sees an old captain that he has known in his younger days,
or one of his messmates, in distress, will pull off his cloak, ay, and
his jacket too, and give them to him. When he hears any one praise me,
his purse is open to him immediately.”
It is necessary that I should introduce my readers to this person, who
played a very conspicuous part in Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment,
from the year 1832 until and after this my second visit to her in
1837 and 1838. It has already been related that, in returning to
Europe in 1832, I took a passage from Sayda to Cyprus in a boat of the
country, called a shaktôor, better known as a _tartane_ lower down the
Mediterranean. The master of this boat was a cheerful good-looking
fellow, named Hassan el Logmagi, or Hassan the Diver, so called from
his first outset in life as a sponge-diver. At the period when I
engaged him, his employment lay in the coasting-trade from Sayda to
Beyrout, Tripoli, Tyr, and the neighbouring ports. In the course of
his motley existence he had been a porter, a fisherman, a diver, a
common sailor, a slave, and a trader in small goods, visiting almost
every port in the Mediterranean and Archipelago, buying at one what
would sell at another, and thus become acquainted with many maritime
cities of Turkey. Shortly subsequent to the date of his carrying us
to Cyprus, Abdallah Pasha made him captain of an armed vessel in his
service, and he then was entitled fully to the rank of Räis Hassan, or
Captain Hassan, which he always afterwards bore.
Lady Hester Stanhope was accustomed to obtain information from all
sorts of persons, as it suited her purpose; and, feeling some interest
about our welfare after quitting her, she sent for Hassan, on his
return to Sayda, to learn the particulars of the voyage. It would seem
that his appearance and conversation pleased her: for, as soon as
Abdallah Pasha was carried off a prisoner to Egypt, she took him into
her service.
His person and manners were those of a handsome boatswain. He was
boisterous and rude, entirely without education, for he could neither
read nor write, but very shrewd, and, from his varied intercourse with
mankind, a keen judge of character――at least, of the dark side of human
nature. He was jovial in the highest degree, remarkably good-looking;
and, for a day’s acquaintance, when matters of interest were out of
the question, nobody who wished to be merry could desire a pleasanter
fellow. Sinbad the sailor could not tell a more marvellous story.
It was matter of much surprise to the Europeans of Beyrout, and the
natives in general, how such a man could be admitted for hours to Lady
Hester Stanhope’s conversation, and the enjoyment of her intimate
confidence; and it was a great marvel to all Sayda, Logmagi’s native
place, and where, of course, his _antecedents_, as the French say, were
well known, how he could have obtained so firm a footing where so many
before him had slipped. The reason will be seen in the course of these
pages, abundantly verifying what Lady Hester very often said, that it
was in vain for people to attempt to investigate or speculate upon her
motives for what she did; and that, if two people were placed in her
room, one in one corner, and one in the other, all day long, she would
manage her business in their presence so that they should be no wiser
in the matter than if they had been a mile off. “Her intentions,” she
would say, “were pure, but God only was the judge of that, and she
cared not a fig what men thought.”
So it was; and on my arrival in Syria, I found Logmagi installed as
purveyor, steward, emissary, and _factotum_. All transactions with the
people of the country were carried on through his hands, and a most
important part of his avocations was to keep Lady Hester constantly
informed of all sorts of matters going on in Sayda and the surrounding
country. Anecdotes of domestic affairs, of the government, news of
every description, formed his budget every time he came up to Jôon;
and, for this purpose, about half his time was spent in town, to be
able to collect it. He was married, had two wives, and was building a
new house principally at her ladyship’s expence.
The secret of Logmagi’s influence with Lady Hester might perhaps
be traced to her reliance upon his apparent zeal in her service.
She believed him to be thoroughly devoted to her, a belief which he
well knew how to foster and sustain. He was too clever a courtier to
eulogize her to her face, and, therefore, always made his advances
by indirect means. He had been sent by her to Marseilles, to
Constantinople, and to other distant places; and, according to Lady
Hester’s account of what he told her on his return, there was not a
person he came in contact with but had related some history of the
Sultan’s admiration of her, of the Grand Vizir’s apprehension of her
political influence, of the extent of her reputation, even in the very
bazars, and of a hundred similar things calculated to flatter her
vanity and love of fame. At Beyrout, at Tripoli, at Alexandria, he was
sure to have met with a Tartar, or a sea-captain in some coffee-house,
who said he had seen a pasha, or a great merchant, or a sheykh, or a
somebody, who had declared he should not die contented, if he had not
once beheld a woman of such extraordinary talents, or who had been
so munificent to some distressed aga, or who had relieved, with such
a liberal hand, some learned dervise: and, after having praised her
charitable heart, he generally finished with a tale of distress of
some family reduced almost to beggary, of some honest tradesman who
wanted relief; and thus, striking the chords which always vibrated
to Lady Hester’s generous heart, he was entrusted with large sums to
distribute. He seldom went down to Sayda without being the bearer of
one, two, three――nay, five thousand piasters at a time, to purchase
provisions with, and to give away in donations.
Lady Hester had, at this time, in her service thirty-five persons.
There was one Arabic secretary, an upper bailiff, three under ones,
two men cooks, two porters, one for each gate, three grooms, two
muleteers, two ass-drivers, whose sole occupation was fetching water
from the spring, and occasionally an extra one; four maids and a girl
for herself; three boys, and eight men-servants. She had two mares,
which were never ridden, one horse for my riding, and five asses, also
never used, as having completed a certain stated period of service,
and being now placed on the superannuated list. There was a mule, also,
which was never allowed to be worked, except by certain servants, and
even then only on her ladyship’s special commission, for some reason
connected with its star: it was afterwards given to Monsieur Guys. The
remainder of the stock consisted of three cows and a flock of sheep.
Formerly, a herd of goats had been kept (one hundred in number), but
their throats were all ordered to be cut in one day, for some cause
which I never clearly understood, but with the intention of defeating a
scheme of the goatherd’s, who had been detected in turning their flesh
and milk to his own account; and this slaughter, she told me, was made
in imitation of her cousin, Lord Camelford, whose energetic character
and abhorrence of knavery she greatly admired. It was, no doubt, also
in emulation of his Lordship’s example that, if she ever discovered
that any of her domestic animals had been put to any use contrary to
her orders, she instantly had them shot, issuing her mandate, at the
same time, that the human delinquents should be, at a moment’s notice,
turned adrift.
There were also three amblers in the stables. These horses, very common
in Syria, are trained by tying leaden weights to their legs until their
trot becomes a run. Soon after my arrival, Lady Hester signified to
me that she should have them shot, for her under-bailiffs did nothing
but ride them when they ought to go on foot, and, moreover, treated
them cruelly. Accordingly, Osman Chaôosh, an under-bailiff, who always
carried a silver-headed stick in his hand, the emblem of the office of
chaôoshes, of whom many are kept in the employ of Pashas as a sort of
police-officers, was commissioned to be their executioner. He received
his orders from Lady Hester herself to this effect. “Osman, you will
say to each horse, before you shoot him, putting your mouth close to
his ear, ‘You have now worked enough on the earth; your mistress fears
you might fall, in your old age, into the hands of cruel men, and she,
therefore, dismisses you from her service.’” This order, strange as it
may appear, was actually executed to the letter, with imperturbable
gravity. Lady Hester’s mysterious ways had given her an extraordinary
ascendency over the minds of her people; and the Syrians, who are
credulous, like all Eastern nations, were generally disposed to believe
that her ladyship really did possess those undefined powers which are
assigned to demonology and magic. That she herself believed in the
transmigration of souls she frequently avowed, and her faith in aërial
spirits also admits of no doubt.
Throughout Syria, and, I believe, the whole Ottoman empire, the belief
in magic and charms is universal. There is not a single person who
does not resort to some means for counteracting the effect of the evil
eye――such as spells by written papers, enchantments, and the like.
Impotence, estrangement of affection, the murrain in cattle, blight in
fruit-trees, anything the cause of which is not immediately obvious,
is universally accounted for by witchcraft. Lady Hester, indeed, had
imbibed all these notions; and, to judge from the substance of many
conversations she held on the subject, no reasonable doubt can be
entertained of the startling fact, that she placed implicit faith in
them.
“Astrology,” she would say, “is confined to the influence of the stars
over people’s birth and actions; but magic has to do with the devil.
Sometimes it is by compact; as when, for a certain price, I say, for
example, to an evil spirit, ‘If you will tell me what they have written
from the Porte to Abdallah Pasha, I will do so and so;’ or if, by means
which I know to be powerful enough to bring devils under my command,
I say to them, ‘You must do this, and that, and the other,’ they are
obliged to obey, or I annihilate them.
“There are persons,” she continued, “who can write charms, by which
they can effect the most diabolical purposes: but their charms are
sometimes baffled by higher influences. I am an example: my star, more
powerful than that on which they rely, renders their magic useless.
So far, there is a connection between astrology and magic. But take
care, doctor, there are men here who will slip a paper into your pocket
unknown to you, and make you an idiot, or blind, or a hundred things.
Always keep at a distance from Girius Gemmal――that man is an agent of
the devil.
“Why, do you know that a woman’s evil eye once fell upon me? I felt a
strange pricking just above my knee; and soon after there appeared,
first, an oval black rim, then a bluish ground within it, and then a
black spot in the centre, so that any one might have said, ‘There is
an eye:’ after a few days it disappeared. There was a man near Cara,
between Damascus and Aleppo, who possessed the faculty of the evil eye
so strongly that he could kill a person, when he chose to use his power
to the utmost.”
Now all this, the reader will say, looks like the grossest credulity.
But, setting aside the observation that the greatest men among the
ancients, as we know from their writings, entertained a similar
creed, and that many eminent philosophers and jurisconsults, as Lord
Bacon and Sir Matthew Hale, were actuated by similar convictions, it
may be conjectured that Lady Hester Stanhope knew very well what a
powerful weapon was this superstition, placed in the hands of those
who understood how to make use of it. Whether premeditatedly or not,
she more than once brought crafty and designing knaves into signal
disrepute by attributing to them dealings of this sort, and thus
punished or kept in awe those whose villanous machinations it might be
impossible to detect, but of which there was little doubt, even though
not tangible by the hand of justice.
Lady Hester Stanhope once built a new room; and, just before she
was going to inhabit it, from some cause, imagined, or pretended to
imagine, it was charmed. We may judge of the builder’s surprise, when
she sent for him, and said, “To-morrow you must assemble your workmen,
and pull down the new room.” The man, fancying some defect had been
discovered in his workmanship, humbly begged her to say what it was
that moved her displeasure, as, perhaps, he might be able to find a
remedy for it, without destroying the whole. “Your business, sir,”
answered Lady Hester, in that tone of voice which she made so terrible
when she chose, “is to pull down if I like it, I suppose, as well as to
build; so be so good as to obey my orders without farther question.”
“When they were removing the arch of the door, doctor,” said Lady
Hester, who related the story to me, “I saw a paper fall out. I took it
up and sent it to a man versed in charms. He told me it was a charm,
written by one of my deadly enemies: and, if I had dwelt in the room, I
should have died. Only think, how lucky it was I did what I did!
“Another time, when I had been ill in bed for some weeks, I happened
to be looking out from under my eyelids, as you know I have got a way
of seeing everything when people think I see nothing, and I observed
Girius Gemmal fumble a paper between his fingers, and dip it into a
glass of lemonade that the slave was going to give me. I said nothing,
but merely desired the slave to set the glass down. Had I drunk it, I
have no doubt I should have been his victim. He is a terrible fellow! I
warn you never to go to the village or take your family there, because
I am afraid he would do some of you some harm. I don’t know how he
might do it: he might slip a paper into your boot, or sprinkle a few
drops of water on your clothes, and utter some incantation; for they
have a hundred ways of inflicting maledictions.”
It may be as well to add here, although not occurring at this time,
that on reading an article in a newspaper to her about vampires, she
said, “I believe in vampires, but the people in England know not how
to distinguish them. Such a being is not a mere creation of people’s
fancies.”
From these, and a variety of other observations, which will be found
scattered through these memoirs, Lady Hester’s professed opinions
on the subject of charms and supernatural agency generally cannot be
mistaken. Nor, indeed, seeing how she mixed up such opinions with the
actual business of life, allowing them to exercise a direct practical
influence over her conduct in numerous instances, can there be any
reason for supposing that she did not entirely believe in them, to all
intents and purposes, as sincerely as the Syrians themselves. But I
leave the consideration of this curious problem to the sagacity of the
reader, limiting my more appropriate province to the simple record of
her ladyship’s actual life and conversations.
To return from this digression. It might be supposed that, immediately
upon my arrival, Lady Hester would have opened the urgent business upon
which she had summoned me. No such thing. After congratulating me upon
my escape from Europe, which, she assured me, would soon be convulsed
by revolutions from one end to the other, she entered at once on her
favourite topic――the coming of the Murdah. But, as her opinions and
proofs were pretty much the same as those she had entertained six years
before, and which have already been related, it is not necessary to
recapitulate them.
July 9.――In the afternoon, I rode down to Mar Elias to see my family,
and returned the following day to dinner.
July 10.――Lady Hester this day asked me if I had ever known Beau
Brummell. “I should like to see that man again, doctor,” continued
she, without waiting for my answer. “He was no fool. I recollect his
once saying to me, in Bond Street, riding with his bridle between his
forefinger and thumb, as if he held a pinch of snuff, ‘Dear creature!
who _is_ that man you were talking to just now?’――‘Why,’ I answered,
‘that is Colonel ――――.’――‘Colonel what?’ said he, in his peculiar
manner; ‘who ever heard of his father?’――So I replied, ‘And who
ever heard of George B.’s father?’――‘Ah! Lady Hester,’ he rejoined,
half-seriously, ‘who, indeed, ever heard of George B.’s father, and who
would have ever heard of George B. himself, if he had been anything
but what he is? But you know, my dear Lady Hester, it is my folly
that is the making of me. If I did not impertinently stare duchesses
out of countenance, and nod over my shoulder to a prince, I should be
forgotten in a week: and, if the world is so silly as to admire my
absurdities, you and I may know better, but what does that signify?’
“Three of the wits of the day in my time,” observed Lady Hester,
continuing the conversation, “were Mr. Hill, Captain Ash, and Mr.
Brummell, all odd in their way――the one for dry wit, the other for
solemn joking, and the last for foppery. Mr. Hill, for example, when
at dinner at somebody’s house, would draw towards him a dish of mashed
potatoes that had a mould mark on them, as if he was going to help
himself; then, eyeing it with irresistible gravity, and looking at it
very oddly with his quizzing-glass, he would turn to the servant and
say, ‘I wish you would tell the housekeeper, my good fellow, not to sit
down on the dishes;’ pretending that he saw a mark, as if she had sat
down upon it.
“Brummell would commit similar freaks at the houses of _parvenus_, or
people who were not exactly of _haut ton_, where, sometimes at dinner,
he would all of a sudden make horridly ludicrous grimaces, as if he
had found a hair in his soup, or would abruptly ask for some strange
Palmyrene sauce, or any out-of-the-way name that nobody ever heard of,
and then pretend he could not eat his fish without it.”
As a specimen of Brummell’s audacious effrontery, Lady Hester said
that once, in the midst of a grand ball, he asked the Duchess of
Rutland――“In Heaven’s name, my dear duchess, what is the meaning
of that extraordinary back of yours? I declare I must put you on a
backboard: you must positively walk out of the room backwards, that I
mayn’t see it.”
Another time he marched up to Lady Hester, who was remarkable for the
fine turn of her cheek, and the set of her head upon her neck, and
coolly took out her ear-rings, telling her she should not wear such
things;――meaning that they hid the best part of her face.
Upon one occasion he went about in a ball-room, asking everybody where
he could find a partner who would not throw him into a perspiration,
and at last crying out――“Ah! there she is!――yes, Catherine will do; I
think I may venture with her.”――And this was the Duchess of Rutland’s
sister.
Sometimes he would have a dozen dukes and marquises waiting for him,
whilst he was brushing his teeth, or dressing himself, and would turn
round with the utmost coolness, and say to them――“Well, what do you
want? don’t you see I am brushing my teeth?” (all the while slowly
moving his brush backward and forward across his mouth, and hawking and
spitting:) then he would cry,――“Oh! there’s a spot――ah! its nothing but
a little coffee. Well, this is an excellent powder, but I won’t let any
of you have the receipt for it.”
On one occasion she spoke of Mr. B. in terms of regard, and said she
should write to him, as a fellow-sufferer like herself from fallen
greatness. “I shall tell him I understand the bedgown is in existence
(alluding to his taste in dressing-gowns when he was a friend of the
Prince of Wales). When he receives my letter, he will say: ‘There she
is again, the dear creature! always the same:’” for I said I had seen
him once or twice at Calais, dressed very quietly, and very much like
a gentleman, with no appearance of foppery, except when he leaned out
of his lodging window in a sort of a fine chintz dressing-gown. “Ah!”
cried Lady Hester, “those are the patterns that the Prince sometimes
used to give £100 for, to have them like his.”
There was a gentleman who visited Lady Hester Stanhope on Mount
Lebanon, Mr. H*****, who, she said, would not be an unworthy successor
of Mr. Brummell. She called him a gentlemanlike fop, who gave her a
sort of a look from top to toe of ineffable _insouciance_, and used
to cry out, when she was telling him some laughable story, “For God’s
sake, don’t make me laugh so: I shall die, I vow and protest: I shall
expire from laughing; now pray, Lady Hester!”
Something turned the conversation to the duc de R――――, who had visited
her once. “I told him,” said Lady Hester, “he had nothing like a duke
about him. ‘Comment! est ce que je suis trop petit?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I
replied, ‘it is not that; you neither look like one, nor act like one.’
Oh! I trimmed him,” she continued. “He wrote to me after he was gone,
and said he had prayed for me at Jerusalem. I wrote him back a letter
so impudent, doctor, and joked him about a _belle marquise_, who, by a
shrewd guess, I fancied, was his _chere amie_, I bade him pray for her,
and not for me, and sent him――what do you call it when there are four
lines in rhyme?――ah! a quatrain, which I will try to recollect.” She
mused a little, and then repeated four lines something to this effect:
“Ne verse pas des larmes, ma chère et belle marquise,
Tu seras l’héroine de toutes mes entreprises;
Je prie trois dieux pour toi; et si ton héros meurt,
A eux je laisse mon ame, à toi je donne mon cœur.”
Lady Hester added, “He was more like a militia officer than a French
duke, and very stingy.”
“Did Lord St. Asaph publish anything?” she asked. I told her not that I
knew of. “He was very active,” she added, “and went about seeking for
antiquities everywhere: whenever he heard of anything, off he set, and
visited it. When he saw my garden, he expressed great admiration of it,
and assured me that it was not only well kept for this country, but
better kept than many a gentleman’s grounds in England.”
Saturday, July 15.――I spent this day and the next at Mar Elias with my
family, and returned to Jôon on Monday, July 17.
It has already been remarked, that there were thirty-four people in
Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment at the time I am now speaking
of, and yet she would complain that she could not get the slightest
attendance. This, of course, was mere temper. Her five maids were
constantly in motion, night and day; but she had become querulous to a
degree scarcely imaginable, and was, beyond all example, _exigeante_
in her demands on the services of everybody about her. But, if such
excessive requisition was ever pardonable in anybody, it was in Lady
Hester Stanhope; for her vast talents seemed to lay claim to submission
from all inferior beings, and even to exact it as a matter of justice.
It was always customary with her (as it generally is with people who
overwork their servants) to appeal first to one and then to another,
whether anybody could give less trouble than she did. “What have my
maids got to do?” she would say: “they think themselves mightily put
upon, if I only require as much from them as some shopkeepers wife
insists upon from her housemaid:――a set of lazy beasts, that sleep
and stuff all day, and then pretend they are mightily hard-worked.
Doctor, Logmagi says, that nothing but the korbàsh will keep them in
order; and, depend upon it, it is so. If I did not tell them I would
have them punished, I should not get the bell answered.” It is true
she was generous to them in giving them clothes, high wages, presents
of money, new year gifts, &c.; but, whilst she bestowed with one hand,
she tyrannized with the other. These mixed extremities of kindness and
severity produced a strange effect upon her servants. I never knew
one of them who, after a time, did not wish to leave her service, or
who, having left it, did not wish to return. The desire to leave her
was stimulated by her restless activity, which left nobody quiet day or
night, and her determined hostility to indolence, lies, and all other
vices common to menials in Syria: while the anxiety to get back again
might be in a great measure traced to the dishonest gains which were so
readily made in her service, and by which her domestics so frequently
enriched themselves――to place nothing to the account of that spell
which she infallibly cast over everybody who came within the sphere of
her attraction.
It cannot be denied that Lady Hester Stanhope had great reason for
her strictness. During her severe illness in 1828, when Miss Williams
died and she was confined to her bed-room for three months, G. G. and
another rascal induced the girl, Fatôom, to steal the keys of the
store-room, and, whilst they waited outside of the window, the wooden
bars of which they sawed through with the adroitness of a London
housebreaker, she handed them out much valuable property. Every one
of the trunks was opened and examined. Hinges were wrenched off, so
as to leave the locks untouched, and the trunks were replaced against
the wall, and the bars of the window refitted to lull suspicion. One
night, as was afterwards revealed in a confession made by one of
the maids, when Mr. Dundas, a traveller, who was on a visit at Dar
Jôon, was sitting with Lady Hester, Fatôom took a key from one of her
ladyship’s pockets, which had been left in her bed-room, opened a small
closet, and out of that closet took a bunch of keys, by means of which
she ransacked almost everything Lady Hester possessed. Her beautiful
Albanian dress, covered with gold, was stolen; a gold medallion,[62]
commemorative of her brother’s and General Moore’s death, at Corunna,
shared the same fate; stuffs, brocades, and other articles of value,
were all carried off.
But the servant who committed the heaviest robberies was Zeyneb, a
black slave, who afterwards became a soldier’s trull. This woman, whose
career throughout was marked by every sort of profligacy, robbed Lady
Hester to the amount of many thousands of piasters.
Lady Hester related, on a subsequent occasion, the winding-up of
Zeyneb’s history, in the following words, which I wrote down April the
9th, 1838. “When Zeyneb stole the gold medal, with General Moore’s and
my brother’s name upon it, I procured all the documents relative to
the theft from Cyprus, where one of her accomplices had fled, and then
sent for Zeyneb and Farez into the saloon. I called in Logmagi and
Khalyl Mansôor as witnesses, and then, telling the culprits what I
knew, said I could hang them if I liked. The impudent slave, Zeyneb,
listened with perfect indifference, and, in going out, stopped up the
door, and, in an ironical tone, thanked Logmagi (who, she thought, had
told me all about it). Logmagi, surprised at her insolence, went to
push her out; when, at that moment, Abu Ali, the great black, who had,
it appears, found his way into the court in order to support the black
girl’s cause, and had been waiting outside the saloon door, seized
Logmagi, and, with his muscular grasp, tried to throttle him. I heard
a strange noise, and went out; and there I saw Logmagi, with his eyes
starting out of his head, held down on the ground by the negro. I
caught the fellow’s hand, although one of his pistols was directed
towards me, and with my other arm gave a back-handed stroke across
Zeyneb’s face (who was helping the black), that knocked her down. She
got up, scaled the wall, and ran off to Sayda; and I never saw her
more. I called the Albanians, and had Abu Ali turned out of doors
directly.” After Zeyneb ran away, she threw herself into the arms of
the _nizam_, or soldiers, where Lady Hester, to use her own emphatic
language, left her to rot.
A short detail of the annoyances to which Lady Hester Stanhope was
exposed may serve to show that she was not angry with these women
without reason. The endless trifling acts of ignorance, awkwardness,
carelessness, forgetfulness, falsehood, and impudence, which she used
to relate to me, were quite sufficient upon the whole, although many
of them were individually petty enough, to justify the severe control
she found it necessary to exercise over them. But then it will be
asked, why did a lady of her rank, accustomed to all the refinements
of European life, keep such servants in her establishment?――why did
she not send for Europeans? That was the question that everybody
asked――that nobody could answer. The real fact, probably, was this――she
preferred these poor creatures, with all their demoralization and
filthy habits, to French or English servants, because, by the customs
of the East, they were habituated to despotism and bursts of passion,
which neither English nor French would be very likely to brook so
patiently.
Besides, no European servants could have reconciled themselves to the
melancholy seclusion of Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment, or to the
never-ceasing activity, or, what is worse, the long vigils required of
them. Here there was no moment of respite from doing or waiting to do.
In England, the maid looks at least for some intervals of recreation,
and expects, at all events, out of the four-and-twenty hours, that
she shall be allowed six or eight for rest. But there was neither one
nor the other at Jôon; for, even while her ladyship was engaged with
her nightly conversations in the saloon, when little or no waiting
was required, still there was no end to the work marked out for her
servants――such as filling pipes every quarter of an hour――by which they
were kept incessantly employed. Now, as Turkish servants _turn in_[63]
almost universally in their clothes, only drawing a counterpane over
themselves when they lie down, they are enabled thus to steal a short
sleep at any hour they can get it, and are ready to rise at a moment’s
call. This is a great advantage, especially to sick people: indeed,
in Lady Hester’s case, it almost compensated for all their faults.
In the twinkling of an eye, upon an emergency, the whole household,
only a moment before buried in profound sleep, would start up on their
feet; and, their duty once over, would suddenly drop again into a deep
slumber.
One day, I went to Lady Hester’s bed-room door, without waiting to
ascertain whether she was ready to receive me. It was a rule with her
for many years never to see anybody, even in her saloon, whether
coming from a distance or staying in her house, until she had sent for
them――no matter who, prince or peasant; and she carried this species
of regality to such a length, that, on one occasion, among twenty
which might be mentioned, an English gentleman and his wife, for both
of whom she entertained a high personal esteem, having arrived from
Beyrout to within a league of her dwelling to pay her a visit, and
having politely sent forward a servant with a letter to announce their
approach, she returned a laconic answer, to say they would not be
received. She, moreover, was accustomed to mark, not merely the day,
but the precise hour, that persons coming to visit her were to present
themselves. She would do so with Duke Maximilian, or with Matteo
Lunardi. On the morning to which I have referred, Lady Hester was in
bed. “What do you want?” said she, in rather an angry tone. I replied
that I had brought her a cut-glass cup and stand for her sherbet and
lemonade, as hers was so common that it gave me pain to see her use
it. “No, doctor,” she said, “I am much obliged to you, but you must
send it away again. If I had twenty fine things, those beasts of maids
would break or steal them all. I had some beautiful cut-glass goblets,
and they all disappeared, one after the other. Would you believe it?
they broke one first of all, and then Miss Williams gave out another.
So they kept the pieces of the broken one, and, every fortnight or
three weeks, came to her first with one bit and then with another,
with some plausible story of an accident, and each time got another
goblet out of her, until all were gone. I found them out at last. The
jades destroy everything: but it is not that which gives me pain; it
is to think that I have not one person who will see me well waited
on.”
Happening to observe, that perhaps some allowance should be made for
their ignorance in that respect, as, after all, they were but peasant
girls and slaves, who could not know what service was, seeing they were
unacquainted with European customs, she exclaimed, “But my liver is
destroyed by the passions I put myself in, and I dare say you, instead
of helping me, will only make matters worse. They’ll only laugh at
you and your sensibility. I can see an idle fellow or a rascal get a
beating with the same tranquillity that I smoke my pipe: but nobody is
more tender than I am, even when an animal suffers unjustly. I never
shall forget how two or three of the servants turned as pale as death
on hearing me on a sudden utter a cry, because a lazy villain was
driving an ass with foal, heavily laden, down a steep bank. I go then
almost into convulsions.
“But, oh! how I detest your sentimental people, who pretend to be full
of feeling――who will cry over a worm, and yet treat real misfortune
with neglect. There are your fine ladies that I have seen in a
dining-room, and when, by accident, an earwig has come out of a peach,
after having been half killed in opening it, one would exclaim, ‘Oh!
poor thing! you have broken its back――do spare it――I can’t bear to see
even an insect suffer. Oh! there, my lord, how you hurt it: stop, let
me open the window and put it out.’ And then the husband drawls out,
‘My wife is quite remarkable for her sensibility; I married her purely
for that.’ And then the wife cries, ‘Oh! now, my lord, you are too good
to say that: if I had not had a grain of feeling, I should have learnt
it from you.’ And so they go on, praising each other; and perhaps the
next morning, when she is getting into her carriage, a poor woman, with
a child at her breast, and so starved that she has not a drop of milk,
begs charity of her; and she draws up the glass, and tells the footman,
another time, not to let those disgusting people stand at her door.”
The conversation, on a subsequent occasion, having fallen on the
nasty servants, and I having assented to the truth of what she said,
regretting that her acute feelings made her torment herself about
things which were but trifles:――“Trifles!” she vociferated; “it is
trifles, as you call them, that kill me. Everybody comes to me. There
are the very maids――if you were only to see――when they have a hole to
mend, how they sew it up all in a spong: they even ask me how their
gowns must be cut out.”
This was the fact; but they came to her because she would have it so.
Many a morning have I seen her cutting out gowns and pantaloons for
them, and stitching the parts together with her own hands. Her talents
were so versatile, that she always seemed to have served her time to
the particular work, whatever it might be, in which you chanced to find
her engaged. I have in my possession patterns, in paper, of gowns after
the Turkish fashion, cut out by Lady Hester’s hand; and if any of the
travellers who visited her may have had occasion to admire the dresses
of her men or maid servants, they may be assured that, even down to the
embroidery, the models for every one of them were first designed and
cut out by their accomplished mistress.
Lady Hester Stanhope had another serious reason to be discontented with
her servants. Her inner court, the gynœcium or harým, was separated
from the outer one by a door, always, or which always ought to have
been, kept locked. The key was entrusted to one of the two men-servants
who lived in this inner court, but whose rooms were divided from the
wing where the maids were by a screen of wainscoting, which neither
party was allowed to pass. That was the rule, but the practice was
far otherwise, and the men were constantly haunting the maids’ rooms
and the kitchen with perfect security; because the locked door, at
which everybody was obliged to knock to get admission, gave them
time to arrange their matters so as to escape detection. Lady Hester
herself was generally in bed, and perfectly incapable of checking
their irregularities. It was not, therefore, to be wondered at, if,
every now and then, the sad consequences were not slow in manifesting
themselves. For in Turkey, where men are never allowed to associate
with women――where the face of a female, even of the lowest class,
cannot be uncovered before the other sex without a stain attaching
to her modesty, and sometimes to her character――the idea of placing
the two sexes in familiar juxtaposition is so foreign to all their
notions, that both the one and the other, when such occasions present
themselves, fancy all reserve is at an end, and use their opportunities
accordingly. Chastity, in our sense of the word, social and moral, is
perhaps unknown among Mahometans. The woman who is well guarded, or the
maiden who lives strictly under her mother’s wing, is kept chaste; but
she who is neglected thinks that there is no longer any reason for
restraint, or believes, at all events, that she does no great wrong in
thinking so.
Lady Hester, no doubt, knew all this better than any one; but there
was no remedy. She did not feel sure of the good conduct of one single
maid-servant. As long as Miss Williams was alive, the awe they all
stood in of her made things go on with propriety; but, after her death,
all these disorders crept in. One of the very European men-servants
whom Lady Hester kept as a check on the people of the country, set them
a profligate example himself, and then sought a pretext for leaving her
service. In another instance, a black slave was found to have formed an
illicit connection with a black man. Lady Hester Stanhope obliged the
man to marry her, and gave them both their freedom. Her ladyship did
not visit these untoward events with severity. Only, as it is a common
practice in Turkey to procure abortion, and as there is no notice taken
of such things by the public authorities, who often set the example
openly in their own harýms, all that Lady Hester ever did in these
cases was to call the offenders before her, and tell them she would
have them hanged if they resorted to any secret means of that kind: and
she was a person to be as good as her word. Her views in such matters
were lenient and compassionate in reference to the circumstances in
which these unfortunate creatures were often placed; but there was
nothing she held in such utter detestation as mere animal vices.
It was naturally Lady Hester’s object to enlist me on her side into
her plan of keeping her household regulated according to the rules
of the strictest decorum; and I of course was most happy to lend my
assistance. Previous to my arrival, I had been, both now and on my
former visit in 1831, held up as a bugbear to all the servants, and the
common exclamation in her mouth was――“Ah! when the doctor comes, he
will very soon set you to rights.” But I was not at all, either from
temperament or reflection, ambitious of filling a post of that sort;
and, although she turned against me at different times the shafts of
ridicule, and a never-ceasing battery of abuse, I passively but firmly
declined all participation in the severity of her measures.
Sunday, July 23.――I rode over to Mar Elias, and returned again to the
Dar on Monday night.
July 24.――Lady Hester Stanhope took a great deal of pains to make me
acquainted with all that was going on both in the house and in the
neighbourhood: still she never touched on the property left, or said
to be left her; and it was not until August the 3rd that the subject
was fairly entered upon. But, as what she communicated then will come
in more appropriately when the correspondence which took place in
reference to it shall be given, we will proceed to other matters.
August 4.――“The people of Europe,” said Lady Hester, “are all, or at
least the greater part of them, fools, with their ridiculous grins,
their affected ways, and their senseless habits. In all the parties I
was in during the time I lived with Mr. Pitt――and they were a great
many――out of thousands of people, I hardly saw ten whose conversation
interested me. I smiled when they spoke to me, and passed on; but they
left no agreeable impressions on my mind.
“Look at Monsieur *********, getting off his horse half a dozen
times to kiss his dog, and take him out of his bandbox to feed him
on the road from Beyrout here: the very muleteers and servants
thought him a fool. And then, that way of thrusting his hands in his
breeches-pockets, sticking out his legs as far as he could――what is
that like?
“Monsieur ―――― is no poet, in my estimation, although he may be
an elegant versifier: he has no sublime ideas. Compare his ideas
with Shakspeare’s――that was indeed a real poet. Oh, doctor, what
inspirations there are in that man! Even his imaginary beings――his
Ariels, his fairies, his Calibans――we see at once are such as they
would be if they had really existed. You don’t believe in such things,
but I do, and so did Shakspeare: he, I am sure, had great knowledge of
Eastern literature, somehow or other.
“Monsieur ――――, with his straight body and straight fingers, pointed
his toes in my face, and then turned to his dog and kissed him, and
held long conversations with him. They say he has £17,000 a year, and
castles and villages. He thought to make a great effect when he was
here, but he was grievously mistaken. I gave him a letter to Abu Ghosh,
who received him very well; but when he talked about himself, and made
out that he was a great man, Abu Ghosh said it was for my sake, and not
for his own, that he showed him as much honour as he could.”
In speaking of M. Lascaris, of whom Monsieur L. has written a great
deal,[64] Lady Hester said M. Lascaris had the heart of a Roman with
the intrigue of a Greek.
FOOTNOTES:
[62] The medallion came into the possession of M. Marino
Mattei, a merchant of Cyprus, who bought it for
thirty-five dollars, of a Syrian; but, being made
acquainted with Lady Hester’s loss, he immediately
offered to restore it for the price it had cost him.
[63] A sailor’s phrase best expresses what these people do,
who cannot be said to go to bed.
[64] See _Souvenirs de l’Orient_, appendix.