Dr. M.’s dilemma--Apprehensions of poisoning--Mr. Cooper’s dray-boy--
Memoirs of a Peeress--Lady B. and the Duchess of ----Novel scheme for
making maids obedient--English servants--Lady J.--Lord C.--Mr. Pitt,
and the disturbed state of England--Peers made by Mr. Pitt--Footmen’s
nosegays--Mr. Pitt’s last words, as related by Gifford--Melancholy
reflections--Mr. Pitt’s signature--Mr. Pitt a Statesman inferior to
Lord Chatham--Mr. Fox--Sir Walter Scott--Shaykh Mohammed Nasýb--
Turkish dervises--Anecdote of Sir William Pynsent--Sir John Dyke--High
and low descent exemplified in Captain ---- and Count Rewisky--Lady
Charlotte Bury--The Empress Josephine--Buonaparte--Mr. Pitt’s
physiognomy--Advantageous offers refused by Lady Hester--Her house in
Montague Square--The Cheshire Squire--Ingratitude of the world--Trust
not in man, but in God.
Monday, April 30.--For three days I find a blank in my diary. The fact
is, I had been so much fatigued for the last month that I threw my
memorandums aside, and, on retiring to my house, gave myself up to the
enjoyment of a little conversation with my family, or else buried my
cares and anxieties in sleep.
On the day when I paid my visit to Prince Pückler Muskau in Sayda, he
had asked me, in the course of conversation, if I had been long in
Syria, and whether I had any intention of returning to Europe. I
answered, that I had come with the understanding of remaining some
months only, and probably should go back in the summer. “But you will
not leave my lady whilst she is so ill?” he exclaimed. These words of
his were ever running in my mind. I saw no prospect of Lady Hester’s
realizing her hopes respecting the property she supposed had been left
her. I was fairly worn off my legs by late hours, multiplied
occupations, and fruitless endeavours to soothe an irritated and
neglected, although a high-born and gifted creature--the victim of
fallen greatness, false hopes, and superhuman efforts to effect vast
projects of philanthropy and political combinations on small means and
ruined resources. I was therefore anxious to close my labours, and
retire to the obscurity from which she had called me: but still the
fatal words--“You will not leave my lady whilst she is so ill”--
recurred to my thoughts, and I knew not what to do. Lady Hester would
often say to me--“You are of no use to me: what good do you do me? I
was just as well without you.”--But, during a long period of thirty
years, in which I was either with, or in correspondence with her, I
had good reason for believing that I had been of much service to her,
both as respected her health and her affairs--indeed I may say,
without presumption, of greater service than any other person. This
was felt by everybody around her; and throughout all her dilemmas and
illnesses, the constant cry was--“My lady, you must send for the
doctor: there is nobody suits you or understands your constitution so
well as he does.” That I was devotedly attached to her, the best part
of a life spent in her service will sufficiently testify; but I was
now grown too old and infirm to be equal to the task of meeting her
constant calls on my time and my energies: I had become nervous.
Doctor C., an Englishman, had fled from her dwelling, fearing to be
poisoned by her villanous servants; yet I had much greater reason to
apprehend such a fate than he had: for the cook (who dressed my family
dinner every day,) was the particular object of Lady Hester’s
suspicions in what regarded the enormous waste of stores; and,
although not entertaining the same suspicions myself, (from having had
him once as my own servant, and having kept my eye upon him for some
years, and from knowing also that there were worse depredators living
in the house;) still, as she directed her daily attacks against him,
and even said I suffered him to rob her by the forbearance I showed in
not having him chastised, I was worked up, on many occasions, into a
state of excitement against him that carried me beyond all restraint,
and necessarily made me hateful in his eyes, inasmuch as he considered
me the principal hindrance to his peculations. I had rated him in
unmeasured terms for his rascality, and the hot-blooded children of
the East do not easily forget or forgive such language. All this
anxiety could not render a man gay, and I wasted away visibly to the
eye. I had nobody to confide in; for I studiously concealed all these
vexations from my family, and endeavoured to put on a cheerful air
before them, when my mind was far from being tranquil. Can it be
wondered at, therefore, if I looked to Europe with a longing desire of
returning thither?
But the prince had said, “You will not surely leave her whilst she is
_so ill_:” and I was constantly reiterating to myself, “How can I
leave her whilst she is _so poor_?” Her embarrassed circumstances, now
that my stay with her could be considered as disinterested, seemed to
be an insuperable barrier to my departure. Had she been rich, I need
not have used any ceremony: the state of my health, now that hers was
somewhat improved, would have been a sufficient plea: but she was
known to be short of money and beset with creditors; and to leave her
would seem to be the result of a mercenary calculation. Under all
these circumstances, I held my peace, and was resolved to remain, as
long as I thought my presence could be either useful or consolatory to
her.
The first subject of conversation to-day was this very cook’s
peculations: “What am I to do?” said Lady Hester; “if nobody will help
me, I’ll go myself, and stand from morning to night in the kitchen,
and see everything come and go. Here am I ruined, because those about
me are so proud and so particular about their dignity that they can’t
put their heads into a kitchen. I presume your father was not better
than Mr. Cooper of Sevenoaks; and, if he had had a son, a doctor, I’ll
venture to say he would not have been so mighty fine.” Here her
thoughts were luckily carried away from the vile cook to Mr. Cooper,
and she went on: “What beautiful teams of gray horses Mr. Cooper had!
There was a boy, who used to ride on one of the dray-horses dressed in
green; a little fellow, who, having seen the Prince of Wales drive
through Sevenoaks, going somewhere, set off by himself one fine day
for London, found out where the Prince lived, and went and knocked at
the gate of Carlton House. The porter was a giant, and wanted to know
what the boy knocked so loudly for: he said he had something to say to
the Prince of Wales. The porter called him an impudent little
scoundrel, and told him to go about his business; but the boy would
not go, and the fight between the giant and this Tom Thumb made a
sort of an uproar: upon which the Prince, who was at dinner, inquired
what was the matter, and desired that the young urchin might be
brought in; who, nothing abashed, being asked what he wanted, said
that, having seen the Prince’s fine servants go along the road, he had
come to London to be one of them; the Prince said very well, and sent
him to the stables. Doctor, he became an excellent groom, and was
afterwards for many years one of his best coachmen.”
This anecdote seemed to have tranquillized Lady Hester’s mind, as was
generally the case when she talked about old times. She proposed that
I should read a little of Lady Charlotte Bury’s novel, the “Memoirs of
a Peeress.” After listening to a few pages, at the mention of some
incident, interrupting me, she said:--“Ah! that was Lady B., who
placed a cast of the statue of Antinous amidst myrtle-pots in a
vestibule of her house: she had ten times more cleverness than her
sister the duchess. The duchess’s reputation was, in great part, the
effect of her position: for fine horses, fine carriages, and that
_éclàt_ that attends a great personage wherever she goes, made up the
greatest part of it. Why, she sometimes would employ her own people to
puff her off. You would see a man in a shop in Bond Street say to the
people of the shop--‘Whose fine carriage is that yonder?’--‘That’s
the Duchess of **********’s, sir,’ the shopman would reply. Then
another man, pretending to be a stranger to the first, would cry out,
‘Good God!--the Duchess of **********; do let me look: I would give
more to get a sight of her grace than I would of the king.--Pray,
excuse me; I shall be back in a moment;’--and off he would run.
“The Duchess of **********, when she did not smile, had something
satanic in her countenance. Then her affectation was so high charged.
No matter to whom--to a dirty clerk of the Foreign Office--she would
say, ‘If you would be so very good, sir, just to give yourself the
trouble to deliver this note--I am sure you are so kind a looking
gentleman.’ And then she would speak in French to whoever was with
her--‘_Quels beaux yeux! ne le trouvez vous pas? C’est un bel homme,
n’est ce pas?_’ just as if the clerks in the Foreign Office might not
know French.”
Wednesday, May 2, 1839.--To-day, as was usual on Wednesdays, I did not
see Lady Hester until after sunset; but dinner was scarcely over, when
came the accustomed message of “The Syt will be glad to see you as
soon as you are at liberty?” She could not bear to be alone: and I
was, therefore, summoned that she might have somebody to talk to. She
made inquiries whether the dinner had been to our liking; whether the
tartlets and bread-pudding were well cooked; and, on such occasions, I
always knew she had been lecturing the cook about his negligence, and
answered accordingly, anxious, if possible, to avoid the broils which
kept the house in a continual uproar; but I seldom succeeded in
averting them entirely; for, after having manifested her anxiety about
my family’s comfort, she would begin about her own, with--“Thus it is:
I am obliged to look after everybody’s dinner, and am left to starve
myself.” She then launched out into her customary complaints, and told
me how she had contrived the means of at last bringing her maids down;
for she had ordered a thing to be made like a clothes’ horse, which
was to stand in her room with a sheet hanging over it, behind which
the maids were to take turns to wait alternately, hour by hour, that
she might be sure she had them within call: “for,” said she, “if they
will not move fast enough when I ring, I’m determined I’ll keep them
on their legs, one or the other, all day; and I have told them I put
them behind a screen that I may not see their ugly faces. That beast,
Sâada, scratches herself before me, just like an Italian or a
Frenchman: I have never been used to such behaviour in servants, and
will not bear it.
“When I recollect how differently servants conduct themselves in
England! There was the groom of the chamber at Mr. Pitt’s--I don’t
think I ever held half an hour’s conversation with him the whole time
he was there; he was, however, a man with quite a distinguished look,
and ten times more of a gentleman than half those who call themselves
so. He came in, delivered a note or a message with a proper air; and,
if I had one to send anywhere, I threw it along the table to the end,
so,” (and here Lady Hester put on one of those--what shall I call
them?--queen-like airs, which she was fond of assuming)--“or else gave
it into his hand, telling him, or not telling him--for he could see by
looking at it--where it was to go. Do you think servants ever dared to
smile, or scratch themselves, or seem to notice anything, as these
beasts do? He afterwards married one of the maids, and took Thomas’s,
or some such named, hotel, where he was well patronized by the great.
“Servants work twice as hard in England as they do here. Why, there
was the boy of twelve or thirteen years old that used to go to
Sevenoaks to fetch papa’s letters. Every day but one in the week did
that boy ride backward and forward; and sometimes I have seen him
lifted off his horse, with his fingers so benumbed that he could not
even ring the bell; and his face and hands were rubbed with snow, and
he was walked about for a quarter of an hour before he was allowed to
go into the servants’ hall. There was the shepherd’s daughter, who
would take up a sheep over her shoulders, and carry it like a nothing;
ay, and whilst it was struggling, too, pretty stoutly, I can tell you.
Then the washerwomen, who used to begin on Monday morning half an hour
after midnight, and work all through the day and the next night until
eleven or twelve, without ever sitting down, except to their
meals:--there was hard work! Here they have their sleep in the middle
of the day, and will not eat or drink when they are warm, for fear of
getting the lampas.”
Thursday, May 3.--I read a few more pages of Lady Charlotte Bury’s
novel. The Duchess of Rochester was now set down as Lady J. “Those
girls of hers,” observed Lady Hester, “were brought up so prim. I
recollect seeing three of them sitting together in a box at the Opera,
and nothing could be more beautiful. They had charming countenances,
with fine eyes, very good teeth, and complexions quite ravishing; but
none of them were remarkably clever.”
The narrative comes to where Mrs. Fitzirnham regrets how she was
taking her pleasure, and putting her husband to the expense of hiring
a country-house for her, when she should have been at home saving his
money. “Ah!” said Lady Hester, “she should have been making his
shirts;” and this text afforded her an opportunity of pronouncing an
encomium on Lady Mahon,[18] her brother’s wife. “She had,” said Lady
Hester, “one good point about her, that, after her marriage, whilst my
brother was poor, she was not extravagant:” then, reverting to other
branches of her family, she dwelt for some time on the merits and
demerits of them all, until she came round again to her brother and to
his father-in-law. “Yes,” she said, “giving Lord Carrington a peerage
was one of Mr. Pitt’s errors. I once asked Mr. Pitt if he did not
repent of making so many peers; and he answered, if he had to go over
his time again, he never would; ‘Age, Hester,’ said he, ‘brings
experience.’ But he was in such a situation, that, to prevent a
revolution in England, or to hinder England from becoming a province
of France, he was obliged to patch up things as he could. He was like
an ambassador, going in ill-health to some distant court on a mission
of importance, and who would say to his physician, ‘You must patch me
up in the best way you can for this journey; so that I get to the end
of it, never mind what becomes of me.’ England at that time was not
like France: the latter was obliged to go through a salivation; the
former only wanted a dose of physic. Besides, fancy, what a revolution
would have been in England. I have seen what an English mob is at an
election: they are the most horrid set I have ever beheld: a word
will lead them any way; and as for reason, they will never listen to
it. But there, doctor, go on with the book: it interests me, when I
think who wrote it, and what we are both come to.”
I read on, until we came to where mention is made of a footman’s
nosegay on a levée day. Upon this, Lady Hester remarked, “My footman
always used to give a guinea for his on the Queen’s birthday. When you
consider,” she added, “what those footmen spent in nosegays and silk
stockings, and bags, and shoe-buckles, it was a pretty round sum. As
for the fine ladies who make such a show in the fashionable world, I
have known some of them borrow five guineas of their footmen. I
sometimes went down to Putney, and shut myself up not to be seen, that
I might not spend all my money on rich dresses; but I saved it for
other purposes, to give away to poor people.”
As the work proceeded, I came to the account of Fitzirnham’s
sufferings and his approaching dissolution: she told me to skip all
that--“I don’t wish to hear it,” she said; “it is too melancholy.”
Alas! I felt it applied to Mr. Pitt’s and to her own situation too
much not to give her pain: so, shutting the book, I tried to converse
on some other subject, but her thoughts still reverted to what I had
been reading about. At last she broke out in these words: “Poor Mr.
Pitt! one of the nourishing things they gave him before his death was
the yolk of an egg beat up so thick with pounded sugar that it was
quite stiff: ‘I wonder,’ said the footman who prepared it for him,
‘that they persist in giving him the egg; for he brings it up every
time.’” Lady Hester went on:--“Mr. Pitt died in the night, doctor.[19]
Dr. Bailey acquainted me with his impending death the day before: Sir
Walter Farquhar kept saying to the last that I need not afflict
myself--always giving me hopes. The carriages had been waiting at the
door, ready for a long time: as soon as all was over, Williams and
James,” (her brother) “set off for Downing Street, and sealed up
everything. Miss Williams then took just what clothes she wanted for
me, and they both returned to Putney, bringing with them Mr. Adams,
Mr. Pitt’s secretary, whom they called up at his house in Queen
Street, Westminster. On their way back they met the doctors going to
town.”
I happened to observe that I had read an account of Mr. Pitt’s last
moments in Gifford’s Life of him, and that his dying words, praying
for forgiveness through the merits of his Redeemer, or words to that
effect, together with the whole scene of his death-bed, appeared, as I
thought, too much made up, and too formal to be true: leaving the
impression that the author, and those from whom he gathered his
information, had considered it a duty to make the close of a great
man’s life conformable to their religious feelings rather than to
facts and reality.[20] “Who is it that says it of him?” asked Lady
Hester. “Dr. Prettyman and Sir Walter Farquhar.”--“Oh! it’s all a
lie,” she replied, rather indignantly:--“Dr. Prettyman was fast asleep
when Mr. Pitt died: Sir Walter Farquhar was not there; and nobody was
present but James. I was the last person who saw him except James, and
I left him about eight o’clock, for I saw him struggling as if he
wanted to speak, and I did not like to make him worse.” After a short
pause, she resumed:--“What should Mr. Pitt make such a speech for, who
never went to church in his life? Nothing prevented his going to
church when he was at Walmer: but he never even talked about religion,
and never brought it upon the carpet.
“When I think of poor Mr. Pitt, I am the more and more persuaded that
the greater part of mankind are not worth the kindness we bestow on
them. Never did so pure an angel enter upon life as he: but, good God!
when he died, had he had to begin the world again, he would have acted
in a very different manner. The baseness and ingratitude that he found
in mankind were inconceivable. All the peers that he had made deserted
him, and half those he had served returned his kindness by going over
to his enemies.
“Then see, doctor, what fortune and luck are! Mr. Pitt, during his
life spent in his country’s service, could seldom get a gleam of
success to cheer him, whilst a Liverpool and a Castlereagh have
triumphs fall upon them in showers. Oh! it makes me sick to think that
Mr. Pitt should have died through hard labour for his country; that
Lord Melville, so hearty as he was, should almost have sunk under it,
and should have had nothing but difficulties and disappointments;
whilst such fellows as H. and C., who do not care if the country were
ruined, provided they kept their places, should have nothing but good
fortune attend them, as if it was the effect of their stupid measures.
But, not contented with that, they must even bring discredit on his
memory by attributing to him a line of conduct he never pursued. To
think of Canning’s going about and saying, ‘This is the glorious
system of Pitt;’ and the papers echoing his words--‘this is the
glorious system of Pitt!’ Why, when Louis XVIII. came to England, Mr.
Pitt would not receive him as King, but only as Count Somebody, (I
declare I forget what, it made so slight an impression on me;) and
when I used to say to Mr. Pitt, ‘Oh, Lord! what does it signify?--do
let him be king if he wants it’--‘No,’ replied Mr. Pitt, ‘I am not
fighting to re-establish the Bourbons on the throne: only let the
French have some stable government that we can make peace with, that’s
all; I am not going to sacrifice the interests of my country to the
Bourbons, Hester.’”
I quitted her about three o’clock, when she said she was going into
the bath, which she did about every third day; no proper place
certainly for her in her state of health.
In crossing the courtyard to go to my house, there seemed somehow to
be an unusual solitude about the premises. The stories, too, I had
been hearing and reading were doleful; so that I became very
melancholy for the rest of the day, and could not rally my spirits, do
what I would. As I sat in my room, I reflected that, although Lady
Hester would probably get through the summer, yet how surely, though
slowly, disease was making irreparable inroads on her reduced frame.
May 8.--My fears about the servants now began to revive. Monsieur Guys
had made his preparations for his departure, and was going in a few
days to Aleppo--he, who knew all her servants, their names, where they
had sprung from, and everything about them, and who, had they
committed any crime, could have at once traced them to their
hiding-places. I felt my loneliness: I had no one to look to, to help
me in any great difficulty. I saw, when I returned from a walk, or
entered the house unexpectedly, how the older ones were often sitting
in close cabal together, and I heard their whispers, like
conspirators laying their heads together for some evil purpose. Why
had I not written down more for these last three days? I said to
myself, when I saw the scantiness of my memorandums: alas! my mind was
ill at ease.
The name of Sir Francis Burdett was often mentioned, and various
conjectures formed to account for his long silence. The prince, who
had promised to write, where was he got to? Every hope seemed to fail.
The prince, when he left Lady Hester Stanhope, had been entrusted with
a copy of the correspondence, such as it afterwards appeared in the
newspapers, and he had undertaken to make it public: she was therefore
in daily expectation of receiving information from him of its
transmission to Europe, and through what channel it would appear. But
no letter came, and this rendered her fidgety and uneasy; for she
conceived it to be of vital importance to her interests that her case
should be made known as speedily as possible, hoping, from publicity,
to come more speedily at the truth about the property to which she
thought herself entitled, and which, she supposed, was withheld from
her.
The time meanwhile was beguiled in reading Lady Charlotte Bury’s
novel, which, from the remarks and anecdotes it called forth, lasted
out much longer than it would with a common reader. In that part of
the “Memoirs” where mention is made of the doubts that existed as to
the validity of the Duke of Rochester’s will, Lady Hester observed, “A
person, who is in the daily habit of writing like another, might
easily imitate his signature. Mr. Pitt, when I had written a paper,
used to say, ‘Sign it for me,’ and I did; because, when you write
quickly, you write like another if you will. It is those who sit down
to forge, and make their strokes slowly, that are found out, because
there is an uncertainty in what they do.”
Something else called forth another observation: “Oh!” said Lady
Hester, “I used very often to tell Mr. Pitt ‘_You_ are not the grand
statesman; it was your father;--you are a little God Almighty sent
from Heaven, who are always thinking of the respect due to the king,
of complaisance to the peers, and who kill yourself out of compassion:
_he_ made them all tremble.’ Nevertheless, doctor, I know that he
thought just as his grandfather did.”
Wednesday, May 9.--I resumed reading at that part where Squire
Mordaunt returns to Spetchingly on New-year’s Day. When the narrative
comes to Mrs. de Vere’s meeting with Mr. Fox, Lady Hester said, “Fox,
I think, was thrown into a position with the Prince and his dissipated
friends from which he never afterwards could extricate himself,
otherwise he would have been a different man; but, mixed up with them,
the king never could bear him: for, when Mr. Pitt took office in
1803, the king wrote to him (for I saw the letter,) ‘Would you force
on me Mr. Fox, who debauched my son?’ &c. The last time I saw Mr. Fox,
he was at Vauxhall with Mrs. Fox. She was dressed as some respectable
housekeeper might be, with a black bonnet and some sort of a gown. I
looked at her several times, but I could see nothing like what I
should have expected in Mrs. Armstead: there was none of that
manner.--” (here Lady Hester made up a kind of courtezan look that
conveyed what she meant to say.) “Mr. Fox looked like the landlord of
a public-house; yet, when he spoke, doctor, he was sometimes very
eloquent. On Mr. Hastings’s trial he made many people cry. There were
all the peers with their pocket-handkerchiefs out--quite a tragedy!
but he made such a business of it--” (here Lady Hester sat up in bed,
and, to show what she meant, threw her arms first to the right and
then to the left, and then thumped the bed violently, making me wonder
where she had found such strength;)--“he was worse than Punch.”
Sir Walter Scott was mentioned in one place in the novel with great
praise. “I’m not sure about Scott,” observed Lady Hester: “he
pretended to be a great Pittite, but he was half inclined to go over
to Fox. He sent some of his poetry, where he praised Fox, before he
published it, to say he would not publish it, if it were displeasing;
but I told him he was to do just as he liked, and to let it stand, as
it made no difference what he wrote.”
Thursday, May 10.--Lady Hester Stanhope was very low to-day, seemingly
exhausted with coughing, when I saw her about one o’clock. She
continued to follow her own mode of cure, which now consisted in
swallowing the yolks of fresh eggs, sucking oranges by dozens, sipping
finjàns of strong coffee with ambergris in it, and drinking small
glasses of rum and milk. Her food was of the most objectionable kind.
She thought, as many others do, that what are reputed strong viands
give strength to the body, without the slightest regard as to whether
the stomach could digest and assimilate them so as to afford
nourishment. Thus she often had meat pies, eating the meat and jelly,
forced meat balls, beef cabóbs, &c.
Shaykh Mohammed Nasýb, a Mograbyn, whom I had sent away on the 19th of
April without a present, made his appearance again to-day. He had been
to the Emir Beshýr and to other great persons in the mountain, to
collect a hundred piasters or two here and there, a practice common
with these shaykhs versed in the Mahometan religion and in the
commentaries on the Alcoran. They go from palace to palace, are lodged
and fed for a night or two, discourse with the great man once or
twice a day, if he is at liberty, and repay the hospitality they
receive either by their learning, or by their skill as alchymists, or
as astrologers, or by the news they bring from the cities they have
passed through, and of the great men they have seen: for they find
admission everywhere.
The dervises are another set of visitors, very frequent in the houses
of the rich. They are the mendicant friars of the East, itinerant
monks, whose pretensions to sanctity are heightened by a strange
costume. Some of them--for they are of different orders--let their
hair and beards grow long and hang dishevelled, and wear black and
shaggy sheep or bear or tiger skins. By their side hang a score of
strange-looking implements--a carved cup in wood, a back-scratcher, to
facilitate the chase after vermin in parts where their hands cannot
easily reach, a pottle for water, a bullock’s horn, or a conch shell
to blow instead of it, long rosaries of immense beads, an ostrich’s
egg--God knows what! They are all impudent, intrusive beggars, and are
well known and appreciated in the East as the Franciscans, Capuchins,
and other friars, are in the West, who are but the humble imitators of
their more audacious, and, let me say, cleverer prototypes.
It was on a winter’s day that one of these people, being refused a
night’s lodging and a bakshysh at Lady Hester’s, invoked a curse on
the house and its inmates. He took his horn from his side, blew three
or four blasts, and uttered some imprecations which were unintelligible
to me. The whole scene was a picture. He was a dervise of the order
called Bektashy, daring and fearless as men are who know that none
will venture to lay hands on them, athletic, with raven locks of
disproportionate thickness and length, and clad in as wild-looking
garments as the imagination of a stage-manager could invent for
Caliban, or some such monster. His large, rolling eye, his features
darkened by a weather-beaten existence, his white teeth, his shaggy
and hairy breast, his naked feet and legs, and his strange
accoutrements, made him altogether a remarkable being. The wind blew
high at the time, the rain swept up through the valley from the sea in
a white sheet, as the squalls every now and then succeeded each other;
and there he stood, under the cover of a dilapidated building, which
those who have visited Dar Jôon may recollect as being near the
entrance gate. He had been fed with a good dinner--for nobody ever
came without having something to eat put before him--but he had heard
that other dervises had left the house with fifty, a hundred, nay,
even two hundred piasters, and he expected to force a compliance with
his demands for himself. It must not be imagined that the servants
beheld this action of his, and heard his anathema, with the same
indifference that I did: they looked gloomy and apprehensive. It so
happened that some pewits, or green plovers, had appeared in the
mountain and in our neighbourhood just about the same time. The
melancholy cry of these birds, as they are not common in Syria, is
considered of bad augury by the Turks. It was in the month when Lady
Hester was in the worst stage of her illness; and they coupled these
things together, and drew from them unfavourable omens. But Lady
Hester had said to me--“Keep away, if you can, all those shaykhs and
dervises; it will only torment me to know they are there, for I can’t
see them. I have no money to give them, and they are too cunning to
trust their news and information, if they have any to give, to anybody
but me.” I was determined, therefore, to send him off; the more so, as
I did not like his physiognomy, and as the village was close at hand,
where he would find a night’s lodging in the khan or caravansery.
But let us return to the Mograbyn shaykh. When I told him that Lady
Hester was ill, and could see nobody, he said, if I would but let her
know who he was, he was sure she would receive him: that he had
several times had the honour of an audience, and that her Felicity
had expressed herself so pleased with his conversation as once to have
engaged him to quit Zyb, where he lived, and to come and settle at
Jôon with his family. I therefore represented this to her ladyship,
but she refused to see him. The circumstance, however, gave rise to
the following conversation:--
“People,” said she, “never should be sent away who show a very great
earnestness to be admitted; for, although many times they might be but
beggars, sometimes it was not so. When my grandfather was ill, a man
on horseback came to the door and insisted on seeing him. My
grandmamma presented herself, and asked him what was his business,
telling him Lord Chatham was so ill that he could receive nobody. The
man signified that nothing would do, but he must see Lord Chatham
himself. After ineffectually trying to induce him to disclose his
business, grandmamma Chatham at last admitted him into my
grandfather’s room, but behind a screen, so that they were still
invisible to each other. ‘That will not do,’ observed the persevering
man; ‘I must see your lordship’s face, and be sure it is you.’ The
screen being removed, and the man assured of whom he was speaking to,
drew out a tin case, containing the will of Sir Something Pynsent,
leaving my grandfather two estates, one in Wiltshire, of £4,000 a
year, and the other, Burton Pynsent, of £10,000; his will only saying
he had done it in admiration of his character. The Wiltshire estate
was sold immediately, and the money frittered away (as I heard from
Mr. Wilson, the tutor) nobody knows how. Of the pictures my
grandfather only reserved two, the portraits of the Marquis of Granby
and of Admiral Saunders, to give to the corporation of Plymouth. Of
the rest, which were old family pictures, like Lady Cobham, &c., he
took no notice whatever.”[21]
Thursday, May 11.--I read to Lady Hester for three hours out of the
“Memoirs of a Peeress.” As she lay on her bed, pale, wan, and
exhausted, she looked like a person in the last stage of illness; but,
as the day advanced, she generally grew more animated. She made few
remarks. The Duchess of Rochester now was become the Marchioness of
T*******. The “jokes of Stowe,” as alluded to in the Memoirs, she
exemplified in this way: “One morning, whilst General Grenville was
staying there, there came a letter, with his address on the cover, and
‘Montrose’ in the corner. The general, not being intimate with the
duke, said--‘What’s this? let’s see: what can make the duke write to
me?’ On opening the letter, out came about fifty fleas, all jumping up
to his face. The general’s extreme aversion to fleas was well known:
he was so angry at this that he ordered a postchaise, and never would
go to Stowe again. On Lord Glastonbury they played a joke of another
sort: they put a paragraph in the papers, with initials and other
indications, that he had run off to Gretna Green. His aversion to
women and to marriage was as great as the general’s aversion to
fleas.”
As I read on, the old squire’s death affected Lady Hester. “How rare
is such a character now!” said she: “I recollect some in my time.
There was Sir John Dyke, who was an excellent man, but careless in his
affairs, and perhaps ruined by this time. But such men, when you get
over the first two or three days, in which a few expressions may be
strange in their conversation, become afterwards most agreeable
society, and have much sterling worth. They are men who know
something, and have real straitforwardness of character: I always
liked them.”
In another place she said--“Doctor, when you reflect on this book,
don’t you see the wide difference there is between refined people and
vulgar ones? There is Lady Isabella and Lady Helen, with a tyrannical
and unkind mother--see how obedient and submissive they are; and, I
dare say, though the daughters of a duchess, had she put them to do
the most menial offices, they would have done them; but vulgar people
are always fancying themselves affronted, and their pride is hurt, and
they are afraid of being lowered, and God knows what. You will think
it a strange thing to say, but it is my opinion that the vices of
high-born people are better than the virtues of low-born ones. By
low-born I do not mean poor people; for there are many without a
sixpence who have high sentiments. It is that, among the low-born,
there is no spring of action that is good, even in their virtues. If
they are laborious and industrious, it is for gain, not for the love
of labour; if they are learned, it is from pedantry; if they are
charitable, it is from ostentation; if religious, from hypocrisy; if
studious of health, it is to gratify their gormandizing; and so on. I
repeat it again--the vices of the great are preferable to the virtues
of such persons. Those of them that rise in the world always show
their base origin: for if you kill a chicken and pick the feathers,
they may fly up into the air for a time, but they fall down again upon
the dunghill. The good or bad race must peep out. God created certain
races from the beginning; and, although the pure may be crossed, and
the cart-horse be taken out of the cart and put to the saddle, their
foals will always show their good or bad blood. High descent always
shows itself, and low always will peep out. I never have known above
two or three persons of common origin who had not something vulgar
about them.”
It was curious to hear how she would quote the opinion of the
commonest persons as affirmative of her notions in this respect. “A
peasant told me, one day,” said Lady Hester, in a conversation on this
subject, “that he had met Captain ---- on the road, in his way to some
part of the mountain; and I asked him what he thought of him. ‘Why,’
replied the man, ‘there is something of good blood about him, and
something that is not: he is half thorough-bred and half _kedýsh_:’”
(The reader has already been told that _kedýshes_ are horses of no
pedigree, used by shopkeepers and pedlars for the road:) “and the man
was right,” added Lady Hester. “But, only think, what quickness of
observation these people have: you cannot deceive them; for, at a
glance, they discover at once what a man is. The girls, too, said
Captain ---- is not quite _akâber_:” (akâber means distinguished in
appearance) “he has a third part of a bad breed in him: and they were
right as well as the peasant; for his mother was a Miss ----, because
his father, disappointed in marrying Miss ----, whom Lord O---- danced
with at a ball and married the next day, went and married a young lady
well brought up, but not thorough bred. He took his marines to the
Emir Beshýr on horseback; horse marines, doctor!--and the natives to
this day talk with astonishment of the calves of the legs of one of
the officers who was with him.
“Did you ever know a better proof again how high descent will show
itself than in what I believe I told you about Count Rewisky? When
coming to see me from Beyrout, he was met by a common shepherd, of
whom he asked the road to Sayda. The count was dressed like a Bedouin
Arab, and was mounted on a shabby mare, of good blood, it is true, but
to all appearance not worth a hundred piasters. The shepherd, looking
at him, replied, ‘Sir, you don’t want to go to Sayda; it is the way to
Jôon you want to know. You are going to see the English _meleky_’
(queen); ‘for a man of your rank is fitting only to be her guest.’
This was exactly the case; he was coming to see me; and, mean and poor
as his appearance was, the peasant detected his noble blood at a
glance.
“That noble-minded man, doctor, was a perfect convert to my opinions.
He assured me that I had appeared to him at different times, and once
in particular he told me the following story. He had been in
conversation with the Emperor Alexander on a state affair of great
importance, and the Emperor had tried to induce him to do something
which the Count felt was the course he ought not to pursue as a man of
integrity, and he begged to be allowed some little time for
consideration before he acceded to the Emperor’s wishes. Alexander
dismissed him, hoping that, by the next day, when he would see him
again, the Count would recollect himself, and who he (the Emperor)
was. Count Rewisky, fretted almost to death, between the ruin he might
bring on his family, if he opposed the Emperor’s wishes, together with
the prospect of Siberia, and the stings of conscience, still wanted
resolution to follow the path of virtue. But at night, when he was in
bed, I, as he told me, appeared to him with a star on my forehead, and
said to him--‘Count, follow the road which conscience shows you is the
right one, and fear nothing.’ The next day, the Count presented
himself at the Emperor’s closet.--‘Who is that?’ said a voice from
within, and Alexander himself opened the door. He started, when he saw
the Count. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I trust you have got a little sense into
your head since yesterday: you have changed your mind, no doubt.’--‘My
mind, sire, remains unchanged,’ said the Count.... ‘What a fine black
horse that was I saw you riding two or three days ago--such a
beautiful creature!’ cried the Emperor, turning the conversation
suddenly; and he never after mentioned the subject to the Count.”
Sunday, May 13.--I did not see Lady Hester until three o’clock in the
afternoon. “Read to me,” she said, almost as soon as I had sat down,
“for I am too exhausted to talk.” I began, in the “Memoirs of a
Peeress,” at the chapter succeeding the burial of the squire, and she
listened for some time without saying a word. At last she interrupted
me, and observed that there was a great deal of good feeling in the
book. “If I were rich enough,” she continued, “I would invite Lady
Charlotte here--and she would come, for she has children, and would
like to show them the East. How pleasant it would be for me to have
such a companion for two or three hours a day! What a beautiful woman
she was! what an arm and hand! I have seen the whole Opera-House turn
to look at it on the front of the box. What a beautiful leg, too!--but
the handsomest foot I ever saw in man or woman was Lord Down’s. The
last time I ever met Lady Charlotte was walking with her brother in
Kensington Gardens: she walked so well!--not mincing, like some women,
nor striding, like others, but with a perfect use of her limbs,
unaffected and graceful. The duke, too, was like her in that respect:
his smile was incomparably sweet. I don’t know where they were going;
but they walked up to a party, seemed to talk and inquire about
somebody, and then walked away together. Her features were equally
charming with her person--with hair not _keteety_” (the Arabic for
hempy), “but approaching to a gold colour, and with a beautiful nose.”
The narrative proceeded to the remarks made on the Empress Josephine.
“There, you see,” exclaimed Lady Hester, interrupting me, “was I right
about Josephine? As soon as I saw that print of her, which you sent
me, I saw at once she was artful beyond measure: I told you so, you
know, some time ago. There are two or three lines about her face that
make me think she was satanic: as for being handsome, that she never
could have been. But Buonaparte, whatever Lady Charlotte may think,
had naturally something vulgar in his composition. He took a little
from Ossian, a little from Cæsar, a little from this book, a little
from that, and made up a something that was a good imitation of a
great man; but he was not in himself naturally great. As for killing
the Duke d’Enghein, if he had killed all the Bourbons for the good of
France, I should say nothing to that; but he had not much feeling.
Whenever he laments anybody, it is always for his own sake that he
does it. I don’t understand, either, a great man making complaints
about the room he slept in not being good enough for him, or
complaining of his champagne: I dare say he had slept in many a worse.
Had I been in his place, you would have seen how differently I should
have acted, and that such a man as Sir Hudson Lowe should never have
seen that he could have the power of vexing me. He was not what I
call a man of genius: a man of considerable talent he certainly was. A
man of genius is like a fine diamond: what I understand by a fine
diamond is one resembling a large drop of water--smooth and even on
every side, so that, whichever way you look at it, there is a blaze of
light that seems as if it would spread as you gaze on it. However, men
of genius have seldom a look that would tell you they are so; for what
a heavy-looking man Mr. Fox was! did you ever see him? Mr. Pitt,
again, had nothing remarkable in his appearance; Mr. Pitt’s was not a
face that gave one the idea of a clever man. As he walked through the
park, you would have taken him for a poet, or some such person, thin,
tall, and rather awkward; looking upwards as if his ideas were _en
air_, and not remarking what was passing around him: there was no
expression in him at such a moment. It was my grandfather who had the
fine look. The best picture of him is that at Chevening: he is
represented in his robes. The colour and fire in his eyes altogether
is very fine. Georgio pleased me, when (on his return from England) he
said, ‘Your face, my lady, is just like your grandpapa’s:’ for the
forehead, and the upper part of the nose, and the contour of the
countenance, I know are the same.”
As I read on about Mr. Fox’s illness and death, Lady Hester lay
absorbed in her reflections almost as if in a trance. Her pipe fell
from her hands, and the bowl of it, turning downwards, emptied its
lighted contents on the blanket of her bed. I had not observed this at
first, until the smell of burning made me look up, and I rose to knock
off the tobacco on the floor. A great round hole had been burnt; but
this was a common occurrence, and she never or seldom noticed such
accidents: my rising, however, disturbed her from her reverie, and she
spoke as follows:--[22]
“Mr. Fox, after Mr. Pitt’s death, sent two distinct messages to me,
offering me the means of securing an independence for life. One was by
Mr. Ward, who said plainly to me--‘You know, Lady Hester, you can
never live, with your present income, as you have been accustomed to
live; and, therefore, take my advice, and accept Mr. Fox’s civility.’
I told him that it was not from a personal disregard for Mr. Fox that
I refused; because, when I asked Mr. Pitt, upon one occasion, who was
the cleverest man in England, he answered, ‘Mr. Fox:’ but, as the
world only knew Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox as opposed to each other, I
should be considered as receiving benefits from Mr. Pitt’s enemy. ‘You
will live to repent your refusal,’ said Mr. Ward. I answered him that
might be, but if he talked for a year, he never would alter my
resolution.”
Lady Hester went on:--“Mr. Fox’s offer, doctor, was as good as ten
thousand pounds a year to me. He was to make me ranger of some park,
with a house; and then I was to have a house in town, and the rest was
to be done in the way they shuffle those things through the public
offices.
“By the other, I was offered apartments in” (I think she said)
“Windsor Castle: but then, you know, I must have been a courtier; and
I rather chose to live independent, on account of my two brothers. And
why did I take that house in Mountague Square” (she always called it
Mountague Square), “but on their account! When I furnished it, I had
got some things which I had saved up, and which were of no use in
Downing Street: these I made use of now; but there were people so
mean as to come and spy about me, and to form unfair conjectures as to
how I got them. ---- was one, who even went to a large shop, and, from
a kind of pencil drawing which he had made, inquired how much such a
lamp as he had seen at my house would cost. They told him seventy-five
guineas. This lamp had been given me by the Princess of Wales; but I
never satisfied their malignity by telling them: I let them talk on.
And, doctor, furnishing my house was no trifling expense to me. But I
thought it best that my brothers should have somewhere to invite their
friends to when in town; and I fitted up two bed-rooms and two
breakfast-rooms for them with every luxury they could have. Neither
were they furnished in a common way; for there were their libraries to
each, and everything customary in fashionable life. Why, James used to
have quite a levée; and breakfast was always on table from nine to
twelve, with tea and coffee, and chicken, and tongue, and cold meat,
and all that. Nash often used to say to me, ‘Lord, my lady, it is a
great pity to make all this waste: I am sure many of those officers
make their dinner off the colonel’s late breakfasts.’ But I used to
answer, ‘Never mind;’ because I thought some of those men, although
they were people I could not know, might be useful to him. He might
want a second, or there might be some other case, where one of these
persons might be sent when another could not, and so on. I do not say
I could not know them, from pride; but it would have been very awkward
for me to have had a red-faced captain coming up to me with, ‘My dear
Lady Hester, how do you do?’ Why, I recollect a very respectable
gentleman coming once into a box at the Opera, where I was seated with
some duchess and some great folks, I forget who, and claiming
acquaintance with me. I very civilly answered him with, ‘I hope you
are well, Mr. T----, how are all your friends in Cheshire?’ But,
doctor, to hear the tittering and the whispers of--‘Who is your dear
friend, Lady Hester?--really, the cut of his breeches is particularly
excellent!’ and another, in a simpering voice, asking, ‘What on earth
did the man wear so many watches for?’ and then some one crying, ‘Oh!
they are the buttons of his coat;’ and then a laugh, so that even I
could hardly stand it.
“So, doctor, what I did for James and Charles was to let them have a
place to see their acquaintances; and I every now and then gave a
dinner, to keep together for them a certain number of Mr. Pitt’s
particular friends. And then, in the summer, I would go down to some
retired spot in Wales, or somewhere, where I saved as much as I
could.[23]
“But,” she continued, “would you believe it? all the time I kept house
in Mountague Square, not one of these people, not one of my relations,
ever sent me a single thing to help me on. Ah! now and then a
sea-captain would offer me a pipe of wine: but I always put him
civilly off with a ‘Not now, but when you return from India,’ or some
such answer. And, from that time to this, these same relations would,
I believe, have let me starve, for aught they cared.
“You often wonder why I scold and scold, and try to make you bring up
your children to be useful to themselves and others, and neglect all
frivolous and empty appearances: but the reason is that the world is
so heartless, that if you came to want a shilling, you would not find
a friend to give you one. If I, who had thousands of friends and
acquaintances, have been left to linger here, deserted and neglected,
what would be the lot of a common person? Has any one of my relations,
any one of my friends, any one of those whom Mr. Pitt, and perhaps I,
enriched, come forward to help me?--not one.
“I have had a hard time for five-and-twenty years; but you will never
see me now in some of those convulsions about it I once used to have:
for, thank God, my spirits are as good, when my cough leaves me quiet,
as ever they were. And what is the use of trusting in man? No; my
reliance is in God; and, if it is his will to get me out of my
difficulties, he will do it in spite of them all. My only trouble is
sometimes about my debts: but I think all will be paid, and from
England too. So here I am, and we will now talk of something else: but
I must first tell you a little Eastern story.
“There was a man who lived in affluence at Damascus, surrounded by a
happy and prosperous family, when some reverses in business ruined his
fortune, and he was reduced to the necessity of exerting his talents
and industry in order to try to maintain his station in life. As he
wanted neither, he flattered himself that, from his numerous
connexions, he should soon re-establish his affairs: but a fatality
seemed to hang over him; for, just as he was about to begin business
again, the plague broke out in the city, and his wife and daughters
were among the victims.
“Unable to bear the sight of a place where such afflictions had
overtaken him, he removed to Beyrout, a seaport of some consequence
even at that time, although much more so now, and there, with his son
and a faithful servant, he opened a small shop, stocked with such
wares as he could procure without much advance of capital. But here
again he was unsuccessful; for, his son becoming answerable for the
debts of a man who had befriended him, and being unable to pay, his
father’s little all was disposed of to save him from prison, and by
degrees beggary overtook them. He then engaged himself as clerk to a
merchant, next turned schoolmaster, until his sight failing him, he at
last became stone-blind, and, in despair, he resolved to quit a
country, where, in spite of his exertions, his position every day had
grown worse and worse.
“Accordingly, he embarked with his son for Damietta in a vessel where
there were fourteen passengers besides himself, and among them two
divers, people who get a living on these coasts by diving for sponges,
which they bring up from the bottom of the sea. It was the winter
season, and the weather proved tempestuous. In crossing the bar of
Damietta, where the current of the Nile, opposed to the waves of the
sea, often makes a dangerous surf, the vessel foundered, and every
soul perished, except the old man, who, when the others took to the
boat, being blind, was unable to shift for himself, and clung to the
wreck, from which he was removed the day afterwards.
“Struck with the singular decrees of Providence, that an old blind man
should have escaped the dangers of the sea where even divers were
drowned, he piously raised his eyes to Heaven and said, ‘I see where
my fault has been: I have relied on my own exertions and the help of
man, when I should have trusted in God alone. Henceforth I will put my
faith in him, and nobody else.’ His peculiar case became known among
the merchants of Damietta, and a subscription was made for him; so
that, in a few days, he had more money at his disposal than all his
friends, and all his exertions, when he looked to them alone, had ever
procured for him. His serenity of mind returned: a small but
sufficient subsistence was secured to him; and he spent the remainder
of his days in pious gratitude to the Almighty, whose wholesome
chastisements had brought him to a proper sense of the futility of
human plans, unless we confide in his goodness to second our
endeavours.”
FOOTNOTES:
[18] The late Countess Stanhope.
[19] “Lord Wellesley returned from his glorious
administration at a very critical period in our
parliamentary history. Mr. Pitt was stricken with the
malady which proved fatal--a typhus fever, caught
from some accidental infection, when his system was
reduced by the stomach complaints he long laboured
under. He soon appointed a time when his friend might
come to see him. This, their last interview, was in
the villa on Putney Heath, where he died a few days
after. Lord Wellesley called upon me there many years
after: it was then occupied by my brother-in-law,
Mr. Eden, whom I was visiting. His lordship showed
me the place where those illustrious friends sat.
Mr. Pitt was, he said, much emaciated and enfeebled,
but retained his gaiety and his constitutionally
sanguine disposition; he expressed his confident
hopes of recovery. In the adjoining room he lay a
corpse the ensuing week; and it is a singular and
melancholy circumstance, resembling the stories told
of William the Conqueror’s deserted state at his
decease, that, some one in the neighbourhood having
sent a message to inquire after Mr. Pitt’s state, he
found the wicket open, then the door of the house,
and, nobody answering the bell, he walked through the
rooms till he reached the bed on which the minister’s
body lay lifeless, the sole tenant of the mansion of
which the doors, a few hours before, were darkened by
crowds of suitors alike obsequious and importunate,
the vultures whose instinct haunts the carcases only
of living ministers.”--_Lord Brougham’s Historical
Sketches._
[20] Lord Malmesbury cites Lady M.’s account of Mr. Pitt’s
last words as follows:--“Lady M. who saw Sir Walter
Farquhar three days after Pitt’s death, and received
from him an account of his last hours, said that
almost the last words he spoke intelligibly were these
to himself, and more than once repeated, ‘Oh! what
times! oh, my country!’”
[21] Here must be some mistake in my notes; for Lady
Cobham’s might have been a family picture, if the term
were applied to Lord Chatham’s residence; but how
could it be so, as belonging to the Wiltshire estate?
However, I let it stand as it was written at the time.
[22] Much has been written in prose and verse on the
advantages and mischief of smoking tobacco. Tissot,
among others, filled a volume to prove that half
the maladies of mankind may be traced to the use of
tobacco. But when some millions of people, male and
female, as in Turkey, smoke from morning till night,
and live, florid and robust, to a good old age, it may
be questioned whether Tissot showed the same sagacity
in his nosological researches on this as on other
subjects. All I can say is that Lady Hester gave her
sanction to the practice by the habitual use of the
long oriental pipe, which use dated from the year
1817, or thereabouts.
As she had now kept her bed for many weeks, we will
describe her there, when, lying with her pipe in her
mouth, talking on politics, philosophy, morality,
religion, or on any other theme, with her accustomed
eloquence, and closing her periods with a whiff that
would have made the Duchess of Rutland stare with
astonishment, could she have risen from her tomb to
have seen her quondam friend, the brilliant ornament
of a London drawing-room, clouded in fumes so that her
features were sometimes invisible. Now, this altered
individual had not a covering to her bed that was not
burnt into twenty holes by the sparks and ashes that
had fallen from her pipe; and, had not these coverings
been all woollen, it is certain that, on some unlucky
night, she must have been consumed, bed and all.
Her bed-room, at the end of every twenty-four hours, was
strewed with tobacco and ashes, to be swept away and
again strewed as before; and it was always strongly
impregnated with the fumes.
The finest tobacco the country could produce, and the
cleanest pipes (for she had a new one almost as often
as a fop puts on new gloves), could hardly satisfy
her fastidiousness; and I have known her footman get
as many scoldings as there were days in the week on
that score. From curiosity, I once counted a bundle
of pipes, thrown by after a day or two’s use, any one
of which would have fetched five or ten shillings
in London, and there were one hundred and two. The
woods she most preferred were jessamine, rose, and
cork. She never smoked cherry-wood pipes, from their
weight, and because she liked cheaper ones, which
she could renew oftener. She never arrived at that
perfectability, which is seen in many smokers, of
swallowing the fumes, or of making them pass out at
her nostrils. The pipe was to her what a fan was or
is in a lady’s hand--a means of having something to
do. She forgot it when she had a letter to write, or
any serious occupation. It is not so with the studious
and literary man, who fancies it helps reflection or
promotes inspiration.
[23] About the time of the Duke of York’s affair with
Mrs. Clarke, Lady Hester went into Wales, and, in an
inn at Builth, she got round her the exciseman, the
apothecary, the landlord, and some of the village
farmers. “Pray, Mr. Innkeeper,” she said, “how should
you like a painted wife, with half-a-dozen fine
gentlemen about her, shaking the hair-powder on her
face? Or is it agreeable, Mr. M., to have the window
opened at dinner-time, in a cold November day, to let
out the smells of a parcel of dogs? I suppose, if you
had an uncomfortable home, you would think yourself
at liberty to take a little pleasure elsewhere.” With
speeches of that sort she won them all over to the
duke’s side. To hear her relate the story herself,
with her mimickry of the men and the landlady, to each
of whom she addressed some question, which brought
the case home to their own feelings, was infinitely
amusing: it was one of the best scenes I ever heard
her act.