EXCURSION IN THE HOLY LAND
WHAT did Lady Hester intend to do in Syria and in Palestine?
She did not intend to seek oblivion, for the necessity of getting
herself talked about, and the thirst for a celebrity which she strove
vainly to retain, formed part of her nature, and she never got rid of
it.
She resembled closely her grandfather, Lord Chatham. She had not only
his grey eyes, which anger darkened strangely, and of which no one was
able, at that time, to stand the glance, but also the inexorable will,
the terrible passions, the continuous tension of the mind in the
direction of one single object without troubling about the obstacles to
be overthrown or the means employed to conquer them.
Grattan, in the curious portrait which he has traced of the first Pitt,
wrote: "The Minister was alone. Modern degeneracy had not touched him.
An old-fashioned inflexibility governed this character which knew
neither how to alter nor to become supple.... Creator, destroyer,
reformer, he had received from Heaven all that was required to convoke
men into a social group, to break their bonds or to reform them...."
Lady Hester had inherited these astonishing gifts, which her
unconventional education had still further strengthened. Under the eyes
of her frightened governesses who had abandoned the impossible task of
making her a young girl like the others, without the knowledge of her
father and her stepmother, who, besides, were not interested in the
matter, she sprouted forth luxuriantly. In the same way as her figure
and her "little" foot, never constrained, developed magnificently, her
luminous intelligence, her originality, her energy, her rough
clear-sightedness forcibly asserted themselves. Never contradicted, she
might be proud of her qualities and of her extraordinary faults, proud
also of that indomitable character which she had alone formed and which
never inclined before anyone, ignorant at once of the art of changing
principles or that of humouring public opinion by half-loyal measures or
proceedings.
Amongst all those wonderful women in which the eighteenth century,
according to Burke, was so fertile, Lady Hester Stanhope has a place
apart. The Duchess of Rutland, the Duchess of Gordon, the Duchess of
Devonshire, Mrs. Bouverie, the Marchioness of Salisbury, Mrs. Crewe,
Lady Bessborough, Lady Liverpool and many others, who had on their side
fortune, beauty, charm, fascination and grace, cannot be compared to
her. Morally and physically, Lady Hester is outside the picture. She is
the echo, not only of the feminine character of her time, but of the
characteristic tendencies of her age. Preoccupation with the Eastern
problem, misanthropy, taste for action, hatred of hypocrisy, love of
social questions and contempt for the people, were imperfectly embodied,
but they were embodied all the same.
Her misfortune was to be a woman. So long as her uncle Pitt had been
near her, she had been able to imagine that she had changed her sex. She
had lived, acted and thought as a man, but as a man who would have been
a beautiful woman and whom the admiration of the crowd retains far from
the combats of politics and the struggle of life.
William Pitt had certainly been, according to the admirable phrase of
Mirabeau, "the Minister of Preparations." He had seen the French
Revolution approaching, and long before all others he had understood the
danger of it. Joining then the fate of France--for which he entertained
neither antipathy nor hatred--with that of the Revolution, he engaged
England in that formidable struggle of which he could not foresee the
issue. Killed by "the glance of Austerlitz," he died too soon to reap
the fruit of his wonderful perspicacity. He died, above all, too soon
for Hester Stanhope, whose future he had not assured. There did not
fail, certainly, statesmen behind whom a pretty woman was bestirring
herself, champion of their policy, to cite only that charming Georgina
Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire, who displayed in Fox's favour an
indomitable energy, not fearing to splash about in the mud and kiss
butchers with her patrician lips in order to exercise the omnipotence of
her persuasion over the Westminster shopkeepers at the time of the
famous elections of 1784. So well that Pitt was to write to Wilberforce,
who was anxious: "Westminster is going well in spite of the Duchess of
Devonshire and other women of the people, but it is not known yet when
the voting will be finished."
But the statesman chosen was only a screen which permitted the spirit of
intrigue which breathed amongst the great ladies of the English
aristocracy to have free course. For Lady Hester, William Pitt was the
reason of existence. When he disappeared, what was she able to do?
He said to his niece, after having lived a long time with her, that he
did not know whether she were more at her ease in the whirlpool of
pleasures and fêtes, in the perplexity of politics or in the most
profound solitude. Sometimes, in fact, Lady Hester went into Society
eagerly and carried into the world her extraordinary brilliancy, her
satire, humour and her biting wit, feared almost as much as the strokes
of Gilray's pencil. Sometimes, she shut herself up with her uncle,
serving him as secretary, astonishing him by the correctness of her
judgment, by the comprehension and knowledge of men which this child of
twenty years possessed, and without which the finest gifts of the
understanding are reduced to sterility and do not descend from the
domain of pure ideas to that of reality. Sometimes, she fled to Walmer
Castle; and there, occupying herself in causing trees to be planted, in
designing gardens, she bathed in silence and meditation. But now the
world, she was surfeited with it!... She had just experienced the
fragility of its infatuations. Politics! She was henceforth outside
everything, and she had to witness the triumph of Pitt's enemies, the
forgetfulness of his services. This power of money would have been
necessary in order to struggle against the coteries of the drawing-room,
the personal enmities which she had created. And she had only the
pension of £1200 granted her in accordance with Pitt's last wish. There
remained retirement. For the conquered, retirement is unendurable in the
places which were witnesses of their past successes, unless they are
surrounded by dear friends whose presence consoles them and makes them
forget. Lord Camelford, whom she had thought for a moment of marrying,
had quarrelled with the Pitts over a matter of money; he had given his
sister--which assuredly he had the right to do--an estate which Lord
Chatham hoped to inherit. Sir John Moore had just been killed. She
dreamed of far-off solitudes, and she thought of undertaking an
expedition which would cover her name with glory and whose fame would
reach England.
Horace Walpole, an unsparing critic of his contemporaries, said of
Chatham that he was "master of all the arts of dissimulation, slave of
his passions, and that he simulated even extravagance to insure
success." Under the smoke of gossip and tittle-tattle he hatches always
a fire of truth. The second part of the portrait can apply as well to
the granddaughter as to the grandfather. Lady Hester was enslaved by a
redoubtable passion: ambition, and ambition without object. Well women
incarnate almost always their aspirations, their desires, their
admirations and their hatreds in living beings and real things: concrete
which, after being the symbol of the abstract, is confounded with it to
make only one. Lady Hester did not escape the common rule; solitude
became little by little the means of getting herself still talked about;
then became peopled by escorts, caravans and Arab chiefs; her ambition
was not quicker than hatred of her enemies and disgust of England, and
she determined upon this journey across the unknown East, journey which
would serve at once her need of solitude and of celebrity in astonishing
the world. Only, she possessed--as much on the side of Pitt as of
Stanhope--a slight taste for eccentricity. She had no need to simulate
an extravagance, which was natural to her; she was inclined to do
nothing like other people.
Unconsciously also, a mysterious reason urged Lady Hester to choose
Syria, and particularly Jerusalem, for the theatre of her exploits. It
was nothing less than a prediction of Brothers. A figure strange, this
Brothers, who created a sensation towards the end of the eighteenth
century.
A former lieutenant in the Navy, his imagination became disordered in
meditating upon the most obscure passages of the Apocalypse; the endless
leisure which voyages permit are truly pernicious for feeble minds....
He soon abandoned his career and modestly assumed the title of "Nephew
of God and Prince of the Hebrews," consecrating himself entirely to the
divine mission which he believed he had received. He lived in an
agreeable hallucination. "After which, being in a vision," said he, "I
saw the angel of God by my side, and Satan, who was walking carelessly
in the streets of London." Even when quite mad the English preserve a
sense of humour!
So long as Brothers contented himself with predicting the approaching
destruction of London and the restoration of the Kingdom of Judea, the
Government did not trouble, but the situation changed when the vague
prophecies were transformed into imperious advice to the King:
"The Eternal God commands me to make known to you, George III, King of
England, that immediately after the revelation of my person to the
Hebrews of London as their prince, and to all the nations as their
governor, you must lay down your crown, in order that all your power and
your authority may cease."
But no time was lost in sending this troublesome person to Bedlam.
Before going, he bestirred himself so much and to such good purpose to
obtain a visit from Lady Hester that this singular request reached the
ears of Pitt's niece. Curious to make the acquaintance of the prophet,
she hastened to accede to his wish. Brothers solemnly predicted to her
that "she would go one day to Jerusalem, and would lead the Chosen
People; that on her arrival in the Holy Land there would be upheavals in
the world and that she would pass seven years in the desert." While she
was rusticating at Brousse, two Englishmen, who were passing through it
and who knew the prophecy, amused themselves about her great future.
"You will go to Jerusalem, Lady Hester," said they; "you will go.
Esther, Queen of the Jews! Hester, Queen of the Jews!"
Did the coincidence of the names strike her, or did this programme
fascinate her by its novelty? Did she consider Brothers as an
inoffensive lunatic or as a visionary of genius? She was not yet the
sorceress of Djoun, believing firmly in magicians and enchanted
serpents. But many sensible men, such as William Sharp, who had even
given to the world a fine engraving of the prophet, with these words:
"Believing firmly that this is the man chosen of God, I have engraved
his portrait," and as Mr. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, an Indian official
and translator of the code of Geptoo laws, if it please you, had
publicly proclaimed themselves his disciples.
However that may be, Lady Hester took, with the handsome Colonel Bruce,
the road to Jerusalem, wearing the costume of the Egyptian Mamelukes:
short bolero of red satin, purple tunic without sleeves, gallooned with
gold, wide trousers of which the multiple folds had the thickness of
drapery, cashmere shawl twisting like a turban around her head. All that
formed a symphony of red, which blazed forth when she partially opened
the great white burnous which hid her entirely during her ramblings on
horseback. They only proceeded so far as Jaffa; Jaffa which bathes the
foot of its dirty houses in the sea, and which the pilgrims returning
from Jerusalem, after the Easter festival, fill with confusion and
noise, transforming the little dead town of fishermen into a comical
fair in which all the idioms of creation are entangled.
They were received by the English consular agent. He was a person called
Damiani, a compromise between the patriarch and the Italian merchant,
but in which the patriarch held the upper hand, an active man of sixty,
wearing a singular costume: an old Eastern robe of sky-blue, lined with
ermine, dirty trousers from which burst out two grey legs, head-dress
_à la française_, that is to say, hair worn in a thick iron-grey
queue, and above all ... above all, an immense three-cornered hat,
polished by the years, soaked with sweat and dust since the Egyptian
campaign. Three-cornered hat which was to amuse royally the Princess of
Wales during her famous journey to Jerusalem, and which was to make
Alphonse de Lamartine smile gently twenty years later.
Mohammed Aga, Governor of Jaffa, believing that it was an affair of some
pious lady of little importance, was hardly civil and did not facilitate
in any way the organisation of the caravan. Lady Hester never forgave
him.
On May 18, 1812, eleven camels and thirteen horses left the town,
conveying the travellers, save Pearce, who was keeping apart. By Gudd
and Ramle they made their way towards the Holy City. It was
harvest-time. Armed with short reaping-hooks, the peasants cut the
barley, fresh barley which formed in the arid landscape islets of shade
and points of velvet on which the eye lingered. Naked gold-coloured
children followed the horses to offer some ears of corn in exchange for
a serious backsheesh, and the doctor, in throwing them the piastres,
declared sadly that no people knew better how to extort presents.
The mountains assumed a severe aspect. The path plunged into the rock
like a nail into a wall. They reached a village amongst the fig-trees,
where they were courteously received by the king of the mountain, the
great sheik Abu Ghosh, who held in his hands the keys of Jerusalem.
Detested by the surrounding pachas, feared by the travellers, he lived
in independent existence in the midst of his hardy and brave
mountaineers. Imposing dues at his pleasure upon the caravans, holding
the pilgrims to ransom, levying taxes upon the convents, compelling the
monks to bring out their little savings, he reigned without dispute over
the mountains of Judea, from Ramle to Jerusalem, from Hebron to Jericho.
Abu Ghosh was one of the most astonished of men to see a European woman
arrive, surrounded by so numerous a suite, mounted on excellent horses.
Ordinarily, the travellers contented themselves with wretched animals
and clothed themselves in rags to pass unnoticed. The sheik, delighted
to make the acquaintance of an English princess and fascinated by the
haughty dignity of her manners, treated her very well. His four wives
hastened to cook a delicate supper: vine-leaves filled with meat,
stuffed pumpkins, roast mutton, chicken swimming in an ocean of boiled
rice.
And the doctor thought sadly that this modest repast was the highest
point of the culinary art of the Arabs.
When night came, Abu Ghosh installed himself with his pipes and his
wives at the corner of the fire and watched over the sleep of the woman
who had committed herself to his care. Early in the morning they
separated as friends, and one of the sheik's brothers protected Lady
Hester so far as Jerusalem.
Monotony of a poor land, and all at once, like a town of clouds, an
apparition of the Middle Ages, loopholed walls and belfries, belfries
and cupolas!... After having vigorously driven away the dragomans of the
Franciscan monastery who clung to them tenaciously, and pointed them out
in advance to Turkish cupidity, Lady Hester wandered into Jerusalem as
her fancies dictated.
Accompanied by twenty horsemen, she made her way to Kengi-Ahmed,
governor of the town. The seraglio partly opened its grated windows,
eyelids closed by an unconquerable sleep on the Mosque of Omar, the holy
mosque with its Persian and blue mosaics surrounded by gardens of
cypress-trees. She went to the Holy Sepulchre, and her visit was not
characterised by the meditation usually associated with a pilgrimage,
not even with a pilgrimage undertaken for artistic purposes. The monks
had, contrary to their custom, closed the doors of the church. They
solemnly opened them and came in procession to meet her carrying lighted
candles. The crowd, curious to see the spectacle, collected and
vociferated in chorus. The police kept it at a distance by blows from
cudgels. Lady Hester relieved the necessities of a Mameluke who had
escaped the previous year from the Cairo massacre. When Emin Bey--that
was his name--had heard the first shots fired by the Albanian soldiers
massed on the walls, when the great slaughter had begun, he had
comprehended that his only chance of safety lay in headlong flight. Then
he had driven his spurs into his horse's flanks, and raising the animal,
which was rearing and neighing with terror, he had leaped from the
platform facing the citadel to the foot of the ramparts--a leap of
forty-five or sixty feet. He had afterwards succeeded in reaching
Jerusalem by the desert, not without having been first overpowered and
robbed by the guides who conducted him. Since that time he had stooped
to live on alms.
She sauntered in the infamous alleys of the Ghetto (Was it necessary to
facilitate Brothers' task?), meeting children oldish-looking and
shrivelled, the Jews of Central Europe with their orange-coloured
greatcoats, wearing their tall skin caps and their abject air.
On May 30, Lady Stanhope, after a visit to Bethlehem, village of Judea,
over which hover the glad memories of the Christ, where long lines of
women defile like shadows, wearing with serene gravity their horned
head-dresses and their trailing blue robes, reached St. Jean d'Acre by
way of Atlitt beach, on which are engulfed the last vestiges of Pelerin
Castle, and Haifa in the shadow of Mount Carmel. The road soon became
more frequented. It was marked out by carcases. It seemed a giant
abattoir. Dead horses, of which the inhabitants of the town had got rid;
camels which had fallen exhausted on returning from a distant journey
sick asses despatched on the spot. From this charnel-house issued an
acrid and warm odour which turned the stomach. As the caravan passed,
clouds of blue flies buzzed by in clusters, and yellow dogs fled
growling and watched from a distance these intruders who came to share
in their festival banquet. The sun burned with a malicious pleasure
these heads half gnawed away, these eviscerated bodies, this greenish
flesh. And the old bones, already picked clean by the jackals and washed
by the rains, sparkled here and there, like great white flowers on the
fields of corruption.