# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Stanhope, Lady Hester

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STANHOPE, LADY HESTER,
Was the oldest daughter of the Earl of Stanhope, well known for his eccentricities and democratic sentiments. Her mother was sister of the celebrated William Pitt. Lady Hester early lost her mother, and, under the nominal guidance of a young and gay step-mother, she received an ill-directed and inappropriate education. She was very precocious—the genius of the family, and the favourite of her father, with whom she took great liberties. She relates herself, that upon one occasion, when the earl, in a democratic fir, put down his carriage, she brought him round again by an amusing practical appeal. "I got myself a pair of stilts," she said, and out I stumped down a dirty lane, where my father, who was always spying about through a glass, could see me." The experiment had the desired effect; her father questioned her good-humouredly upon her new mode of locomotion, and the result was a new carriage. Unlike her father, Lady Hester was a violent aristocrat, boasting of her nobility, and priding herself upon those mental and physical peculiarities which she considered the marks of high birth. At an early age, she established herself in the family of her uncle, Mr. Pitt, for the purpose, she asserted, of guarding the interests of her family during a perilous political crisis. She resided with Mr. Pitt till his death, courted and flattered by the most distinguished people in England, and enjoying all the advantages which her position as mistress of his house afforded her. She represents herself as having possessed considerable influence with Mr. Pitt; sharing his confidence, and exercising a large amount of control over the patronage belonging to his post.
After the death of Mr. Pitt, she obtained from George the Third a pension of fifteen hundred pounds. On this she tried to maintain her former rank and style; but, finding it impossible, she removed to Wales, and finally, in 1810, to the East. In 1813, she settled near Sidon; and soon afterwards removed to Djoun, her celebrated Syrian residence. Here she erected extensive buildings for herself and suite, in the Oriental style, with several gardens laid out with good taste. Money goes very far in the East, and the munificence which she exhibited, added to her well-known rank, acquired for her an influence which her personal character soon established; and she exercised a degree of power and control over the neighbouring tribes and their chiefs, for which their ignorance and superstition can alone account. Lady Hester here promulgated those peculiar religious sentiments which she continued to hold to the last. The words of St. John, "But there is one who shall come after me, who is greater than I am," she with a most extraordinary carelessness attributes to Christ; and upon this promise she founded her belief in the coming of another Messiah, whose herald she professed to be. She kept in a luxurious stable, carefully attended to by slaves devoted solely to that purpose, two mares, one of which, possessing a natural defect in the back, she avowed was born ready saddled for the Messiah; the other, kept sacred for herself, she was to ride upon at his right hand, when the coming took place.
It is impossible to say what Lady Hester's faith really was. She professed to believe in astrology, magic, necromancy, demonology, ​and in various extravagances peculiarly her own. This mysticism was well adapted to the people among whom she dwelt, and may in a great measure have been assumed to impose upon and confirm her influence with them. Possessing in a high degree the spirit of intrigue, she exercised her powers in fomenting or allaying the disturbances among the neighbouring tribes. With the Emir Beshyr, prince of the Druses, whom she braved, she kept up an unceasing hostility; her enmity was also violently displayed towards the whole consular body, who she said "were intended to regulate merchants, and not to interfere with or control nobility." On the other hand, she was profuse in her bounty, and charitable to the poor and afflicted of every faith. Her residence was a place of refuge to all the persecuted and distressed who sought her protection. When news arrived of the battle of Navarino, all the Franks in Sayda fled for refuge to her dwelling; and, after the siege of Acre, she relieved and sheltered several hundred persons. Nor was her generosity confined to acts like these; she lent large sums to chiefs and individuals, who, in their extremity, applied to her; and, to save whole families from the miseries of the conscription, she furnished the requisite fines. This profuse expenditure, added to the charge of her household, which was seldom composed of less than forty persons, without counting the various hangers-on from without, soon crippled her means. She took up money at an enormous interest, and became involved in pecuniary difficulties. Upon application made by one of her creditors to the British government, in 1838, Lord Palmerston issued an order to the consuls, forbidding them to sign the necessary certificates of Lady Hester's still being alive; and this high-handed measure being carried out, she was hence-forward deprived of all use of her pension.
Tormented by her creditors, and enraged at the treatment she had received from her own government. Lady Hester renounced her allegiance, refusing ever again to receive her pension. She walled up her gateway, determining to have no communication with any one without; and dismissed her physician, though she was in an advanced stage of pulmonary disease. Dr. M. left her in August, 1838. Her last letter to him is dated May, 1839; and on the 23rd. of June, 1839, attended by a few slaves, and without a single European or Christian near her, she breathed her last, aged sixty-three years, Mr. Moore, the English consul at Beyrout, and Mr. Thompson, an American missionary, hearing of her death, proceeded to Djoun, and performed the last sad offices to her remains, burying her at midnight in her own garden.