# Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope/Volume 2/Chapter 1

MEMOIRS
OF
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
CHAPTER I.
Lady Hester Stanhope's descent—The Author's first introduction to her—Her reasons for quitting England—Anecdotes of her childhood and womanhood—Her motives for going to live with Mr. Pitt—Mr. Pitt's opinion of Tom Paine—Lady Hester noticed by George III.—Anecdote of Sir A. H.—Of Lord G.—Of Lord A.—Impertinent questioners—Anecdote of the Marquis * * *—Mr. Pitt's confidence in Lady Hester's discretion—and in her devotion to him—His opinion of her cleverness, and of her military and diplomatic abilities—Her tirade against doctors—Her reflections on prudery—Anecdote of General Moore—Of the Duc de Blacas, &c.
It probably will be known to most readers that Lady Hester Stanhope was the daughter of Charles Earl of Stanhope by Hester, his first wife, sister to Mr. William Pitt, and daughter of the first Earl of Chatham. He had issue by this first wife—three daughters—Hester, Griselda, and Lucy. The earl ​married a second wife, by whom he had three sons: the present earl; Charles, killed at Corunna; and James, who died at Caen Wood, the villa of his father-in-law, the Earl of Mansfield.
I became acquainted with Lady Hester Stanhope by accident. The chance that introduced me to her was as follows:—I was going to Oxford to take my degree; and, having missed the coach at the inn, I was obliged to hurry after it on foot, for the want of a hackney-coach, as far as Oxford-road turnpike, where I overtook it, and mounted the box in a violent perspiration. The day was bitterly cold, and, before night, I found myself attacked with a very severe catarrh. The merriment of a college life left me little time to pay attention to it; and, after about fifteen days, I returned with a troublesome cough, to London, where I took to my bed.
Mr. H. Cline, jun., (the son of the celebrated surgeon) being my friend, and hearing of my indisposition, came to inquire after my health very frequently. One day, sitting by my bedside, he asked me if I should like to go abroad. I told him it had been the earliest wish of my life. He said, Lady Hester Stanhope (the niece of Mr. Pitt) had applied to his father for a doctor, and that, if I liked, he would propose me, giving me to understand from his father that, although the salary would be small, I ​should, if my services proved agreeable to Lady Hester, be ultimately provided for. I thanked him, and said, that to travel with such a distinguished woman would please me exceedingly. The following day he intimated that his father had already spoken about me, and that her ladyship would see me. In about four days I was introduced to her, and she closed with me immediately, inviting me to dine with her that evening. Afterwards, I saw her several times, and subsequently joined her at Portsmouth, whence, after waiting a fortnight, we sailed in the Jason, the Hon. Captain King, for Gibraltar.
The reasons which Lady Hester assigned for leaving England were grounded chiefly on the narrowness of her income. Mr. Pitt's written request, on his deathbed, that she might have £1500 a year, had been complied with only in part, owing to the ill offices of certain persons at that time in the privy-council, and she received clear, after deductions for the property-tax were made, no more that £1200. At first, after Mr. Pitt's death, she established herself in Montague Square, with her two brothers, and she there continued to see much company. "But," she would say, "a poor gentlewoman, doctor, is the worst thing in the world. Not being able to keep a carriage, how was I to go out? If I used a hackney-coach, some spiteful person would be sure to mention it:—'Who ​do you think I saw yesterday in a hackney-coach? I wonder where she could be driving alone down those narrow streets?' If I walked with a footman behind me, there are so many women of the town now who flaunt about with a smart footman, that I ran the hazard of being taken for one of them; and, if I went alone, either there would be some good-natured friend who would hint that Lady Hester did not walk out alone for nothing; or else I should be met in the street by some gentleman of my acquaintance, who would say, ‘God bless me, Lady Hester! where are you going alone?—do let me accompany you:' and then it would be said, ‘Did you see Lady Hester crossing Hanover Square with such a one? he looked monstrous foolish: I wonder where they had been.’ So that, from one thing to another, I was obliged to stop at home entirely: and this it was that hurt my health so much, until Lord Temple, at last, remarked it. For he said to me one day, ‘How comes it that a person like you, who used to be always on horseback, never rides out?'—‘Because I have no horse.'—'Oh! if that is all, you shall have one to-morrow.'—'Thank you, my lord; but, if I have a horse, I must have two; and, if I have two, I must have a groom; and, as I do not choose to borrow, if you please, we will say no more about it.’—‘ Oh! but I will send my horses, and come and ride out with you every day.’ ​However, I told him no: for how could a man who goes to the House every day, and attends committees in a morning, be able to be riding every day with me? And I know what it is to lend and borrow horses and carriages. When I used to desire my carriage to go and fetch any friend, my coachman was sure to say, 'My lady, the horses want shoeing;' or the footman would come in with a long face, 'My lady, John would like to go and see his sister to-day, if you please:' there was always some excuse. All this considered, I made up my mind to remain at home."
For some time did Lady Hester remain in Montague Square: but her brother and General Moore, having fallen at the battle of Corunna, I believe she grew entirely disgusted with London; and, breaking up her little establishment, she went down into Wales, and resided in a small cottage at Builth, somewhere near Brecon, in a room not more than a dozen feet square. Here she amused herself in curing the poor, in her dairy, and in other rustic occupations: until, not finding herself so far removed from her English acquaintances but that they were always coming across her and breaking-in upon her solitude, she resolved on going abroad, up the Mediterranean.
Arrived at Gibraltar, she was lodged at the governor’s, in the convent, where she remained some ​time; and then embarked for Malta in the Cerberus, Captain Whitby, who afterwards distinguished himself in Captain Hoste’s victory up the Adriatic. At Malta, she lived, at first, in the house of Mr. Fernandez: afterwards, General Oakes offered Lady Hester the palace of St. Antonio, where we resided during the remainder of her stay.
We departed for Zante in the month of June or July, 1810. From Zante, we passed over to Patras, where she bade adieu to English customs for the rest of our pilgrimage. Traversing Greece, we visited Constantinople, and, from Constantinople, sailed for Egypt. At Rhodes we were shipwrecked, and I there lost my journals, among which were many curious anecdotes that would have thrown much light on her ladyship’s life. I shall relate what I have since gathered, without observing any order, but always, as far as I could recollect, using her very expressions; and, in many instances, there will be found whole conversations, where her manner would be recognized by those who were acquainted with it. I shall sometimes preface them with observations of my own.
Speaking of her sisters, Lady Hester would say: "My sister Lucy was prettier than I was, and Griselda more clever; but I had, from childhood, a cheerfulness and sense of feeling that always made me ​a favourite with my father. She exemplified this by an anecdote of the second Lady Stanhope, her step-mother, referring to the time when her father, in one of his republican fits, put down his carriages and horses.
"Poor Lady Stanhope," she said, "was quite unhappy about it; but, when the whole family was looking glum and sulky, I thought of a way to set all right again. I got myself a pair of stilts, and out I stumped down a dirty lane, where my father, who was always spying about through his glass, could see me. So, when I came home, he said to me, 'Why, little girl, what have you been about? Where was it I saw you going upon a pair of—the devil knows what?—eh, girl?'—'Oh! papa, I thought, as you had laid down your horses, I would take a walk through the mud on stilts; for you know, papa, I don’t mind mud or anything—’tis poor Lady Stanhope who feels these things; for she has always been accustomed to her carriage, and her health is not very good.'—'What's that you say, little girl?' said my father, turning his eyes away from me; and, after a pause, 'Well, little girl, what would you say if I bought a carriage again for Lady Stanhope?'—'Why, papa, I would say it was very kind of you.'—'Well, well,' he observed, 'we will see; but, damn it! no armorial bearings.' So, some time afterwards, down came a new carriage and new ​horses from London; and thus, by a little innocent frolic, I made all parties happy again."
Lady Hester continued. "Lucy's disposition was sweet, and her temper excellent: she was like a Madonna. Griselda was otherwise, and always for making her authority felt. But I, even when I was only a girl, obtained and exercised, I can't tell how, a sort of command over them. They never came to me, when I was in my room, without ending first to know whether 1 would see them.
"Mr. Pitt never liked Griselda; and, when he found she was jealous of me, he disliked her still more. She stood no better in the opinion of my father, who bore with Lucy—ah! just in this way—he would say to her, to get rid of her, 'Now papa is going to study, so you may go to your room then, when the door was shut, he would turn to me, 'Now, we must talk a little philosophy and then, with his two legs ​stuck upon the sides of the grate, he would begin—'Well, well,' he would cry, after I had talked a little, 'that is not bad reasoning, but the basis is bad.'
“My father always checked any propensity to finery in dress. If any of us happened to look better than usual in a particular hat or frock, he was sure to have it put away the next day, and to have something coarse substituted in its place.
"When I was young, I was always the first to promote my sister’s enjoyments. Whether in dancing, or in riding on horseback, or at a feast, or in anything that was to make them happy, I always had something to do or propose that increased their pleasure. In like manner, afterwards, in guiding them in politics, in giving them advice for their conduct in private life, in forwarding them in the world, I was a means of much good to them. It was always Hester, and Hester, and Hester; in short, I appeared to be the favourite of them all; and yet now, see how they treat me!
"I was always, as I am now, full of activity, from my infancy. At two years old, I made a little hat. You know there was a kind of straw hat with the crown taken out, and in its stead a piece of satin was put in, all puffed up. Well! I made myself a hat like that; and it was thought such a thing for a child of two years old to do, that my grandpapa had a ​little paper box made for it, and had it ticketed with the day of the month and my age.
"Just before the French revolution broke out, the ambassador from Paris to the English Court was the Comte d’Adhémar. That nobleman had some influence on my fate as far as regarded my wish to go abroad, which, however, I was not able to gratify until many years afterwards. I was but seven or eight years old when I saw him; and when he came by invitation to pay a visit to my papa at Chevening, there was such a fuss with the fine footmen with feathers, in their hats, and the count’s bows and French manners, and I know not what, that, a short time afterwards, when I was sent to Hastings with the governess and my sisters, nothing would satisfy me but I must go and see what sort of a place France was. So I got into a boat one day unobserved, that was floating close to the beach, let loose the rope myself, and off I went. Yes, doctor, I literally pushed a boat off, and meant to go, as I thought, to France. Did you ever hear of such a mad scheme?
"But I was tired of all those around me, who, to all my questions, invariably answered, 'My dear, that is not proper for you to know,—or, you must not talk about such things until you get older; and the like. So I held my tongue, but I made up for it, by treasuring up everything I heard and saw. Isn’t it extraordinary ​that I should have such a memory? I can recall every circumstance that ever occurred to me during my life—everything worth retaining, that I wished to remember. I could tell what people said, how they sat, the colour of their hair, of their eyes, and all about them, at any time, for the last forty years and more. At Hastings, for example, I can tell the name of the two smugglers, Tate and Everett, who attended at the bathing-machine, and the name of the apothecary, Dr. Satterly, although I have never heard a word about those persons from that day to this.
"How well I recollect what I was made to suffer when I was young! and that’s the reason why I have sworn eternal warfare against Swiss and French governesses. Nature forms us in a certain manner, both inwardly and outwardly, and it is in vain to attempt to alter it. One governess at Chevening had our backs pinched in by boards, that were drawn tight with all the force the maid could use; and, as for me, they would have squeezed me to the size of a puny miss—a thing impossible! My instep, by nature so high, that a little kitten could walk under the sole of my foot, they used to bend down in order to flatten it, although that is one of the things that shows my high breeding.
"Nature, doctor, makes us one way, and man is always trying to fashion us another. Why, there was Mahon, when he was eight or nine years old, that ​never could be taught to understand how two and two make four. If he was asked, he would say, four and four make three, or ten, or something: he was shown with money, and with beans, and in every possible way, but all to no purpose. The fact was, that that particular faculty was not yet developed: but now, there is no better calculator anywhere. The most difficult sums he will do on his fingers; and he is besides a very great mathematician. There was a son of Lord Darnley's, a little boy, who was only big enough to lie under the table, or play on the sofa, and yet he could make calculations with I don't know how many figures—things that they have to do in the Treasury. Now, if that boy had gone on in the same way, he would by this time have been Chancellor of the Exchequer. But I hear nothing of him, and I don't know what has become of him; so I suppose he has not turned out anything extraordinary.
"But nature was entirely out of the question with us: we were left to the governesses. Lady Stanhope got up at ten o'clock, went out, and then returned to be dressed, if in London, by the hair-dresser; and there were only two in London, both of them Frenchmen, who could dress her. Then she went out to dinner, and from dinner to the Opera, and from the Opera to parties, seldom returning until just before daylight. Lord Stanhope was engaged in his philoso​phical pursuits: and thus we children saw neither the one nor the other. Lucy used to say that, if she had met her step-mother in the streets, she should not have known her. Why, my father once followed to our own door in London a woman who happened to drop her glove, which he picked up. It was our governess; but, as he had never seen her in the house, he did not know her in the street.
"He slept with twelve blankets on his bed, with no nightcap, and his window open: how you would have laughed had you seen him! He used to get out of bed, and put on a thin dressing-gown, with a pair of silk breeches that he had worn overnight, with slippers, and no stockings: and then he would sit in a part of the room which had no carpet, and take his tea with a bit of brown bread.
"He married two wives; the first a Pitt, the second a Grenville; so that I am in two ways related to the Grenvilles.
Lady Hester continued: "As I grew up, Lady Stanhope used to chuck pie under the chin, and cry, 'Why the kurl (girl) is like a soap ball; one can't pinch her cheek:' and I really used to think there was something very strange about me. Soon after Horne Tooke took notice of me, and pronounced flatteringly on my talents. And when Mr. Pitt followed, and kindly said, 'Why I believe there is nothing to find ​fault with, either in her looks or her understanding,' I began to know myself. Mr. Elliott, (who married Miss Pitt) used to say to me, dear man! in his bontonné manner, 'You must not be surprised, my love, if you make a great noise in the world.'
"Sir Sydney Smith said of me, after he had known me fifteen years, and when my looks were much changed by illness, 'When I see you now, I recall to my recollection what you were when you first came out. You entered the room in your pale shirt, exciting our admiration by your magnificent and majestic figure. The roses and lilies were blended in your face, and the ineffable smiles of your countenance diffused happiness around you.'
"The Duke of Cumberland used to say to me—'You and Amelia (Princess Amelia) are two of the most spanking wenches I ever saw; but, if (alluding to my ill-health) you go on in this way, I do not know what the devil you will make of it.'"
When mentioning this, her ladyship added: "Doctor, at twenty, my complexion was like alabaster; and, at five paces' distance, the sharpest eye could not discover my pearl necklace from my skin: my lips were of such a beautiful carnation, that, without vanity, I can assure you very few women had the like. A dark blue shade under the eyes, and the blue veins that were observable through the transparent skin, ​heightened the brilliancy of my features. Nor were the roses wanting in my cheeks; and to all this was added a permanency in my looks that fatigue of no sort could impair."
I am now writing when disappointments and sickness have undermined her health, and when she has reached her 54th year. Her complexion had now assumed a yellow tint, but her hands were still exceedingly fair, and she had the very common though pardonable fault of often contriving to show them. There were moments when her countenance had still something very beautiful about it. Her mouth manifested an extraordinary degree of sweetness, and her eyes much mildness.
She never would have her likeness taken, when in the bloom of her beauty, and it is not probable it can be ever done now. There is a sort of resemblance between her and Mr. Pitt, (if I may judge from his portraits.) She has told me also, that she was like the late Duchess of Cumberland. Her head, seen in front, presented a perfect oval, of which the eyes would cover a line drawn through the centre. Her eyebrows were arched and fine, I mean slender; her eyes blue, approaching to gray; her nose, somewhat large, and the distance from the mouth to the chin rather too long. Her cheeks had a remarkably fine contour, as they rounded off towards the neck; so that ​Mr. Brummell, as has been related, once said to her in a party, “For God’s sake, do take off those earrings, and let us see what is beneath them.” Her figure was tall (I think not far from six feet), rather largely proportioned, and was once very plump, as I have heard her say. Her mien was majestic; her address eminently graceful; in her conversation, when she pleased, she was enchanting; when she meant it, dignified; at all times, eloquent. She was excellent at mimickry, and upon all ranks of life. She had more wit and repartee, perhaps, than falls to the lot of most women. Her knowledge of human nature was most profound, and she could turn that knowledge to account to its utmost extent, and in the minutest trifles. She was courageous, morally and physically so; undaunted, and proud as Lucifer.
She never read in any book more than a few pages, and there were few works that she praised when she looked them over. History she despised, considering it all a farce: because, she said, she had seen so many histories of her time, which she found to be lies from beginning to end, that she could not believe in one. She had a great facility of expression, and, on some occasions, introduced old proverbs with wonderful appositeness. Conversation never flagged in her company. But to return to Lady Hester’s own account of herself.
​"I can recollect, when I was ten or twelve years old, going to Hastings’s trial. My garter, somehow, came off, and was picked up by Lord Grey, then a young man. At this hour, as if it were before me in a picture, I can see his handsome but very pale face, his broad forehead; his corbeau coat, with cut-steel buttons; his white satin waistcoat and breeches, and the buckles in his shoes. He saw from whom the garter fell, but, observing my confusion, did not wish to increase it, and with infinite delicacy gave the garter to the person who sat there to serve tea and coffee.
"The first person I ever danced with was Sir Gilbert Heathcote.
"When I was young, I was never what you call handsome, but brilliant. My teeth were brilliant, my complexion brilliant, my language—ah! there it was—something striking and original, that caught everybody’s attention. I remember, when I was living with Mr. Pitt, that, one morning after a party, he said to me, 'Really, Hester, Lord Hertford' (the father of the late lord, and a man of high pretensions for his courtly manners) 'paid you so many compliments about your looks last night, that you might well be proud of them.'—'Not at all,' answered I: 'he is deceived, if he thinks I am handsome, for I know I am not. If you were to take every feature in my ​face, and put them, one by one, on the table, there is not a single one would bear examination. The only thing is that, put. together and lighted up, they look well enough. It is homogeneous ugliness, and nothing more.'
"Mr. Pitt used to say to me, 'Hester, what sort of a being are you? We shall see, some day, wings spring out of your shoulders; for there are moments when you hardly seem to walk the earth.' There was a man who had known me well for fifteen years, and he told me, one day, that he had tried a long time to make me out, but he did not know whether I was a devil or an angel. There have been men who have been intimate with me, and to whom, in point of passion, I was no more than that milk-jug" (pointing to one on the table); "and there have been others who would go through fire for me. But all this depends on the star of a person.
"Mr. Pitt declared that it was impossible for him to say whether I was most happy in the vortex of pleasure, in absolute solitude, or in the midst of politics; for he had seen me in all three; and, with all his penetration, he did not know where I seemed most at home. Bouverie used to say to me, when l lived at Chevening, 'I know you like this kind of life; it seems to suit you.' And so it did: but why did I quit home? Because of my brothers and sisters, and for my father's sake. I ​foresaw that my sisters would be reduced to poverty if I did not assist them; and, though people said to me, 'Let their husbands get on by themselves; they are capable of making their own way,' I saw they could not, and I set about providing for them. As for my father, he thought that, in joining those democrats, he always kept aloof from treason. But he did not know how many desperate characters there were, who, like C———, for example, only waited for a revolution, and were always plotting mischief. I thought, therefore, it was better to be where I should have Mr. Pitt by my side to help me, should he get into great difficulty. Why, they almost took Joyce out of bed in my father's house; and when my father went to town, there were those who watched him; and the mob attacked his house, so that he was obliged to make his escape by the leads, and slip out the back way. Joyce was getting up in the morning, and was just blowing his nose, as people do the moment before they come down to breakfast, when a single knock came to the door, and in bolted two officers with a warrant, and took him off without even my father's knowledge. Then, were not Lord Thanet, Ferguson, and some more of them thrown into gaol? and I said, 'If my father has not a prop somewhere, he will share the same fate;' and this was one of the reasons why I went to live with Mr. Pitt. Mr. Pitt used to say ​that Tom Paine was quite in the right; but then he would add, 'What am I to do? If the country is overrun with all these men, full of vice and folly, I cannot exterminate them. It would be very well, to be sure, if everybody had sense enough to act as they ought; but, as things are, if I were to encourage Tom Paine’s opinions, we should have a bloody revolution; and, after all, matters would return pretty much as they were.' But I always asked, 'What do these men want? They will destroy what we have got, without giving us anything else in its place. Let them give us something good before they rob us of what we have. As for systems of equality, everybody is not a Tom Paine. Tom Paine was a clever man, and not one of your hugger-mugger people, who have one day one set of ideas, and another set the next, and never know what they mean.'
"I am an aristocrat, and I make a boast of it. We shall see what will come of people’s conundrums about equality. I hate a pack of dirty Jacobins, that only want to get people out of a good place to get into it themselves. Horne Tooke always liked me, with all my aristocratical principles, because he said he knew what I meant.
"No, doctor, Bouverie was right: I liked the country. At the back of the inn, on Sevenoaks common, stood a house, which, for a residence for myself, I should ​prefer to any one I have ever yet seen. It was a perfectly elegant, light, and commodious building, with an oval drawing-room, and two boudoirs in the corners, with a window to each on the conservatory. When I visited there, it was inhabited by three old maids, one of whom was my friend. What good ale and nice luncheons I have had there many a time! What good cheese, what excellent apples and pears, and what rounds of boiled beef?"
The next day these personal recollections were renewed.
"I remember, when Colonel Shadwell commanded the district, that, one day, in a pelting shower of rain, he was riding up Madamscourt Hill, as I was crossing at the bottom, going home towards Chevening with my handsome groom, Tom, a boy who was the natural son of a baronet. I saw Colonel Shadwell’s groom’s horse about a couple of hundred yards from me, and, struck with its beauty, I turned up the hill, resolving to pass them, and get a look at it. I accordingly quickened my pace, and, in going by, gave a good look at the horse, then at the groom, then at the master, who was on a sorry nag. The colonel eyed me as I passed; and I, taking advantage of a low part in the hedge, put my horse to it, leaped over, and disappeared in an instant. The colonel found out who I was, and afterwards made such a fuss at the mess about ​my equestrian powers, that nothing could be like it. I was the toast there every day.
"Nobody ever saw much of me until Lord Romney's review. I was obliged to play a trick on my father to get there. I pretended, the day before, that I wanted to pay a visit to the Miss Crumps" (or some such name), "and then went from their house to Lord Romney's. Though all the gentry of Kent were there, my father never knew, or was supposed not to have known, that I had been there. The king took great notice of me. I dined with him—that is, what was called dining with him, but at an adjoining table. Lord and Lady Romney served the king and queen, and gentlemen waited on us: Upton changed my plate, and he did it very well. Doctor, dining with royalty, as Lord Melbourne does now, was not so common formerly; I never dined with the king but twice—once at Lord Romney's at an adjoining table, and once afterwards at his own table: oh! what wry faces there were among some of the courtiers! Mr. Pitt was very much pleased at the reception I met with the king took great notice of me, and, I believe, always after liked me personally. Whenever I was talking to the dukes, he was sure to come towards us. 'Where is she?' he would cry; 'where is she? I hear them laugh, and where they are laughing I must go too:' then, as he came nearer, he would ​observe 'if you have anything to finish, I won't come yet—I'll come in a quarter of an hour.' When he was going away from Lord Romney's, he wanted to put me bodkin between himself and the queen; and when the queen had got into the carriage, he said to her, 'My dear, Lady Hester is going to ride bodkin with us; I am going to take her away from Democracy Hall:' but the old queen observed, in rather a prim manner, that I 'had not got my maid with me, and that it would be inconvenient for me to go at such a short notice:' so I remained.
"It was at the review that I was talking to some officers, and something led to my saying, 'I can't bear men who are governed by their wives, as Sir A. H*** is; a woman of sense, even if she did govern her husband, would not let it be seen: it is odious, in my opinion:' and I went on in this strain, whilst poor Sir A. himself, whom I did not know, but had only heard spoken of, was standing by all the time. I saw a dreadful consternation in the bystanders, but I went on. At last some one—taking commiseration on him, I suppose—said, 'Lady Hester, will you allow me to introduce Sir A. H*** to you, who is desirous of making your acquaintance.' Sir A. very politely thanked me for the advice I had given him; and I answered something about the regard my brother had for him, and there the matter ended.
​"When first I went to live with Mr. Pitt, one day he and I were taking a walk in the park, when we were met by Lord Guildford, having Lady——— and Lady———, two old demireps, under his arm. Mr. Pitt and I passed them, and Mr. Pitt pulled off his hat: Lord G. turned his head away, without acknowledging his bow. The fact was, he thought Mr. Pitt was escorting some mistress he had got. 'Well,' said I, 'there goes Falstaff with the merry wives of Windsor.' 'Yes,' rejoined Mr. Pitt, 'and I think, what ever he may take you to be, he need not be so prim, with those two painted and patched ladies under his arm.'
"The same thing happened with Lord A.; and, when Mr. Pitt soon after came into office, Lord A. called on Mr. Pitt, who, being busy, sent him to me. Lord A. began with a vast variety of compliments about ancient attachments, and his recollection, when a boy, of having played with me: so I cut him short by telling him his memory then must have sadly failed him the other day, when he passed me and Mr. Pitt in his curricle with Lady———. After many, 'Really, I supposed,' and 'Upon my honours,—'Sense of propriety on account of Lady———, and not knowing who I was'—I laughed heartily at him, and he went away. When he was gone, Mr. Pitt came to me, and said, 'I don’t often ask questions about your visitors, ​but I should really like to know what excuse Lord A. could offer for his primosity to us, when he was riding with such a Jezebel as Lady———.'
"Yet it might have been very natural for Mr. Pitt to do so. How many people used to come and ask me impertinent questions, in order to get out his state secrets: but I very soon set them down. 'What, you are come to give me a lesson of impertinence,' I used to say, laughing in their faces. One day, one of them, of rather a first-rate class, began with―'Now, my dear Lady Hester, you know our long friendship, and the esteem I have for you―now do just tell me, who is to go out ambassador to Russia?' So I was resolved to try him; and, with a very serious air, I said, 'Why, if I had to choose, there are only three persons whom I think fit for the ​situation—Mr. Tom Grenville, Lord Malmesbury,' and I forget who was the third: 'but you know,' I added, 'Lord Malmesbury’s health will not allow him to go to so cold a climate, and Mr., the other, is something and something, so that he is out of the question.' Next morning, doctor, there appeared in 'The Oracle,' a paper, observe, that Mr. Pitt never read—'We understand that Lord M. and Mr. T. G. are selected as the two persons best qualified for the embassy to Russia: but, owing to his lordship’s ill health, the choice will most likely fall on Mr. T. G.'
"I was highly amused the following days, to hear the congratulations that were paid to Mr. Grenville: but, when the real choice came to be known, which was neither one nor the other, oh! how black the inquisitive friend of mine looked; and what reproaches he made me for having, as he called it, deceived him! But I did not deceive him: I only told him what was true, that, if I had the choice, I should choose such and such persons.
"There are, necessarily, hundreds of reasons for ministers’ actions, that people in general know nothing
​about. When the Marquis——— was sent to India it was on condition that he did not take——— with him: for Mr. Pitt said, 'It is all very well if he chooses to go alone, but he shan’t take——— with him; for—who knows?—she may be, all the time, carrying on intrigues with the French government, and that would not suit my purpose.'
"There might be some apparent levity in my manner, both as regarded affairs of the cabinet and my own; but I always knew what I was doing. When Mr. Pitt was reproached for allowing me such unreserved liberty of action in state matters and in affairs where his friends advised him to question me on the motives of my conduct, he always answered—'I let her do as she pleases; for, if she were resolved to cheat the devil, she could do it.' And so I could, doctor; and that is the reason why thick-headed people, who could never dive into the motives of what I did, have often misinterpreted my conduct, when it has proceeded from the purest intentions. And, in the same way, when some persons said to Lady Suffolk, 'Look at Lady Hester, talking and riding with Bouverie and the Prince’s friends; she must mind what she is about'—Lady Suffolk remarked, 'There is nothing to fear in that quarter; she never will let any body do a bit more that she intends: what she does is with connoissance de cause.‘ And she was right; ​nobody could ever accuse me of folly: even those actions which might seem folly to a common observer, were wisdom. Everything with me, through life, has been premeditatedly done.
"Mr. Pitt paid me the greatest compliment I ever received from any living being. He was speaking of C*****, and lamenting he was so false, and so little to be trusted; and I said, 'But perhaps he is only so in appearance, and is sacrificing ostensibly his own opinions, in order to support your reputation.'—'I have lived,' replied Mr. Pitt, 'twenty-five years in the midst of men of all sorts, and I never yet found but one human being capable of such a sacrifice.'—'Who can that be?' said I. 'Is it the Duke of Richmond? is it such a one? and I named two others, when he interrupted me—'No,—it is you.'
"I was not insensible to praise from such a man; and when, before Horne Tooke and some other clever people, he told me I was fit to sit between Augustus and Mæcenas, I suppose I must believe it. And he did not think so lightly of my lectures as you do: for one day he said to me, 'We are going to establish a new hospital, and you, Hester, are to have the management of it: it is to be an hospital for the diseases of the mind; for nobody knows so well as you how to cure them.' I should never have done if I were to repeat the many attestations of his good opinion of ​me: but it was no merit of mine if I deserved it: I was born so. There was a man one day at table with Mr. Pitt, an old friend of his—Canning told me the story—who, speaking of me, observed that he supposed I should soon marry, and, after some conversation on the subject, concluded by saying, 'I suppose she waits till she can get a man as clever as herself.' 'Then,' answered Mr. Pitt, 'she will never marry at all.'
"In like manner, in the troublesome times of his political career, Mr. Pitt would say, 'I have plenty of good diplomatists, but they are none of them military men: and I have plenty of good officers, but not one of them is worth sixpence in the cabinet. If you were a man, Hester, I would send you on the Continent with 60,000 men, and give you carte blanche; and I am sure that not one of my plans would fail, and not one soldier would go with his shoes unblacked; meaning, that my attention would embrace every duty that belongs to a general and a corporal—and so it would, doctor."
After musing a little while, Lady Hester Stanhope went on. "Did you ever read the life of General Moore that I have seen advertised, written by his brother? I wonder which brother it was. If it was the surgeon, he was hard-headed, with great knowledge of men, but ​dry, and with nothing pleasing about him. His wife was a charming woman, brought up by some great person, and with very good manners.
"As for tutors, and doctors, and such people, if, now-a-days, mylords and myladies walk arm-in-arm with them, they did not do so in my time. I recollect an old dowager, to whom I used sometimes to be taken to spend the morning. She was left with a large jointure, and a fine house for the time being, and used to invite the boys and the girls of my age, I mean the age I was then, with their tutors and governesses, to come and see her. 'How do you do, Dr. Mackenzie? Lord John, I see, is all the better for his medicine: the duchess is happy in having found a man of such excellent talents, which are almost too great to be confined to the sphere of one family.'—'Such is the nature of our compact, my Lady, nor could I on any account violate the regulations which so good a family has imposed upon me.'—'It's very cold, Dr. Mackenzie: I think I increased my rheumatic pains at the Opera on Saturday night.'—'Did you ever try Dover's Powders, my lady?' He does not, you see, tell her to use Dover's Powders; he only says, did you ever try them? 'Lord John—Lord John, you must take care, and not eat too much of that strawberry preserve.'
​"'How do you do, Mr. K.?—how do you do, Lord Henry? I hope the marchioness is well? She looked divinely last night. Did you see her when she was dressed, Mr. K.?'—'You will pardon me, my lady,' answers the tutor, 'I did indeed see her; but it would be presumptuous in me to speak of such matters. I happened to take her a map,' (mind, doctor, he does not say a map of what) 'and, certainly, I did cast my eyes on her dress, which was, no doubt, in the best taste, as everything the Marchioness does is.' Observe, here is no mention of her looks or person. Doctors and tutors never presumed formerly to talk about the complexion, and skin, and beauty, of those in whose families they lived or found practice. Why, haven't I told you, over and over again, how Dr. W———lost his practice from having said that a patient of his, who died, was one of the most beautiful corpses he had ever seen, and that he had stood contemplating her for a quarter of an hour: she was a person of rank, and it ruined him. Even his son, who was a doctor too, and had nothing to do with it, never could get on afterwards.
"Then would come in some young lady with her governess, and then another; and the old dowager would take us all off to some show, and make the person who exhibited it stare again with the number of young nobility she brought with her. From the ​exhibition, which was some monster, or some giant, or some something, she would take us to eat ices, and then we were all sent home, with the tutors and governesses in a stew, lest we should be too late for a master, or for a God knows what.
"I have known many apothecaries cleverer than doctors themselves. There was Chilvers, and Hewson, and half-a-dozen names that I forget: and there was an apothecary at Bath that Mr. Pitt thought more of than of his physician. Why, I have seen Sir H——— obliged to give way to an apothecary in a very high family. 'We will just call him in, and see what he says:' and the moment he had written his prescription and was gone out of the house, the family would consult the apothecary, who perhaps knew twice as much of the constitution of the patient. 'You know, my lord, it is not the liver that is affected, whatever Sir H——— pretends to think: it is the spleen; for, did not we try the very same medicine that he has prescribed for above a week? and it did your lordship no good. You may just as well, and better, throw his draught away:' and sure enough it was done. Sir Richard Jebb the same.
"Do you think," continued she, "that the first physician in London is on terms of intimacy with the mylords he prescribes for? he prescribes, takes his guinea, and is off: or, if he is asked to sit down a ​little, it is only to pick his brains about whether somebody is likely to live or not: but I am not, and never was, so mean: I always liked people should know their relative situations. Ah! Dr. Turton, or some such man as that, would be perhaps asked now and then to dinner, or to take a walk round the grounds. A doctor's business is to examine the grandes affaires, talk to the nurse, and see that his blister has been well dressed, and not to talk politics, say such a woman is handsome, and chatter about what does not concern him."
Whilst Lady Hester was going on with her strictures on the poor doctors, a favourite theme with her, I produced from the back of a cupboard a miniature print of General Moore, which had been lying at Abra, neglected for some years. She took it from my hand, and, looking at it a little time, she observed that it was an excellent likeness of what he was when he became a weather-beaten soldier: "Before that," said she, "those cheeks were filled out and ruddy, like Mr. Close's at Malta."
After a pause, Lady Hester Stanhope continued: "Poor Charles! My brother Charles one day was disputing with James about his handsome Colonel, and James, on his side, was talking of somebody's leg being handsome, saying he was right, for it had been modelled, and nobody's could be equal to it; when ​Charles turned to me, and asked with great earnestness if I did not think General Moore was the better made man of the two, I answered, 'He is certainly very handsome.'—'Oh! but,' said Charles, 'Hester, if you were only to see him when he is bathing, his body is as perfect as his face.' I never even smiled, although inwardly I could not help smiling at his naïveté.
"I consider it a mark of vulgarity and of the association of bad ideas in people's minds when they make a handle of such equivoques in an ill-natured way, as you recollect Mr. T. did when he was at Alexandria. People of good breeding do not even smile, when, perhaps, low persons would suppose they might show a great deal of affected primosity. Only imagine the Due de Blacas to be announced;—what would my old servant, poor William Wiggins, have done? He would never have got out the word." Here Lady Hester set up laughing most heartily, and then she laughed, and laughed again. I think I never saw anything make her relax from her composure so much.
"As for what people in England say or have said about me, I don't care that for them," (snapping her fingers); "and whatever vulgar-minded people say or think of me has no more effect than if they were to spit at the sun. It only falls on their own nose, and all the harm they do is to themselves. They may spit ​at a marble wall as they may at me, but it will not hang. They are like the flies upon an artillery-horse's tail—there they ride, and ride, and buz about, and then there comes a great explosion; bom! and off they fly. I hate affectation of all kinds. I never could bear those ridiculous women who cannot step over a straw without expecting the man who is walking with them to offer his hand. I always said to the men, when they offered me their hand, 'No, no; I have got legs of my own, don't trouble yourselves.' Nobody pays so little attention to what are called punctilios as I do; but if any one piques me on my rank, and what is due to me, that's another thing: I can then show them who I am."
October 16.—These conversations filled up the mornings and evenings until the 16th of October, when I went to Mar Elias for a day. Whilst there, a peasant arrived with an ass-load of musk grapes and mukseysy grapes that Lady Hester had sent. An ass-load in those happy countries is but a proof of the abundance that reigns there. A bushel-basket of oranges or lemons, a bunch of fifty or sixty bananas, ten or twelve melons at a time, were presents of frequent occurrence.
October 18.—I returned to Jôon, and employed myself busily in fitting up the cottage intended for our dwelling. The nearer the time approached for bringing ​my family close to her premises, the more Lady Hester seemed to regret having consented to the arrangement. Petty jealousies, inconsistent with a great mind, were always tormenting her. Of this a remarkable and somewhat ludicrous instance occurred during the latter part of the month of September. Most persons are probably aware that Mahometans have a religious horror of bells, and, in countries under their domination, have never allowed of their introduction even into Christian churches. It is not uncommon, by way of contempt, to designate Europe as the land of bells. This pious abhorrence penetrates the arcana of private life; and, in a Turkish house, no such thing as a bell for calling the servants is ever to be seen. A clap of the hands, repeated three times, is the usual summons and, as the doors are seldom shut, the sound can be easily heard throughout every part of the dwelling.
Lady Hester, however, retained her European habits in this one particular; and perhaps there never existed a more vehement or constant bell-ringer. The bells hung for her use were of great size; so that the words Gerass el Syt, or my lady's bell, echoing from one mouth to another when she rang, made the most indolent start on their legs; until, at last, as nobody but herself in the whole territory possessed house-bells, the peasantry and menials imagined that the use of ​them was some special privilege granted to her by the Sublime Porte on account of her exalted rank, and she probably found it to her advantage not to disturb this very convenient supposition.
On taking up our residence at Mar Elias, there were two bells put by in a closet, which were replaced for the use of my family, with bell-ropes to the saloon and dining-room, none of us ever suspecting that they could, by any human ingenuity, be considered otherwise than as most necessary appendages to a room: but we calculated without our host. This assumption of the dignity of bells was held to be an act of lœsa majestas; and the report of our proceedings was carried from one person to another, until, at last, it reached Lady Hester's ears, endorsed with much wonder on the part of her maids how a doctor's wife could presume to set herself on an equality with a meleky (queen). Lady Hester, however, saw the absurdity of affecting any claim to distinction in such a matter, and, therefore, vexed and mortified although it appears she was, she never said a word to me on the subject. But, one morning in September, when we were all assembled at breakfast, on pulling the bell-rope no sound responded, and, examining into the cause, we discovered that the strings had been cut by a knife, and the bells forcibly wrenched from their places. Much conjecture was formed as to who could ​have done all this mischief. The maids were questioned; the porter, the milkman, the errand-boy, the man-servant, every body, in short, in and about the place, but nobody knew anything of the matter. Understanding Arabic, I soon found there was some mystery in the business; and answers, more and more evasive, from the porter, the harder he was pressed, led to a presumption, amounting almost to a certainty, that her ladyship's grand emissary, Osman Chaôosh, had arrived late at night, armed with pincers, hammer, etcetera, and, before daylight, had carried off the bells to Lady Hester's residence. I concealed my conjecture from my family, wishing to cause no fresh source of irritation; and, having occasion to write that day to Lady Hester, I merely added, as a postscript, "The two bells have been stolen during the night, and I can find no certain clue to the thief. For, although I have discovered that Osman el Chaôosh has been here secretly, I cannot think it likely that any one of your servants would presume to do such a thing without your orders; nor can I believe that your ladyship would instruct any one to do that clandestinely which a message from yourself to me would have effected so easily."
When I saw Lady Hester a day or two afterwards, she never alluded to the bells, nor did I; and nothing was ever mentioned about them for two or three months, ​until, one day, she, being in a good humour, said, "Doctor, it was I who ordered Osman to take away the bells. The people in this country must never suppose there is any one connected with my establishment who puts himself on an equality with me, no matter in what. The Turks know of only one Pasha in a district; the person next to him is a nobody in his presence, not daring even to sit down or to speak, unless told to do so. If I had let those bells hang much longer, the sound of my own would not have been attended to. As it is, half of my servants have become disobedient from seeing how my will is disputed by you and your family, who have always a hundred reasons for not doing what I wish to be done; and, as I said in my letter to Eugenia, I can't submit to render an account of my actions; for, if I was not called upon to do so by Mr. Pitt, I am sure I shan't by other people; so let us say no more about it." Of course, I complied with her whims; or rather, I should say, admitted the good sense of her observations: for I knew very well that she never did anything without a kind or substantial motive. So, after that, the exclamation of Gerass el Syt recovered its magical effect.
October 23.—I escorted my family to their new residence, which was called the Tamarisk Pavilion, from a tamarisk-tree that grew from the terrace. ​They were all delighted with it, and happiness seemed restored to its inmates.
October 25.—The very day on which my family came up, Lady Hester took to her bed from illness, and never quitted it until March in the following year. She had now laboured under pulmonary catarrh for six or seven years, which, subsiding in the summer months, returned every winter, with increased violence, and at this time presented some very formidable symptoms.
November 9.—About six o'clock, just as I had dined, a servant came to say that her ladyship wished to see me. On going into her bed-room, which, as usual, was but faintly lighted, I ran my head against a long packthread, which crossed from the wall, where it was tied, to her bed, and was held in her hand. "Take care, doctor," said she; "these stupid beasts can't understand what I want: but you must help me. I want to pull out a tooth. I have tied a string to it and to the wall: and you, with a stick or something, must give it a good blow, so as to jerk my tooth out."
Knowing her disposition, I said, "Very well, and that I would do as she wished. But, if you like," added I, "to have it extracted secundem artem, I fancy I can do it for you."—"Oh! doctor, have you nerve enough? and, besides, I don't like those crooked ​instruments: but, however, go and get them." I had seen in the medicine-chest a dentist's instrument, and, returning with it, I performed the operation; with the result of which she was so much pleased, that she insisted upon having another tooth out. The relief was so instantaneous, that the second tooth was no sooner gone than she commenced talking as usual.
The cough with which Lady Hester had been so long indisposed occasionally assumed symptoms of water in the chest. Sudden starts from a lying posture, with a sense of suffocation, which, for a moment, as she described it, was like the gripe of a hand across her throat, made me very uneasy about her. Her strong propensity to bleeding, to which she had resorted four or five times a year for the last twenty years, had brought on a state of complete emaciation, and what little blood was left in her body seemed to have no circulation in the extremities, where her veins, on a deadly white skin, showed themselves tumefied and knotty.
It was difficult to reason with her on medical subjects, especially in her own case. She had peculiar systems, drawn from the doctrine of people's stars. She designated her own cough as an asthma, and had, for some time, doctored herself much in her own way. Such is the balmy state of the air in Syria, that, had she trusted to its efficacy alone, and lived with habits of ​life like other people, nothing serious was to be dreaded from her illness. But she never breathed the external air, except what she got by opening the windows, and took no exercise but for about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour daily, when, on quitting her bed-room to go to the saloon, she made two or three turns in the garden to see her flowers and shrubs, which seemed to be the greatest enjoyment she had.
She prescribed almost entirely for herself, and only left me the duties of an apothecary; or, if she adopted any of my suggestions, it was never at the moment, but always some days afterwards, when it seemed to her that she' was acting, not on my advice, but on the suggestions of her own judgment. She was accustomed to say, if any doubts were expressed of the propriety of what she was going to do, "I suppose I am grown a fool in my old age. When princes and statesmen have relied on my judgment, I am not going to give it up at this time of life."
But it was not for herself alone that she thus obstinately prescribed; she insisted also upon doing the same for everybody else, morally as well as medically. One of the prominent features in her character was the inclination she had to give advice to all persons indiscriminately about their conduct, their interests, and their complaints: and, in this latter respect, she pre​scribed for everybody. I was not exempt, and I dreaded her knowing anything about the most trifling indisposition that affected me. Greatly addicted to empiricism, she would propose the most strange remedies; and, fond of the use of medicine herself, she would be out of humour if others showed an aversion to it. There was no surer way of securing her good graces than to put one's self under her management for some feigned complaint, and then to attribute the cure to her skill. Hundreds of knaves have got presents out of her in this way. For they had but to say that, during their illness, they had lost an employment, or spent their ready money, no matter what—they were sure to be remunerated tenfold above their pretended losses. Let it however be said to her honour, that, among the number she succoured in real sickness, many owned with gratitude the good she had done: and no surer proof of this can be given than the universal sorrow that pervaded half the population of Sayda, when, in the course of this her illness, she was reported to be past recovery.
It was in compliance with this foible of hers that, when I returned to Dar Jôon, after being laid up with a bad leg, she would insist on my wearing a laced cloth boot, which she ordered to be made, unknown to me; on my washing the œdematous leg in wine with laurel leaves steeped in it; and on sitting always, ​when with her, with my leg resting on a cushion placed on a stool. Her tyranny in such matters was very irksome; for it was clothed in terms of so much feeling and regard, and of such commiseration for one's overrated sufferings, that, to escape the accusation of ingratitude and bad breeding, it was impossible to avoid entire acquiescence in every one of her kind commands.
She was ever complaining that she could get nothing to eat, nothing to support a great frame like hers: yet she seldom remained one half hour, from sunrise to sunset, or from sunset to sunrise (except during sleep), without taking nourishment of some kind. I never knew any human being who took food so frequently: but, from that very frequency, it might be doubted whether she had a relish for anything. And may not this, in some measure, account for her frequent ill-humour? for nothing sours people's temper more than an overloaded stomach, and nothing promotes cheerfulness more than a light one.
* ↑ In accordance with his republican principles, Lord Stanhope caused his armorial bearings to be defaced from his plate, carriages, &c. Nothing was spared but the iron gate before the entrance to the house. Even the tapestry given to the great Lord Stanhope by the king of Spain, with which one of the rooms in Chevening was ornamented, he caused to be taken down and put into a corner, calling it all damned aristocratical. He likewise sold all the Spanish plate, which Lady Hester said weighed (if I recollect rightly) six hundred weight.
* ↑ A friend has suggested that primosity is not in Johnson's dictionary; it was however a word of frequent recurrence in Lady Hester's vocabulary; and it scarcely, I think need be said, that it means prudery: "What is prudery? 'Tis a beldam, Seen with wit and beauty seldom." Pope.
* ↑ (This footnote was orphaned in the original; its intended placement is here estimated.) (Wikisource contributor note) "In 1800, Mr. Pitt, for the third time, contemplated renewing his attempts to make peace with France, and he offered the mission again to Lord Malmesbury. Lord Grenville wished to appoint his brother, Mr. Thomas Grenville; and Lord Malmesbury, whose deafness and infirmity had much increased, readily consented."—Diaries and Correspondence of the Earl of Malmesbury.