# Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope/Volume 2/Chapter 10

CHAPTER X.
Visit of Mr. Vesey Forster and Mr. Knox—Lady S. N.'s pension and Mr. H.—Lady Hester undeservedly censured by
English travellers—Mr. Anson and Mr. Strangways—Mr. B. and Mr. C.—Captain Pechell—Captain Yorke — Colonel
Howard Vyse—Lord B.
Mr. Forster and Mr. Knox, two English gentlemen, came up to Jôon this morning to pay a visit to
Lady Hester. To my great surprise, I found them seated at the porter's lodge among the servants, who were standing around them; a situation to which they accommodated themselves with the good sense of men of the world. They had sent in a message that two Franks were at the gate, having a letter for the Syt Mylady, and were patiently awaiting the result.
I took the liberty of inquiring their names, and hastened to her ladyship; whilst orders were given to conduct them immediately to the strangers' room. Lady Hester, who had got their letter in her hand, ​told me one was a relation of Sir Augustus Forster, our ambassador at Turin. "Go instantly to them," said she, "for Sir Augustus is an old friend of mine, and be particularly attentive to Mr. Forster—indeed, to both of them. Tell them, I am very sorry I can't see them; for, when I get into conversation, I become animated, and then I feel the effects of it afterwards; but assure them that they are welcome to make their home of their present lodging for a couple of days or a couple of hours, or as long as they like. Do they look gentlemanlike?" she asked. "Ah!" continued she, "what a charm good-breeding gives to mankind, and how odious vulgarity is after it! Only reflect! I, who have been all my life accustomed to the most refined society, what I must feel sometimes to have nothing to do but with beasts. But go, go! and make them as comfortable as you can."
They were in the strangers' room, which stood in a small garden, ornamented with a few rose-bushes, pomegranate and olive-trees, and some flowering plants. It was a little enclosure, which had by no means a disagreeable aspect, surrounded by a wall topped with prickly thorn-bushes. Once inside this place, the new comer could know nothing of what was passing without. Such were Lady Hester's contrivances: everything about her must wear an air of
mystery.
​I lost no time in conveying Lady Hester's message to them, and, for the short hour I enjoyed the pleasure of their conversation, had every reason to rejoice
in the opportunity of making their acquaintance. As this visit of two travellers may serve as a specimen of what occurred, with slight variations, on every similar occasion, when Englishmen came to her house, who were little aware how much trouble their unexpected arrival sometimes caused her, I shall detail what passed as minutely as I can.
I had hardly paid my compliments to them, and inquired whether they would take an English breakfast or something more solid, when a message came from Lady Hester to say she wanted to see me for a moment. This was always her way. The ruling passion of ordering what was to be done and what was to be said on all occasions made her impatient about things passing out of her sight.
"Well, doctor," cried Lady Hester, "what age do they appear to be, and where do they come from?" Having satisfied her on the first head, I told her they were last from the Emir's palace at Btedýn: then, after some trifling observation, I added, the Emir complained to them that M. Lamartine, in his
recent work on Syria, had greatly compromised him with Ibrahim Pasha, in having said that he, the Emir, had enterlained the most friendly dispositions ​towards Buonaparte and the French during the siege of Acre. This the Emir denied, and averred that
his great friend was Sir Sydney Smith: meaning, probably, as I observed from myself, to compliment his present guests at the expense of the absent French. "He was very civil to the two travellers," I added, "and, understanding they were going to see your ladyship, he sent his compliments to you."—"Ah!"
replied she, "that looks as if he were fishing for friends, in ease he should shortly have to fly; for they say that Sherýf Pasha has been defeated in the Horàn, and the Emir begins to tremble; for the Druzes will not spare him."
I then told Lady Hester they had refused tea or coffee, but, as they were come from a distance, would probably like something more substantial: they had expressed, too, a wish for a glass of lemonade. Here Lady Hester, suddenly raising herself in her bed, interrupted me with "Good God!—lemonade! why, the maid said that the secretary had been to ask for some violet syrup for them: now, which is it they want? Can nobody ever take upon them to direct the simplest thing but they must blunder? must everything fall upon me?"—"Well, but," observed I, "lemonade, or violet syrup, it does not much matter which!"— "Not matter!—there it is again: and
then who is there can make lemonade?—not a soul ​but myself in the whole house: and poor I am obliged to wear my little strength out in doing the most trivial offices. Here I am; I wanted to write another letter to go by the steamboat, and now all my thoughts are driven out of my head. Zezefôon!" (ding, ding, ding, went the bell) "Zezefôon! order the gardener to bring me four or five of the finest lemons on the tree next the alley of roses—you know where I mean—and prepare a tray with glasses." This was accordingly done, and Lady Hester, sitting up in bed, went to work squeezing lemons and making lemonade.
In my way to her ladyship's room from the strangers', I had called the cook, and directed him to dress a
mutton-chop, to make a vermicelli soup, a dish of spinach and eggs, a little tunny-fish salad, and with a cold rice pudding (which I recollected and sent for from my house), and some Parmesan cheese, I trusted there would be enough for a hasty meal. Whilst making the lemonade, the following conversation went on. "Now, doctor, what can be got for their déjeûner a la fourchette? for there is nothing whatever in the house." I mentioned what I had ordered. "Ah! yes," resumed Lady Hester, "let me see:—there is a stew of yesterday's, that I did not touch, that may be warmed up again, and some potatoes may be added; and then you must taste that wine that ​came yesterday from Garýfy, to see if you think they will like it. The spinach my maid must do. Dyk" (the cook) "does not know how to dress spinach, but I have taught Zezefôon to do it very well." (Ding, ding, ding.) "Zezefôon, you know how to boil spinach in milk, and you must garnish it with five eggs, one in each corner, and one in the centre."—"Yes, Sytty."—"And, Zezefôon, send the yackney" (stew) "to Dyk, and let it be warmed up for the strangers. They must have some of my butter and some of my bread. Likewise give out the silver
spoons and knives and forks; they are under that cushion on the ottoman, there; and mind you count them when you give them to Mohammed, or they will steal one, and dispute with you afterwards about the number:—a pack of thieves! And let the cook send in the dishes necessary: for I will not have any of mine go out.
"You must tell the travellers, doctor, and especially Mr. Forster, for he is an Irishman, that I have
a great deal of Irish and Scotch blood in me, and no English. Tell him I have made great investigations on the subject of the origin of the Scotch, and could prove to him that they came originally from this country. Tell him how beautiful the Irish women are, and that I, having had opportunities of seeing some of the finest Circassians and Georgians of the ​harýms of great Turks here and at Constantinople, think there are none like Irish women.
"If Mr. Forster asks you anything about the Cruzes (as he seems to interest himself concerning the religion of that people), say to him that the Druzes, the Ansàries, the Ishmaelites—all these sects—must and will remain a mystery to strangers. There was Monsieur Reynaud, one of the forty savants who wrote the great book on Egypt, and was afterwards consul at Sayda—if any body could comprehend the secret, he could; yet, although he had four of the Druze books in his possession, and five learned persons of this country to assist him in translating and explaining them through a whole winter, he could make out
nothing: because, even if you understand the text, you are still not a bit the wiser. Suppose, for example, you open a page, and you find these words—'Do you use senna leaves?' which is one of their questions of recognition, like similar apparently vague questions in freemasonry: what do you know about that? You may understand the answer clearly enough, so far as mere words go; but it is useless unless you understand the thing of which the words are a symbol; for they are all symbolical. You must know that it refers to an insurgent, who, in the cause of their faith, raised the standard of revolt, centuries ago, in the land where senna grows, and that it implies, 'Do you ​adopt his tenets? and so of other passages. The chiefs of their religion cannot make any disclosures; for, if they did, their lives would be the forfeit. Tell him they are a bold, sanguinary race, who will cut a man in pieces themselves, or see it done by others, and never change colour. Why, one of them, not long since, killed or wounded with his own hands five of Ibrahim Pasha's soldiers, who were sent to seize him as a refractory recruit."
Here Lady Hester, having finished making the lemonade, stopped for a moment to desire Zezefôon to take it out and send it to the strangers' room. She then resumed, "Tell them, doctor, that no people will bear a flogging like the Druzes. The Spartans were nothing to them: isn't it the Spartans that were such floggers? for I am such a dunce that I never can recollect some things which every schoolboy knows; and I always said I was a dunce in some things, although Mr. Pitt used to say, 'Hester, if you would but keep your own counsel, nobody could detect it. But it is the truth, and when you talk to me of paper money and the funds (although I may understand for the moment what you try to explain to me), I forget it all the next morning: yet, on subjects which my inclination leads me to investigate, nobody has a better judgment. My father, with all his mathematical
knowledge, used to say I could split a hair. Talk to ​the point, was his cry: and I could bring truth to a point as sharp as a needle. I divested a subject of all extraneous matter, and there it was—you might turn and twist it as you would, but you must always come back to that.
"The Druzes like me, and all the Emir Beshýr's
hatred of me arose from my friendship for the Shaykh Beshýr. I After you left me, I went to stay with him at Makhtara, where he assigned me a wing of the
palace to live in. He was a clever man, and afterwards, in his troubles, came to me for advice and succour: he offered me a third of his treasures, but I refused them. When he fled, the Emir Beshýr got about a third of them; an equal portion they say is buried: and ​the remainder was carried off by his wife, but afterwards lost. Poor woman! she is dead now. It was
the attempt to relieve her, amongst other causes, that drew me into embarrassments. She had fled—her husband was a captive at Acre—and the Emir was pursuing her in every direction to take her life. The snow was thick on the ground. She had with her a child at the breast, one two years old, and another: two were with the father in prison. I despatched people with clothes and money to relieve her immediate wants; they found her in the Horan, where she
had taken refuge with an old servant. Her daughter also applied to me for assistance, but I was penniless, and could do nothing for her. Poor girl! she was afterwards married, but Ibrahim Pasha cut off her husband's head, and she went raving mad. To complete the tragedy, Hanah Abôod, one of those I sent
to look after her, fell asleep out of weariness, after having returned home on foot through the snow, and got an inflammation in his eyes, which ended in total blindness. The journey back occupied I think forty hours. I have been obliged partially to maintain the poor fellow and Werdy, his wife, ever since.
"Perhaps, doctor, Mr. Forster and Mr. Knox may have heard of the extraordinary conduct of the English government towards me; so let them know that I am not low-spirited about it; and, although the Queen may ​think herself justified in taking away my pension, I would not, even if I were a beggar, change places with her. As for the Queen's interfering in my affairs, she might just as well go and stop Sir Augustus Forster's salary, on the plea that he had left his tailor's bill unpaid. My debts were incurred very often for tilings I did not care about for myself. For example, what are books to me, who never look into them? If I had been like you doctors, who tell your patients to take turtle soup, and then contrive to be asked to dinner, it were another thing: but my researches were for the good of others, and for no advantage of my own.
"When I think what I have done, and what I could have done if I had had more money! There was a book came into my hands, which the owner, not knowing its value, offered for my acceptance as you would offer an old brass candlestick. I consulted several persons about it; and, when all assured me it was a valuable manuscript, I scorned to take advantage of the man's ignorance, and returned it to him, telling him when I was rich enough I would buy it of him. Ought not a person to act so?" "Undoubtedly," I replied, "a person of principle would not act otherwise." "Principle!" she exclaimed; "what do you mean by principle?—I am a Pitt."
As I did not understand precisely why a Pitt should ​be above principle, although it would seem there is a species of integrity higher than principle itself, I held my tongue, and Lady Hester went on. "I know where to find a book that contains the language spoken by Adam and Eve: the letters are a span high. Such things have fallen into my hands as have fallen into nobody's else. I know where the serpent is that has the head of a man, like the one that tempted Eve. The cave still exists not far from Tarsus; and the
villages all about are exempted from the miri in consideration of feeding the serpents. Everybody in that neighbourhood knows it: isn't it extraordinary? why don't you answer? is it, or is it not? Good God! I should go mad if I were obliged to remain three whole days together in your society—I'm sure I should. Such a cold man I never saw; there is no getting an answer from you: however, think as you like. These serpents will march through the country to fight for the Messiah, and will devour everything before them." Here she paused for about a minute, and then added, "I think you had better not tell them anything about the serpents; perhaps their minds are not prepared for matters of this sort."
I have already observed that Monsieur Guys had mentioned, with some surprise, the serious manner in ​which Lady Hester spoke of these serpents; and, although he did not express it, yet he half intimated
that he thought her intellects a little disordered: we shall see hereafter if they were so.
Lady Hester resumed: "But now, doctor, if you can spare a minute, you must write a line by the messenger to Monsieur Guys, and tell him I had
begun a letter to him, but that the arrival of two English travellers, one of whom revived a number of
recollections, had obliged me to stop short, and I could write no more. Doctor, this Mr. Forster must be one of the children of the Irish Speaker. He was left with ten; and I remember very well one day that H******** was standing before me at a party, making a number of bows and scrapes, turning up his eyes,
and cringing before me so, that when we got home, Mr. Pitt said to me, 'Hester, if I am not too curious, what could H ******** have to say that animated him so much: what could he be making such fine speeches about: what could call forth such an exuberance of eloquence in him?'—'Oh! it was nothing,' answered I; 'he was telling me that all the power of the Treasury was at my service—that he would take care that Lady S**** N*****'s pension should be got through the different offices immediately—that he had nothing so much at heart as to execute my orders—that he
would see all that was necessary should be done ac​cording to my wishes, and so on; but, as I despise the man, I only laughed at him and turned my back on him'; for I drink at the fountain head.'
"'Now, this is really too good a thing,' interrupted Mr. Pitt, lifting up his eyes in astonishment. 'It was but this very day, at three o'clock, that he was urging me not to let this very pension be given, or at least to prolong the business for a year, if it were possible; till, by tiring her patience, the thing might be dropped, or something turn up to set it aside; adding, that it would be opening the door to abuses, and, if I granted this too readily, I should have Forster's ten children to provide for.'"
Lady Hester went on: "From that day, I knew my man. I then said to Mr. Pitt, 'Let me show him who he has to deal with; do give your orders that the thing may be done immediately.'—'Oh! but
it is too late to-night,' said Mr. Pitt. 'No, it is not,' I cried; 'for I see a light in the Treasury.' So I
rang, and sent for" (here her ladyship mentioned a name which I could not catch, but I think it was Mr. Chinnery)—. When he came, I said to him, 'Will you be so good, sir, the first thing in the morning, to see that all the signatures are put to Lady S. N.'s paper: there is Mr. Pitt; ask him if it is so or not.' Mr. Pitt of course assented, and there the matter ended. Doctor, I had a great deal of trouble ​with those sort of people, like H———. Now, if Mr. Forster is about thirty-five years old, he must be one of that family.
"Do tell Mr. Forster what a pack of beasts those servants are. Ask him if he ever heard of women throwing themselves down to sleep in the middle of a courtyard, or on the floor of a kitchen, dragging their quilt after them from place to place: tell him that is what mine do, and that I am obliged to wait a quarter of an hour for a glass of water.
"You may talk to them a little about stars, but I dare say you will commit some horrible blunder, as you always do, and that is what makes me so afraid of your having to say anything that concerns me. Tell Mr. Forster that in people's stars lie their abilities, and that you may bring up a hundred men to be generals and another hundred to be lawyers, but out of these perhaps four or five only will turn out good for anything. When a grand Llama is to be chosen, why do they go about until they have found a particular boy with certain marks, known to the learned of that country—a child born under a certain star? It is because, when they have found such a ​one, he has no occasion for instruction; he is born the man for their purpose.
"Thus, the Duke of Wellington is not a general by trade—I mean by instruction; for, if examined before a court-martial on all the branches of military tactics, perhaps he would be found deficient. Hundreds may know more of them than he does: but he is a general by his star. He acts under a certain impulse, which makes him hit on the stratagem he ought to practise, and, without the help of previous study or even the suggestions of experience, he knows that his manœuvre is right. It was thus with me when I was young. People might preach and talk; but, when I saw them doing things or reasoning about them, I could at once distinguish the things that were right from the things that were wrong; but I could not say why or wherefore. My father said I was the best logician he ever saw—I could split a hair. The last time he saw me, he repeated the same words, and said I had but one fault, which was being too fond of royalty."
I observed here to Lady Hester, that in many things she reminded me of the ancient philosophers, to whom she bore a strong resemblance on most points; but that in this one particular she differed from them widely, as most of them were strenuously opposed to royalty and monarchical power. "My ​liking for royalty," she answered, "is not indiscriminate, but I believe in the divine right of kings; for I have found it out. And you may ask Mr. Forster also why the bottle of oil came from India to anoint the kings of France. I dare say they never heard of Melek es Sayf, a hero whose exploits and name are hardly inferior in the East to those of Solomon. Is it not extraordinary, that in Europe they know nothing of those people—of him and his forty sons, all of whom were men of note in their time? This must be so; for some of the gates of Cairo are named after them.
"If you happen to speak about the Albanians and the other soldiers that I had here, tell them I did not see them all; I only saw the most desperate, and those whose violence was to be kept under. When I admitted them to my presence, I was always alone, and they always wore their arms; but I never feared them."
Thus Lady Hester went on talking: the dish of potatoes, the dessert, and several other things were forgotten. So, reminding her that Mr. Forster and Mr. Knox must be all this time marvelling what could have detained me, I at last made my escape. In the mean while, the breakfast had been served up as well as the resources of the place would admit. The scene must have been highly curious to her ladyship's guests, who could not fail to be amused as well ​as surprised at the sight of a deal table, rush-bottomed chairs, cheese put on first and a pudding in a copper dish after it, with other anomalies that would have made even a third-rate Brummell shudder. But the occasions for eating in the European way in Lady Hester's house occurred very rarely, and the servants, who were habituated to Turkish usages or to the mongrel service of some Levantine dragoman, had no notions of the regulations of an English table. In my own house, I had two tolerably well-trained boys; but there was an interdict against their ever crossing the threshold of Lady Hester's gate, in order that no information of what was going on within her walls should be carried out to the female part of my family. In the most common concerns, Lady Hester's servants made much bustle and did little. They ran in different directions, jostled and crossed each other half a dozen at a time for the same thing, entirely reversing one of her favourite maxims, that everything in a great person's house should be done as if by magic, and nobody should know who it was set it a going. These servants had but one spring of action, and that was the bakshysh, or present, which they all looked for on the departure of a stranger. It was a painful thought to me, as these gentlemen left the gate, that, when they were about to mount their horses, the mercenary spirit of such a set of varlets might be charged to the connivance of the mistress.
​The two travellers made a miserable repast, and, when it was over, signified their desire to take leave. It seems they had taken Lady Hester's invitation "to make the place their home for two hours or two days" in its literal acceptation; and it is scarcely necessary to say that there was no time for me to enter into an explanation on the subject, nor, indeed, to deliver a tenth part of the discursive matter with which Lady Hester had charged me. It was from these gentlemen I learned, for the first time, that a committee had been appointed, on the motion of Mr. D. W. Harvey, for inquiring into the pensions on the civil list. It had so happened that no newspapers had reached us for a long time, and, consequently, this was the first intimation her ladyship had received of a measure in which it might be supposed she felt no inconsiderable interest, although in reality she did not.
As Mr. Forster and his friend had to cross a deep valley and mount a steep ascent before they could take the road to Beyrout, to which town they were now going, I sent Ali Hayshem, the messenger, to put them on their way. He returned in the course of an hour or two, and was despatched the same evening on foot, with letters to Beyrout, where he arrived next day before Messieurs Knox and Forster. He told me, on his return, that their surprise was very great on finding him at the inn, knowing that they had left him behind them, the morning before, up the mountain. ​Ali's account of Mr. Forster's regimentals, in which he saw him dressed at Beyrout, was very flaming: and from that day, in speaking of the two, he always distinguished him from Mr. Knox by the title of 'the general.'
Lady Hester deeply regretted that she was not able to see these gentlemen. "Ah!" said she, "how many times have I been abused by the English when I did not deserve it, and for nothing so much as for not seeing people, when perhaps it was quite out of my power! There was Mr. Anson and Mr. Strangways, who, because I refused to see them, sat down under a tree, and wrote me such a note! Little did they know that I had not a bit of barley in the house for their horses, and nothing for their dinner. I could not tell them so; but they might have had feeling enough to suppose it was not without some good reason that I declined their visit. Many a pang has their ill-nature given me, as well as that of others. I have got the note I still somewhere.
​"Among the visitors I have had was the duchess of Gontaut's brother, she that brought up the Duke of Bordeaux. I supposed she must have talked of me to her brother, whom I never recollect: however, he came with his two sons; but I would not see him. It was that time when Monsieur Guys, after sitting and staring at me some minutes, exclaimed—'Madam, when I see you dressed in that abah' (the Bedouin cloak), 'in that keffiah (the Bedouin vizor), 'and when I think you are that Lady Hester Stanhope, qui faisoit la pluie et le beau temps à Londres, I am lost in wonder how you could have come and fixed yourself in these desolate mountains.'
"Another of Charles the Tenth's courtiers came here, but a higher personage, whom I also refused to see: he was dreadfully savage about it too. I fancy Charles the Tenth had a secret intention of resigning the crown, and of coming to this country to finish his days in the Holy Land like another St. Louis! and I think this man had something to ask me about it: ​however, I refused to see him. But it was not caprice, nor, as this proves, was it Englishmen alone I denied myself to. Sometimes I was not well enough to sustain a conversation—sometimes I had no provisions in the house, perhaps no servant who knew how to set a table; but travellers never fancied that there could be any other reason for my refusal, but the determination to affront them. God knows, when I could, I was willing to receive anybody.
"Once I had a visit from two persons whom we will call Mr. A. and Mr. B., or Mr. B. and Mr. C.—what letter you like. I thought Mr. B. very stupid, but good God! doctor, there never was anything so vulgar as Mr. C. When I got his note to ask leave to come, the name deceived me; I thought he might be a son of Admiral C. But when he came into the room with his great thighs and pantaloons so tight that he could hardly sit down, I thought he was more like a butcher than anything else. He was a man entirely without breeding, with his Ma'ams and ladyships. I asked him a few questions, as—'Pray, sir, will you allow me to ask if you are a relation of Admiral C's.?'—'No, ma'am, I am no relation at all.'—'Will you permit me to inquire what is the motive of your visit to me?'—'Only to see your ladyship, ma'am.'—'Do you come to this country with any particular object?'—'To be a merchant.'—'You are ​probably conversant in mercantile affairs?'—'No, ma'am, I am come to learn,'—and so on. After some time, I told them that I never saw people in the morning, and would take my leave of them, as they probably would wish to set off early; and I desired them to order what they liked for their breakfast. Next morning, when I thought, as a matter of course, they were gone, in came a note from them to say, they were not going till next day, and then another to say they did not know, and then a third to say that, as they expected ships, and God knows what, they must go.—Good God! they might go to the devil for me: I had taken my leave of them, and there was an end of it. Mr. C. was a downright vulgar merchant's clerk, come to Syria, I suppose, to set up for himself. Lord St. Asaph said to me—'Lady Hester, you really should consider who you are, and not allow people of that description to pay visits to you.'
"There was a man who bore a great resemblance to the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Clarence, but something between both, who passed two or three years in this neighbourhood and sometimes came to see me; he was good-natured, and I liked him. He went about with a sort of pedlar's box, full of trinkets and gewgaws to show to the peasant woman, thus bringing the whole population of the village out of ​their houses: and then giving away beads and earrings to get the young girls around him.
"Of the English, who have visited me here, I liked Captain Pechell and Captain Yorke very much, and thought them both clever men.
"Colonel Howard Vyse one day came up to the village and wrote me a note, and did everything he could to see me. He was an old Coldstream:—it broke my heart not to see him; but it would have revived too many melancholy reflections. Poor man! I believe he was very much hurt; but I could not help it.
"A man came here—I believe the only one who was saved out of a party that was killed going across the Desert—and asked me for a letter to the Arabs. I sent him away, telling him that he might just as well come and ask me for a pot of beer. What had I to do with their schemes and their navigation of the Euphrates? Yet, for this, this officer wrote verses upon the wall of the room against me.
"Then Mr. Croix de la Barre came, but I could not see him. He said he wanted to talk politics with me, and learn the customs and manners of the natives. I should tire you, doctor, if I were to tell you how many have come. I saw Lord B*****, when he was travelling, at the baths of Tiberias, where Abdallah Pasha happened to be. Lord B. ​proposed calling on the pasha, and equipped himself for that purpose with a pair of pistols and a yatagàn in his girdle, after the fashion of a Turkish subaltern; for the Franks, who surrounded him as dragomans and menials, had taught him to adopt what accorded with their ideas of finery, and not what was suitable to his rank. Luckily, he mentioned his intention the day before to me, and I told him that there was a full dress of ceremony in Turkey as well as in Europe, and I lent him the most essential part of it, a benýsh, with which he presented himself. At first there was some hesitation, on his entering the room with his people, as to which was the great Mylord; for his lordship's doctor, who sat down close by him, and poked his head forward with an air of great attention to what the pasha said, made him doubt whether the doctor was not the chief personage; it being a part of Oriental etiquette that no dependant should obtrude himself into the least notice in his superior's presence: nay, generally speaking, it is required that doctors, secretaries, dragomans, and the like, should remain standing during such interviews. This difficulty being ​got over, the pasha, after some questions about Lord B.'s health, asked him what brought him to Tiberias, a part of his province the least beautiful and most barren. The question would have led most persons to say that, knowing the pasha was there, he seized the opportunity of paying his respects to him, or some such complimentary speech. But Lord B., with a naïveté somewhat plebeian, replied, that he came to see the baths. The pasha coldly desired that proper persons should show them to him, and soon after broke up the interview. The very attendants of his Highness were struck with the incivility and want of tact which Lord B. showed, and it was one of them who told me the story. But this was not all: the pasha, who is fond of consulting European doctors, requested Lord B., who was to depart next day, to leave his doctor behind for twenty-four hours; which request Lord B. refused. After he was gone, the pasha sent me a pelisse of considerable value, with a request that I should present it in his name to Lord B., but I returned it, saying Lord B. was gone; for I did not think his incivility deserved it. So much for English breeding! and then let them go and call the Turks barbarians.
"Mr. Elliot came to see me from Constantinople, in order "to make the pashas and governors of the neighbouring provinces treat me well. He fell ill, and I ​sent for the doctor of a frigate that was on the coast for him—a man who could kick his forehead with his toe. I quizzed Mr. Elliot a great deal.
"But now, doctor, what did Mr. Forster say about the Scotch? If he agrees with me that they sprang from hereabouts, I might have given him some useful hints on that subject: but we will write him a letter about it."
​When I told her that Mr. Forster had spoken of a work of Sir Jonah Barrington's on Ireland, in which it was said that Mr. Pitt got up the Irish rebellion in order to make the necessity of the Union more palatable to parliament, she observed that, if she met him, she would settle his business for him. "Mr. Pitt liked the Irish," said she. "There were some fools who thought to pay their court by abusing them, and would talk of men's legs like Irish porters, or some such stuff: but I always answered, they would be very much pleased to have their own so, which was much better than having them like a pair of tongs: and I was certain to observe a little smile of approbation in Mr. Pitt's eyes, at what I had said."
In this way her ladyship would run on from topic to topic—with a rapidity and fluency which frequently rendered it difficult to preserve notes of even the heads of her discourse. Her health was slightly improved: she attended a little more closely to my advice, but still would never allow me to see her until her coughing fit was over, which usually lasted for about a ​couple of hours. Notwithstanding this, her pulse maintained a degree of vigour which was very extraordinary, considering the state of attenuation to which she was reduced. She had a great reluctance in touching on her bad symptoms, but dwelt readily on such as were favourable. "I certainly have got small abscesses," she answered to me, "but it is not consumption: because there are hours in the day when my lungs are perfectly free, as there are others when I can hardly breathe. Sometimes, doctor, my pulse is entirely gone, or so thin—so thin!—as to be but just perceptible, and no more. You pretend to find it very readily and tell me it is not bad: but Zezefôon can't feel it, and Sàada can't feel it, and old Pierre has tried, and says the same. I think, too," continued she, "I was a little delirious this morning; for, when I awoke, I asked where Zezefôon had gone, although there she was, sitting up on her mattress by my bedside before my eyes."
END OF VOL. II.
FREDERICK SHOBERL, JUNIOR, PRINTER TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT, 51, RUPERT STREET, HAYMARKET, LONDON.
* ↑ The reader ought to be informed that, a few years before this time, Beshýr Jumbalàt, a man of the first family of the Druzes, had risen by his possessions and influence to such power in Mount Lebanon as to excite the jealousy of the Emir Beshýr, the recognized prince of the Druzes, by right of investiture from the Porte. The Emir (who is a Mussulman) entertained such fears of being supplanted by a chief of his power and popularity, that, after a variety of intrigues and plots, he at last succeeded in effectually awakening the distrust of Abdallah, the Pasha of Acre, who finally united with the Emir in a plan for his destruction. The person of the unfortunate Beshýr Jumbalat was accordingly seized, his palace razed to the ground, and his possessions confiscated; nor was their jealousy set at rest until they ultimately got rid of him by strangulation.
* ↑ Ben Jonson, in his "Alchemist," alludes to such a book, "Ay, and a treatise penned by Adam."
* ↑ It may be right to mention that Mr. Forster, as I believe, is not one of the family alluded to in this anecdote: but, as Lady Hester's remarks hinged on his name, I thought it best to retain it.
* ↑ This note I afterwards read and copied. These two gentlemen presented themselves at the gate, and Lady Hester dictated the following message to them, which Miss Williams wrote:— "Lady Hester Stanhope presents her compliments to Mr. Anson and Mr. Strangways, and acquaints them that she is little in the habit of seeing European travellers, therefore declines the honour of their visit." To this was returned the following answer:—"Mr. Anson presents his compliments to Lady Hester Stanhope, and begs to assure her he has not the slightest wish to intrude where his visit is accounted disagreeable: but having, during a three months' residence among the Arabs, met with universal hospitality, he took for granted that he would not have met with the first refusal in an English house."
* ↑ The benýsh is a large mantle, reaching to the ground, ample, and folding over, with bagging sleeves hanging considerably below the tips of the fingers. When worn, it leaves nothing seen but the head and face. This is synonymous with a dress coat.
* ↑ A long letter was subsequently written, in which she explained her theory of the origin of the Scotch; and, having learned by a note from Mr. Forster that they would return from Beyrout to Sayda in their way to St. Jean d'Acre, I rode down to Sayda in the hope of meeting him. Circumstances, however, made them set off a day sooner than they intended and I missed them. The letter Lady Hester took back into her own possession, and seemed to set so much value on it that she would not even give me a copy. At the time I could have repeated the substance of it with tolerable accuracy from memory; but, as she strictly regarded it in the light of a private communication, I did not consider myself justified in making any use of it without her sanction. It will be sufficient to say that she found a great resemblance between the names of the Scotch nobility and certain terms in the Arabic language, indicating patronymics, dignities, offices, &c. Her general notion was that Scotland had been peopled by the flight of some tribes of Arabs in the middle ages. She once had an intention of writing to Sir Walter Scott, to urge him to make some researches on that head, and she showed me a list of Scotch names apparently of Arabic origin. Thus she would say Gower meant Gaôor, or infidel; and by a stretch of deduction, commonly indulged in even to still greater excess by people who have a favourite theory to sustain, she would argue that, as Mr. Pitt used to say that Lord Granville was the counterpart of the statue of Antinous, with the same face and the same pose when he stood talking unconcernedly, therefore the race of Antinous, which was also Eastern, was continued in him.