Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope, as related by herself in conversations with her physician, vol. 1 (of 3)

History of Raïs Hassan—His influence with Lady Hester Stanhope—Number of persons in her service—Number of animals in her stables—Her manner of disposing of those which were superannuated—Her belief in Magic and Demonology—Examples—Anecdotes of Mr. Brummell—Mr. H.—The Duc de R********—Lord St. Asaph—Lady Hester’s strictness with menials—Justified by their misconduct and vices—Zeyneb, the black slave—Annoyances to which Lady Hester was subjected—Her service not tolerable for Europeans—Her reasons for using plain furniture—Her detestation of sentimentality—Her general interference in every department of housewifery—Irregularities of the servants—Chastity, how defined in Turkey—Lady H.’s measures for enforcing it—Her opinion of a French traveller, and of M. Lascaris.

Dismissing these personal details, which have been mentioned solely as connecting links of the main narrative, I now resume my diary.

July 7.—I returned to Dar Jôon.

July 8.—The day after my arrival, before breakfast, Lady Hester Stanhope being yet in bed, a servant came for me. “I hope I have not disturbed you,” said she, when I entered her room; “but I wanted you just for a minute to say a word about Logmagi, whom I am going to send home for a week or two. Poor man! he is all devotedness to my service, but I must not ride a willing horse to death. He is liberal-minded, too, and charitable; not as your fine my lord is, who gives his five guineas to a somebody, and never feels the loss of his money; but one who, if he sees an old captain that he has known in his younger days, or one of his messmates, in distress, will pull off his cloak, ay, and his jacket too, and give them to him. When he hears any one praise me, his purse is open to him immediately.”

It is necessary that I should introduce my readers to this person, who played a very conspicuous part in Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment, from the year 1832 until and after this my second visit to her in 1837 and 1838. It has already been related that, in returning to Europe in 1832, I took a passage from Sayda to Cyprus in a boat of the country, called a shaktôor, better known as a tartane lower down the Mediterranean. The master of this boat was a cheerful good-looking fellow, named Hassan el Logmagi, or Hassan the Diver, so called from his first outset in life as a sponge-diver. At the period when I engaged him, his employment lay in the coasting-trade from Sayda to Beyrout, Tripoli, Tyr, and the neighbouring ports. In the course of his motley existence he had been a porter, a fisherman, a diver, a common sailor, a slave, and a trader in small goods, visiting almost every port in the Mediterranean and Archipelago, buying at one what would sell at another, and thus become acquainted with many maritime cities of Turkey. Shortly subsequent to the date of his carrying us to Cyprus, Abdallah Pasha made him captain of an armed vessel in his service, and he then was entitled fully to the rank of Räis Hassan, or Captain Hassan, which he always afterwards bore.

Lady Hester Stanhope was accustomed to obtain information from all sorts of persons, as it suited her purpose; and, feeling some interest about our welfare after quitting her, she sent for Hassan, on his return to Sayda, to learn the particulars of the voyage. It would seem that his appearance and conversation pleased her: for, as soon as Abdallah Pasha was carried off a prisoner to Egypt, she took him into her service.

His person and manners were those of a handsome boatswain. He was boisterous and rude, entirely without education, for he could neither read nor write, but very shrewd, and, from his varied intercourse with mankind, a keen judge of character—at least, of the dark side of human nature. He was jovial in the highest degree, remarkably good-looking; and, for a day’s acquaintance, when matters of interest were out of the question, nobody who wished to be merry could desire a pleasanter fellow. Sinbad the sailor could not tell a more marvellous story.

It was matter of much surprise to the Europeans of Beyrout, and the natives in general, how such a man could be admitted for hours to Lady Hester Stanhope’s conversation, and the enjoyment of her intimate confidence; and it was a great marvel to all Sayda, Logmagi’s native place, and where, of course, his antecedents, as the French say, were well known, how he could have obtained so firm a footing where so many before him had slipped. The reason will be seen in the course of these pages, abundantly verifying what Lady Hester very often said, that it was in vain for people to attempt to investigate or speculate upon her motives for what she did; and that, if two people were placed in her room, one in one corner, and one in the other, all day long, she would manage her business in their presence so that they should be no wiser in the matter than if they had been a mile off. “Her intentions,” she would say, “were pure, but God only was the judge of that, and she cared not a fig what men thought.”

So it was; and on my arrival in Syria, I found Logmagi installed as purveyor, steward, emissary, and factotum. All transactions with the people of the country were carried on through his hands, and a most important part of his avocations was to keep Lady Hester constantly informed of all sorts of matters going on in Sayda and the surrounding country. Anecdotes of domestic affairs, of the government, news of every description, formed his budget every time he came up to Jôon; and, for this purpose, about half his time was spent in town, to be able to collect it. He was married, had two wives, and was building a new house principally at her ladyship’s expence.

The secret of Logmagi’s influence with Lady Hester might perhaps be traced to her reliance upon his apparent zeal in her service. She believed him to be thoroughly devoted to her, a belief which he well knew how to foster and sustain. He was too clever a courtier to eulogize her to her face, and, therefore, always made his advances by indirect means. He had been sent by her to Marseilles, to Constantinople, and to other distant places; and, according to Lady Hester’s account of what he told her on his return, there was not a person he came in contact with but had related some history of the Sultan’s admiration of her, of the Grand Vizir’s apprehension of her political influence, of the extent of her reputation, even in the very bazars, and of a hundred similar things calculated to flatter her vanity and love of fame. At Beyrout, at Tripoli, at Alexandria, he was sure to have met with a Tartar, or a sea-captain in some coffee-house, who said he had seen a pasha, or a great merchant, or a sheykh, or a somebody, who had declared he should not die contented, if he had not once beheld a woman of such extraordinary talents, or who had been so munificent to some distressed aga, or who had relieved, with such a liberal hand, some learned dervise: and, after having praised her charitable heart, he generally finished with a tale of distress of some family reduced almost to beggary, of some honest tradesman who wanted relief; and thus, striking the chords which always vibrated to Lady Hester’s generous heart, he was entrusted with large sums to distribute. He seldom went down to Sayda without being the bearer of one, two, three—nay, five thousand piasters at a time, to purchase provisions with, and to give away in donations.

Lady Hester had, at this time, in her service thirty-five persons. There was one Arabic secretary, an upper bailiff, three under ones, two men cooks, two porters, one for each gate, three grooms, two muleteers, two ass-drivers, whose sole occupation was fetching water from the spring, and occasionally an extra one; four maids and a girl for herself; three boys, and eight men-servants. She had two mares, which were never ridden, one horse for my riding, and five asses, also never used, as having completed a certain stated period of service, and being now placed on the superannuated list. There was a mule, also, which was never allowed to be worked, except by certain servants, and even then only on her ladyship’s special commission, for some reason connected with its star: it was afterwards given to Monsieur Guys. The remainder of the stock consisted of three cows and a flock of sheep. Formerly, a herd of goats had been kept (one hundred in number), but their throats were all ordered to be cut in one day, for some cause which I never clearly understood, but with the intention of defeating a scheme of the goatherd’s, who had been detected in turning their flesh and milk to his own account; and this slaughter, she told me, was made in imitation of her cousin, Lord Camelford, whose energetic character and abhorrence of knavery she greatly admired. It was, no doubt, also in emulation of his Lordship’s example that, if she ever discovered that any of her domestic animals had been put to any use contrary to her orders, she instantly had them shot, issuing her mandate, at the same time, that the human delinquents should be, at a moment’s notice, turned adrift.

There were also three amblers in the stables. These horses, very common in Syria, are trained by tying leaden weights to their legs until their trot becomes a run. Soon after my arrival, Lady Hester signified to me that she should have them shot, for her under-bailiffs did nothing but ride them when they ought to go on foot, and, moreover, treated them cruelly. Accordingly, Osman Chaôosh, an under-bailiff, who always carried a silver-headed stick in his hand, the emblem of the office of chaôoshes, of whom many are kept in the employ of Pashas as a sort of police-officers, was commissioned to be their executioner. He received his orders from Lady Hester herself to this effect. “Osman, you will say to each horse, before you shoot him, putting your mouth close to his ear, ‘You have now worked enough on the earth; your mistress fears you might fall, in your old age, into the hands of cruel men, and she, therefore, dismisses you from her service.’” This order, strange as it may appear, was actually executed to the letter, with imperturbable gravity. Lady Hester’s mysterious ways had given her an extraordinary ascendency over the minds of her people; and the Syrians, who are credulous, like all Eastern nations, were generally disposed to believe that her ladyship really did possess those undefined powers which are assigned to demonology and magic. That she herself believed in the transmigration of souls she frequently avowed, and her faith in aërial spirits also admits of no doubt.

Throughout Syria, and, I believe, the whole Ottoman empire, the belief in magic and charms is universal. There is not a single person who does not resort to some means for counteracting the effect of the evil eye—such as spells by written papers, enchantments, and the like. Impotence, estrangement of affection, the murrain in cattle, blight in fruit-trees, anything the cause of which is not immediately obvious, is universally accounted for by witchcraft. Lady Hester, indeed, had imbibed all these notions; and, to judge from the substance of many conversations she held on the subject, no reasonable doubt can be entertained of the startling fact, that she placed implicit faith in them.

“Astrology,” she would say, “is confined to the influence of the stars over people’s birth and actions; but magic has to do with the devil. Sometimes it is by compact; as when, for a certain price, I say, for example, to an evil spirit, ‘If you will tell me what they have written from the Porte to Abdallah Pasha, I will do so and so;’ or if, by means which I know to be powerful enough to bring devils under my command, I say to them, ‘You must do this, and that, and the other,’ they are obliged to obey, or I annihilate them.

“There are persons,” she continued, “who can write charms, by which they can effect the most diabolical purposes: but their charms are sometimes baffled by higher influences. I am an example: my star, more powerful than that on which they rely, renders their magic useless. So far, there is a connection between astrology and magic. But take care, doctor, there are men here who will slip a paper into your pocket unknown to you, and make you an idiot, or blind, or a hundred things. Always keep at a distance from Girius Gemmal—that man is an agent of the devil.

“Why, do you know that a woman’s evil eye once fell upon me? I felt a strange pricking just above my knee; and soon after there appeared, first, an oval black rim, then a bluish ground within it, and then a black spot in the centre, so that any one might have said, ‘There is an eye:’ after a few days it disappeared. There was a man near Cara, between Damascus and Aleppo, who possessed the faculty of the evil eye so strongly that he could kill a person, when he chose to use his power to the utmost.”

Now all this, the reader will say, looks like the grossest credulity. But, setting aside the observation that the greatest men among the ancients, as we know from their writings, entertained a similar creed, and that many eminent philosophers and jurisconsults, as Lord Bacon and Sir Matthew Hale, were actuated by similar convictions, it may be conjectured that Lady Hester Stanhope knew very well what a powerful weapon was this superstition, placed in the hands of those who understood how to make use of it. Whether premeditatedly or not, she more than once brought crafty and designing knaves into signal disrepute by attributing to them dealings of this sort, and thus punished or kept in awe those whose villanous machinations it might be impossible to detect, but of which there was little doubt, even though not tangible by the hand of justice.

Lady Hester Stanhope once built a new room; and, just before she was going to inhabit it, from some cause, imagined, or pretended to imagine, it was charmed. We may judge of the builder’s surprise, when she sent for him, and said, “To-morrow you must assemble your workmen, and pull down the new room.” The man, fancying some defect had been discovered in his workmanship, humbly begged her to say what it was that moved her displeasure, as, perhaps, he might be able to find a remedy for it, without destroying the whole. “Your business, sir,” answered Lady Hester, in that tone of voice which she made so terrible when she chose, “is to pull down if I like it, I suppose, as well as to build; so be so good as to obey my orders without farther question.” “When they were removing the arch of the door, doctor,” said Lady Hester, who related the story to me, “I saw a paper fall out. I took it up and sent it to a man versed in charms. He told me it was a charm, written by one of my deadly enemies: and, if I had dwelt in the room, I should have died. Only think, how lucky it was I did what I did!

“Another time, when I had been ill in bed for some weeks, I happened to be looking out from under my eyelids, as you know I have got a way of seeing everything when people think I see nothing, and I observed Girius Gemmal fumble a paper between his fingers, and dip it into a glass of lemonade that the slave was going to give me. I said nothing, but merely desired the slave to set the glass down. Had I drunk it, I have no doubt I should have been his victim. He is a terrible fellow! I warn you never to go to the village or take your family there, because I am afraid he would do some of you some harm. I don’t know how he might do it: he might slip a paper into your boot, or sprinkle a few drops of water on your clothes, and utter some incantation; for they have a hundred ways of inflicting maledictions.”

It may be as well to add here, although not occurring at this time, that on reading an article in a newspaper to her about vampires, she said, “I believe in vampires, but the people in England know not how to distinguish them. Such a being is not a mere creation of people’s fancies.”

From these, and a variety of other observations, which will be found scattered through these memoirs, Lady Hester’s professed opinions on the subject of charms and supernatural agency generally cannot be mistaken. Nor, indeed, seeing how she mixed up such opinions with the actual business of life, allowing them to exercise a direct practical influence over her conduct in numerous instances, can there be any reason for supposing that she did not entirely believe in them, to all intents and purposes, as sincerely as the Syrians themselves. But I leave the consideration of this curious problem to the sagacity of the reader, limiting my more appropriate province to the simple record of her ladyship’s actual life and conversations.

To return from this digression. It might be supposed that, immediately upon my arrival, Lady Hester would have opened the urgent business upon which she had summoned me. No such thing. After congratulating me upon my escape from Europe, which, she assured me, would soon be convulsed by revolutions from one end to the other, she entered at once on her favourite topic—the coming of the Murdah. But, as her opinions and proofs were pretty much the same as those she had entertained six years before, and which have already been related, it is not necessary to recapitulate them.

July 9.—In the afternoon, I rode down to Mar Elias to see my family, and returned the following day to dinner.

July 10.—Lady Hester this day asked me if I had ever known Beau Brummell. “I should like to see that man again, doctor,” continued she, without waiting for my answer. “He was no fool. I recollect his once saying to me, in Bond Street, riding with his bridle between his forefinger and thumb, as if he held a pinch of snuff, ‘Dear creature! who is that man you were talking to just now?’—‘Why,’ I answered, ‘that is Colonel ——.’—‘Colonel what?’ said he, in his peculiar manner; ‘who ever heard of his father?’—So I replied, ‘And who ever heard of George B.’s father?’—‘Ah! Lady Hester,’ he rejoined, half-seriously, ‘who, indeed, ever heard of George B.’s father, and who would have ever heard of George B. himself, if he had been anything but what he is? But you know, my dear Lady Hester, it is my folly that is the making of me. If I did not impertinently stare duchesses out of countenance, and nod over my shoulder to a prince, I should be forgotten in a week: and, if the world is so silly as to admire my absurdities, you and I may know better, but what does that signify?’

“Three of the wits of the day in my time,” observed Lady Hester, continuing the conversation, “were Mr. Hill, Captain Ash, and Mr. Brummell, all odd in their way—the one for dry wit, the other for solemn joking, and the last for foppery. Mr. Hill, for example, when at dinner at somebody’s house, would draw towards him a dish of mashed potatoes that had a mould mark on them, as if he was going to help himself; then, eyeing it with irresistible gravity, and looking at it very oddly with his quizzing-glass, he would turn to the servant and say, ‘I wish you would tell the housekeeper, my good fellow, not to sit down on the dishes;’ pretending that he saw a mark, as if she had sat down upon it.

“Brummell would commit similar freaks at the houses of parvenus, or people who were not exactly of haut ton, where, sometimes at dinner, he would all of a sudden make horridly ludicrous grimaces, as if he had found a hair in his soup, or would abruptly ask for some strange Palmyrene sauce, or any out-of-the-way name that nobody ever heard of, and then pretend he could not eat his fish without it.”

As a specimen of Brummell’s audacious effrontery, Lady Hester said that once, in the midst of a grand ball, he asked the Duchess of Rutland—“In Heaven’s name, my dear duchess, what is the meaning of that extraordinary back of yours? I declare I must put you on a backboard: you must positively walk out of the room backwards, that I mayn’t see it.”

Another time he marched up to Lady Hester, who was remarkable for the fine turn of her cheek, and the set of her head upon her neck, and coolly took out her ear-rings, telling her she should not wear such things;—meaning that they hid the best part of her face.

Upon one occasion he went about in a ball-room, asking everybody where he could find a partner who would not throw him into a perspiration, and at last crying out—“Ah! there she is!—yes, Catherine will do; I think I may venture with her.”—And this was the Duchess of Rutland’s sister.

Sometimes he would have a dozen dukes and marquises waiting for him, whilst he was brushing his teeth, or dressing himself, and would turn round with the utmost coolness, and say to them—“Well, what do you want? don’t you see I am brushing my teeth?” (all the while slowly moving his brush backward and forward across his mouth, and hawking and spitting:) then he would cry,—“Oh! there’s a spot—ah! its nothing but a little coffee. Well, this is an excellent powder, but I won’t let any of you have the receipt for it.”

On one occasion she spoke of Mr. B. in terms of regard, and said she should write to him, as a fellow-sufferer like herself from fallen greatness. “I shall tell him I understand the bedgown is in existence (alluding to his taste in dressing-gowns when he was a friend of the Prince of Wales). When he receives my letter, he will say: ‘There she is again, the dear creature! always the same:’” for I said I had seen him once or twice at Calais, dressed very quietly, and very much like a gentleman, with no appearance of foppery, except when he leaned out of his lodging window in a sort of a fine chintz dressing-gown. “Ah!” cried Lady Hester, “those are the patterns that the Prince sometimes used to give £100 for, to have them like his.”

There was a gentleman who visited Lady Hester Stanhope on Mount Lebanon, Mr. H*****, who, she said, would not be an unworthy successor of Mr. Brummell. She called him a gentlemanlike fop, who gave her a sort of a look from top to toe of ineffable insouciance, and used to cry out, when she was telling him some laughable story, “For God’s sake, don’t make me laugh so: I shall die, I vow and protest: I shall expire from laughing; now pray, Lady Hester!”

Something turned the conversation to the duc de R——, who had visited her once. “I told him,” said Lady Hester, “he had nothing like a duke about him. ‘Comment! est ce que je suis trop petit?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘it is not that; you neither look like one, nor act like one.’ Oh! I trimmed him,” she continued. “He wrote to me after he was gone, and said he had prayed for me at Jerusalem. I wrote him back a letter so impudent, doctor, and joked him about a belle marquise, who, by a shrewd guess, I fancied, was his chere amie, I bade him pray for her, and not for me, and sent him—what do you call it when there are four lines in rhyme?—ah! a quatrain, which I will try to recollect.” She mused a little, and then repeated four lines something to this effect:

Lady Hester added, “He was more like a militia officer than a French duke, and very stingy.”

“Did Lord St. Asaph publish anything?” she asked. I told her not that I knew of. “He was very active,” she added, “and went about seeking for antiquities everywhere: whenever he heard of anything, off he set, and visited it. When he saw my garden, he expressed great admiration of it, and assured me that it was not only well kept for this country, but better kept than many a gentleman’s grounds in England.”

Saturday, July 15.—I spent this day and the next at Mar Elias with my family, and returned to Jôon on Monday, July 17.

It has already been remarked, that there were thirty-four people in Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment at the time I am now speaking of, and yet she would complain that she could not get the slightest attendance. This, of course, was mere temper. Her five maids were constantly in motion, night and day; but she had become querulous to a degree scarcely imaginable, and was, beyond all example, exigeante in her demands on the services of everybody about her. But, if such excessive requisition was ever pardonable in anybody, it was in Lady Hester Stanhope; for her vast talents seemed to lay claim to submission from all inferior beings, and even to exact it as a matter of justice. It was always customary with her (as it generally is with people who overwork their servants) to appeal first to one and then to another, whether anybody could give less trouble than she did. “What have my maids got to do?” she would say: “they think themselves mightily put upon, if I only require as much from them as some shopkeepers wife insists upon from her housemaid:—a set of lazy beasts, that sleep and stuff all day, and then pretend they are mightily hard-worked. Doctor, Logmagi says, that nothing but the korbàsh will keep them in order; and, depend upon it, it is so. If I did not tell them I would have them punished, I should not get the bell answered.” It is true she was generous to them in giving them clothes, high wages, presents of money, new year gifts, &c.; but, whilst she bestowed with one hand, she tyrannized with the other. These mixed extremities of kindness and severity produced a strange effect upon her servants. I never knew one of them who, after a time, did not wish to leave her service, or who, having left it, did not wish to return. The desire to leave her was stimulated by her restless activity, which left nobody quiet day or night, and her determined hostility to indolence, lies, and all other vices common to menials in Syria: while the anxiety to get back again might be in a great measure traced to the dishonest gains which were so readily made in her service, and by which her domestics so frequently enriched themselves—to place nothing to the account of that spell which she infallibly cast over everybody who came within the sphere of her attraction.

It cannot be denied that Lady Hester Stanhope had great reason for her strictness. During her severe illness in 1828, when Miss Williams died and she was confined to her bed-room for three months, G. G. and another rascal induced the girl, Fatôom, to steal the keys of the store-room, and, whilst they waited outside of the window, the wooden bars of which they sawed through with the adroitness of a London housebreaker, she handed them out much valuable property. Every one of the trunks was opened and examined. Hinges were wrenched off, so as to leave the locks untouched, and the trunks were replaced against the wall, and the bars of the window refitted to lull suspicion. One night, as was afterwards revealed in a confession made by one of the maids, when Mr. Dundas, a traveller, who was on a visit at Dar Jôon, was sitting with Lady Hester, Fatôom took a key from one of her ladyship’s pockets, which had been left in her bed-room, opened a small closet, and out of that closet took a bunch of keys, by means of which she ransacked almost everything Lady Hester possessed. Her beautiful Albanian dress, covered with gold, was stolen; a gold medallion,[62] commemorative of her brother’s and General Moore’s death, at Corunna, shared the same fate; stuffs, brocades, and other articles of value, were all carried off.

But the servant who committed the heaviest robberies was Zeyneb, a black slave, who afterwards became a soldier’s trull. This woman, whose career throughout was marked by every sort of profligacy, robbed Lady Hester to the amount of many thousands of piasters.

Lady Hester related, on a subsequent occasion, the winding-up of Zeyneb’s history, in the following words, which I wrote down April the 9th, 1838. “When Zeyneb stole the gold medal, with General Moore’s and my brother’s name upon it, I procured all the documents relative to the theft from Cyprus, where one of her accomplices had fled, and then sent for Zeyneb and Farez into the saloon. I called in Logmagi and Khalyl Mansôor as witnesses, and then, telling the culprits what I knew, said I could hang them if I liked. The impudent slave, Zeyneb, listened with perfect indifference, and, in going out, stopped up the door, and, in an ironical tone, thanked Logmagi (who, she thought, had told me all about it). Logmagi, surprised at her insolence, went to push her out; when, at that moment, Abu Ali, the great black, who had, it appears, found his way into the court in order to support the black girl’s cause, and had been waiting outside the saloon door, seized Logmagi, and, with his muscular grasp, tried to throttle him. I heard a strange noise, and went out; and there I saw Logmagi, with his eyes starting out of his head, held down on the ground by the negro. I caught the fellow’s hand, although one of his pistols was directed towards me, and with my other arm gave a back-handed stroke across Zeyneb’s face (who was helping the black), that knocked her down. She got up, scaled the wall, and ran off to Sayda; and I never saw her more. I called the Albanians, and had Abu Ali turned out of doors directly.” After Zeyneb ran away, she threw herself into the arms of the nizam, or soldiers, where Lady Hester, to use her own emphatic language, left her to rot.

A short detail of the annoyances to which Lady Hester Stanhope was exposed may serve to show that she was not angry with these women without reason. The endless trifling acts of ignorance, awkwardness, carelessness, forgetfulness, falsehood, and impudence, which she used to relate to me, were quite sufficient upon the whole, although many of them were individually petty enough, to justify the severe control she found it necessary to exercise over them. But then it will be asked, why did a lady of her rank, accustomed to all the refinements of European life, keep such servants in her establishment?—why did she not send for Europeans? That was the question that everybody asked—that nobody could answer. The real fact, probably, was this—she preferred these poor creatures, with all their demoralization and filthy habits, to French or English servants, because, by the customs of the East, they were habituated to despotism and bursts of passion, which neither English nor French would be very likely to brook so patiently.

Besides, no European servants could have reconciled themselves to the melancholy seclusion of Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment, or to the never-ceasing activity, or, what is worse, the long vigils required of them. Here there was no moment of respite from doing or waiting to do. In England, the maid looks at least for some intervals of recreation, and expects, at all events, out of the four-and-twenty hours, that she shall be allowed six or eight for rest. But there was neither one nor the other at Jôon; for, even while her ladyship was engaged with her nightly conversations in the saloon, when little or no waiting was required, still there was no end to the work marked out for her servants—such as filling pipes every quarter of an hour—by which they were kept incessantly employed. Now, as Turkish servants turn in[63] almost universally in their clothes, only drawing a counterpane over themselves when they lie down, they are enabled thus to steal a short sleep at any hour they can get it, and are ready to rise at a moment’s call. This is a great advantage, especially to sick people: indeed, in Lady Hester’s case, it almost compensated for all their faults. In the twinkling of an eye, upon an emergency, the whole household, only a moment before buried in profound sleep, would start up on their feet; and, their duty once over, would suddenly drop again into a deep slumber.

One day, I went to Lady Hester’s bed-room door, without waiting to ascertain whether she was ready to receive me. It was a rule with her for many years never to see anybody, even in her saloon, whether coming from a distance or staying in her house, until she had sent for them—no matter who, prince or peasant; and she carried this species of regality to such a length, that, on one occasion, among twenty which might be mentioned, an English gentleman and his wife, for both of whom she entertained a high personal esteem, having arrived from Beyrout to within a league of her dwelling to pay her a visit, and having politely sent forward a servant with a letter to announce their approach, she returned a laconic answer, to say they would not be received. She, moreover, was accustomed to mark, not merely the day, but the precise hour, that persons coming to visit her were to present themselves. She would do so with Duke Maximilian, or with Matteo Lunardi. On the morning to which I have referred, Lady Hester was in bed. “What do you want?” said she, in rather an angry tone. I replied that I had brought her a cut-glass cup and stand for her sherbet and lemonade, as hers was so common that it gave me pain to see her use it. “No, doctor,” she said, “I am much obliged to you, but you must send it away again. If I had twenty fine things, those beasts of maids would break or steal them all. I had some beautiful cut-glass goblets, and they all disappeared, one after the other. Would you believe it? they broke one first of all, and then Miss Williams gave out another. So they kept the pieces of the broken one, and, every fortnight or three weeks, came to her first with one bit and then with another, with some plausible story of an accident, and each time got another goblet out of her, until all were gone. I found them out at last. The jades destroy everything: but it is not that which gives me pain; it is to think that I have not one person who will see me well waited on.”

Happening to observe, that perhaps some allowance should be made for their ignorance in that respect, as, after all, they were but peasant girls and slaves, who could not know what service was, seeing they were unacquainted with European customs, she exclaimed, “But my liver is destroyed by the passions I put myself in, and I dare say you, instead of helping me, will only make matters worse. They’ll only laugh at you and your sensibility. I can see an idle fellow or a rascal get a beating with the same tranquillity that I smoke my pipe: but nobody is more tender than I am, even when an animal suffers unjustly. I never shall forget how two or three of the servants turned as pale as death on hearing me on a sudden utter a cry, because a lazy villain was driving an ass with foal, heavily laden, down a steep bank. I go then almost into convulsions.

“But, oh! how I detest your sentimental people, who pretend to be full of feeling—who will cry over a worm, and yet treat real misfortune with neglect. There are your fine ladies that I have seen in a dining-room, and when, by accident, an earwig has come out of a peach, after having been half killed in opening it, one would exclaim, ‘Oh! poor thing! you have broken its back—do spare it—I can’t bear to see even an insect suffer. Oh! there, my lord, how you hurt it: stop, let me open the window and put it out.’ And then the husband drawls out, ‘My wife is quite remarkable for her sensibility; I married her purely for that.’ And then the wife cries, ‘Oh! now, my lord, you are too good to say that: if I had not had a grain of feeling, I should have learnt it from you.’ And so they go on, praising each other; and perhaps the next morning, when she is getting into her carriage, a poor woman, with a child at her breast, and so starved that she has not a drop of milk, begs charity of her; and she draws up the glass, and tells the footman, another time, not to let those disgusting people stand at her door.”

The conversation, on a subsequent occasion, having fallen on the nasty servants, and I having assented to the truth of what she said, regretting that her acute feelings made her torment herself about things which were but trifles:—“Trifles!” she vociferated; “it is trifles, as you call them, that kill me. Everybody comes to me. There are the very maids—if you were only to see—when they have a hole to mend, how they sew it up all in a spong: they even ask me how their gowns must be cut out.”

This was the fact; but they came to her because she would have it so. Many a morning have I seen her cutting out gowns and pantaloons for them, and stitching the parts together with her own hands. Her talents were so versatile, that she always seemed to have served her time to the particular work, whatever it might be, in which you chanced to find her engaged. I have in my possession patterns, in paper, of gowns after the Turkish fashion, cut out by Lady Hester’s hand; and if any of the travellers who visited her may have had occasion to admire the dresses of her men or maid servants, they may be assured that, even down to the embroidery, the models for every one of them were first designed and cut out by their accomplished mistress.

Lady Hester Stanhope had another serious reason to be discontented with her servants. Her inner court, the gynœcium or harým, was separated from the outer one by a door, always, or which always ought to have been, kept locked. The key was entrusted to one of the two men-servants who lived in this inner court, but whose rooms were divided from the wing where the maids were by a screen of wainscoting, which neither party was allowed to pass. That was the rule, but the practice was far otherwise, and the men were constantly haunting the maids’ rooms and the kitchen with perfect security; because the locked door, at which everybody was obliged to knock to get admission, gave them time to arrange their matters so as to escape detection. Lady Hester herself was generally in bed, and perfectly incapable of checking their irregularities. It was not, therefore, to be wondered at, if, every now and then, the sad consequences were not slow in manifesting themselves. For in Turkey, where men are never allowed to associate with women—where the face of a female, even of the lowest class, cannot be uncovered before the other sex without a stain attaching to her modesty, and sometimes to her character—the idea of placing the two sexes in familiar juxtaposition is so foreign to all their notions, that both the one and the other, when such occasions present themselves, fancy all reserve is at an end, and use their opportunities accordingly. Chastity, in our sense of the word, social and moral, is perhaps unknown among Mahometans. The woman who is well guarded, or the maiden who lives strictly under her mother’s wing, is kept chaste; but she who is neglected thinks that there is no longer any reason for restraint, or believes, at all events, that she does no great wrong in thinking so.

Lady Hester, no doubt, knew all this better than any one; but there was no remedy. She did not feel sure of the good conduct of one single maid-servant. As long as Miss Williams was alive, the awe they all stood in of her made things go on with propriety; but, after her death, all these disorders crept in. One of the very European men-servants whom Lady Hester kept as a check on the people of the country, set them a profligate example himself, and then sought a pretext for leaving her service. In another instance, a black slave was found to have formed an illicit connection with a black man. Lady Hester Stanhope obliged the man to marry her, and gave them both their freedom. Her ladyship did not visit these untoward events with severity. Only, as it is a common practice in Turkey to procure abortion, and as there is no notice taken of such things by the public authorities, who often set the example openly in their own harýms, all that Lady Hester ever did in these cases was to call the offenders before her, and tell them she would have them hanged if they resorted to any secret means of that kind: and she was a person to be as good as her word. Her views in such matters were lenient and compassionate in reference to the circumstances in which these unfortunate creatures were often placed; but there was nothing she held in such utter detestation as mere animal vices.

It was naturally Lady Hester’s object to enlist me on her side into her plan of keeping her household regulated according to the rules of the strictest decorum; and I of course was most happy to lend my assistance. Previous to my arrival, I had been, both now and on my former visit in 1831, held up as a bugbear to all the servants, and the common exclamation in her mouth was—“Ah! when the doctor comes, he will very soon set you to rights.” But I was not at all, either from temperament or reflection, ambitious of filling a post of that sort; and, although she turned against me at different times the shafts of ridicule, and a never-ceasing battery of abuse, I passively but firmly declined all participation in the severity of her measures.

Sunday, July 23.—I rode over to Mar Elias, and returned again to the Dar on Monday night.

July 24.—Lady Hester Stanhope took a great deal of pains to make me acquainted with all that was going on both in the house and in the neighbourhood: still she never touched on the property left, or said to be left her; and it was not until August the 3rd that the subject was fairly entered upon. But, as what she communicated then will come in more appropriately when the correspondence which took place in reference to it shall be given, we will proceed to other matters.

August 4.—“The people of Europe,” said Lady Hester, “are all, or at least the greater part of them, fools, with their ridiculous grins, their affected ways, and their senseless habits. In all the parties I was in during the time I lived with Mr. Pitt—and they were a great many—out of thousands of people, I hardly saw ten whose conversation interested me. I smiled when they spoke to me, and passed on; but they left no agreeable impressions on my mind.

“Look at Monsieur *********, getting off his horse half a dozen times to kiss his dog, and take him out of his bandbox to feed him on the road from Beyrout here: the very muleteers and servants thought him a fool. And then, that way of thrusting his hands in his breeches-pockets, sticking out his legs as far as he could—what is that like?

“Monsieur —— is no poet, in my estimation, although he may be an elegant versifier: he has no sublime ideas. Compare his ideas with Shakspeare’s—that was indeed a real poet. Oh, doctor, what inspirations there are in that man! Even his imaginary beings—his Ariels, his fairies, his Calibans—we see at once are such as they would be if they had really existed. You don’t believe in such things, but I do, and so did Shakspeare: he, I am sure, had great knowledge of Eastern literature, somehow or other.

“Monsieur ——, with his straight body and straight fingers, pointed his toes in my face, and then turned to his dog and kissed him, and held long conversations with him. They say he has £17,000 a year, and castles and villages. He thought to make a great effect when he was here, but he was grievously mistaken. I gave him a letter to Abu Ghosh, who received him very well; but when he talked about himself, and made out that he was a great man, Abu Ghosh said it was for my sake, and not for his own, that he showed him as much honour as he could.”

In speaking of M. Lascaris, of whom Monsieur L. has written a great deal,[64] Lady Hester said M. Lascaris had the heart of a Roman with the intrigue of a Greek.