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

Lady Hester Stanhope’s hours of sleep—Her night-dress—Irksomeness of her service—Her bed-room—Her dislike to clocks—Her frequent use of the bell—Her aptitude in discovering and frustrating plots—Blind obedience required by her—Anecdote of Lord S.—Lady Hester’s colloquial powers—Interminable length of her conversations—Peculiar charm of them—Her religious opinions—Her belief in supernatural agencies, and also of revealed religion—Certain doctrines of the sect of the Metoualis adopted by her.

For the last fifteen years of her life, Lady Hester Stanhope seldom quitted her bed till between two and five o’clock in the afternoon, nor returned to it before the same hours the next morning. The day’s business never could be said to have well begun until sunset. But it must not be supposed that the servants were suffered to remain idle during daylight. On the contrary, they generally had their work assigned them over-night, and the hours after sunset were employed by her ladyship in issuing instructions as to what was to be done next day; in giving orders, scoldings, writing letters, and holding those interminable conversations which filled so large a portion of her time, and seemed so necessary to her life. When these were over, she would prepare herself to go to bed, but always with an air of unwillingness, as if she regretted that there were no more commands to issue, and nothing more that she could talk about. When she was told that her room was ready, one of the two girls, Zezefôon or Fatôom, who by turns waited on her, would then precede her with the lights to her chamber.

Her bedstead was nothing but planks nailed together on low trestles. A mattress, seven feet long and about four and a half broad, was spread on these planks, which were slightly inclined from head to foot. Instead of sheets, she had Barbary blankets, which are like the finest English ones, two over her, and one under. There was no counterpane, but, as occasion required, a woollen abah, or cloak, or a fur pelisse would be used for that purpose. Her pillow-case was of Turkish silk, and under it was another covered in coloured cotton. Behind this were two more of silk, ready at hand, if wanted.

Her night-dress was a chemise of silk and cotton, a white quilted jacket, a short pelisse, a turban on her head, and a kefféyah tied under her chin in the same manner as when she was up, and a shawl over the back of her head and shoulders. Thus she slept nearly dressed.

As it had become a habit with her to find nothing well done, when she entered her bed-room, it was rarely that the bed was made to her liking; and, generally, she ordered it to be made over again in her presence. Whilst this was doing, she would smoke her pipe, then call for the sugar-basin to eat two or three lumps of sugar, then for a clove to take away the mawkish taste of the sugar. The girls, in the mean time, would go on making the bed, and be saluted every now and then, for some mark of stupidity, with all sorts of appellations. The night-lamp was then lighted; a couple of yellow wax lights were placed ready for use in the recess of the window; and, all things being apparently done for the night, she would get into bed, and the maid, whose turn it was to sleep in the room, (for, latterly, she always had one) having placed herself, dressed as she was, on her mattress behind the curtain which ran across the room, the other servant was dismissed.

But hardly had she shut the door and reached her own sleeping-room, flattering herself that her day’s work was over, when the bell would ring, and she was told to get broth, or lemonade, or orgeat directly. This, when brought, was a new trial for the maids. Lady Hester Stanhope took it on a tray placed on her lap as she sat up in bed, and it was necessary for one of the two servants to hold the candle in one hand and shade the light from her mistress’s eyes with the other. The contents of the basin were sipped once or twice and sent away; or, if she ate a small bit of dried toast, it was considered badly made, and a fresh piece was ordered, perhaps not to be touched.

This being removed, the maid would again go away, and throw herself on her bed; and, as she wanted no rocking, in ten minutes would be sound asleep. But, in the mean time, her mistress has felt a twitch in some part of her body, and ding dong goes the bell again. Now, as servants, when fatigued, do sometimes sleep so soundly as not to hear, and sometimes are purposely deaf, Lady Hester Stanhope had got in the quadrangle of her own apartments a couple of active fellows, a part of whose business it was to watch by turns during the night, and see that the maids answered the bell: they were, therefore, sure to be roughly shaken out of their sleep, and, on going, half stupid, into her ladyship’s room, would be told to prepare a fomentation of chamomile, or elder flowers, or mallows, or the like. The gardener was to be called, water was to be boiled, and the house again was all in motion. During these preparations, perhaps Lady Hester Stanhope would recollect some order she had previously given about some honey, or some flower, or some letter—no matter however trifling—and whoever had been charged with the execution of it was to be called out of his bed, whatever the hour of the night might be, to be cross-questioned about it. There was no rest for anybody in her establishment, whether they were placed within her own quadrangle, or outside of it. Dar Jôon was in a state of incessant agitation all night.

These details are unimportant in themselves, but they are significant in a high degree of her ladyship’s peculiarity of character; and, as we have touched upon the incidents of her bed-room, which was, for most purposes, her principal apartment, it may be as well to complete the description by a few additional particulars. The room bore no resemblance to an English or a French chamber, and, independently of its rude furniture, it was, in another sense, hardly better than a common peasant’s. Its appearance, when illness confined its occupant to her bed, was something of this sort; for I often entered it, early in the morning, before breakfast. On the floor, which was of cement, the common flooring of Syria, lay, upon an Egyptian mat, a large oblong bit of drab felt, of the size of a bedside carpet, called in Arabic libàd, and a thick coarse chintz cushion, from which her black slave, Zezefôon, had just risen, and where she had slept by her mistress’s bedside; the slave having this privilege over the maid, who always slept behind the curtain. This dirty red cotton curtain was suspended by a common cord across the room, to keep off the wind when the door opened, most of the curtain-ring tapes being torn off: so that the curtain hung, alternately suspended here, and dangling there, a testimony of the little time the maids found for mending. There were three windows to the room; one was nailed up by its shutter on the outside, and one closed up by a bit of felt on the inside: the third only was reserved for the admission of light and air, looking on the garden. In two deep niches in the wall (for the walls of houses in Syria are often three feet thick), were heaped on a shelf, equidistant from the top and bottom, a few books, some bundles tied up in handkerchiefs, writing-paper—all in confusion, with sundry other things of daily use; such as a white plate, loaded with several pair of scissors, two or three pair of spectacles, &c.; and another white plate, with pins, sealing-wax, wafers; with a common white inkstand, and the old parchment cover of some merchant’s day-book, with blotting-paper inside, by way of a blotting-book, in which, spread on her lap, as she sat up in bed, she generally wrote her letters. These places were seldom swept out, and dust and cobwebs covered the books, into none of which, I believe, she ever looked, excepting Tissot’s Avis au Peuple, another medical book, the title of which I have forgotten, the Court Calendar, a Bible, and a Domestic Cookery. The ground was strewed with small bundles; gown-pieces of silk, or coloured cotton, which she destined as presents; bits of twine, and brown paper, left from day to day, from packages which had been undone, &c.

She had no watch, clock, or timepiece; and generally the last words, when I left her in the evening, were, “Doctor, tell me what it is o’clock before you go.” I took the liberty of asking her why she had not sent for a watch or timepiece during the number of years she had remained on Mount Lebanon, a thing so necessary every where, but especially in a solitary house, where the muezzim[37] could not be heard, as in towns. “Because I cannot bear any thing that is unnatural,” was her answer; “the sun is for the day, and the moon and stars for the night, and by them I like to measure time.” Upon another occasion, she said, “I never should be induced to go into a steamboat; I, who have seen five men killed by the explosion of a boiler, and I don’t know how many more wounded and scalded, have always a dread about me. Besides, I like nothing but nature.”

On a wooden stool, which served as a table, by the bedside, stood a variety of things to satisfy her immediate wants or fancies; such as a little strawberry preserve in a saucer, lemonade, chamomile tea, ipecacuanha lozenges, a bottle of cold water, &c. Of these she would take one or other in succession, almost constantly. In a day or two they would be changed for other messes or remedies. There would be a bottle of wine, or of violet syrup; aniseeds to masticate, instead of cloves; quince preserve; orgeat; a cup of cold tea, covered over by the saucer; a pill-box, &c.; and so thickly was the wooden stool covered, that it required the greatest dexterity to take up one thing without knocking down half a dozen others. And, in this respect, the noiseless movements and dexterity of the Syrian and black women pass all imagination. For months together nothing of this assemblage would be upset or broken; whilst a blundering Frank (Lady Hester would often say) could not come into a room without tumbling over her pipe, hooking his foot in the carpet or mat, pitching forward against the table, and manifesting all that European clumsiness, upon which she so delighted to expatiate.

Her bed had no curtains, no mosquito net. An earthenware ybrick, or jug, with a spout, stood in one of the windows, with a small copper basin, and this was her washing apparatus. The room had no table for the toilet, or any other purpose; and, when she washed herself, the copper basin was held before her as she sat up in bed. There were no curtains to the windows; and the felt with which one of them was covered was kept in its place by a faggot-stick, stuck tightly in from corner to corner, diagonally. Such was the chamber of Lord Chatham’s grand-daughter! Diogenes himself could not have found fault with its appointments!

I see I have omitted, in the enumeration of the furniture, to mention a necessary appendage, often so ornamental in English rooms—I mean, bellropes. Lady Hester Stanhope’s room had one, a common hempen cord, such as is customarily used for cording boxes. It was reeved through a wooden pulley, screwed into the centre of the ceiling, and came down slanting to the wall, where it was tied to a rusty hook; the bend, within her reach, was thickly knotted, so that she might the more easily lay hold of it. Nor was it made so strong and stout without good reason; for she lugged at it sometimes with a degree of violence and vigour, that would have snapped whipcord in two; and seldom did a servant leave her room without being rung back again, once, twice, or thrice—so impatient was her ladyship’s temper, and in such quick succession did her ideas rise in her mind upon every order she had to give.

Worn out with the fatigue of ringing, talking, and scolding, at length Lady Hester Stanhope would fall asleep; all would be hushed, and so the silence would continue for three, four, or five hours. But, soon after sun-rise, the bell would ring violently again, and the business of the morning would commence. This was a counterpart of the night, only that the few hours’ sleep gave her a fresh supply of vigour and activity. As she seldom rose until four or five in the afternoon, the intervening hours were occupied in writing, talking, and receiving people; for, as she then sat up in her bed, her appearance was pretty much the same as if she had been on a sofa, to which her bed bore some resemblance. She would see, one after another, her steward, her secretary, the cook, the groom, the doctor, the gardener, and, upon some occasions, the whole household. Few escaped without a reproof and a scolding; her impatience, and the exactitude she required in the execution of her commands, left no one a chance of escape. Quiet was an element in which a spirit so restless and elastic could not exist. Secret plans, expresses with letters, messengers on distant journeys, orders for goods, succour and relief afforded to the poor and oppressed—these were the aliments of her active and benevolent mind. No one was secure of eating his meals uninterruptedly; her bell was constantly ringing, and the most trifling order would keep a servant on his legs, sometimes a whole hour, before her, undergoing every now and then a cross-examination worse than that of a Garrow.

In the same day, I have frequently known her to dictate, with the most enlarged political views, papers that concerned the welfare of a pashalik; and the next moment she would descend, with wondrous facility, to some trivial details about the composition of a house-paint, the making of butter, the drenching of a sick horse, the choosing lambs, or the cutting out of a maid’s apron. She had a finger in everything, and in everything was an adept. Her intelligence really seemed to have no limits; the recesses of the universe, if one might venture to say so, absolutely seemed thrown open to her gaze. In the same manner that she frustrated the intrigues and braved the menaces of hostile Emirs and Pashas, did she penetrate and expose the tricks and cunning of servants and peasants, who were ever plotting to pilfer her. It was curious to see what pains she would take in developing and bringing to light a conspiracy of the vile wretches, who, from time to time, laid their deep schemes of plunder—schemes to which European establishments have no parallel, and machinations which Satan himself could hardly have counteracted. She used to say, “there are half a dozen of them whom I could hang, if I chose;” but she was forbearing to culprits, when she once had them in her power, although unwearied and unflinching in her pursuit of them.

No soul in her household was suffered to utter a suggestion on the most trivial matter—even on the driving of a nail into a bit of wood: none were permitted to exercise any discretion of their own, but strictly and solely to fulfil their orders. Nothing was allowed to be given out by any servant without her express directions. Her dragoman or secretary was enjoined to place on her table each day an account of every person’s employment during the preceding twenty-four hours, and the names and business of all goers and comers. Her despotic humour would vent itself in such phrases as these. The maid one day entered with a message—“The gardener, my lady, is come to say that the piece of ground in the bottom is weeded and dug, and he says that it is only fit for lettuce, beans, or selk, [a kind of lettuce] and such vegetables.” “Tell the gardener,” she answered vehemently, “that when I order him to dig, he is to dig, and not to give his opinion what the ground is fit for. It may be for his grave that he digs, it may be for mine. He must know nothing until I send my orders, and so bid him go about his business.”

The consequence of all this was, she was pestered from morning till night, always complaining she had not even time to get up, and always making work for herself. Here is another example. A maid, named Sâada, was desired to go to the store-room man, and ask for fourteen sponges. She went, and added, out of her own head when she delivered the message, “fourteen to wipe the drawing-room mats with”—it being customary in the Levant (and an excellent custom it is) to clean mats with wet sponges. In the course of the day, this slight variation in the message came to Lady Hester’s ears, and she instantly sent for the culprit, and, telling her that she would teach her for the future how she would dare to vary in a single word from any message she had to deliver, she ordered the girl’s nose to be rubbed on the mats, while this injunction was impressed on her, that, whatever the words of a message might be, she was never to deviate from them, to add to them, or to take from them, but to deliver them strictly as she received them. In fact, she maintained that the business of a servant was, not to think, but simply to obey.

Truly did old General Loustaunau say sometimes that, with all her greatness and her talents, there was not a more wretched being on earth. People have often asked me how she spent her life in such a solitude: the little that has already been related will show that time seldom hung heavily on her hands, either with her or those about her.

In reference to the blind obedience she required from servants, Lady Hester Stanhope one day said to me, “Did I ever tell you the lecture Lord S******* gave me? He and Lady S—— had taken me home to their house from the opera. It was a cold snowy night; and, after I had remained and supped tête-à-tête with them, when it was time to go, owing to some mistake in the order, my carriage never came for me; so Lord S—— said his should take me home. When he rang for the footman to order it out, I happened to observe, ‘The poor coachman, I dare say, is just got warm in his bed, and the horses are in the middle of their feed; I am sorry to call him out on such a night as this.’ After the man had left the room, Lord S—— turned to me and said, ‘My dear Lady Hester, from a woman of your good sense, I should never have thought to hear such an observation. It is never right to give a reason for an order to a servant. Take it for a rule through life that you are never to allow servants to expect such a thing from you: they are paid for serving, and not for whys and wherefores.’”

When Lady Hester Stanhope got up, increasing attention to her own personal wants through long years of bad health had rendered her a being of such sensitiveness, that a thousand preparations were necessary for her comfort; and herein consisted the irksomeness of the service for those about her. Yet this, if ever it was pardonable in any person, was surely so in her; for her nature seemed to lay claim to obedience from all inferior creatures, and to exact it by some talismanic power, as the genii in Eastern tales hold their familiar spirits in subjection.

The marked characteristic of Lady Hester Stanhope’s mind was the necessity she was under of eternally talking. This is a feature in her life to which justice can hardly be done by description. Talking with her appeared to be as involuntary and unavoidable as respiration. So long as she was awake, her brain worked incessantly, and her tongue never knew a moment’s repose. It might be supposed that such a perpetual flow and outpouring of words must lead to the unconscious disclosure of every thought and feeling; but it was not so with Lady Hester Stanhope. Her control over her expressions was wonderful, in spite of her impetuous volubility. Her tongue was anything but the frank interpreter of her thoughts; it seemed rather to be given to her, upon Talleyrand’s principle, to conceal them; it was the tongue of a syren, always employed in misleading the hearer, and in conducting him to some unexpected conclusion by a roundabout road, or through a labyrinth of words, in which she would inextricably entangle him, until, at length, to his amazement, he found himself at some point, which he had never thought of before, or which he had been all along trying to avoid.

Her conversations lasted six and eight hours at a time, without moving from her seat; so that, although highly entertained, instructed, or astonished as the listeners might be, it was impossible not to feel the weariness of so long a sitting. Everybody who has visited Lady Hester Stanhope in her retirement will bear witness to her unexampled colloquial powers; to her profound knowledge of character; to her inexhaustible fund of anecdotes; to her talents for mimicry; to her modes of narration, as various as the subjects she talked about; to the lofty inspirations and sublimity of her language, when the subject required it; and to her pathos and feeling, whenever she wished to excite the emotions of her hearers. There was no secret of the human heart, however studiously concealed, that she could not discover; no workings in the listener’s mind that she would not penetrate; no intrigue, from the low cunning of vulgar artifices to the vast combinations of politics, that she would not unravel; no labyrinth, however tortuous, that she would not thread.

It was this comprehensive and searching faculty, this intuitive penetration, which made her so formidable; for, under imaginary names, when she wished to show a person that his character and course of life were unmasked to her view, she would, in his very presence, paint him such a picture of himself, in drawing the portrait of another, that you might see the individual writhing on his chair, unable to conceal the effect that her words had on his conscience. Everybody who heard for an hour or two retired humbled from her presence; for her language was always directed to bring mankind to their level, to pull down pride and conceit, to strip off the garb of affectation, and to shame vice, immorality, irreligion, and hypocrisy.

In the latter years of her life, social and unrestrained conversation was out of the question—it was difficult to unbend before her—to spend a couple of hours with her was to go to school. She was unceasingly employed in laying bare the weaknesses of our common nature. Mercy, in the sense of tenderness for people’s foibles, she had none; but, to her honour be it said, although she was constantly drawing a line between the high and low born, good qualities in the most menial person bore as high an estimation in her mind, as if she had discovered them in princes.

It was wonderful how long she would hold a person in conversation, listening to her anecdotes and remarks on human life; she seemed entirely to forget that the listener could possibly require a respite or even a temporary relief. It may be alleged that nothing was more easy than to find excuses for breaking up a parley of this sort; but it was not so—for her words ran on in such an uninterrupted stream, that one never could seize a moment to make a pause. I have sat more than eight, ten—nay, twelve and thirteen hours, at a time! Lady Hester Stanhope told me herself, that Mr. Way[38] remained, one day, from three in the afternoon until break of day next morning, tête-à-tête with her; and Miss Williams once assured me that Lady Hester kept Mr. N. (an English gentleman, who was her doctor some time) so long in discourse that he fainted away. Her ladyship’s readiness in exigencies may be exemplified by what occurred on that occasion. When she had rung the bell, and servants had come to her assistance, she said very quietly to them, that, in listening to the state of disgrace to which England was reduced by the conduct of the Ministers (this was in 1818-19), his feelings of shame and grief had so overpowered him, that he had fainted. Mr. N., however, declared to Miss W. that it was no such thing, but that he absolutely swooned away from fatigue and constraint.

Her conversations were generally familiar and colloquial, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes rising to eloquence so noble and dignified, that, like an overflowing river, it bore down everything before it. Her illustrations were drawn from every sensible or abstract thing, and were always most felicitous. Her reasoning was so plain, as to be comprehended and followed by the most illiterate person, at the same time that it was strictly logical, and always full of strength and energy. She had read all subjects without books, and was learned without lore; and, to sum up all, if she was mad, as many people believed, she was, like the cracked Portland vase, more valuable, though damaged, than most perfect vessels.

These dialogues may not, perhaps, read so well upon paper as they sounded to the ear when she spoke them. The flexibility of her features, the variety of her tones, her person, her dignified manner, her mimicry—all contributed towards the effect. Sometimes, after being deeply impressed with her discourse, I have gone from her, and immediately put it down in writing, word for word; but it never seemed to me the same thing.

It was often necessary to bear with great superciliousness and arrogance in her manner, and she might be said to be the most deliberately affronting person that ever existed, for she would say anything to anybody. Few, however, thought proper to put themselves in a passion, for she generally hit right. I have known her call a prince a coquin to his face. Nobody could despise her powers of argument, and her superiority of intellect. Her quickness of perception between right and wrong was indubitable; but, when she chose it, her sophistry was no less subtile and irresistible.

In the following diary, as much as possible of what fell from her on different subjects has been preserved. To have written down all would have required as many scribes as there are reporters for a daily newspaper. “Thoughts come into my head as wind comes in at the window,” Lady Hester used to say. Topic succeeded topic, one thing followed another, and it required a tenacious memory to retain such a profusion of matter, and much leisure to put it on paper.

The religious opinions of a person like Lady Hester Stanhope may probably be an object of curiosity to those who consider a man’s mode of faith the true criterion by which to estimate him. As far, however, as professed creeds went, it is doubtful whether she ever subscribed to any. She was accustomed to say, “What my religion is nobody knows. Jews and Christians have tried me hard, and questioned me pretty closely, but they were not wiser when they ended than when they began.”

“Doctor,” one day she said to me, “you have no religion—what I mean by religion is, adoration of the Almighty. Religion, as people profess it, is nothing but a dress. One man puts on one coat, and another another; but the feeling that I have is quite a different thing, and I thank God that he has opened my eyes. You will never learn of me, because you cannot comprehend my ideas, and therefore it is of no use teaching you. Nobody opens a book to an idiot, that would spit and splutter over it; for you never could make him read. Ah!—I see my way a little before me, and God vouchsafes to enlighten me perhaps more than other people.

“I know my own imperfections and my own merits; and I hope, by rendering myself pure in thought and deed, to become acceptable in the eyes of God. In all my gaieties, I was always the same as I am now. I saw there was a system of mythology, a system of medicine, of politics, of all sorts of things; but they did not satisfy me, and I used to say to myself I must find all this out. I know now a great deal more than I did then; and, if I were to sit down to dictate all I know, it would take me two years to do it. Yet, after all, when I look round and see the boundless extent of knowledge, I feel my own littleness. But what are half the people in the world? I hold them in the most sovereign contempt. Sir J. Mackintosh, who makes a speech, and makes a talk at a dinner-table, and then says he doesn’t know what about witchcraft—he may say what he likes, but there are evil spirits in mankind. Go into a madhouse!—all madnesses are not alike—and where you suspect the presence of an evil spirit.... But there, you will go and speak of these things to common persons, who will make fun of it, just as Dr. Madden and Dr. Clarke did....”

She went on, “I never can imagine that all the celebrated Greeks and Romans were a pack of old women; and therefore what they believed in must be as good as what other people believe in. But many, who see these things with the same eyes as I do, are still in the dark. It is like that looking-glass—everybody knows it reflects his face, but many do not know how and in what manner that is effected. Now I understand all the heathen mythology, not from reading about it, or hearing people talk about it, but from my own penetration and the depth of my reflections. And, if I could but get hold of some books that would give me the opinions and doctrines of all the ancient philosophers, I would then write down my own, and would support them by quotations; as thus—such a thing is so and so, and Plato, or Socrates, or Cicero, or somebody else, has such a passage in confirmation of what I assert.

“It was ever an object with me to search out why I came into the world; what I ought to do in it, and where I shall go to. God has given me the extraordinary faculty of seeing into futurity; for a clear judgment becomes matter of fact. It has ever been my study to know myself. I may thank God for my sufferings, as they have enabled me to dive deeper into the subject than, I believe, any person living. The theory of the soul, doctor, what an awful thing!

“My religion is to try to do as well as I can in God’s eyes. That is the only merit I have: I try to do the best I can. Some of the servants sometimes talk about my religion—dyn es Syt,[39] as they call it—and I let them talk; for they explain it to people by saying, it is to do what is right, and to avoid all uncleanliness.

“My views of the Creator are very different. I believe that all things are calculated, and what is written is written; but I do not suppose that the devil is independent of God: he receives his orders. Not that God goes and gives them to him, any more than the big my lord goes and gives orders to his shoeblack. There is some secondary being that does that—some intendant.

“There are angels of different degrees, from the highest down to the devil. It must be an awful sight to see an angel! There is something so transcendent and beautiful in them, that a person must be half out of his senses to bear the sight. For, when you are looking down, and happen to raise your head, and there is the angel standing before you, you can’t say whether it came up through the earth, or down from the sky, or how—there he is, and may go in the same way. But angels don’t appear to every body. You know, doctor, you can’t suppose that, if you were a little dirty apothecary, keeping a shop in a narrow street, a prime minister would waste his time in going to call on you; or that, if a man is sitting over his glass all the evening, or playing whist, or lounging all the morning, an angel will come to him. But when there is a mortal of high rectitude and integrity, then such a being may be supposed to condescend to seek him out.

“God is my friend—that is enough: and, if I am to see no happiness in this world, my share of it, I trust, will be greater in the next, if I am firm in the execution of those principles which he has inspired me with.”

Such were the religious opinions which Lady Hester Stanhope expressed from time to time. There may be observed in the lives of persons of extraordinary political talents a disposition to believe in the possibility of a class of agencies, which are generally considered visionary by common capacities. This may arise from the comparison they make between their own intellectual faculties and those of common minds. For, when they reflect how much superior they are to the generality of mankind, how much farther they can see into men’s projects, and what numberless agents, unknown and unsuspected by the vulgar, they call into action to effect their own plans and purposes, they then set no bounds to the range of an omnipotent being, and they fancy such a power to be served by spirits as much invisible to themselves, as their spies and creatures are unseen and unobserved by those whom they influence.

It was so with Lady Hester Stanhope. She managed whatever affair she undertook with impenetrable mystery; and the hand that weighed down the guilty or lifted up the oppressed was, when she stretched it out, oftener felt than perceived. Hence, probably, it was that her all-powerful mind had taken a strong bias towards dæmonology, necromancy, and magic. She seemed to entertain a firm belief that the elements were filled with spirits, who watched over and guided the steps and actions of men. The air we move in, and the earth we tread on, she considered as filled with delicate and aërial beings, by whom the gentle and sage were rewarded and protected for the amenity and prudence of their every-day movements and actions, but who, in return, avenged themselves on the wicked, nay, even on the awkward, by causing the numberless bodily accidents which such persons are liable to. “Never do I move a foot,” Lady Hester would sometimes say, “but I ask these guardian sylphs to watch over me; and never do I see a blundering fellow knock his head against the top of a doorway, but I think he is breaking some of their delicate members. For, as a piece of valuable china is generally set in a place where it may not be easily knocked down, so do these spirits generally perch where our steps may not molest them: and, as a man who spits about a room commonly aims his saliva where he will not spoil the furniture, so should we look that our motions and gestures do not injure these unseen creatures; and hence it becomes us, in what we do violently, to give them a kind of warning to get out of the way.”

In this belief, Lady Hester still acknowledged the Holy Scriptures as inspired writings; she quoted from them as such, and may be said to have looked into them oftener than into any other book. Thus, in speaking of the resurrection, she drew her argument from the New Testament. “There will be two resurrections,” she used to say; “for the Scripture mentions somewhere the first resurrection, and people don’t talk of their first wife unless they have had a second. The first resurrection will be such, that the dead will rise, and walk on the earth, with the people of it, in their accustomed forms and raiment; but, at the second, they will all appear before the Murdah,[40] and then will be the day of judgment.”

On another occasion, she exclaimed, “What wonderful things those prophecies are in the Bible! To think they should foretel events, and even people’s names, so many hundred years before a thing happens!”

When the missionary, Mr. Way, was at Jôon, Lady Hester and he talked together on religion for several hours. “Mr. W.,” she said, “was clever and learned; but he, like the rest, fancied he was to effect the conversion of men by his own efforts: they are all mistaken. My scheme is quite different. I am but an instrument in the hands of God, and, when he pleases that the great change is to take place, he will bring it to pass as he likes. My duty is to prepare people’s minds; and, if I were to die to-morrow, I should be contented if I thought I had made some persons, at least, reflect.”

In some things, Lady Hester Stanhope had adopted portions of the Jewish law, or perhaps of that of the Mussulman sect of the Shyites. Several of her maid-servants were taken from the neighbouring villages, where there are a great many schismatic Mahometans, called Metoualys; and in them she probably remarked certain observances, about which she obtained fuller explanations from the learned Sheykhs who occasionally visited her; and she seems to have copied these observances as useful rules of life, but not as religious duties. The Metoualys have the terms nidjez and halal, synonymous with unclean and lawful, constantly in their mouths, and most of the laws respecting uncleanliness in the Levitical code are followed by them. Lady Hester Stanhope had imbibed many of these prejudices, as will be seen from an example or two.

A gentleman, irreproachable on the score of cleanliness and of refined manners, having arrived somewhat unexpectedly at Jôon, the servants, in their hurry to get his dinner, made use of some things which belonged to her ladyship’s service. After dining, the guest paid his visit to her, and then retired to go to rest. It was nearly one in the morning. From a word, casually dropped by the slave, she discovered that some of her own dinner napkins had been given out for her visitor. Such an uproar began, as few people can imagine would ever spring from so trifling a cause, and was hardly over by daylight.

“What! is there no possibility,” she cried, “of keeping anything to myself? I do insist, that everything which regards other people may never be mixed with what is for me. Neither shall water be boiled in my kitchen, nor cooking go on there, nor saucepan, dish, nor glass, that has once gone out for any one, ever return there again.” The confusion lasted for some hours after midnight; she had all her pots, pans, tumblers, dishes, towels, knives and forks, every article of the table or kitchen, brought in, and spread before her, to teach them, as she said, by the trouble they had, not to violate her orders again. But there was reason to suppose that all these minute and exclusive regulations were not attended to. She was the dupe of the servants’ lies; and she once said, as if in despair at not being able to enforce obedience, “Doctor, they wipe their noses, then the ..., and then the drinking-glasses, in the same towel; and lie, and lie, with an assurance that sets detection at defiance.”