In relating these conversations, which place the character of the Emir Beshýr in so disadvantageous a light, it would be unfair not to call the attention of the reader to a work recently published (Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess), in which the Emir is held up as a model of all Christian virtues, and his reign as a reign of peace.
As a romance, the Memoirs of the Princess may challenge a comparison with many works of our best novelists. The authoress seems to have a most unbounded indulgence for the errors of others; but the Emir Beshýr, notwithstanding, must still be left with all his stains upon him, as a wily, sanguinary, and perfidious, but successful prince.
It is not pretended that Lady Hester Stanhope did not personally dislike the Emir Beshýr; and, as her hatreds were as cordial as her friendships, she never spared him when she spoke of him to others, whilst her language, no doubt, was at all times highly coloured: but, unhappily, there are too many notorious facts to justify the abuse she lavishes on him, as regards his cruelties; only, if it is any palliation of his conduct that he had to deal with chieftains who were as great adepts in machiavelism as himself, this excuse is conceded to him.
In vol. ii., p. 160, the Amira Asmar informs her readers that the Emir Beshýr had put his two nephews to death to punish their treason in attempting his downfall. Now everybody in Mount Lebanon knows that the nephews had their eyes put out, and, as it was affirmed, were subjected to the loss of organs equally dear to Oriental husbands with sight itself, but were not put to death, and possibly are living now.
In vol. ii., p. 158, we read, “The Emir had been in power forty years, and, by the firmness and liberality of his policy, had continued, during the long period, to consolidate the jarring and heterogeneous elements committed to his sway into something like a united body; insomuch that peace reigned in the mountain, and the Moslem thirsted not for the blood of his Christian fellow-subject. In short, Maronite, Motowli, Mahometan, and Druze, looked upon each other as brethren.” A little before this (vol. ii., p. 140), she tells us, “I was at length under the protection of a prince whose vigorous arm upheld the dignity of Christianity in the East, and bid its followers confess their God without fear.”
In another place (vol. ii., p. 187), we read, “Soon afterwards Lady Hester Stanhope rose, and, bidding us farewell, took her departure, attended by a large retinue. A spirited charger stood at the gate, champing the bit with fiery impatience. She put her foot in the stirrup, and, vaulting nimbly into the saddle, which she, after the Oriental fashion, bestrode like a man, started off at a rapid pace, galloping over rock and mountain.”
Vol. ii., page 203, will afford us one quotation more; and, whilst it must be a matter of regret to raise a doubt of the correctness of the Amira’s recollections, it still will be necessary to vindicate the present publication from being the vehicle of falsehoods. It is there said, “The Queen of Tadmor, as Lady Hester Stanhope was commonly called by all the Bedouin tribes, was on the most friendly terms with the Emir Beshýr and his family, and a constant visitant to the garden.”
It will be in our power to answer all these somewhat erroneous assertions, by relating the substance of a conversation with Lady Hester, not embodied in the text. The conversation was as follows:—
“What would you say, Doctor, if a monster should send his executioner to tear your little girl, Eugenia, from you, and put her to death? what would be your horror? Yet the Emir Beshýr was capable of this; for when the wretched and unfortunate wife of the Sheykh Beshýr was flying from the terrors that surrounded her, he issued an order that her boy should be torn asunder wherever found. I was by no means intimate or attached to that woman; but her misfortunes required that I should assist her, and humanity justified it, as she was, at the time, without a parra, and flying through the snow. She had four or five children, two of which were in prison at Acre with the father, (who was afterwards strangled there, as you know,) and one was suckling at her breast.
“The Emir will never forget or forgive what I did on that occasion; for with Hanah” (this was a poor blind peasant, about whom I had been speaking, and the mention of whom led to the conversation) “and another, who were but lads then, I thwarted all his detestable plans, although he had his myrmidons in all directions out in search of her. Hanah was nearly lost in the snow, and the effect of the glare on his sight he never recovered. Most people called me a fool for my pains, and trembled at the consequences for me in opposing a powerful prince; but I am not one of your quiet sort, who sit in a corner, and grunt and lament, because they are afraid to act. Humanity raised her voice, that I should endeavour to rescue these wretched orphans, and I did it. With the intrigues of these two rivals, the Emir and the Sheykh, I never meddled: I have never seen the one or the other since the death of Sulymàn Pasha.” Now Sulymàn Pasha died before 1822, consequently Lady Hester Stanhope could not have been intimate with the Emir, nor have mounted her horse at his gate subsequent to 1825, which, if my recollection serves me (for I copied the quotations and returned the book), is the date of the Amira’s anecdotes.
Page 106.—“The room bore no resemblance.”
In perusing these pages, the reader is requested to bear constantly in mind the distinction there is between the usages of the East and those of England. Reflections and observations, if made on some of the incidents in this work, which would apply with irresistible truth in our own country and would necessarily have much weight attached to them, fall still-born from the pen in relation to Orientals. This reservation is called for more particularly in reference to the scenes which pass in Lady Hester Stanhope’s bed-chamber.
At the word bed-chamber we naturally figure to ourselves a four-post bedstead with tester and curtains, with paillasse, mattress, and feather bed, with marseilles quilt, and perhaps an eider-down one upon that, with a marble dressing-table and lavabou, and an endless display of rouge-pots, combs, hair-brushes, and the paraphernalia of a fashionable toilet-table. With one breath all this must be blown to the winds; Turkish ladies never know even the existence of such things. Some cupboard in a corner, or some brass-nailed box, contains whatever they want for cosmetical purposes, and a visit to the bath supplies all the rest.
In Eastern countries there is no room bearing even the name of bed-room; for there are no fixed bedsteads, no fixed washing-stands, no fixed dressing-tables. Every room is a saloon; and, when night comes, from a recess or niche in the thick walls of their houses, covered by a curtain, is drawn forth a wool mattress with a sheet, which are spread on the floor-matting. Upon this ready couch the lovely daughters of those favoured regions throw themselves dressed (let not this be lost sight of—dressed) very much in the same clothes as in the day-time, even to the turban, and draw over their persons a wadded quilt, to which is sewed the upper sheet, as a certain way of preventing it from shifting its position with reference to the quilt. Nothing else appears in the room, and ingress and egress is as free when ladies are in bed as at any other hour: hence the reason why the peasant spoken of at p. 62 of this volume so unceremoniously enters where Lady Hester is lying. In some houses, where the sofas are of sufficient breadth, even the mattress is dispensed with, and the quilt alone is all that is required for the night’s repose.
Lady Hester had adopted the same mode of sleeping. Her bed-room differed in nothing from the one described, excepting that, from an invincible repugnance to sleep on the floor, yet unable to procure a European bedstead, she had substituted in its place deal planks laid on trestles, which were stationary; and this was a constant source of difficulty and ridicule with the maids, whose prejudices against an immoveable bed never were entirely eradicated. On this she slept, attired as completely as when up, and the most scrupulous prudery could find no difference between her couch and her drawing-room sofa, unless it was that on one she lay, on the other she sat. Most often, however, when in conversation, she sat up in her bed, with a short pelisse over her shoulders, such as Polish ladies often wear. Her bath-room was her dressing-room.
In the early part of my life I was acquainted with the Prince C——, Hospodar of Wallachia, who had fled from his principality to Geneva. I never shall forget the impression which an introduction to his daughter, a young princess, made on me, when (not for a medical visit, but for one of friendship) I was ushered into a bed-room and shook hands with her, seated in her bed, dressed in the way represented above as usual with the Turks. Guests went and came as if she had been in the drawing-room, and, no doubt, some two or three Europeans among the number were as much astonished as myself. But how frivolous and empty are the distinctions which men create between right and wrong, when weighed in the balance of reason! I have dined with a French countess (who had taken a temporary lodging in Paris) in her bed-room; yet she never dreamed of impropriety; but I have been told, had I inadvertently put my hat down on her bed instead of a chair, her femme-de-chambre and she herself would have been scandalized at the imputation such an act conveyed.
Page 125.—“To see an angel.”
Page 162.—Lady Hamilton.
“Lady Hamilton was a woman **** **** whom Sir William H. fell in with here when he began to doat, and married when his doatage was confirmed: she is clever and artful, but a sad **.”—Diaries and Correspondence of the Earl of Malmesbury, v. iv. p. 214.
Page 270.—“P—— of W——, who was a sloven.”
“Argument with the Princess about her toilette; she piques herself on dressing quick; I disapprove this. She maintains her point; I, however, desire Madame Busche to explain to her that the Prince is very delicate, and that he expects a long and very careful ‘toilette de propreté,’ of which she has no idea. On the contrary, she neglects it sadly, and is offensive from this neglect.”
In this extract from Lord Malmesbury’s Diary, it will be seen how accurate his observations were, and how well they tally with Lady Hester Stanhope’s, who must have had opportunities of knowing all this even better than his Lordship could.
His Lordship in his diary again returns to the subject. “I endeavoured,” (says he) “as far as was possible for a man, to inculcate the necessity of great and nice attention to every part of dress, as well as to what was hid as to what was seen. I knew she wore coarse petticoats, coarse shifts, and thread stockings, and these never well washed, or changed often enough.... It is remarkable how amazingly her education has been neglected, and how much her mother, although an English woman, was inattentive to it.”—Diaries and Correspondence of the Earl of Malmesbury, v. iii. pp. 207, 211.
END OF VOL. I.
FREDERICK SHOBERL, JUNIOR,
PRINTER TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT,
51, RUPERT STREET, HAYMARKET, LONDON.