CHAPTERV.
Prince Pückler Muskau’s style of writing—Talking beneficial to health—Young men of Lady Hester’s time—Lady Hester’s superstitious belief in good and bad days—Hamâady, the executioner—His importance—Folly of education, according to Lady Hester—Lord Hood, Lord Bridport, Payne, the smuggler’s son—the O****s—The Prince’s self-invitations to dine out—B.—Prince Pückler and old Pierre—The American Commodore—Lady Hester’s cats—Mahomet Ali’s secret devices.
Monday, April 23.—During the stay of the prince, the count lent me a work written by the former, under the assumed name of Semilasso, and I read a page or two of it to Lady Hester Stanhope. “Ah!” cried she, “I see; he writes as he talks: he is not profound.”
Lady Hester was decidedly better in health, in many respects; but, notwithstanding, she grew thinner, if that were possible, and wasted away: she had become too a little humpbacked. Nevertheless, she now rose every day, sat up for six or eight hours, walked a little in her garden, and was almost as active in correspondenceand in the business of the house as when she was in perfect health. But the spasmodic jerks in her lower extremities occasionally returned: her eyes were more sunk in her head, and her nails continued to crack; still, as far as I could prognosticate, she was saved for this year; what another might do was in the hands of God. The powerful reaction, which her naturally strong constitution supplied against pulmonary disease, lay in the unceasing exercise she gave to her lungs in talking. The ancient physicians held that speaking and reading aloud were succedanea for the cessation of bodily exercise in old age. Experience proves that orators in the senate, barristers (who have briefs, that is), infirm old women given to garrulity, scolds, showmen, and all those whose tongues are constantly going, reach to an advanced period of life, without motion or fresh air enough, as one would suppose, to keep the functions of life in activity.
I have known her lie for two hours at a time, with a pipe in her mouth, when she was in a lecturing humour, and go on in one unbroken discourse, like a parson in his pulpit, happy in some flights of eloquence, which every now and then she was so remarkable for. Reflection succeeded reflection, anecdote followed anecdote, so fast, that one drove the other out of my head, and left me in despair at the impossibility of committing them to paper.
One of her favourite topics was the golden days of her time, when people of inferior station knew how to behave themselves; when young men were so well bred that they never stuck their legs in your face, never leaned their elbows on the table, never scratched their noses nor twisted their mustachios, never rubbed their eyes, never flapped their boots with their whips and canes, never did this and never did that, until at last one grew afraid to stir a limb before her, for fear of committing one of these numberless offences. And, as her temper was generally soured and her constitution much weakened, a person felt unwilling to move her susceptibility, however irksome this enforced stillness might be to him.
The best proof of good sense with her was to listen attentively to what she said, and the long experience of years had convinced me that she was justified, like Pythagoras, from the superiority of her reasoning powers, in demanding such acquiescence.
Tuesday, April 24.—It wanted about half an hour of sunset when I left her: it was Tuesday evening. Just before going, she said, with a serious air, “Doctor, take a bit of paper, and write—To-morrow, the 4th Adàr, the 13th Suffar, and the 25th of April[16]—nothingwhatever is to be done for me either by you or by anybody in the house, and the servants are to do no work. And, doctor, I would advise you to have nothing done by your family on that day: it is a nasty month, Suffar: I hate it.” I made no remark on this strange superstition, which Lady Hester Stanhope had in common with Julius Cæsar and others who have passed for great men.
Whilst walking with my family on the Sayda road, I saw a man coming towards us, mounted on a beautiful gray mare, with her tail reaching to the ground (the lower part of it dyed red with henna), and preceded by a walking groom. “Here comes Sulyman Hamâady,” said I. “And who is Sulyman Hamâady,” one of the party replied; “what’s he to us?” As soon as he had passed, I told them who he was. Sulyman Hamâady is, at this day, to the Emir Beshýr, what Tristram the Hermit was to Louis XI. of France. It is Hamâady who is the hangman of Mount Lebanon, and the executioner of the many cruelties that the Emir exercises against his devoted victims, and, like Tristram, he is the personal friend of that prince: he is well received by the great, feared by all classes, and a man of much importance. Honour, not disgrace, is attached to his office in this country. A proof of it was that, as we returned home through the village, we saw Hamâady sitting at the windowof the best house in the place, where he was lodged for the night.
Never was there a man more dreaded than Hamâady. He was rather thin, but apparently all nerve, grave in his deportment, with a large, full, but rolling black eye, and, on common occasions, without any sinister or harsh expression. Wherever he went, honours were paid him: he was often received by Lady Hester Stanhope, and I have drunk a glass of champagne with him in her company, which he professed not to like, preferring brandy to it. He was known to enjoy much of the familiarity, and some portion of the confidence, of the Emir himself.
It is strange that a drummer of a regiment, or a boatswain of a ship-of-war, may flog a man according to the caprice of a colonel or a commander of twenty-five; or the boatswain may hang him at the yard-arm, according to the sentence of a court-martial, or he shall die of the stripes he receives, yet the drummer shall, in process of time, become drum-major and be a fine gentleman, and the boatswain shall be a respectable petty officer among his acquaintance; whilst the Jack Ketch, who hangs a man, tried and condemned by a grave judge and a conscientious jury, is hooted at if he shows his face. Whence springs this abhorrence in the one case, this courtesy in the other? Is it that law, with its formalities, inspires moredisgust than the passionate freaks of individual severity? or have judge and jury, the real hangmen, had the art to throw the odium of spilling blood on a poor wretch, who is no more accessory to the act than the hempen cord which he ties?
I recollect once, in November last, riding over to the village of Jôon, to endeavour to persuade the goatherds, who supplied my family with milk, to send it with more regularity, having ineffectually requested them to do so several times by the servant. It was, I believe, on that day, when, in returning, I met Messrs. Poujolat and Boutés, the two French travellers, whose unsuccessful visit to Lady Hester Stanhope has been already narrated. I do not know whether other persons have made the observation, but it has occurred to me that, in countries called despotic, the lower orders give themselves more licence than in those where it is supposed, from the nature of the government, they possess greater impunity. The reason of this perhaps may be that, as their obedience to their superiors is regulated by the degree of fear in which they hold them, so they are always ready to disobey the injunctions of one superior at the command of another who happens to be more powerful. The consequence is, that no dependance can be placed on the word of the Syrian peasantry for any regular service required of them. A goatherd promised tosupply me punctually with milk all the year through: and he would probably have done so, if it had not been that a greater man than myself sometimes came to the village, who was fond of a bowl of milk for his breakfast. This man was Hamâady, who was not to be affronted with impunity: we were neglected therefore, so long as he staid, and I found all arguments vain against the terror of his formidable name.
Wednesday, April 25.—Lady Hester said to me to-night, “I always considered you as a respectable literary character—a little pedantic, and fond of showing people what you know—and, therefore, cannot but regret that you should have lost your energy, and your understanding, and your memory, by the perfect apathy to everything in which you are sunk. B. was clever as a literary character, too; but then he always affronted everybody by his immoderate pretensions: they might be just, but then he had no indulgence for any one. I always told him that people would never fail to be silent before him, and he would get nothing out of them; because I had observed at my father’s, how extremely modest people of knowledge generally were: they sat like scholars—I don’t mean like great scholars, but like scholars of a schoolmaster. You would spare a dunce, B. would not; and even sometimes he was quite rude. One day he and Lord S. were talking together, and Lord S. happened to sayto some passage B. was quoting—‘I believe it is so; when I was at college I could have told you, but now I can’t exactly say:’ when B. continued, ‘Why, you know Theocritus has a line,’ &c.—‘Who is Theocritus?’ I asked. ‘Madam,’ replied B., ‘I may say of you what was once said of thegreatLord Chatham, as you call him, and whom you have been talking about for these last two hours—I hardly know which most to be astonished at, your extraordinary genius, or your extraordinary ignorance.’
“Now, doctor, I always say I am a great dunce in some things; for, though there are few persons who have a quicker conception, a better judgment, and a nicer discrimination, with a firmer decision, than I have, yet, if I were to be taught for six hours things that do not suit my capacity, I should forget them all next morning, just as if I had never heard them: and so I told Prince Pückler Muskau, when we almost quarrelled about education. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you may educate a horse, and make him put a kettle on the fire, and drink tea, and dance a minuet on hishind legs, and a hundred things besides; but, leave him to himself, and he will do nothing of the kind:’ and so it is with the education of men. You may give a nobleman a tutor, and, so long as his father is alive, for fear he should be disinherited, or for fear of not marrying some particular woman who has got a largefortune, or to drink his father’s champagne, or for fear of being kicked out of society, he will keep to his books and to appearances; but, as soon as his father is dead, he’ll show himself what he really is, and, if he is by nature a blackguard, the greater will he prove in proportion to his rank. Such was Lord B., worse than a hackney-coachman; but if a man has such vices as come from nature alone—as when a peasant, from ambition, does things to rise in the world which even are crimes, I can forgive him; or if another, from an unaffected flow of spirits, must get into society and get drunk, or, from an over-vigorous constitution, becomes debauched, I can overlook all this.
“I knew a man, who, seeing a family in distress, out of sheer pity, gave bills for their relief, although he must have been aware he could never repay a sixpence of it: this may be swindling in the eyes of man, but is it in the eyes of God? When a cold, artificial character reads, and then assumes from books qualities and appearances not his own, studies for debauchery’s sake, runs after women for fashion and not from constitution—all such performances I detest, and would be the first to kick him out of society.
“I was acquainted with two persons in the great world, one a lover of the Duchess of R., the other a great politician in the House of Commons, and highlyesteemed by his party: neither of them could write a common note without making one or two blunders. The former could not always spell his own name; for I knew his tutor, and he assured me that his pupil, at twenty, came to him sometimes to know if he had written his signature properly. He once wrote me a note so illegible, that all I could make out was that my letters were better than Madame de Sevigné’s; and then, with a scrawling hand, and with blots, he contrived to hide his blunders: but the latter was so fearful of betraying his ignorance, that, when any particular question about politics required a long explanation, he would evade it, if written to, by replying, in five words, that he had had for some time thoughts of going down in the country to visit his correspondent, and he would then talk over the business. It is said that the great Duke of Marlborough could not write a despatch without a dozen errors in it: but here the want of education did no harm. The lover could always be understood enough to know that an assignation was made, and the general that a victory had been gained.
“Education is all paint—it does not alter the nature of the wood that is under it, it only improves its appearance a little. Why I dislike education so much is that it makes all people alike, until you have examined into them: and it sometimes is so long beforeyou get to see under the varnish! Education, beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic, is of no use to persons who have shops to attend to, household duties to perform, and indeed in all the ordinary occupations of life. I told the prince that, in reality, my lord’s gentleman and my lady’s-maid were much better off than a clergyman or a doctor. The rooms they live in, their fine wines, their dress, everything about them is better; and what education do they want more than keeping an account of their master’s and mistress’s linen, and such trifling inventories? I cannot let you remain in your error—an error so fatal to everybody—that accomplishments and learning give any decided advantage to their possessors; it is a man’s star that effects all: if men are to be great, they will be so as well without learning as with. Why, there was Lord Hood and Lord Bridport, both sons of country clergymen, with not more than a hundred a year, and they surely could not have had much education: for they robbed orchards, played the truant, hated school, and were sent to sea: yet one became a viscount with an immense fortune, and the other a lord, but not so rich. There was no remarkable talent in either—both were very honest men. Payne, the smuggler’s son, whom I sent to sea, had no education; but he had activity and luck, and made his way. I had admired his discretion and intelligenceas a lad; and when, at a time that Lord St. Vincent had more prizes than he could well man, and Payne was put into one of them, he boldly asked for himself the command of it, little knowing that Lord St. Vincent and Mr. Pitt did not like each other at all. ‘Who are you, my brave lad?’ asked Lord St. Vincent.—‘Why,’ answered he, ‘Lady Hester Stanhope knows me.’—‘You know Lady Hester Stanhope?’ said my lord. ‘Yes,’ replied Payne, ‘I knew her at Deal, and Mr. Pitt I know too, and that’s no bad recommendation.’—‘I think so,’ cried Lord St. Vincent, laughing, and appointed him.
“Now, take the reverse of the picture, and look at the O***s, with their polished education and every sort of accomplishment, and compare their splendid misery—for misery I call it—with those I have mentioned. There was Mrs. W*****, Lady A***, and Mrs. B*******. Lady A. might be said to be well off, as a baronet’s wife; but the other two!—I have witnessed the anxious countenances of those people, who, at every knock at the door, involuntarily turned their eyes, as if expecting some troublesome dun or some unpleasant news; and then, if the husband was called out of the room, what a look the wife gave when he came in again, as seemingly fearful something might have happened! What a fool and abominable wretch the Prince must have been, to go and invite himselfto dine with such people, when he knew he put them to the expense of a quarter’s income!
“There you would see him at some party, at the doorway of two rooms, speaking loudly to some one:—‘Well, then, it’s all fixed; on Wednesday next I dine with you, and shall bring about a dozen friends.’ ‘Why does your royal highness say a dozen? let it be fifteen.’—‘Well, a dozen—fifteen; but we shall dine precisely at four.’ And there was the man’s wife, standing breathless, with scarce strength to keep down a suppressed sigh, thinking with herself, ‘What shall we do, and how shall we provide for all this?’ Then the husband, with a forced smile, would endeavour to relieve her with, ‘My dear, did you hear? his royal highness intends us the honour of dining with us on Wednesday—you forget to thank him:’ and the poor wife, who strains at a compliment, ill-worded from her uneasiness—Oh! Lord!—oh! Lord, doctor, it has made my heart ache.
“I recollect B******* going down into Kent, and going round among the farmers to buy up chestnut horses with white foreheads and white legs; and, when he had got nine of them, he trimmed them up, made them good-looking, and, by going about, pretending first he would not sell them on any account, then that he would sell them only for money down, contrived to get a buyer for them, and sold them at ahundred pounds a pair, when he had given twenty-five, thus getting himself a little claret and champagne for the winter.
“These O***s were brought up from H. to be married to the Prince’s friends; for you know men will not go into society where there are no attractions from women; and the Prince, who saw them, said, ‘You must get them to town into our parties:’ but would they not have done better to have married some country squire, where at least they would have had their own mutton, a comfortable house, and plenty around them?”
Thursday, April 26.—Lady Hester was in better health, and in the best of humours: a gleam of sunshine seemed for awhile to dispel the gloom which had for so many months pervaded this unhappy abode. She talked over the gay scenes of her early travels, in which I had shared; of the festivities of Constantinople; reminded me of the sea captains (as she was accustomed to call them); of Mr. Fazakerly and Mr. Galley Knight; then how Mr. Tom Sheridan fell on his knees before her and made fine speeches at Malta; of General Oakes’s splendid parties; how Mr. Frederick North ran about in search of a —— he could not find; and related a hundred anecdotes, which her inexhaustible memory supplied at the suggestion of the moment.
She at last brought the conversation round to the Prince Pückler Muskau. “Now do tell me, doctor,” she continued, “what the Prince said of me; for, you know, when they come to me, they all come with a set speech and a prepared bow, that they may put down in their book what passed; but I want you to tell me how he comes into a room in a common way, as when he paid your family a visit: what sort of a bow does he make? He is a handsome man; but, although his hands are very good and very white, I don’t think them as good as old Pierre’s. What beautiful fingers Pierre has got! and, with the dirty work he has to do, they are even now white:—what would they be if he wore gloves constantly? The Prince’s nails are very good, but Pierre’s are incomparably fine: his hand is like some of those you see in the pictures at the Vatican; and, when it hangs loose, with his arm extended, it falls at right angles to his wrist—and all this with no intention on his part: he never suspected even that I was looking at them. Poor old Pierre! he walked about his room, the maids say, praying for me half the night. I have sent him home to his wife. I shall make him up a basket of some potatoes and vermicelli, and salmon, and some brawn—he likes brawn: and perhaps we shall have some news how the Prince made out at the Emir Beshýr’s.”
In fact, old Pierre was a regular spy, who, residing at Dayr el Kamar, was sent for from time to time to give an account of the visits of travellers to the Emir, of their reception, and what they talked about. He was not intentionally a spy; but, from his natural garrulity, he always recounted what he had heard, merely to please her ladyship, whom he knew to be very fond of such gossip.
Lady Hester pursued her discourse, and asked me if all the people now wore white gloves as the prince did. “It must be,” she observed, “very expensive: they can’t do with less than two pair a-day, which, at half-a-crown a pair, is about £70 a-year. I calculate it thus:—7s.6d.in three days, 15s.in six, or one week, and 60s.in a month:—that, with the odd days left out in each week, will make about £70.[17]
“It is very odd,” she observed after a pause, “that all those who write books say that I shake hands with them: now, you know very well that I never do, and that it is quite contrary to my manner—what can be the reason of their saying so?” “But the Americans,” I rejoined. “Oh!” cried she, “as for the Americans, it was quite ridiculous. When the whole posse of sixteen came with Commodore ——, I thought they would have torn my arm off: not a simple shake,but” (and here she imitated their rough way of doing it) “such as draymen would give. There were the Commodore’s daughters too—rather pretty girls, but ill dressed—something like Miss Williams; one with a beautiful set of teeth, which she showed, gums and all: but their clothes hung about them—you know how I mean. They wanted to appear rather clever, talking about the Sultan and his favourite, and having all the Turkish names at their tongues’ ends. I don’t know whether he talked to them, but I think he did: just, you know, speaking to the father, and then saying, ‘Are these your daughters?’—in that way. As for the Sultan’s favourite, he is a man to talk to anybody, and laugh in his sleeve.”
Logmagi had come up, his new house being finished, which Lady Hester had partly built, and nearly furnished at her expense. “Now,” she said, “I shall send him a voyage to sea, that he may do something for himself—perhaps to Constantinople.” In my own mind I conceived this to be some plan she had in contemplation for getting news from that city, or to send persons there, or to get somebody back—God knows what! All that could be conjectured on such occasions was, that there was something in the wind; but foolish was he who troubled himself in divining what it was; he was sure to be wide of the mark. Mystery and secresy were ever necessary to her nature. Herplans were generally executed in the cause of humanity, and with the most disinterested feelings: sometimes they were political, and then might be viewed in different lights, according to the party or school in which men had been bred; but her tendency for masking the most simple actions ran into excess. All the common events of Beyrout must be related to her with a mysterious air, as if nobody else was privy to them. Had I never seen anybody from day to day but her ladyship, I might have remained for months in ignorance of what was the town talk. If a dispute had happened among the military, if a governor had been deposed, if the Pasha had arrived, if a consul had died, all the every-day chat which, in other houses, is as common as the tea and coffee on the table—not one word of all this would you ever hear from her lips: she made a disguise for things which everybody must have known quite as well as herself.
Lady Hester told me the cats had eaten up her dinner. This reminds me that I have said nothing of the prodigious number of these animals, which had the run of her house and courtyards. I have counted as many as thirty old cats and kittens, without including those that haunted the store-rooms, the granaries, the outhouses, and the gardens. It was forbidden to molest them; and the consequence was,that neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, could be left for a moment on a table or a shelf, but half-a-dozen cats would be gnawing it or carrying it off. This was a trifling nuisance, however, in comparison with their caterwauling during their disputes, day and night, which was at once most overpowering and most ludicrous.
Lady Hester, before I left her, said, “You must write a letter to M. Guys, and tell him the Prince sent three times to the Emir Beshýr to say he was coming, and three times put it off again. The Emir will lay it upon me:—but you will see he will be as humble to the Prince; so humble! for I think the Prince has been instructed by Mahomet Ali to treat him like a dog.” She seemed to be reflecting a little while, and then resumed: “I don’t think Mahomet Ali is coming here, as the Prince told you he was: perhaps he has given out so, and will send that man, who, you know, resembles him so much; a figure he keeps to send out here and there, just to make his appearance and go again, to frighten people at certain places. He is so artful, doctor! he has tried to makesavantsof some of his women; he wanted some Madame de Staëls. There is no saying what pains he has taken to effect his purpose: I believe he would have been glad to have had me. But, as I said to the Prince, when he told me I ought to be on the throneof England, I would not be queen of England, nor of twenty Englands, if you could place me there:—all that is too low for me. I prefer my corner of the earth, with my own wild ideas, to being a shackled sovereign, with a pack of fools about me; and you may think it an odd speech to make, but such is the case,—I am now above mortification and above ambition. Those who have thought to mortify me have been much mistaken: have you ever seen me mortified?” To this question I was silent, at the time not distinguishing in my mind the difference between the indignation I had seen her manifest at the neglect and baseness of some persons and the assumption of some supposed superiority, which is quite a separate ebullition of feeling. “If you have,” she repeated, “say so:” then, reverting to Mahomet Ali, she went on: “The viceroy is such a sharp man, doctor. Once he wanted to find out how the women in his harým conducted themselves, and he used to dress himself as a common soldier, and, going to some of the tiptop pimps of Cairo, he would say to them, ‘I should like to get into such a house,’ naming some merchant or aga’s; ‘I am but a common man, but I have had the luck to find a treasure, and can pay you well for your pains. Here is a large gold coin for you; it’s ancient, and will not pass—but you can get it melted down. I have many like it, and you shan’t wantcash, if you will but introduce me into one or two houses that I shall point out.’ By degrees, he would talk of the viceroy’s harým, and so at last he would obtain information, and find out who were the faithless and intriguing ones among his own women. What he did with them I don’t know, but he had twelve of the pimps thrown into the Nile.
“But now, doctor, I see you are drowsy, so go to bed and sleep, and then get up, and eat, and walk, and ride, if those are the great pursuits of life. If I die, I die; and if I live (as I think I shall yet), and even if I am reduced to walk about in an old sack, so that God but gives me strength enough to wear it, I shall be perfectly contented. You have not profited by my advice; but at least I have done my duty; so, good night.”
After that she, as usual, resumed the conversation for an hour: but who could write down all she said? nay, it were better, perhaps, that even the little I have recorded should have died with her, and have never met the public eye: for, in endeavouring to rescue her memory from the many unjust imputations cast upon her actions during life, I may unwittingly have entailed much odium, trouble, and reproach upon myself.
FOOTNOTES:[16]All these are one and the same day in the corresponding months of the Syrian, Christian, Turkish, and European calendars.[17]This is mentioned to give the reader a notion of Lady Hester’s manner of calculating money.
FOOTNOTES:
[16]All these are one and the same day in the corresponding months of the Syrian, Christian, Turkish, and European calendars.
[17]This is mentioned to give the reader a notion of Lady Hester’s manner of calculating money.