SECOND EDITION.
In publishing a second edition of the “Memoirs of Lady Hester Stanhope,” the Author does not feel himself called upon to reply to the many desultory criticisms on his work which have issued from the press. It was naturally to be expected that, among the numerous adherents of statesmen, noblemen, and princes, whose lives had been commented upon in these pages, there would be no lack of writers to vindicate their reputation, or, failing in this, to censure the narrator. But, to do so with vulgarity, as was the case in two or three reviews, is surely departing from the rules of literary courtesy, and must rather have weakened their arguments than otherwise.
We read in the number of the Quarterly Review for September last (p. 449) a paragraph, which the writer must have known was a misrepresentation of facts. It is there asserted that the Earl Stanhope had given a flat contradiction to a portion of Dr. M.’s Conversations. Now, the critic ought to have been aware that what his lordship denied was no part of the “Conversations,” but an extract from a letter written by Lady Hester herself to his Grace the Duke of Wellington; and yet, not acting with the fairness and impartiality which became him, and becomes every person sitting in judgment on another, he forgets to give at the same time the answer, and in this way hopes to cast odium on the Author of the Memoirs, at the expense of truth and justice. No apology therefore is needed for inserting the answer, thus, it is to be hoped, unintentionally omitted, and which was as follows:――
“The Author of the ‘Memoirs of Lady Hester Stanhope’ presents his compliments to the Editor of the Morning Post, and, in reference to that portion of a letter from the Earl Stanhope, which appeared in the Morning Post on the 10th inst., wherein his lordship complains of an assertion ‘that he went to dine in company with Mr. Fox when Mr. Pitt was on his death-bed,’ begs leave to inform him that it was not made by Lady Hester Stanhope in conversation with the Author (as might be inferred from his lordship’s words), but was contained in a letter written by her ladyship to the Duke of Wellington, and which was published in the newspapers of the day. Consequently, the Author of the Memoirs is in no wise responsible for the accuracy or inaccuracy of the statement.
“With regard to the concluding paragraph of his lordship’s letter, in which he says, ‘I may also express my concern that any physician should have considered it as consistent with his sense of propriety to publish the report of conversations between himself and one of his patients,’ the Author of the Memoirs takes the liberty of observing that the contents of his work are not confidential communications between a physician and his patient, but conversations upon domestic and public subjects, which had already been repeated to many other persons, and which, he was convinced, from her ladyship’s frequent recurrence to the same topics, she was but too anxious should be made known to the world. The Author, therefore, may be excused if he adds that he has been as desirous to observe the strict rules of propriety, and is as incapable of violating private confidence, as his lordship himself.”
In other respects, the Author of the Memoirs has no complaint to make. A reviewer promulgates his opinions, which clash with those of an author, and the public, if interested in the discussion, soon shows its leaning. When the reviewer has done honour to Lady Hester Stanhope’s noble qualities and her virtues, the Author can readily forgive what is said of himself, although, “peradventure,” not altogether said with fairness.
THE AUTHOR.
United University Club, November 5, 1845.
PREFACE.
There are some people in the world whose pride is so great or so little, that the remarks of any individual, respecting their condition, do not affect them one way or the other. Such a person was Lady Hester Stanhope; and I beg leave, at the outset of this work, to apprize the reader, in the most explicit terms, that I have published nothing, in what I am about to submit to his perusal, which she would not have desired to be now made known. As a professional man, who was for many years her physician, I may naturally be supposed to feel a deep interest about her; and, when I had seen her, in the first epoch of her peregrinations, dwelling in palaces, surrounded with all the luxuries common to her rank, and courted and admired by all who had access to her, I could not but be poignantly affected in beholding the privations to which she was latterly subjected. My object being to portray a character which is not duly appreciated by people in general, I could devise no better means than that of giving a diary of her conversations, wherein her observations on men and things fall naturally from her own mouth.
Whilst I acknowledge my own unfitness for such a work, my chief reason for undertaking it is the possession of numerous memoranda, resembling the unfashioned marble fresh from the quarry, rudely shaped, but, to the philosopher and moralist, bearing the marks of the soil from whence it was taken. Had I entrusted them to abler hands, to form into a more perfect composition, the materials might have been embellished, but it would have been at the expense of their originality.
Lady Hester Stanhope, noble by birth and haughty by nature, had carried out from England all the habits of her order: but a prolonged residence in the East amongst the Turks induced her to reflect on the different customs of those around her, and she adopted by degrees all such as she thought had good sense for their basis. Every year brought her nearer to the simplicity of nature, and taught her to throw down those barriers with which pride, reserve, and etiquette have hedged in persons of rank in this country――barriers, favourable to a complete separation between the rich and poor, between the high and low, but which have also excluded our aristocracy from the enjoyment of many of the pleasures of life, and have too often made them the slaves of their own greatness.
The following pages are faithful transcripts of Lady Hester Stanhope’s conversations. In the thousand and one nights that I have sat and listened to them, I have heard enough to compile an uninterrupted history of her life from her infancy to her death; but, of course, much has been necessarily suppressed, and much more forgotten: the reader, therefore, must content himself with a less continuous narrative, which, it is hoped, will not prove uninstructive, and is, at all events, strictly true. The phraseology of the speaker is religiously preserved, as will be readily acknowledged by those who have known her. In many instances it is but little conformable with the present style of English conversation: but any alterations made in it, to suit the fastidiousness of some tastes, would, by destroying the fidelity of the picture, shake the authenticity of what remains.
I have touched slightly on Lady Hester Stanhope’s religious opinions; and although I am quite sure that a traveller was seldom, if ever, allowed to depart from her presence without an insight into her sentiments on these points, even from the little I have said, it will be plain that not one has done her justice in speaking of them.
I sincerely trust that nothing will be found in the following pages which can with just cause wound the feelings of any living person: and it is to be borne in mind that chagrin and disappointment had soured Lady Hester’s temper, and put her out of humour with all mankind; so that her praise and blame must be received with all due reservation.
Before I conclude, I think it necessary to add a few lines respecting the last months of her existence. Lady Hester Stanhope died, as far as I have been able to learn, unattended by a single European, and in complete isolation. I was the last European physician or medical man that attended her, and I was most anxious and willing (foreseeing her approaching fate as I did) to continue to remain with her: but it was her determined resolve that I should leave her, and those who have known her can not deny that opposition to her will was altogether out of the question.
There is no doubt that, by prolonging my stay on Mount Lebanon, I might have been of considerable service to her ladyship. She was about to shut herself up alone, without money, without books, without a soul she could confide in; without a single European, male or female, about her; with winter coming on, beneath roofs certainly no longer waterproof, and that might fall in; with war at her doors, and without any means of defence except in her own undaunted courage; with no one but herself to carry on her correspondence; so that everything conspired to make it an imperative duty to remain with her: yet she would not allow me to do so, and insisted on my departure on an appointed day, declaring it to be her fixed determination to remain immured, as in a tomb, until reparation had been made her for the supposed insult she had received at the hands of the British government.
It would have been expected that the niece of Mr. Pitt, and the grand-daughter of the great Lord Chatham, might have laid claim to some indulgence from those whose influence could help or harm her; and that her peculiar situation in a foreign country, among a people unacquainted with European customs and habits (being left as she was to her own energies to meet the difficulties which encompassed her), might have exempted her from any annoyance, if it did not obtain for her any aid. A woman sixty years old, with impaired health, inhabiting a spot removed many miles from any town, amidst a population whom their own chiefs can hardly keep under control, was no fit object, one would think, for molestation under any circumstances; but, when the services of Lady Hester’s family are put into the scale, it seems wonderful how the representations of interested money-lenders could have had sufficient weight with those who guided the State to induce them to disturb her solitude and retirement. Will it be believed that, when in August, 1838, I took leave of her, the beam of the ceiling of the saloon, in which she ordinarily sat, was propped up by two unsightly spars of wood, for fear the ceiling should fall on her head; and that these deal pillars, very nearly in the rough state in which they had been brought from the North in some Swedish vessel, stood in the centre of the room? Her bed-room was still worse; for there the prop was a rough unplaned trunk of a poplar-tree, cut at the foot of the hill on which her own house stood.
It may be asked whether there were no carpenters or masons in that country? There certainly were both; but, where carriage is effected on the backs of camels and mules and there are no wheeled vehicles whatever, in a sudden emergency (such as the cracking of a beam), resort must be had to the most ready expedient for immediate safety; and, with her resources cramped by the threatened stoppage of her pension, her ladyship could not venture on new-roofing her rooms――a work of time and expense.
