Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, Volume 3 (of 3)

Journey of the Princess of Wales to Jerusalem--Burial at Abra--Dismissal of Ibrahim--Padre Nicolo--M. Ruffin appointed French consul at Sayda--Great drought--Festival of St. Elias--Alarm of robbers--Visit of the Author to the Shaykh Beshýr’s wife, and to Syt Frosýny Kerasâty--Further alarms--Festival of Byrám--Cottages taken for Lady Hester at the village of Rûm--Depilation--Flight of Mâlem Dubány--Return of Lady Hester from Antioch--Result of researches after the murderers of Col. Boutin--The Ansáry refuse to give them up--Mustafa Aga Berber collects troops to punish the Ansáry--Motives of Lady Hester’s voyage to Antioch--Visit of M. Regnault, French consul at Tripoli--M. Loustaunau and his predictions--History of Michael Ayda--Return of Giorgio from England, with Mr. N., as successor to the Author--Last visit of the latter to Acre--The governor of Smyrna put to death--Hawáry soldiers--Visit to the Emir Beshýr.

In the mean time, it was told me by Abûna Saba, the superior of the monastery of Dayr Mkhallas, who was just returned from Acre, that Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales had reached Acre under the following circumstances. The vessel, on board of which she was, had put into Jaffa, as being the nearest port to Jerusalem. Mohammed Aga, the governor, was not there, and the vice-governor, Kengi Ahmed, (his father-in-law) refused to let Her Royal Highness land, saying that he respected her firmans, but dared not act upon them until they had been presented to his master, Sulymán Pasha.[98] Upon this the vessel sailed for Acre. Here the Princess inquired for Signor Catafago, of whom she had probably heard at Jaffa; but, on learning that he was absent, Her Royal Highness sent for Signor Malagamba, the English agent.

A complaint was laid against Kengi Ahmed Aga for having refused her entrance at Jaffa; but his conduct was justified by the pasha, who said that it was Her Royal Highness who had gone wrong by trying to get in at the window instead of the door; meaning that she had presented herself at a port which was not the seat of government. The pasha judged Signor Catafago to be the fittest person to act as Her Royal Highness’s conductor to Jerusalem: he therefore sent for him to Nazareth, ordering him to come immediately.

Soon after his arrival, which was on the same day, the princess landed, and paid a visit to the pasha, who received her with distinction, but in his common saloon; after which the necessary orders were issued by him that she should be furnished with tents, horses, and mules, for her suite and luggage, and with a takhtarwàn, or covered palanquin, and his own double tent for herself; and, likewise, that she should be entertained at the pasha’s cost at the different stations on the road. Abûna Saba told me that, on the princess’s visit to the pasha, she walked through the streets to the palace, taking the arm of two of her officers who wore red coats. There was one great piece of neglect in her people: they never officially advised the pasha that she proposed to visit him, otherwise he would not have received her in the room that he did.

Signor Malagamba, the English agent, had, it appears, so little polish in his manners, that he was entirely neglected by her Royal Highness, who found in Signor Catafago all the attention to her wishes that she could desire. Accordingly, in arranging the plan of the journey to Jerusalem, he obtained from her Royal Highness her consent that she should go by the way of Nazareth, and across Samaria, to Jerusalem. On quitting Acre, her Royal Highness presented the pasha with a snuff-box (my narrator told me) worth one hundred purses--more than £1500; but here the customary exaggeration of the Levantines probably added seven eights to the real value.

On the road to Nazareth there is a large village, called Shûf Omar. I conceive this to have been the place meant, in the evidence adduced against her Royal Highness in the House of Lords, in 1820, under the name of Aûm: for there is no place called Aûm on the road from Acre to Nazareth, and none the sound of which comes so near it as Omar. Here her Royal Highness made her first station. As, in so large a cavalcade, composed of so many persons ignorant of Arabic, there was necessarily much confusion, it happened that one of her Royal Highness’s trunks, containing effects she would have been unwilling to lose, was stolen hereabouts. No sooner was it missed, than Signor Catafago set his people to work to discover the thief. This is not very difficult in a country, where, between town and town, or between village and village, there are no single houses, no extensive forests, and few places of concealment, except caverns, to issue from or return to; and where a single individual, not present at the customary evening conversation of his neighbours, would necessarily be compelled, from the usual interrogatories of his friends, to assign a sufficient reason for his absence. Signor Catafago immediately sent for the bailiffs of the village, and told them that, if the trunk were not produced forthwith, the village should be avanized. This is a common way of finding out a delinquent: for the peasants, rather than suffer in their own pockets, will soon discover the offenders and bring them to justice. Accordingly, on the following morning, Signor Catafago was told that the trunk would be found lying in a cavern by the side of the road. It was found and restored to the princess: and although it had been broken open, the contents were left in it.

At Nazareth her Royal Highness was lodged in Signor Catafago’s house. When she departed, he requested her to excuse him from accompanying her farther, and deputed his son, Lewis Catafago, in his place. Her Royal Highness offered him a handsome present for his trouble and hospitality, which he refused, probably out of fear, under the plea that he was but a servant of the pasha’s, and could not accept anything.

Her Royal Highness pursued her journey, and arrived safe at Jerusalem. The same house was assigned to her which Lady Hester had occupied when there. Thence she went to the river Jordan, and, returning to Jerusalem, took the road to Jaffa, where the vessel awaited her. Among the persons appointed to attend her Royal Highness on this interesting tour in the Holy Land was Hadj Ali, whose name has already occurred so often in these pages. He filled the same situation with her Royal Highness which he had done with Lady Hester; and it is chiefly from him and Abûna Saba that I have collected these trifling details.

About this time, an old man in Abra (nicknamed the doctor), but whose real name was Abu Daûd, died. As soon as the breath was out of his body, the women stripped the corpse, and put on it what had been his Sunday clothes. His son, with much wailing (for custom allows not silent grief), set up the usual cry of “Oh, my father! oh, my father!” Friends of the family were then despatched to all the villages within distance, to assemble the villagers, who make it a point of good neighbourhood to attend on these melancholy occasions. They flocked in by small parties; and, as soon as they came within hearing of the house where the corpse lay, they began to cry aloud, continuing in one breath and one tone from beginning to end--“Thou art gone, cousin: our tears are hot: parting is bitter, but such is the will of God!” This cry was continued up to the door. To a person unacquainted with Arabic, the cry for a marriage and for a death (by the men) appears the same: the tones are one, the words only are different.

Ibrahim, the Egyptian, who had been sent to England with a couple of Arabians, as a present to his Royal Highness the late Duke of York, had, under my hands, recovered his health from a severe pulmonary attack: but, not liking the monotonous life of Abra, he threw up his service, and went to Damascus. Here poverty overtook him, and he returned to me begging. I gave him a small allowance on Lady Hester’s account, merely to keep him above want until her return: for I did not wish to use harsh measures with a man just rescued from the jaws of death, and for whom I supposed Lady Hester would have some consideration, as having been in England, and for some time groom in the Duke of York’s stables. However, to finish what I have to say of this man, when Lady Hester returned from Antioch, she found it impossible to keep him. I took him, therefore, before the cadi of Sayda, to whom I made known the kindnesses which had been wasted on this ungrateful fellow. I dwelt particularly on his habits of drunkenness, which were hardly pardonable in any one, more especially in a Mahometan; and I then begged, in Lady Hester’s name, that he might be shipped off to Egypt, his own country, by the first opportunity. This was done. His loose habits there brought on a repetition of his cough; and he finally died of phthisis. I discovered afterwards that this man had acted as sheriff’s officer at Alexandria on the occasion of an execution of a thief, who was hanged by the English from the top of the gateway that overlooks the parade. What would the Duke have thought, if he had known that one of his grooms was a hangman!

On the 26th of July I had an attack of fever, which, however, left me in four days; but I felt feeble for some time afterwards. At the commencement of this fever I happened to have taken an emetic, and was under its influence, when a holy father was announced to me. He proved to be Father Nicholas, a friar of the order of St. Francis, who had resided for many years at Zeluma, a village on the very summit of Mount Lebanon; where, in the midst of the Drûzes and some Christian families, he enjoyed such consideration as his convivial qualities entitled him to. He announced himself as the envoy of the Emiry (feminine for emir) Meleky by name, sister to the Emir Hyder, who, having run the gauntlet through all the medical practitioners of Syria for some female complaint with which she was afflicted, now wished me to undertake her cure.

I entertained the jovial friar until the next morning, as well as my sick state of body would permit me, and then dismissed him with a letter to the princess, excusing myself on the score of ill health.

Monsieur Taitbout, the French consul at Sayda, had been superseded by Monsieur Ruffin, son of a gentleman at Constantinople, who had, on one occasion, held for a short time the situation of chargé d’affaires of the French government to the Porte. Monsieur Ruffin arrived about this period. He was accompanied by Madame Ruffin, a Parisian, who expressed much disgust at the want of gallantry to the ladies which so strongly marked the Levantine manners.

On the 28th of July Miss Williams fell ill, as it seemed, from excessive heat. The customary heat of the climate had received an adventitious augmentation from the great drought which had parched up the soil. The spring, which usually supplied the convent with water, was dried up. Peasants were seen transporting their sacks of corn from places ten or twenty miles distant, to be ground at the water-mills on the river Ewely, where the stream had yet power to turn the wheels: for, in most places, even the rivers had ceased to flow. Wheat had become exceedingly dear; and in Abra the peasants ate barley bread.