Chapter IV: Excursion in the Holy Land

WHAT did Lady Hester intend to do in Syria and in Palestine?

She did not intend to seek oblivion, for the necessity of getting herself talked about, and the thirst for a celebrity which she strove vainly to retain, formed part of her nature, and she never got rid of it.

She resembled closely her grandfather, Lord Chatham. She had not only his grey eyes, which anger darkened strangely, and of which no one was able, at that time, to stand the glance, but also the inexorable will, the terrible passions, the continuous tension of the mind in the direction of one single object without troubling about the obstacles to be overthrown or the means employed to conquer them.

Grattan, in the curious portrait which he has traced of the first Pitt, wrote: "The Minister was alone. Modern degeneracy had not touched him. An old-fashioned inflexibility governed this character which knew neither how to alter nor to become supple.... Creator, destroyer, reformer, he had received from Heaven all that was required to convoke men into a social group, to break their bonds or to reform them...." Lady Hester had inherited these astonishing gifts, which her unconventional education had still further strengthened. Under the eyes of her frightened governesses who had abandoned the impossible task of making her a young girl like the others, without the knowledge of her father and her stepmother, who, besides, were not interested in the matter, she sprouted forth luxuriantly. In the same way as her figure and her "little" foot, never constrained, developed magnificently, her luminous intelligence, her originality, her energy, her rough clear-sightedness forcibly asserted themselves. Never contradicted, she might be proud of her qualities and of her extraordinary faults, proud also of that indomitable character which she had alone formed and which never inclined before anyone, ignorant at once of the art of changing principles or that of humouring public opinion by half-loyal measures or proceedings.

Amongst all those wonderful women in which the eighteenth century, according to Burke, was so fertile, Lady Hester Stanhope has a place apart. The Duchess of Rutland, the Duchess of Gordon, the Duchess of Devonshire, Mrs. Bouverie, the Marchioness of Salisbury, Mrs. Crewe, Lady Bessborough, Lady Liverpool and many others, who had on their side fortune, beauty, charm, fascination and grace, cannot be compared to her. Morally and physically, Lady Hester is outside the picture. She is the echo, not only of the feminine character of her time, but of the characteristic tendencies of her age. Preoccupation with the Eastern problem, misanthropy, taste for action, hatred of hypocrisy, love of social questions and contempt for the people, were imperfectly embodied, but they were embodied all the same.

Her misfortune was to be a woman. So long as her uncle Pitt had been near her, she had been able to imagine that she had changed her sex. She had lived, acted and thought as a man, but as a man who would have been a beautiful woman and whom the admiration of the crowd retains far from the combats of politics and the struggle of life.

William Pitt had certainly been, according to the admirable phrase of Mirabeau, "the Minister of Preparations." He had seen the French Revolution approaching, and long before all others he had understood the danger of it. Joining then the fate of France--for which he entertained neither antipathy nor hatred--with that of the Revolution, he engaged England in that formidable struggle of which he could not foresee the issue. Killed by "the glance of Austerlitz," he died too soon to reap the fruit of his wonderful perspicacity. He died, above all, too soon for Hester Stanhope, whose future he had not assured. There did not fail, certainly, statesmen behind whom a pretty woman was bestirring herself, champion of their policy, to cite only that charming Georgina Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire, who displayed in Fox's favour an indomitable energy, not fearing to splash about in the mud and kiss butchers with her patrician lips in order to exercise the omnipotence of her persuasion over the Westminster shopkeepers at the time of the famous elections of 1784. So well that Pitt was to write to Wilberforce, who was anxious: "Westminster is going well in spite of the Duchess of Devonshire and other women of the people, but it is not known yet when the voting will be finished."

But the statesman chosen was only a screen which permitted the spirit of intrigue which breathed amongst the great ladies of the English aristocracy to have free course. For Lady Hester, William Pitt was the reason of existence. When he disappeared, what was she able to do?

He said to his niece, after having lived a long time with her, that he did not know whether she were more at her ease in the whirlpool of pleasures and fêtes, in the perplexity of politics or in the most profound solitude. Sometimes, in fact, Lady Hester went into Society eagerly and carried into the world her extraordinary brilliancy, her satire, humour and her biting wit, feared almost as much as the strokes of Gilray's pencil. Sometimes, she shut herself up with her uncle, serving him as secretary, astonishing him by the correctness of her judgment, by the comprehension and knowledge of men which this child of twenty years possessed, and without which the finest gifts of the understanding are reduced to sterility and do not descend from the domain of pure ideas to that of reality. Sometimes, she fled to Walmer Castle; and there, occupying herself in causing trees to be planted, in designing gardens, she bathed in silence and meditation. But now the world, she was surfeited with it!... She had just experienced the fragility of its infatuations. Politics! She was henceforth outside everything, and she had to witness the triumph of Pitt's enemies, the forgetfulness of his services. This power of money would have been necessary in order to struggle against the coteries of the drawing-room, the personal enmities which she had created. And she had only the pension of £1200 granted her in accordance with Pitt's last wish. There remained retirement. For the conquered, retirement is unendurable in the places which were witnesses of their past successes, unless they are surrounded by dear friends whose presence consoles them and makes them forget. Lord Camelford, whom she had thought for a moment of marrying, had quarrelled with the Pitts over a matter of money; he had given his sister--which assuredly he had the right to do--an estate which Lord Chatham hoped to inherit. Sir John Moore had just been killed. She dreamed of far-off solitudes, and she thought of undertaking an expedition which would cover her name with glory and whose fame would reach England.

Horace Walpole, an unsparing critic of his contemporaries, said of Chatham that he was "master of all the arts of dissimulation, slave of his passions, and that he simulated even extravagance to insure success." Under the smoke of gossip and tittle-tattle he hatches always a fire of truth. The second part of the portrait can apply as well to the granddaughter as to the grandfather. Lady Hester was enslaved by a redoubtable passion: ambition, and ambition without object. Well women incarnate almost always their aspirations, their desires, their admirations and their hatreds in living beings and real things: concrete which, after being the symbol of the abstract, is confounded with it to make only one. Lady Hester did not escape the common rule; solitude became little by little the means of getting herself still talked about; then became peopled by escorts, caravans and Arab chiefs; her ambition was not quicker than hatred of her enemies and disgust of England, and she determined upon this journey across the unknown East, journey which would serve at once her need of solitude and of celebrity in astonishing the world. Only, she possessed--as much on the side of Pitt as of Stanhope--a slight taste for eccentricity. She had no need to simulate an extravagance, which was natural to her; she was inclined to do nothing like other people.

Unconsciously also, a mysterious reason urged Lady Hester to choose Syria, and particularly Jerusalem, for the theatre of her exploits. It was nothing less than a prediction of Brothers. A figure strange, this Brothers, who created a sensation towards the end of the eighteenth century.

A former lieutenant in the Navy, his imagination became disordered in meditating upon the most obscure passages of the Apocalypse; the endless leisure which voyages permit are truly pernicious for feeble minds.... He soon abandoned his career and modestly assumed the title of "Nephew of God and Prince of the Hebrews," consecrating himself entirely to the divine mission which he believed he had received. He lived in an agreeable hallucination. "After which, being in a vision," said he, "I saw the angel of God by my side, and Satan, who was walking carelessly in the streets of London." Even when quite mad the English preserve a sense of humour!

So long as Brothers contented himself with predicting the approaching destruction of London and the restoration of the Kingdom of Judea, the Government did not trouble, but the situation changed when the vague prophecies were transformed into imperious advice to the King:

"The Eternal God commands me to make known to you, George III, King of England, that immediately after the revelation of my person to the Hebrews of London as their prince, and to all the nations as their governor, you must lay down your crown, in order that all your power and your authority may cease."

But no time was lost in sending this troublesome person to Bedlam. Before going, he bestirred himself so much and to such good purpose to obtain a visit from Lady Hester that this singular request reached the ears of Pitt's niece. Curious to make the acquaintance of the prophet, she hastened to accede to his wish. Brothers solemnly predicted to her that "she would go one day to Jerusalem, and would lead the Chosen People; that on her arrival in the Holy Land there would be upheavals in the world and that she would pass seven years in the desert." While she was rusticating at Brousse, two Englishmen, who were passing through it and who knew the prophecy, amused themselves about her great future. "You will go to Jerusalem, Lady Hester," said they; "you will go. Esther, Queen of the Jews! Hester, Queen of the Jews!"

Did the coincidence of the names strike her, or did this programme fascinate her by its novelty? Did she consider Brothers as an inoffensive lunatic or as a visionary of genius? She was not yet the sorceress of Djoun, believing firmly in magicians and enchanted serpents. But many sensible men, such as William Sharp, who had even given to the world a fine engraving of the prophet, with these words: "Believing firmly that this is the man chosen of God, I have engraved his portrait," and as Mr. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, an Indian official and translator of the code of Geptoo laws, if it please you, had publicly proclaimed themselves his disciples.

However that may be, Lady Hester took, with the handsome Colonel Bruce, the road to Jerusalem, wearing the costume of the Egyptian Mamelukes: short bolero of red satin, purple tunic without sleeves, gallooned with gold, wide trousers of which the multiple folds had the thickness of drapery, cashmere shawl twisting like a turban around her head. All that formed a symphony of red, which blazed forth when she partially opened the great white burnous which hid her entirely during her ramblings on horseback. They only proceeded so far as Jaffa; Jaffa which bathes the foot of its dirty houses in the sea, and which the pilgrims returning from Jerusalem, after the Easter festival, fill with confusion and noise, transforming the little dead town of fishermen into a comical fair in which all the idioms of creation are entangled.

They were received by the English consular agent. He was a person called Damiani, a compromise between the patriarch and the Italian merchant, but in which the patriarch held the upper hand, an active man of sixty, wearing a singular costume: an old Eastern robe of sky-blue, lined with ermine, dirty trousers from which burst out two grey legs, head-dress _à la française_, that is to say, hair worn in a thick iron-grey queue, and above all ... above all, an immense three-cornered hat, polished by the years, soaked with sweat and dust since the Egyptian campaign. Three-cornered hat which was to amuse royally the Princess of Wales during her famous journey to Jerusalem, and which was to make Alphonse de Lamartine smile gently twenty years later.

Mohammed Aga, Governor of Jaffa, believing that it was an affair of some pious lady of little importance, was hardly civil and did not facilitate in any way the organisation of the caravan. Lady Hester never forgave him.

On May 18, 1812, eleven camels and thirteen horses left the town, conveying the travellers, save Pearce, who was keeping apart. By Gudd and Ramle they made their way towards the Holy City. It was harvest-time. Armed with short reaping-hooks, the peasants cut the barley, fresh barley which formed in the arid landscape islets of shade and points of velvet on which the eye lingered. Naked gold-coloured children followed the horses to offer some ears of corn in exchange for a serious backsheesh, and the doctor, in throwing them the piastres, declared sadly that no people knew better how to extort presents.

The mountains assumed a severe aspect. The path plunged into the rock like a nail into a wall. They reached a village amongst the fig-trees, where they were courteously received by the king of the mountain, the great sheik Abu Ghosh, who held in his hands the keys of Jerusalem. Detested by the surrounding pachas, feared by the travellers, he lived in independent existence in the midst of his hardy and brave mountaineers. Imposing dues at his pleasure upon the caravans, holding the pilgrims to ransom, levying taxes upon the convents, compelling the monks to bring out their little savings, he reigned without dispute over the mountains of Judea, from Ramle to Jerusalem, from Hebron to Jericho. Abu Ghosh was one of the most astonished of men to see a European woman arrive, surrounded by so numerous a suite, mounted on excellent horses. Ordinarily, the travellers contented themselves with wretched animals and clothed themselves in rags to pass unnoticed. The sheik, delighted to make the acquaintance of an English princess and fascinated by the haughty dignity of her manners, treated her very well. His four wives hastened to cook a delicate supper: vine-leaves filled with meat, stuffed pumpkins, roast mutton, chicken swimming in an ocean of boiled rice.

And the doctor thought sadly that this modest repast was the highest point of the culinary art of the Arabs.

When night came, Abu Ghosh installed himself with his pipes and his wives at the corner of the fire and watched over the sleep of the woman who had committed herself to his care. Early in the morning they separated as friends, and one of the sheik's brothers protected Lady Hester so far as Jerusalem.

Monotony of a poor land, and all at once, like a town of clouds, an apparition of the Middle Ages, loopholed walls and belfries, belfries and cupolas!... After having vigorously driven away the dragomans of the Franciscan monastery who clung to them tenaciously, and pointed them out in advance to Turkish cupidity, Lady Hester wandered into Jerusalem as her fancies dictated.

Accompanied by twenty horsemen, she made her way to Kengi-Ahmed, governor of the town. The seraglio partly opened its grated windows, eyelids closed by an unconquerable sleep on the Mosque of Omar, the holy mosque with its Persian and blue mosaics surrounded by gardens of cypress-trees. She went to the Holy Sepulchre, and her visit was not characterised by the meditation usually associated with a pilgrimage, not even with a pilgrimage undertaken for artistic purposes. The monks had, contrary to their custom, closed the doors of the church. They solemnly opened them and came in procession to meet her carrying lighted candles. The crowd, curious to see the spectacle, collected and vociferated in chorus. The police kept it at a distance by blows from cudgels. Lady Hester relieved the necessities of a Mameluke who had escaped the previous year from the Cairo massacre. When Emin Bey--that was his name--had heard the first shots fired by the Albanian soldiers massed on the walls, when the great slaughter had begun, he had comprehended that his only chance of safety lay in headlong flight. Then he had driven his spurs into his horse's flanks, and raising the animal, which was rearing and neighing with terror, he had leaped from the platform facing the citadel to the foot of the ramparts--a leap of forty-five or sixty feet. He had afterwards succeeded in reaching Jerusalem by the desert, not without having been first overpowered and robbed by the guides who conducted him. Since that time he had stooped to live on alms.

She sauntered in the infamous alleys of the Ghetto (Was it necessary to facilitate Brothers' task?), meeting children oldish-looking and shrivelled, the Jews of Central Europe with their orange-coloured greatcoats, wearing their tall skin caps and their abject air.

On May 30, Lady Stanhope, after a visit to Bethlehem, village of Judea, over which hover the glad memories of the Christ, where long lines of women defile like shadows, wearing with serene gravity their horned head-dresses and their trailing blue robes, reached St. Jean d'Acre by way of Atlitt beach, on which are engulfed the last vestiges of Pelerin Castle, and Haifa in the shadow of Mount Carmel. The road soon became more frequented. It was marked out by carcases. It seemed a giant abattoir. Dead horses, of which the inhabitants of the town had got rid; camels which had fallen exhausted on returning from a distant journey sick asses despatched on the spot. From this charnel-house issued an acrid and warm odour which turned the stomach. As the caravan passed, clouds of blue flies buzzed by in clusters, and yellow dogs fled growling and watched from a distance these intruders who came to share in their festival banquet. The sun burned with a malicious pleasure these heads half gnawed away, these eviscerated bodies, this greenish flesh. And the old bones, already picked clean by the jackals and washed by the rains, sparkled here and there, like great white flowers on the fields of corruption.