LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17597, 9 October 1920, Page 1 (Supplement)

LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

THE ENGLISH ARAB CtUEEN. . ; ■•. v BY JUS. The troubles of Britain with- the Arab tribes of Mesopotamia are'the inevitable j result of the impact of Western civilisation upon the primitive, hardy peoples of j the desert. The Arab, with all his faults,! J has never been a weakling. There is a i I power of adaptation that is the note. of national strength ; the Arab's strength j does not lie in that' direction. There is an instinct of adaptation that is the badge of the weak, destined to submission, born for subserviency. There.is not a tincture of that in the Arab character. Without the gift of adaptation he is thrown always into hostility with what is new. with what he cannot understand. " When in doubt, fight," is his motto, and he lives joyfully up to it. The French are finding the same difficulties in Syria, and from tip nunc cause. Yet there have been men and women of the Western race that by the> sheer power of personality, by the subtle magic of leadership, have won their way to author-, ity and control among the independent tribes of Syria and Arabia. Colonel Lawrence, a young Englishman, dominated the Arab nations during the great war. But he did it by becoming an Arab; the vague ideals and aspirations stirring in the hearts of a widely-scattered people without any developed national sense, and split up into a host of uncoordinated units, were given at last clear expression in him. He focussed what all'were dimly groping to realise. He made the Arab' soul articulate : he revealed the Arab to himself and I to the world. v

Lady Hester. An English lady, self-condemned to exile, -wielded for many years early in the nineteenth century a sort of sovereignty over the wandering tribes of Syria. Lady Hester Stanhope was the niece of William Pitt, and during his final period of office managed for him the social side of his duties as Prime Minister. "She became," says Kinglake, " the dispenser of much patronage and sole Secretary of State for the department, of Treasury banquets." The fiecy spirit of her grandfather, the great Chatham, burned fiercely in her; a majestic, dominant, almost domineering woman of great force of character and intellectual power, she naturally and easily filled her place as queen of London society. It was a timH of intense anxiety for England. Acrossi the narrow seas, Napoleon marshalled his tremendous Armada for the invasion oi Great Britain. Nelson made his hopes the shadow of a dream by the glorious victory at Trafalgar- Pitt, in the days of darkest stress, engineered a vast European coalition to smash the power of Napoleon on land. Austria and Russia drew together in an alliance, that filled English hearts with highest expectations. But at Ulm an Austrian army was wiped off the map, and at Austerlita Napoleon, shattered the Austrian and Russian armies with a blow that shook Europe to its foundations. The disaster was too much for Pitt, already much enfeebled in health. In the bitterness of his. despair he cried out to his "niece and bid her ' Roll up" the r map of Europe.' Tfaere was a little more of suffering, and at last with his swollen tongue still muttering something for England he died by the noblest of all sorrows." Pitt's death seems to have convinced Lady Hester that England was utterly unworthy.* She turned from her native land in scorn, left its shores in high disdain, and never came back. The East fascinated her. ' > One thing alone seemed worth —complete isolation from the old life and its conventions. It was generally understood thai) Lady Hester was engaged to 'Sir' JohnMoore,- who conducted ,l the 'famioTi? retreat across Spain to Corunna, and died on the field of honour in the very hour when Soult's pursuing legions were hurled -back in utter confusion. The snapping of that tie made all the eld surroundings hateful— sne would blaze a new trail in a new land among new people. In Syria.

So she came to Syria, with, a large retinue, and apparently unlimited resources at her command. At first she had no base, but wandered at will, now appearing at Damascus, now at Aleppo, now" at Jerusalem. She-gripped the Arab imagination. At the height of her power -she seems to have had an Arab train of

40,000, and to have, been proclaimed Qi.een of Palmyra by the admiring tribes. Whatever the reason she exercised a remarkable influence and control, almost a sovereignty, over the tribes between Damascus and Palmyra. She soon felt the need of a permanent base, and secured a disused convent on the slopes of Lebanon, not far from the ancient Phoenician city of Sidon. She restored it at great cost, added largely to the buildings, constructed gardens in the English mode, and surrounded the whole establishment with a massive wall that converted it into an almost impregnable fortress. Here she lived in Oriental magnificence, with an immense retinue, attracted and held more by the lavish generosity of the eccentric mistress than by any real devotion —altogether a figure unique in history. But money failed at last, and she had to curtail her extravagances. She lost most of her authority with her money. In adversity she showed the same strong domineering spirit. Three interesting glimpses of this strange figure are given by distinguished men who called upon her in her mountain eyry. Lamartine and Kinglake. Lamartine, the famous French statesman, historian and poet, records at length a visit paid to Lady Hester in the days of her declining fortunes. Rather unnecessarily lie begged her not to let mere politeness lead her to grant an interview distasteful to her. If she had not wanted him she would have told hm so in a few well-chosen and emphatic words. Lamartine found her disposed to be gracious. Solitude had developed the streak of eccentricity in her into something akin to religious mania. She read the stars, was a firm believer in astrology and alchemy, prescribed for her retainers in a fashion that severely tried their loyalty, and came to believe in her own prophetic powers. Kinglake, the hitorian of the Crimean War. in his graphic travel studies, " Eothen." gives an account similar in the general drift, of his own visit to the Lebanon fortress. He marked the two natures strong in her. the same imperious Pitt blood and the queer mysticism with which the East and solitude had clothed ! her. Now she was in the clouds, soaring \ away on the wings of prophecy. Now she 1 was "the sort of woman you see in Lon- • don drawing rooms —cool, decisive in man- ! ner. unsparing of enemies, full of auda- ! cious fun and saying the-downright things | that the sheepish society around her is ! afraid to utter." j Dr. W. to. Thomson. | The last witness is Dr. Thomson, author j J of the most famous of all the bonks on I ! Palestine. •The Land and the Book." He: 1 gives the closing scenes. Her servants! ' stole everything of value while she lay ill, I and abandoned her. " Without a Euro- ; perm attendant, without a friend, male or j female, alone on the top of this bleak. mountain, her lamp of life grew dimmer and more dim. Such, was the end of the i i once gay and brilliant niece of Pitt, pre siding in the saloons of the master-spirit of Kiirope. and familiar with the intrigues' of kings and cabinets. She was wholly! laud magnificently unique. Now riding at : I the head of wild Arabs, queen of the | desert : now intriguing with marl pashas , and vulgar emirs: at one time treating i with contempt consul.-. generals anS ' nobles or bidding defiance to -law, and j thrashing the officers sent to her lodge: at I another resorting to all sorts of mean shifts to elude or confound her creditors; day charitable and kind to the poor; to-morrow oppressive, selfish and tyrannical in the extreme.'' A dismal end to a life hardly gp\erned by sanity. Still she. had her crowded hour, when as queen of the desert, she swept the Syrian sands j At the head of her Arab hosts.