Stanhope

Stanhope, LADY HESTER LUCY, the eldest daughter of Charles, third Earl Stanhope, and his wife Hester, daughter of the great Lord Chatham, was born at Chevening, Kent, on 12th March 1776. She grew up to be a woman of great personal charm and of unusual force and originality of character. In 1803 she went to reside with her uncle, William Pitt, and as mistress of his establishment and his most trusted confidant during his season of power and till his death she had full scope for the exercise of her imperious and queenly instincts. On Pitt's death in 1806 a pension of £1200 a year was assigned her by the king. Fox proposed to provide for her much more munificently, but she proudly declined his offers, as unwilling to accept benefit at the hands of the political enemy of her dead uncle. The change from the excitements of a public career, as it might almost be called, to the life of an ordinary woman of her rank with means somewhat insufficient was naturally irksome to her, and in 1808 she was tried still further by the death at Corunna of her favourite brother Major Stanhope, and of Sir John Moore, for whom she is known to have cherished an affection. Conceiving a disgust for society, she retired for a time into Wales, and in 1810 left England never to return. In mere restlessness of spirit she wandered on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and finally in 1814 settled herself among the half-savage tribes of Mount Lebanon. Here she led the strangest life, adopting in everything the Eastern manners, and by the force and fearlessness of her character obtaining a wonderful ascendancy over the rude races around her. She was regarded by them with superstitious reverence as a sort of prophetess, and gradually came so to consider herself. With the garb of a Mohammedan chieftain, she adopted something of the faith of one, and her religion, which seems to have been sincere and profound, was compounded in about equal proportions out of the Koran and the Bible. Her recklessly profuse liberality involved her in constant straits for money; and her health also giving way, her last years were passed in wretchedness of various kinds, under which, however, her untamable spirit supported her bravely to the end. She died on 23d June 1839, with no European near her, and was buried in her own garden. The main sources of information about her are the notes of Lamartine, Kinglake, and other travellers who visited her in her strange seclusion, and the Memoirs and Travels derived from her own lips, and afterwards (6 vols. Lond. 1845-46) published by Dr Meryon, the physician who went abroad with her, and from time to time lived with her in her retirement.