Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/97

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Lady Hester Stanhope.
83

My wife sent to her to say that she or my daughter would, with pleasure, come and keep her company, or sit up wit her: this she refused. I then offered Miss Longchamp's services: but Lady Hester's pride would not allow her to expose to a stranger the meagreness of her chamber, so utterly unlike a European apartment. It was indeed an afflicting sight to behold her wrapped up-in old blankets, her room lighted by yellow beeswax candles in brass candlesticks, drinking her tea out of a broken-spouted blue teapot and a cracked white cup and saucer, taking her draughts out of an old cup, with a short wooden deal bench by her bedside for a table, and in a room not so well furnished as a servant's bed-room in England.

The general state of wretchedness in which she lived had even struck Mr. Dundas, a gentleman, who, on returning overland from India, staid some days with her: and, as Lady Hester observed, when she told me the story, "He did not know all, as you do. I believe he almost shed tears. 'When I see you, Lady Hester,' said he, 'with a set of fellows for servants who do nothing, and when I look at the room in which you pass your hours, I can hardly believe it is you. I was much affected at first, but now I am more reconciled. You are a being fluctuating between heaven and earth, and belonging to