Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838/Djouni. The Residence of Lady Hester Stanhope

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Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838 (1837)
by Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Djouni. The Residence of Lady Hester Stanhope
2389784Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838 — Djouni. The Residence of Lady Hester Stanhope1837Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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DJOUNI,
THE RESIDENCE OF LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

Artist: W. H. Bartlett - Engraved by: J. Cousen




DJOUNI. THE RESIDENCE OF LADY HESTER STANHOPE.


Oh ladye, wherefore to the desert flying,
    Didst thou forsake old England’s sea-beat strand,
To dwell where never voice to thine replying,
    Repeats the accents of thy native land?

Around thee the white pelican is sweeping,
    Watching the slumbers of her callow brood;
And at the fountains of her fond heart keeping
    The last supply of their precarious food.

Far spreads the wilderness of sand, as lonely
    As is the silence of the eternal grave;
And for thy home companions, thou hast only
    The dog, the Arab steed, the flower, the slave.

And rightly hast thou judged. On the strong pinion
    Of an unfettered will thy flight was made;
At once escaping from the false dominion
    Of our cold life, whose hopes are still betrayed.

What is the social world thou hast forsaken?—
    A scene of wrong and sorrow, guilt and guile;
Whence Love a long and last farewell has taken,
    Where friends can smile, and "murder while they smile."

Small truth is there among us—little kindness—
    And falsehood still at work to make that less.
We hurry onward in our selfish blindness,
    Not knowing that the truth were happiness.

Ah! wisely hast thou chosen thus to leave us,
    For thou hast left society behind.
What are to thee the petty cares that grieve us,
    The cold—the false—the thankless—the unkind?

Thy home is in the desert; fit disdaining
    Thou showest to the present and to us.
Calm with the future and the past remaining,
    Hopeful the one—the other glorious.


"How could I," said Lady Hester, "live with the common people of usual life, after having lived with my uncle—England's prime minister—Pitt?"



In its intricate, wild, convolved appearance, this scene resembles many among the Appenines; the road is seen in front, winding up, in a zig-zag course, to the building; a kind of "break-neck road," as if her ladyship wished to make the pilgrim toil and murmur to her dwelling, and, like Christian going up the hill Difficulty, "endure hardness" ere he reaches her bower of delights. A more capricious choice of a home has never been made, in this world of caprice and eccentricity; the land abounds with sites of beauty and richness, vales and shaded hills, screened by loftier hills, with many waters. Lebanon has a hundred sites of exquisite attraction and scenery; but this lady, ever loving the wild and the fearful more than the soft things of this world, has fixed her eagle’s nest on the top of a craggy height that is swept by every wind. The dark foliage that appears above its walls are the gardens, which are remarkably beautiful and verdant, the creation of her own hands. Nowhere in the gardens of the East is so much beauty and variety to be seen—covered alleys, pavilions, grass-plats, plantations, &c. all in admirable order.