Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope (12 March 1776 – 23 June 1839), the eldest child of Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope by his first wife Lady Hester Pitt, is remembered by history as an intrepid traveller in an age when women were discouraged from being adventurous.
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Lady Hester was born and grew up at her father's seat of Chevening until early in 1800, when he sent her to live with her grandmother, Hester Pitt, Countess of Chatham, at Burton Pynsent. A year or two later she travelled abroad, but her cravings were not satisfied until she became the chief of the household of her uncle, William Pitt the Younger, in August 1803.
In his position as British Prime Minister, Pitt, who was unmarried, needed a hostess for his household. Lady Hester sat at the head of his table and assisted in welcoming his guests; she became known for her stately beauty and lively conversation. Although her brightness of style cheered Pitt's declining days and amused most of his political friends, she also made enemies unnecessarily. Lady Hester possessed great business talents, and when Pitt was out of office she acted as his private secretary. She was also the prime initiator of the gardens at Walmer Castle during his tenure as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. She was with him in his last illness, and his dying thoughts were concerned with her future, but he had no reason to worry. The nation, grateful for his qualities, awarded his niece a pension of £1200 a year, dating from shortly after his death in January 1806, which Lady Hester Stanhope enjoyed for the rest of her days.
On Pitt's death she lived in Montagu Square, London, but life in London without the interest caused by associating with the principal politicians of the Tory party frustrated her, and she went to live in Wales, leaving England for good in February 1810 after the death of her brother. A romantic disappointment is said to have caused her decision to go to a long sea voyage. Among her entourage were her physician and later biographer Charles Meryon, her maid, Anne Fry, and a young man called Michael Bruce, who became her lover. It is claimed that when they arrived in Athens, the poet, Lord Byron, dived into the sea to greet her. From Athens they traveled to Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire, and intended to proceed to Cairo, only recently emerged from the chaos following Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the international conflicts that followed (see here).
En route to Cairo by sea, the ship endured a storm and was shipwrecked on Rhodes. Stanhope's party lost all their clothes and had to borrow Turkish costumes. Stanhope refused to wear a veil and dressed as a Turkish male, in robe, turban and slippers. When a British frigate took them to Cairo, she bought a more elaborate version of the costume: purple velvet robe, embroidered trousers, waistcoat, jacket, saddle and saber. In this costume she went to greet the Pasha, who received her with awe. From Cairo she went on to journey in the Middle East. Many Turkish sheikhs received her with respect . She refused to wear a veil even in Damascus, which was reputed to be a particularly anti-Christian city. In Jerusalem, the governor received her; when she announced she wanted to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the doors were es pecially closed and reopened in her honour.
By now Lady Hester had begun to believe she had a destiny. She claimed to have heard omens from various sources, from fortune-tellers to prophets, that her destiny was to become the bride of a new messiah therefore she tried to make matrimonial connection with Ibn Saud, the great chief of the Wahabies[1].Ibn Saud is not represented as a very loveable object ; but, making love subservient to ambition, they may unite their arms together, bring about a great revolution both in religion and politics, and shake the throne of the Sultan (Grand Signor) to its very center. She decided to visit the city of Palmyra, even though the route went through a desert with potentially hostile Bedouins that is pre-joined Fedhan by whoem she was pursued. Fedhan are, also, wellknown to have strong parties abroad, mortal enemies of Franks and Turks, and wellknown to breed white camles[2]. She dressed as a Bedouin and took with her a caravan of 22 camels to carry all her baggage. Local Bedouin sheiks were apparently impressed by her courage and visited her particularly the Emir Mahannah el Fadel, who received Lady Hester with every testimony of respect and joy for her safe return. In Palmyra, people knew to expect her and she was crowned in a celebration. She became known as "Queen Hester".
In 1815 she obtained a 'map' in which a treasure was indicated among the ruins of Ascalan (modern Ashkelon) on the Mediterranean coast north of Gaza. She persuaded the Ottoman authorities that she can excavate it for them and they might share the spoils. They agreed and ordered the governor of Jaffa, Abu Nabbut (Father of the Mace) to assist her with workers. This resulted in the first 'archaeological excavation' ever carried out in Palestine. A headless ancient marble statue was discovered, later smashed to pieces.
Having grown tired of wandering, Lady Hester Stanhope settled near Sidon, a town on the Mediterranean coast in what is now Lebanon, about halfway between Tyre and Beirut. She lived first in the disused Mar Elias monastery at the village of Abra, and then in another monastery, Deir Mashmousheh, southwest of the Casa of Jezzine.
Lady Hester's cherished companion, Miss Williams, and her trusted medical attendant, Dr Charles Meryon, remained with her for some time; but Miss Williams died in 1828, and Meryon left in 1831, only returning for a final visit from July 1837 to August 1838. When Meryon decided to return to England, Lady Hester moved to a more remote abandoned monastery at Joun (also transliterated Joon, Djoun, جون), a village of seven hills eight miles from Sidon, where she lived until her death. Her residence, known by the villagers as Dahr El Sitt, was on the tip of one of these hills.[3] Meryon implied that she liked the house because of its strategic location, "the house on the summit of a conical hill, whence comers and goers might be seen on every side"; the road from Joon to the cities of Sidon, Beirut and Deir el Qamar goes into lonely mountains full of jackals and wolves.
At first she was greeted by emir Bashir Shihab II, but over the years she gave sanctuary to hundreds of refugees of Druze inter-clan and inter-religious squabbles and earned his enmity. In her new setting, she wielded an almost absolute authority over the surrounding districts. Her control over the natives was enough to cause Ibrahim Pasha, when about to invade Syria in 1832, to seek her neutrality, and this supremacy was maintained by her commanding character and by the belief that she possessed the gift of divination.
She kept writing to important people and spent money at an alarming rate. She still received curious visitors who went out of their way to visit her. One French officer stayed with her until his untimely death; she temporarily buried him in the grave she had prepared for herself.
She mounted an expedition to search for buried treasure in the city of Ascalon and wanted the British government to pay the bills—neither attempt succeeded. She found herself deeply in debt and, by Lord Palmerston's order, her pension from England had to be used to pay off her creditors in Syria. She unsuccessfully complained to Queen Victoria.
Lady Hester was known for her hospitality. Dr. Charles Meryon records that she "received me with great apparent pleasure, kissing me on each cheek, ordering sherbet, the pipe, coffee, and a finjan [small cup] of orange flower water; all which civilities, at meeting, are regarded in the East as marks of the most cordial and distinguished regard."
In her lonely Joun residence, a house "hemmed in by arid mountains", and with the troubles of a household of some thirty servants only waiting for her death to plunder the house, Lady Hester Stanhope's strength slowly wasted away, and she died there. The disappointments of her life, and the necessity of controlling her servants as well as the chiefs who surrounded Joun, had made her haughty and bad-tempered. She became a recluse and her servants began to take off with her possessions because she could not pay them. She would not receive visitors until dark and then would only let them see her hands and face. She wore a turban over her shaven head. After her death, the British consul arrived from Beirut to settle her affairs and found her quarters full of junk.
In 1846, some years after her death, Dr Meryon published three volumes of Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope as related by herself in Conversations with her Physician, and these were followed in the succeeding year by three volumes of Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, forming the Completion of her Memoirs narrated by her Physician. They presented a lively picture of this extraordinary woman's life and character, and contained many anecdotes of Pitt and his colleagues in political life for a quarter of a century before his death.
In 1988 the International Committe of the Red Cross in Lebanon were approached by an un-named individual who claimed to be in possession of Lady Hester's remains, said to have been removed from her grave which had been damaged during the civil war. The ICRC passed this on to the British Embassy in Beirut who eventually came into possession of the remains. The Embassy then made contact with the Chevening Trust (through the Near East and North Africa Dept of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) who offered to pay for her reburial in the garden of the Ambassador's Residence.