Brilliant
sisters of Smyrna; and yet, says the Greek, he may trust himself to
one and all the bright cities of the Aegean, and may yet weigh
anchor with a heart entire, but that so surely as he ventures upon
the enchanted isle of Cyprus, so surely will he know the rapture or
the bitterness of love. The charm, they say, owes its power to
that which the people call the astonishing "politics" (p???t???) of
the women, meaning, I fancy, their tact and their witching ways:
the word, however, plainly fails to express one-half of that which
the speakers would say. I have smiled to hear the Greek, with all
his plenteousness of fancy, and all the wealth of his generous
language, yet vainly struggling to describe the ineffable spell
which the Parisians dispose of in their own smart way by a summary
"Je ne scai quoi."
I went to Larnaca, the chief city of the isle, and over the water
at last to Beyrout.
CHAPTER VIII - LADY HESTER STANHOPE {14}
Beyrout on its land side is hemmed in by the Druses, who occupy all
the neighbouring highlands.
Often enough I saw the ghostly images of the women with their
exalted horns stalking through the streets, and I saw too in
travelling the affrighted groups of the mountaineers as they fled
before me, under the fear that my party might be a company of
income-tax commissioners, or a pressgang enforcing the conscription
for Mehemet Ali; but nearly all my knowledge of the people, except
in regard of their mere costume and outward appearance, is drawn
from books and despatches, to which I have the honour to refer you.
I received hospitable welcome at Beyrout from the Europeans as well
as from the Syrian Christians, and I soon discovered that their
standing topic of interest was the Lady Hester Stanhope, who lived
in an old convent on the Lebanon range, at the distance of about a
day's journey from the town. The lady's habit of refusing to see
Europeans added the charm of mystery to a character which, even
without that aid, was sufficiently distinguished to command
attention.
Many years of Lady Hester's early womanhood had been passed with
Lady Chatham at Burton Pynsent, and during that inglorious period
of the heroine's life her commanding character, and (as they would
have called it in the language of those days) her "condescending
kindness" towards my mother's family, had increased in them those
strong feelings of respect and attachment, which her rank and
station alone would have easily won from people of the middle
class. You may suppose how deeply the quiet women in Somersetshire
must have been interested, when they slowly learned by vague and
uncertain tidings that the intrepid girl who had been used to break
their vicious horses for them was reigning in sovereignty over the
wandering tribes of Western Asia!
