Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope

On 29 April 1809 Miranda scrawled his first impressions of Hester on the back of a dinner invitation from James, who declared his sister was ‘very anxious’ to make his acquaintance:

I have dined with Lady Hester Stanhope who enchanted me with her amiability, erudition, and liberal conversation. At one time she talked about Rome and Italy, which she had visited; at another time she talked about Greece, which she wished to visit and which she was not able to see when she was in Naples. She also talked about Venezuela whose independence she wished to see established upon a basis of rational liberty. In this connection she said to me that her uncle Mr Pitt had upon various occasions talked to her with interest and warmth about this affair, and had particularly lauded my patriotic ideas. Ever since Lady Hester had wished to become acquainted with me, and had also wished to visit my interesting country. She said further that if I needed a recruit of her species, she was ready to follow me there though it should be to do nothing else than to manage schools and hospitals. All this she descanted upon with greatest jocularity and grace until midnight when I retired most highly impressed with her conversation, good judgement … and interesting person. She is one of the most delightful women I have ever known – and if her behaviour accords with my first impressions – she is certainly a rarity among her sex.8

Pitt had first encountered Miranda in 1790, and initially encouraged his idea of a British-sponsored expedition to South America. But he may have deliberately made sure the dashing, much-travelled, multi-lingual ladykiller did not meet his niece. By 1809 Miranda’s life history was a complicated one that had encompassed manifold allegiances. In the name of fighting for liberty, his many adventures had already included stints as a Spanish military officer, a colonel in the Russian army, and a commander of French Revolutionary forces in the Netherlands. Whichever country he was in, he was invariably accused of being an enemy spy. Around London, Miranda was celebrated for his spell-binding tirades at the tables of Charles Fox, Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham and William Wilberforce.

Shortly after their first meeting, Hester dined with Miranda again, and this time Bentham – Miranda’s neighbour on Grafton Street – was present.* Within two weeks Miranda was calling Hester ‘Querida’ and told his friends that she was ‘the most delicious woman I have yet encountered’.9 This, from a man whose nickname was ‘the Casanova of the New World’, was indeed a high compliment.

In Wales, Hester lost no time in writing to Miranda. She knew that he was anxious for definite action to bring about Venezuelan independence, his ‘Great Cause’ he called it, in pursuit of which he had already accumulated considerable debts. Just as she had been with Moore, she was sympathetic to Miranda’s misadventures in his attempts to interest Canning and Castlereagh in funding his proposed expedition. She shared admiration for his zeal with Bentham and Wilberforce – the former was already drafting legislation for the new Venezuelan Republic, while the latter, who found Miranda ‘very entertaining and instructive’, hoped he would be of some influence in abolishing slavery in his own country.10 Miranda promised to come out to see her in August. She replied in a slightly teasing letter dated 31 July 1809:

I cannot wait until I receive your letter to express how much I am delighted with the prospect of seeing you in this part of the world; I wish I could flatter myself with the idea that I could contribute to your amusement while here … and that you will spend as much more of yr time as you can spare from yr books, a certain number of which I suppose travel with you …11

The farmhouse, she told him with some circumspection, would be too small and cramped for him to find comfortable, and she suggested he stay at the Royal Oak. All the same, he seems to have dined with her every night, bringing with him his two flutes – ebony and silver – on which he played melancholy tunes. Miranda remained long enough to ride with Hester through the Brecon mountains to Abergavenny and other beauty spots, staying at small inns along the route.

The question of whether Hester had an affair with Miranda has been raised many times. Almost all of Miranda’s biographers boldly assert this was the case. The stronger possibility, given the age difference, is that she did not. Yet there was undoubtedly something of an erotic charge between them, and a passionate enthusiasm to their meetings. Hester did not seem to care what others thought of their travelling together or the fact that they were often alone together. Both were flamboyant extroverts who craved public acclaim, and in Hester, Miranda clearly recognized a kindred spirit. But although he was regularly unfaithful to the mother of his two sons, Sarah Andrews, he was not seeking a permanent replacement. What is certain is that within a short time, they had achieved the kind of intimacy only very close friends can manage.

He called her ‘the divine Irenide’, a teasing reference to the woman she might become in ‘his’ South America. Miranda may have been a daredevil and a dreamer, but his dreams had real substance. He inspired Hester to think that life could be different and better. Miranda’s belief that men and women should be equal in society, and that women should be admitted to higher education and free to direct their talents where they saw fit, was probably for Hester a revolutionary idea (and to her far sweeter on Miranda’s lips than the same notions already expressed by Mary Wollstonecraft). In his new South America, there would be no limit to human achievement; the new Venezuela would be the most enticing of all future meritocracies, set against marvels of natural beauty and without the weight of the old, exhausted, and over-refined cultures of England and Europe. Certainly, he caused Hester to rethink much of what she believed about a great many things; and once Miranda had begun opening doors in her mind, it was hard for her to shut them.

As summer drew to an end, Hester packed up once more. Like anyone who moves around a great deal, she seems to have felt a certain fatigue towards her belongings. She left behind two of her prized possessions, large paintings of Pitt and the Duke of York.12 She also planted an orange blossom tree – the ancient symbol of marriage and fertility – at the foot of the farmhouse garden.13 Perhaps this was a gesture towards what she felt had been taken away from her, or an expression of hope that her chances were not all over – or perhaps there was something that had been precious to her that she wanted to bury underneath it.

When Charles Meryon stepped through the door of Hester’s temporary lodgings at Green Street, he was surprised to be met not by a footman or maid, but by a foreign-looking gentleman who introduced himself as General Miranda.14 Meryon, who was still only partially qualified, was completing his medical studies at St Thomas’s. Nonetheless, ‘Dr Meryon’ was ushered directly into the dining room to sit at a table, which was scattered with maps and books.

The man whose future would for ever be entangled with Hester’s was tall and slender, with pleasant, somewhat deferential features, and a mouth that had a tendency to curve upwards into a smile no matter what his mood. His chestnut hair was fashionably close-cropped, and he often blinked his long sand-coloured lashes. He had pink-rimmed eyes. Unknown to Hester, his eyes were raw from crying. Four days earlier, a nineteen-year-old girl with whom he had been conducting an affair had died as she gave birth to their daughter. By cruel coincidence the day of her funeral – Tuesday, 9 January 1810 – was the same day he had received a note from Hester summoning him. One of Meryon’s friends was the son of Dr Cline, under whom he studied, and his name had been put forward.

By the time Meryon left that night, he had accepted all Hester’s terms. They were to spend a year or more in Sicily. He had to be ready to leave immediately. She asked him about his family at Rye, and about his travels to France. He was startled when she suddenly changed the subject and told him that she hoped she could rely on his discretion. She related an anecdote about a certain doctor employed by someone she knew, and whose name was also familiar to Meryon, who lost his practice after saying of a patient after her death that she ‘was one of the most beautiful corpses he had ever seen, and that he had stood contemplating her for a quarter of an hour’. This woman had been ‘a person of rank’, like herself, Hester warned, and that doctor’s ‘comment, made in an unguarded moment to a friend, ruined him’.

Certainly, as he mulled over the meeting that night, Meryon must have wondered at what an extraordinary turn his life had just taken.

Around three in the morning on 13 January 1810 Hester closed the door of 14 Green Street for the last time. James and his army friend Nassau Sutton were already in Portsmouth, as was Meryon; she had also sent her servants Elizabeth Williams and Ann Fry ahead of her. There were no witnesses to her sudden mood of agitation. By the time she reached Portsmouth late that evening, a steady icy rain assaulted the carriage windows. Instead of feeling tired, when she settled into her room at the George Inn on the High Street, Hester’s mind was racing.15

Indecision plagued her. The previous week, she had sent a flurry of letters to Miranda; she had requested immediate replies, indeed she called for a ‘verbal answer’. Miranda dined with her twice that week. Something was discussed between them, something so important to Hester that it could not be written down. When her emotions were engaged, Hester often acted precipitously. That week, it seems that without too much discretion, Hester put out her own feelers on Miranda’s behalf. She approached Lord Mulgrave, an old Pitt loyalist, to see whether the Admiralty might offer Miranda passage at least part of the way to Caracas.

Perhaps she misunderstood one of Miranda’s throwaway comments: that he would go away with her if he could, if they were on their way to South America. Judging by her actions in the week before her departure, whatever he said was strong enough for her to consider changing her own plans. He seems to have told her to await word from him, while he toyed with the possibility that he might join her in Portsmouth, either to bid her farewell, or even – and he may not have expected her to truly believe this – to board a frigate together.

On 15 January, having not heard from him but expecting him to materialize at any moment, Hester could bear the uncertainty no longer. That afternoon, around four o’clock, she wrote a long letter – insistent and urgent – to Miranda:

As I cannot guess what you have done, I can only advise in case you have done nothing adverse to what I propose. The wind is foul & has every chance of remaining so. I should at all events leave town on Wednesday morning & go with Seymour, with his present convoy, if we cannot manage what I now recommend. There are 3 convoys here, one for the West Indies, which runs for the South, one for the Straits & one for Lisbon, the latter of which the Manilla [sic] belongs to. There are no less than 12 frigates exclusive of Line of Battle attached to these convoys & certainly the Manilla [sic] might well be spared – Seymour has no objection whatever (& he mentioned even solicited) to take you all the way though he fears you will be uncomfortable … I should at any rate go with Seymour if you can leave town Wednesday & Doctor Maryan [sic] on Thursday night by mail or Thursday morning in a chaise, we shall be able to embark this Friday … The town is quite full but I will get you lodgings in time for you if you write tomorrow night – I am quite well … I entreat you, come off on Wednesday, if the wind is the same. Do not be deceived about it – there is a fine weather cock on Chesterfield House. If the wind remains from the South, to West & North West, they cannot sail. God bless you …16

The letter details preparations Captain Seymour is ready to make on his behalf:

Seymour has a fire, is putting up bulkheads, will accommodate your maids on sophas [sic] in your own cabin & will manage the baggage as well as he can – and insists that once they have set off he will be duty-bound to carry his passengers all the way – They cannot refuse you his ship to go on with from Lisbon.17

She apologizes for sending the express so that the letter would reach him by one o’clock that night, a service which cost a shilling per mile. In order to receive the letter, Miranda would have had to pay almost £4, an astronomical sum.18

Miranda clearly considered leaving on the same ship as Hester, but he was weighing up his options. He was aware of the latest reports from Spain, which was now almost entirely subjugated by Napoleon’s armies, and he was convinced that soon the British government would find it impossible to disregard the Spanish-American cause, and would become as favourable to his plans as it had hitherto been ‘vacillating and contradictory’. Replying to Hester six days later, it is clear that he had probably made up his mind by the time she reached Portsmouth. It is a gentle letter to his ‘dear and amiable Lady Hester’ apologizing for not replying earlier – ‘What series of disappointments, and vexation follows you now? But your superior mind is above them I hope’ – and telling her that he envies James the ‘pleasing task’ of taking ‘peculiar care of his inestimable Sister’. He told her she was ‘irreplaceable’, that she was ‘dear and beloved’ and wished she ‘was near to copmunicate [sic] & to give advice’ and ends:

And do not forget that if a Profile of devine [sic] Irenide was ever to be taken (and I think it ought), you promised me a Copy

Farewell – better in Greek

Ever & sincerely yours

M19

Hester replied in a similar graceful tone, with none of her earlier urgency. But she was hurt. The winds, which had been perfect, changed. Despite all the hurry for departure, they had no choice but to wait. In the end, they would stay in Portsmouth almost an entire frustrating month. She let Miranda think she was already on her way.20 Calling each other lifelong friends, they would never see one another again.

She took disconsolate walks along the harbour, which was crowded with captured French warships used as prison hulks, their masts removed and decks refitted with odd-looking huts for the guards. She gazed at HMS Victory. Having returned from the blockade of the Russian fleet, its gigantic frame had been hauled up on to land in the Royal Dockyards to be refitted. In the winter of 1808, the Victory had been sent out as a troop ship with the remaining forces of General Sir John Moore’s army; her dear Charles had been on board. Within three months, the ship had returned with Moore’s defeated army, the wounded James among them. James had brought with him two small parcels of possessions, one that had belonged to Charles, the other to Moore; correspondence and notes that were now bloodstained, as well as her own letters to both men. Colonel Anderson had given her a lock of Moore’s hair and his bloodstained glove. These had been too precious for her to leave behind; she had them with her now. The sight of the Victory broke her heart.

On 9 February, knowing finally she would leave the next day, Hester wrote a last farewell letter, late at night, feeling wretched and alone. She knew the sight of her handwriting made him blanch but she could not help it. It was to Granville, who she knew had recently married. It is undated, a wild, ungainly sprawl:

The wind is fair, the ship soon in sight, we embark tomorrow morning … I hope you will respect my absence a little … Think sometimes of me when I am far, far off which now will soon be the case. May every blessing attend you & when we meet again I hope it will be with equal joy on both sides, once more. God bless you … I fear I shall scarce be able to send this.21

Early the next morning, they left from King’s Quay in the Royal Dockyards, boarding the war-bound Royal Navy vessel Jason, a regular fifth-rate frigate carrying dispatches for Lisbon, accompanied by the Jamaica, a larger third-rater, for transporting the 4th and 28th Regiments under convoy, to be sent off to the frontline in Spain from Gibraltar. With one last look, Hester turned to watch England drift away. As she described it to herself, the coming weeks and year would ‘decide her fate’.

* William Noel Hill would go on to a distinguished diplomatic career, first in Austria, then Turin, returning for a time to be an MP for Marlborough, then taking up duties again as a diplomat in Naples.

* Pitt had intended Moore to fight Napoleon’s armies in France, making a bold landing, and with a spectacular showdown, partnered by an army to be led by Sir Sidney Smith. ‘He promised General Moore the command of 30,000 men; indeed of all the disposable force of the country, if he thought such a force necessary.’ (The plan was not adopted; Moore did not think it was tactically prudent, as he made plain in his Narrative of the Campaign of the British Army in Spain, published posthumously that same year.)

* Bentham observed Hester’s interest in going out to South America, and they had discussed the idea of establishing Quaker schools in Venezuela based on the so-called Lancaster method. Joseph Lancaster (1778–1838) was an English educationist who had developed a system of schooling based on non-denominational, monitorial principles.

5 Love and Escape

Gibraltar was not the ‘abroad’ Hester had in mind when she left England. The island, although bathed in strong sunshine, struck her as squalid and small-minded. In some ways, it seemed merely a rougher version of the regimental life she had left behind at Walmer. The knowledge that both Charles and Sir John Moore had passed this way so recently depressed her. She could see no joy in the faces of the Spanish refugees who thronged the cramped, cobbled alleys. She was, however, warmly welcomed by the Governor, Colonel Colin Campbell, a doughty Scotsman, who invited Hester and James to stay with him in the official residence, known by all as the Convent, an austere former Franciscan monastery.

In the meantime Meryon was becoming familiar with what was required of him in his new role. He wrote to his family that his employer was ‘on the whole, much better than when we left England. She rises at midday, breakfasts in her chamber, and at one or two, makes her appearance. At this time I converse with her about her health, if occasion require, or walk with her for half an hour in the Convent garden. I then ride, read, or amuse myself as I please, for the rest of the day until dinner-time.’ Warming to his theme, he added, ‘Her disposition is the most obliging you can possibly conceive, and the familiar and kind manner in which she treats me has the best effect on persons around me, from all of whom, through her, I experience the politest civilities.’1

To brighten the mood, the Colonel staged a series of dinner parties – the first for Hester’s birthday on 12 March – inviting any high-placed acquaintances he could find. Within barely a fortnight of one another, two Englishmen – Michael Bruce and the Marquess of Sligo, Howe Peter Browne – had arrived in Gibraltar. Both men were curious to meet Hester.

At twenty-three, Michael Bruce, the son of Patrick Crauford Bruce, a rich nabob, was undeniably good-looking, tall and slim, with fine tanned skin, fledgling sideburns on his downy cheeks, grave blue eyes and long lashes. When he smiled, he revealed beautiful, even white teeth. The night Hester met him, Campbell staged his dinner party in the ballroom, which had been fashioned from the nave of an adjacent chapel. Hester found herself looking into Bruce’s eyes, studying the exact colour; as well as each button and the fabric of his jacket; the delicate indentations in his wrists, and watching his handsome head and neck as he turned to refill a glass. Afterwards the party had wandered into the courtyard garden, stuck about with dragon trees. Hester and Bruce stayed talking there for a while, sitting by a small fountain.

Bruce came from enterprising, rather exotic Scottish stock. In the late eighteenth century, one of his forebears, the explorer James Bruce, made epic voyages through Syria, Egypt, Arabia and Abyssinia (Ethiopia), where he had been the first European to reach the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile.* Hester learned that Bruce had been born in Bombay and that his mother had been a great beauty, painted by Romney. His father, an East India Company man, had founded a highly successful importing business. It was a delightful life for a beloved first son in a household full of servants who doted on him, to whom pet monkeys and caparisoned elephants were commonplace. He and his mother and siblings had returned to England when he was five. He had gone to Eton and St John’s College, Cambridge. He admitted to being a good rower, and told her that his father, having become a banker, had embarked on another career as a Member of Parliament, buying various seats, including one in Rye, one of the Cinque Ports.

Bruce had been away from England for almost three years – his father hoped he might become a diplomat. In Scandinavia he had met all the princes and nobles, and had instructions from his father to continue onwards to mingle with rarefied society in St Petersburg and Moscow. But he never got there, although he was in Copenhagen in 1807 when Canning gave the order for the British fleet to launch a hasty, unprovoked pre-emptive attack on the city. Outraged, Bruce took the Danish side, and had been the first British civilian to return to the city and give an eyewitness account of the destruction.*

It would emerge that Hester and Bruce were linked, in a roundabout way, through the misdeeds and deeds of men with whom she had been on intimate terms. Her second cousin, Lord Grenville, had been a neighbour and friend of Bruce’s father, and in 1807 had bartered a seat in Ireland to be accepted by Crauford Bruce if he would agree to pay off the present incumbent with the exact amount of the debt (some £2,500) he was owed by a certain Lord Camelford, Grenville’s brother-in-law, who had recently died. That this same Camelford had been Hester’s first lover, Bruce was, of course, unaware.

There were other coincidental crossings of paths. When Bruce’s father saw him off on his travels, bound for the royal courts of St Petersburg and Moscow, he had every expectation that his son would be warmly received by Ambassador Lord Granville Leveson Gower in St Petersburg, to whom he had a letter of introduction.

But the last association could not have failed to make Hester sad. Instead of going to Russia, Bruce had gone to Spain. Towards the end of 1808 he went to the Peninsula, to tour the battlefronts, hoping to present himself as a ‘free lance’ to Sir John Moore, a particular hero of his. Moore had been ‘very civil and kind’ to him at Salamanca, and with the general’s consent, he had made his way to Madrid – alone – just as the French were massing around the city, with the apparent aim of bringing back news of the enemy’s movements. It was obvious nothing could be done to prevent the capital from falling. Just before the attack, in the dead of night, Bruce had walked his way out, covering a distance of twenty-eight miles on foot to reach the safety of Aranjuez. He then retreated alongside Moore’s army to Corunna, an experience that made him deeply bitter. He held Wellesley – soon to be the Duke of Wellington – personally responsible.

Three days before Moore and Charles Stanhope were killed, Bruce had still been at Corunna. Was he present at the battle, or had he managed to avoid it? Had he also met Hester’s brothers? Neither he nor James ever mention this detail; it is safe to assume he stayed out of danger’s way. If he despised Wellesley, he reserved an even greater hatred for ‘Bony’.

It is easy to see that Bruce, with his strong political opinions, would have been immediately disarmed by Hester’s equally confrontational attitudes. Her forthrightness in discussion about the war and military tactics impressed him. Meryon noted that at this time she ‘often mention[ed] Mr Pitt’s opinion of her fitness for military command. Had she been a man and a soldier, she would have been what the French call a sabreur; for never was anyone so fond of wielding weapons and of boasting of her capability of using them as she was.’ Hester boasted to the young man that she liked daggers, but ‘her favourite weapon was the mace’.2 Wilful and independent, with her impressive connections, she immediately signalled a challenge. Her more sophisticated, ironic utterances caused Bruce to question his own, somewhat more woodenly expressed views.