Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope. Kirsten Ellis

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