Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth CenturyAdams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
History
Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century
Adams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
Women travelers -- Biography
No man is said to be a hero to his valet; I suppose the proverb may be
applied in the case of his physician. Certainly, Lady Hester Stanhope's
medical attendant does not forget to expose her weaknesses. "As it had
become," he says, "a habit with her to find nothing well done, when she
entered her bedroom, it was rare that the bed was made to her liking;
and, generally, she ordered it to be made over again in her presence.
Whilst this was doing, she would smoke her pipe, then call for the sugar
basin to eat two or three lumps of sugar, then for a clove to take away
the mawkish taste of the sugar. The girls, in the meantime, would go on
making the bed, and be saluted every now and then, for some mark of
stupidity, with all sorts of appellations. The night-lamp was then
lighted, a couple of yellow wax lights were placed ready for use in the
recess of the window, and all things being apparently done for the
night, she would get into bed, and the maid whose turn it was to sleep
in the room (for latterly she always had one) having placed herself,
dressed as she was, on her mattress behind the curtain which ran across
the room, the other servant was dismissed. But hardly had she shut the
door and reached her own sleeping-room, flattering herself that her
day's work was over, when the bell would ring, and she was told to get
broth or lemonade or orgeat directly. This, when brought, was a new
trial for the maids. Lady Hester Stanhope took it on a tray placed on
her lap as she sat up in bed, and it was necessary for one of the two
servants to hold the candle in one hand and shade the light from her
mistress's eyes with the other. The contents of the basin were sipped
once or twice and sent away; or, if she ate a small bit of dried toast,
it was considered badly made, and a fresh piece was ordered, perhaps not
to be touched."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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