IT'S THREE YEARS SINCE THE LAST biography of Lady Hester Stanhope, one which went some way to exploring the remarkably busy private life of this prototype for 19thcentury female travellers. For some reason though, Kirsten Ellis doesn't cite Lorna Gib
b's study in her bibliography – perhaps because she is more concerned to establish Stanhope's public role rather than her private one.
Gibb's emphasis made it hard to empathise with this life story of a privileged woman descended from "Diamond" Pitt, an adventurer who struck not gold, but one of the biggest diamonds ever seen and in doing so made the family fortune for generations to come – in that account, it was hard to see why Stanhope's story, unusual though it was for a woman of her time, mattered quite so much. Lady Hester came across as hedonistic, often foolish, occasionally delusional and very capable of bad judgment. In Ellis's account, however, we have a very different Hester Stanhope: a woman who has inherited the mantle of her Prime Minister forebears (William Pitt the Younger was her uncle; Pitt the Elder her grandfather), showing due leadership, courage under fire, and a mission to count in the imperial power games being played in the East.
Would the real Hester Stanhope please stand up? The facts of her life are in little dispute: born in 1776 to Lady Hester Pitt (who was to die at only 25) and the erratic Charles Stanhope, later Viscount Mahon, she began life as a sturdy baby, became known as a "wild child" who liked nothing better than racing horses too big for her, and developed into, if not a classical beauty, at least a highly attractive young woman who thought nothing of having affairs with eligible and highly indiscreet young men.
Her first love was a classic "rake", Granville Leveson Gower, who was – unbeknown to her – the father of two of the married Lady Bessborough's children (Bessborough was sister to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and the mother of Lady Caroline Lamb, author of an exposé about her affair with Lord Byron). He was perfectly placed then, to break her heart and duly did. The next big affair was with Michael Bruce, a descendant of the Scottish explorer James Bruce, and a fairly dashing individual who, at only 23, had already been involved in military campaigns.
After Bruce would come the Frenchmen Boutin and Lascaris, inevitably tough individuals given the backdrop to their lives, the French Revolution and Napoleon's various assaults on land in Europe and the Middle East. Hester wouldn't meet them until she was well on her way to becoming a white "Queen of the Desert", the woman who impressed the notoriously fierce Bedouins with her impeccable and fearless riding skills.
Unwilling to settle to married life on a country estate in England, she headed first to Gibraltar, then further east as war with Napoleon intensified.
Ellis spends a great deal of time establishing Hester's credentials as a political player, emphasising her good relations with tribal leaders and warlords, her ability to impress without alienating misogynistic chiefs and Arab outlaws. After only a few years, she could enter a city to a great reception, even managing to form her own army. She played with her gender throughout, often dressing in male Arab dress, and was contemptuous of British officials who displayed little understanding of dress codes in the East. She travelled through Libya, Syria, Palestine, Iran and Iraq, and repeatedly seems to have caused a sensation wherever she went.
It was her good relations with leaders in those areas that, Ellis argues, made her valuable to the British Foreign Office, and her cousin, Sir Stanley Smith, tried to enlist her help when he planned military campaigns in the East, something she refused to give. Her interest lay in bettering the parts of the countries she visited, with plans for schools and libraries; war and territorial occupation wasn't her goal. But the question of how far she was involved, exactly, in the political machinations that went on between Britain and the countries she travelled through, is hard to answer, and Ellis's commendably detailed accounts only befuddle the issue further.
Ellis acknowledges that Hester was an often voluble character, who changed after one serious illness that almost killed her, and changed again after going off into the desert alone and consorting with various religious and spiritual men. She speculates on possible miscarriages in her relationship with Bruce, and on possible other affairs Hester might have had. By and large, though, this is a biography of a political figure, rather than of a social figure, or even of an unusual woman. Her ability to survive in conditions that defeated most men is given extra weight here, but it is also her political sense that is assessed. To read Gibb is to picture a dynamic, unstable, privileged aristocrat having adventures in the desert; to read Ellis is to encounter a strong-willed, passionate, politically astute individual trying to make the world a better place. The truth probably lies somewhere between the two.
The full article contains 868 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
