Lady Hester Stanhope’s voice dominates this third volume of her memoirs, recorded by her physician Charles Lewis Meryon. The text is built around her conversations, letters, and Meryon’s own travel narratives, creating a layered account of life in 1830s Syria. Stanhope’s opinions are delivered with characteristic force: she dismisses Prince Pückler Muskau’s writings, mocks English servants, and recounts a scene where she won over a duke’s critics by mimicking their complaints. The volume also includes Meryon’s hurried journey to Beyrout during a plague outbreak, a sequence that contrasts Stanhope’s rigid weekly seclusion with the urgency of medical crisis.

A Voice of Performative Authority

Her authority extends to superstition. Meryon notes that every Wednesday from sunset to sunset she was “invisible,” a rule so strict that when a letter arrived about a dying woman, he had to leave without consulting her. The vigil of Wednesday commenced at sunset on Tuesday, and from that hour she could “neither see me, nor admit of any message.” This blend of theatricality and rigid ritual shapes the volume’s texture.

Tensions of Travel and Quarantine

Meryon’s own narrative provides a counterpoint to Stanhope’s monologues. In Chapter VII, he receives an urgent plea from an English merchant at Beyrout: his wife is alarmingly ill. Meryon sets off at three in the morning on an ass, taking eleven hours, only to find she has died. The plague has struck the town. A friend warns him: “Touch nobody; the plague is in the town: it has taken us by surprise.” The English consul is already in quarantine, receiving Meryon at his doorway. The juxtaposition is stark: Stanhope’s controlled world of conversation and ritual versus the chaotic, deadly reality of epidemic. Meryon’s understated prose—he notes the innkeeper’s “copious repasts” before learning of the plague—heightens the unease.

Opinions on People and Politics

The volume is thick with Stanhope’s judgments on contemporaries. She discusses Lord Byron, Mehemet Ali, and the Emir Beshýr, though the excerpts offer only fragments. Her letters, such as those to Lord Ebrington and the Duke of Bavaria, reveal a woman engaged with European and Ottoman power structures. She also comments on local customs: Syrian surgeons, the severity needed with Eastern servants, and the folly of education. Her views are rarely neutral. She dismisses Prince Pückler Muskau’s writing style and mocks Dr. Bowring. These opinions are not systematic but erupt through conversation, giving the volume a spontaneous, gossipy energy. Meryon’s editorial hand is light, letting Stanhope’s voice dominate even when her claims are contradictory or exaggerated.

Readers should approach this volume as a curated performance rather than a straightforward autobiography. Meryon’s framing—his own journeys, his dilemmas, his role as audience—shapes how Stanhope’s words land. Pay attention to the gaps: what she does not say about her finances, her isolation, or the political upheavals around her. The volume rewards those who read for voice and tension, not for factual completeness.