Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/113

 my ass a few times to break her in, and make her gentle, I will try and ride about in the garden: but, as for going outside my own gates, it is impossible; the people would beset me so—you have no idea. They conceal themselves behind hedges, in holes in the rocks, and, whichever way I turn, out comes some one with a complaint or a petition, begging, kissing my feet, and God knows what: I can’t do it. I can ride about my garden, and see to my plants and flowers: but you must break her in well for me; for, if she were to start at a bird or a serpent, I am so weak I should tumble off."

November 18.—I had taken some physic without consulting her, upon which she launched out into a tirade against English doctors. Impoverishment of the blood is a very favourite theme among people who are well off, and who shut their eyes to the robust health of many a labourer, whose whole sustenance amounts not to the offals of their table. So she began—" What folly you have been guilty of in impoverishing your blood! Look at a stupid Englishman, who takes a dose of salts, rides a trotting horse to get an appetite, eats his dinner, takes a cordial draught to make him agreeable, goes to his party, and then goes to bed:—for worlds, I would not be such a man’s wife! where is he to get a constitution? But the fault is not all their own—part is you doctors: you give the same