Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/25

 that I should have such a memory? I can recall every circumstance that ever occurred to me during  my life—everything worth retaining, that I wished to remember. I could tell what people said, how they sat, the colour of their hair, of their eyes, and all about them, at any time, for the last forty years and more. At Hastings, for example, I can tell the name of the two smugglers, Tate and Everett, who attended at the bathing-machine, and the name of the apothecary, Dr. Satterly, although I have never heard a word about those persons from that day to this.

"How well I recollect what I was made to suffer when I was young! and that’s the reason why I have sworn eternal warfare against Swiss and French governesses. Nature forms us in a certain manner, both inwardly and outwardly, and it is in vain to attempt to alter it. One governess at Chevening had our backs pinched in by boards, that were drawn tight with all the force the maid could use; and, as for me, they would have squeezed me to the size of a puny miss—a thing impossible! My instep, by nature so high, that a little kitten could walk under the sole of my foot, they used to bend down in order to flatten it, although that is one of the things that shows my high breeding.

"Nature, doctor, makes us one way, and man is always trying to fashion us another. Why, there was Mahon, when he was eight or nine years old, that