Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/287

 Duke of Wellington, K.G.' in the other: what people will he fancy I am got among! why, the lowest clerk in the Foreign Office would not have made such a blunder: this is your fine Oxford education!" and then she gave a deep sigh, as if in utter despair, to think that a letter should go forth from her hands so different in paper, seal, and address, from those of her early days, when she reigned in Downing Street, co-equal with Mr. Pitt. Now it was a rickety old card-table, a rush-bottomed chair, a white pipe-clay inkstand, wax that would not be used in a counting-house in Cheapside; and both the Sultaness and her vizir (for so I shall presume to style her and myself), fitting their spectacles on their noses, equally blind, equally old, and almost equally ailing.

I finished the address to the Duke. "How many et ceteras have you put?" asked Lady Hester:— "what! only two? I suppose you think he's a nobody!" The remaining letters were directed without farther trouble, but, by some unaccountable blunder, Sir Edward Sugden was made a Sir Charles of. A long deliberation ensued, whether the letter to Her Majesty should be enclosed in a cover to Lord Palmerston, or whether it should be left to be seen by the English consul at Beyrout, to frighten him.

It was now three o'clock in the morning. I quitted Lady Hester, and had Ali Hayshem, the confidential