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228 3GADY HESTEB STANHOPE.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
— — Much Has Been Said And Written Latel...
political reveries , that lie seemed scarcely conscious of the life which was passing around hiin . Lady StanhopeMs second wife
passed her time in a round of frivolity and visiting , " . She was , seldom at home unless it were to dress herself for fresh soirees ;
she dined out nearly every day , and was constantly to be seen at the opera . This woman of fashion who had succeeded Pitt ' s
sister , was a Gfrenville by birth , without brains or heart—a silly dressed up doll . Between these parentsso completely strangers
to each other that the one only returned , from her gaieties just before daylight , when the other was rising to engage in his politics
and philosophical pursuits , the children grew up scarcely seeing either the one or the other , and entirely confided to the care of a
governess , who endeavored to restrain in every way the moral and physical development of her pupils- Now teasing them with bad
Italian and German , and now torturing them with backboards and devices for shaping their figures , this Swiss governess succeeded
in inspiring her pupils with the strongest abhorrence for herself , Proud , energetic , and capricious , Hester imbibed from her
treatment the greatest horror of all education in general . She was right so far , tliat much which is called education
now-a-days only succeeds in deforming the natural character , through want of judgment in the teacher . We cannot nourish delicate
plants by drowning them with water , and precocious development in some particular faculty may dwarf the whole powers
of the mind . _Sjoeaking forty years afterwards from the royal nest which she fancied she had built for herself among the rocks of
Syria , this disdainful woman referred with scorn to her unfortunate education . " They thought , " she said to reduce me to a
fashionable Miss ; they even imagined to flatten my foot , the arch of which is so high that a kitten might pass underneath it . Stupid
creatures ! as if they could not recognise by this the nobility of my race . " - Hester Stanhope soon showed herself ifted with a powerful
memory , and astonishing activity . At two g years o ] d she was said to have made a straw bonnet , the model of those which were worn
at the time ; a feat which was thought so extraordinary for her age that her father had it preserved as a family relic . Like Pitt
to whom she delighted to liken herself , she had the faculty of never , forgetting what she had once seen . Were it only a treeor a stone
in the road , that tree or that stone would stand out with , its peculiar color or angles before her eyes for ever . Like all egotistical
persons , her will seems to have exercised an important influence over this memory . There are some things we do not care to retain
in our minds , and these we speedily reject . The power we all possess of ignoring some circumstances in our past lives and
magnifying others is often ludicrous to our hearers ; but the memory is with many of us an optimisttill in moments of
difficulty or distress the impartial panorama , of our whole lives is
stretched before our unwilling eyes .
228 3gady Hesteb Stanhope.
228 3 _GADY HESTEB STANHOPE .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), June 1, 1862, page 228, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01061862/page/12/
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