Today, a prime minister's niece doesn't get the
message. The University of Houston's College of
Engineering presents this series about the machines
that make our civilization run, and the people
whose ingenuity created them.
The amazing William Pitt was
only 24 when he first became prime minister of
England in 1783. Pitt was an incorruptible
reformer. Yet he never traveled, had limited
knowledge of human nature, and lived outside the
intellectual mainstream. He was a lonely,
tightly-wired spendthrift who died penniless at 47
after a nervous breakdown during his second term as
prime minister.
Pitt's sister had married Charles Stanhope, borne
three daughters, and died young. Charles's second
wife took little interest in the daughters. Their
schooling and upbringing were haphazard.
But Charles had his own erratic genius, which he
divided between politics and invention. As a member
of parliament under Pitt, he'd opposed England's
war against the American Colonies and supported the
French Revolution. As an inventor he created the
powerful Stanhope optical lens. He also invented
the first iron printing press -- the first step
away from the old winepress screw that'd been used
since Gutenberg to press inked type against paper.
The Stanhope Press led the way to high-speed
presses which made books cheap and available in the
19th century. He'd sown practical as well as
political seeds of a new equality. But his
revolutionary message seemed not to register with
his daughters.
Three years before his death, Pitt had asked
Charles's eldest daughter, Hester Stanhope, to manage his
household. Hester had all her family's brilliance,
but she put it to shaping a place within the
rarified atmosphere of the 18th-century rich. Pitt
pampered Hester. The aristocracy loved her sharp
undisciplined tongue. She was vain and
self-dramatizing and had commanding personal
magnetism.
When Pitt died, Hester lost access to his lavish
spending. So in 1810, now 34, she gathered a small
entourage and set off for the Middle East.
Adventure followed adventure. In Greece, she met
young Lord Byron (who found
her annoying). Later, she was ship- wrecked off the
island of Rhodes. Finally, the Pasha of Acre gave
her the ruins of a convent on Mt. Lebanon. She
began dressing like an Arab, and she made the old
convent into a medieval fortress.
For 25 years she maintained 30 native servants and
entertained European visitors who came to hear her
rambling harangues. London followed her in the
papers. She fed beggars, defended the Pasha against
Druse uprisings, and became a frightening Holy
Woman for the locals. When she'd spent all she had,
she ran up huge debts. She smoked hash, grew sick,
and turned old far beyond her years.
Why don't you cut your staff, a friend said. Think
of my rank and appearances, she snarled. When she
died in 1839 her servants stole all but the clothes
and jewelry on her body. She'd barely outlived the
old order of English aristocracy without
understanding the political and inventive reforms
her father and uncle had put in motion. In the
exotic fortress of her powerful personality, Hester
Stanhope had clung to the last outpost of imperial
excess.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
Haslip, J., Lady Hester Stanhope. New
York: Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers, 1934.
See also the Encyclopaedia Britannica
and Dictionary of National Biography
entries on William Pitt and Charles and Hester
Stanhope, as well as various texts on printing,
optics and the history of technology.
These two websites give additional background on
Hester Stanhope: http://www.manhal.com/ladyhes.html
http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/ReadingRoom/Fiction/Kinglake/Eothen/chapter08
And this website gives photos, both of the region
in Lebanon where Hester Stanhope lived, and of the
ruins of her citidel/house. Click on the thumbnail
below to reach one those photos.
http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/700/770/779.photographs/ludvigsen/pcd1263/
From The Wonder Book of Knowledge,
1923
From the October, 1895, Century
Magazine.
William Pitt
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
Lienhard.
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