To tell the story of Lady Hester Stanhope and Michael Bruce would take a whole novel in itself. For those interested, I recommend the brief biography of Lady Hester in Passionate Pilgrims: English Travelers to the World of the Desert Arabs by James C. Simmons. Most of the earlier biographies are marred by unrealistic allusions to Lady Hester as a wrinkled old crone at the age of thirty-four and unsubstantiated pronouncements against Michael Brace's "weak" character, both of which do disservice to the very real high drama and intensity of their affair. Brace's and Lady Hester's collected letters in The Nun of Lebanon: The Love Affair of Lady Hester Stanhope and Michael Bruce, and Lavalette Bruce: His Adventures and Intrigues Before and After Waterloo, both published by his descendant Ian Brace, give the reader a clearer and fairer picture of an interesting and complex young man who-if he failed to fulfill the vicarious aspirations to greatness which both his father and his lover forced upon him to gratify their own ambitions-at least had a life beyond Lady Hester Stanhope.

And as for aged crones who have passed the thirty-four mark-well, humpf! Is it realistic to suppose that a handsome, healthy male in his early twenties (who certainly proved in later life that he could have any woman he wanted) was only interested in Lady Hester's politics? In the end, outside of all the biographers' suppositions and historical evidence, I suspect that Lady Hester's and Michael's real relationship can be most vividly imagined by listening to Rod Stewart's song "Maggie May."

end.