servant to a very old Mr. Stewart, father of Charles Stewart, notary
public. The father was a notary also, and James, who wanted a man of
law to be at the evictions on May 15, and thought that Charles Stewart
was absent in Moidart, conceived that the old gentleman would serve
the turn. But his messenger missed the venerable sportsman, who had
gone a-fishing. Learning later that Charles had returned from Moidart,
James, at 8 A.M. on May 14 (the day of the murder), sent a servant to
Charles at Fort William, bidding him come to the evictions on May 15,
'as everything must go wrong without a person that can act, and that
I can trust.' In a postscript he added, 'As I have no time to write to
William (Stewart), let him send down immediately 8_l._ to pay for four
milk cows I bought for his wife at Ardshiel.' His messenger had also
orders to ask William Stewart for the money.
Nothing could seem more harmless, but the prosecution might have
argued that this letter was, as to the coming of the notary, a
'blind,' and that the real object was, under the plea of sending for
the notary, to send the messenger for William Stewart's 8_l._,
destined to aid Allan in his escape.[8] There was no proof or even
suggestion that, on May 12, James had asked old Mr. Stewart to send
money for Allan's use, or had asked William Stewart, as having none by
him he would have done--that is, if James had concerted the murder
with Allan. If, on May 14, James was trying to raise money to help a
man who, as he knew, would need it after committing a murder on that
day, he showed strange want of foresight. He might not get the money,
or might not be able to send it to Allan. In fact, that day James did
not get the money. The prosecution argued that the money was sent for
on May 14, to help Allan Breck, and did not even try to show that
James had sent for money on May 12; when it would have arrived in good
time. Indeed James did not, on May 12, send any message to William
Stewart at Fort William, from whom, not from Charles or the old
gentleman, he tried to raise the cash on May 14. A friendly or a just
jury would have noted that if James planned a murder on the night of
May 11, and had no money, his very first move, on May 12, would be to
try to raise money for the assassin's escape. No mortal would put off
that step till the morning of the crime; indeed, it is amazing that
Allan, if he meant to do the deed, did not first try to obtain cash
for his escape. The relations of Glenure suspected, at the time, that
Allan was not the assassin, that he fled merely to draw suspicion away
from the real criminal (as he does in _Kidnapped_), and they even
wished to advertise a pardon for him, if he would come in and give
evidence. These facts occur in a copious unpublished correspondence of
the day between Glenure's brothers and kinsmen; Mr. Stevenson had
never heard of these letters.[9] Thus, up to the day of the murder,
Allan may not have contemplated it; he may have been induced,
unprepared, to act as accessory to _the other man_.
[Footnote 8: Really, the prosecution did not make this point: an
oversight.]
[Footnote 9: They are in the possession of Mr. Walter Blaikie, who
kindly lent them to me.]
The point where, according to the prosecution, the evidence 'pinched'
James of the Glens was his attempt to raise money on May 14. What
could he want with so large a sum as 8_l._, so suddenly, as he had no
bill to meet? Well, as a number of his friends were to be thrown out
of their farms, with their cattle, next day, James might need money
for their relief, and it seems certain that he had made no effort to
raise money at the moment when he inevitably must have done so, if
guilty, that is, on May 12, immediately after concerting, as was
alleged, the plot with Allan Breck. Failing to get money from William
Stewart at Fort William on May 14, James did on May 15 procure a small
sum from him or his wife, and did send what he could scrape together
to Allan Breck at Coalisnacoan. This did not necessarily imply guilt
on James's part. Allan, whether guilty or not, was in danger as a
suspected man and a deserter; James was his father's friend, had been
his guardian, and so, in honour, was bound to help him.
But how did he know where Allan was to be found? If both were guilty
they would have arranged, on May 11, a place where Allan might lurk.
If they did arrange that, both were guilty. But Donald Stewart, who
went, as we have said, and saw Allan on the hillside on the night of
the murder, added to his evidence that Allan had then told him to tell
James of the Glens where he might be found, that is, at Coalisnacoan.
These tidings Donald gave to James on the morning of May 15. James
then sent a pedlar, Allan's cousin, back to William Stewart, got
3_l._, added, in the evening of the 16th, more money of his own, and
sent it to Allan. There was a slight discrepancy between the story of
the maid, Kate MacInnes, and that of Donald Stewart, as to what
exactly passed between them, concerning Allan, on the night of the
murder, and whether Allan did or did not give her a definite message
to Donald. The prosecution insisted on this discrepancy, which really,
as James's advocate told the jury, rather went to prove their want of
collusion in the manufacture of testimony. Had their memories been
absolutely coincident, we might suspect collusion--that they had been
'coached' in their parts. But a discrepancy of absolutely no
importance rather suggests independent and honest testimony. If this
be so, Allan and James had arranged no trysting-place on May 11, as
they must have done if Allan was to murder Glenure, and James was to
send him money for his escape.
But there was a discrepancy of evidence as to the hour when the pedlar
sent by James to Fort William on May 15 arrived there. Was he
despatched after the hour when Donald Stewart swore that he gave
Allan's message to James of the Glens, or earlier, with no knowledge
on James's part of the message carried by Donald? We really cannot
expect certainty of memory, after five months, as to hours of the
clock. Also James did not prove that he sent a message to Allan at
Coalisnacoan, bidding him draw on William Stewart for money; yet on
Friday, May 15, James did, by the pedlar, bid William Stewart give
Allan credit, and on Saturday, May 16, Allan did make a pen from a
bird's feather, and ink with powder and water, and write a letter for
money, on the strength of James's credit, to William Stewart. This is
certainly a difficulty for James, since he suggested John Breck
MacColl, a tenant of Appin's at Coalisnacoan, for the intermediary
between Allan and William Stewart, and Allan actually did employ this
man to carry his letter. But Allan knew this tenant well, as did
James, and there was nobody else at that desolate spot, Coalisnacoan,
whom Allan could employ. So lonely is the country that a few years ago
a gentleman of my acquaintance, climbing a rocky cliff, found the
bones of a man gnawed by foxes and eagles; a man who never had been
missed or inquired after. Remains of pencils and leather shoe strings
among the bones proved that the man had been a pedlar, like James
Stewart's messenger, who had fallen over the precipice in trying to
cross from Coalisnacoan to the road through Glencoe. But he never was
missed, nor is the date of his death known to this day.
The evidence of the lonely tenant at Coalisnacoan, as to his
interviews with Allan, is familiar to readers of _Kidnapped_. The
tenant had heard of the murder before he saw Allan. Two poor women,
who came up from Glencoe, told the story, saying that '_two men_ were
seen going from the spot where Glenure was killed, and that Allan
Breck was one of them.' Thus early does the mysterious figure of _the
other man_ haunt the evidence. The tenant's testimony was not regarded
as trustworthy by the Stewart party; it tended to prove that Allan
expected a change of clothes and money to be sent to him, and he also
wrote the letter (with a wood-pigeon's quill, and powder and water) to
William Stewart, asking for money. But Allan might do all this relying
on his own message sent by Donald Stewart, on the night of the murder,
to James of the Glens, and knowing, as he must have done, that William
Stewart was James's agent in his large financial operations.
On the whole, then, the evidence, even where it 'pinches' James most,
is by no means conclusive proof that on May 11 he had planned the
murder with Allan. If so, he must have begun to try to raise money
before the very day of the murder. James and his son were arrested on
May 16, and taken to Fort William; scores of other persons were
arrested, and the Campbells, to avenge Glenure, made the most minute
examinations of hundreds of people. Meanwhile Allan, having got 5_l._
and his French clothes by the agency of his cousin the pedlar,
decamped from Coalisnacoan in the night, and marched across country to
the house of an uncle in Rannoch. Thence he escaped to France, where
he was seen in Paris by an informant of Sir Walter Scott's in the dawn
of the French Revolution; a tall, thin, quiet old man, wearing the
cross of St. Louis, and looking on at a revolutionary procession.
The activities of the Campbells are narrated in their numerous
unpublished letters. We learn from a nephew of Glenure's that he had
been 'several days ago forewarned,' by whom we cannot guess;
tradition tells, as I have said, that he feared danger only in
Lochiel's country, Lochaber, and thought himself safe in Appin. The
warning, then, probably came from a Cameron in Lochaber, not from a
Stewart in Appin. In coincidence with this is a dark anonymous
blackmailing letter to Fassifern, as if _he_ had urged the writer to
do the deed:
'You will remember what you proposed on the night that Culchena was
buried, betwixt the hill and Culchena. I cannot deny but that I had
breathing' (a whisper), 'and not only that, but proposal of the same
to myself to do. Therefore you must excuse me, when it comes to the
push, for telling the thing that happened betwixt you and me that
night.... If you do not take this to heart, you may let it go as you
will.' (June 6, 1752.)
Fassifern, who had no hand in the murder, 'let it go,' and probably
handed the blackmailer's letter over to the Campbells. Later, ----,
---- of ----, the blackest villain in the country, offered to the
Government to accuse Fassifern of the murder. The writer of the
anonymous letter to Fassifern is styled 'Blarmachfildich,' or
'Blarmackfildoch,' in the correspondence. I think he was a Mr. Millar,
employed by Fassifern to agitate against Glenure.
In the beginning of July a man, suspected of being Allan, was arrested
at Annan on the Border, by a sergeant of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He
really seems to have changed clothes with Allan; at least he wore gay
French clothes like Allan's, but he was not that hero. Young
Ballachulish, at this time, knew that Allan was already across the
sea. Various guesses occur as to who _the other man_ was; for example,
a son of James of the Glens was suspected, so there _was_ another man.
The 'precognitions,' or private examinations of witnesses before the
trial, extended to more than seven hundred persons. It was matter of
complaint by the Stewart party that 'James Drummond's name appeared in
the list of witnesses;' this is Mr. Stevenson's James More, really
MacGregor, the son of Rob Roy, and father of Catriona, later Mrs.
David Balfour of Shaws, in _Kidnapped_ and _Catriona_. 'James More's
character is reflected upon, and I believe he cannot be called worse
than he deserves,' says one of the Campbells. He alleges, however,
that in April, before the murder, James of the Glens visited James
More, then a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle, 'caressed him,' and had a
private conversation with him. The abject James More averred that, in
this conversation, James of the Glens proposed that James More's
brother, Robin Oig, should kill Glenure for money. James More was not
examined at the trial of James of the Glens, perhaps because he had
already escaped, thanks to Catriona and collusion; but his evidence
appears to have reached the jury, almost all of them Campbells, who
sat at Inveraray, the Duke of Argyll on the bench, and made no
difficulty about finding James of the Glens 'Guilty.' To be sure,
James, if guilty, was guilty as an accessory to Allan, and that Allan
was guilty was not proved; he was not even before the court. It was
not proved that the bullets which slew Glenure fitted the bore of
James's small gun with which Allan was alleged to have perpetrated the
murder, but it was proved that the lock of that gun had only one
fault--it missed fire four times out of five, and, when the gun did
not miss fire, it did not carry straight--missed a blackcock, sitting!
_That_ gun was not the gun used in the murder.
The jury had the case for James of the Glens most clearly and
convincingly placed before them, in the speech of Mr. Brown for the
accused. He made, indeed, the very points on which I have insisted;
for example, that if James concerted a murder with Allan on May 11, he
would not begin to hunt for money for Allan's escape so late as May
14, the day of the murder. Again, he proved that, without any
information from James, Allan would _naturally_ send for money to
William Stewart, James's usual source of supply; while at Coalisnacoan
there was no man to go as messenger except the tenant, John Breck
MacColl. A few women composed his family, and, as John MacColl had
been the servant of James of the Glens, he was well known already to
Allan. In brief, there was literally no proof of concert, and had the
case been heard in Edinburgh, not in the heart of the Campbell
country, by a jury of Campbells, a verdict of 'Not Guilty' would have
been given: probably the jury would not even have fallen back upon
'Not Proven.' But, moved by clan hatred and political hatred, the
jury, on September 24, found a verdict against James of the Glens,
who, in a touching brief speech, solemnly asserted his innocence
before God, and chiefly regretted 'that after ages should think me
guilty of such a horrid and barbarous murder.'
He was duly hanged, and left hanging, on the little knoll above the
sea ferry, close to the Ballachulish Hotel.
And _the other man_?
Tradition avers that, on the day of the execution, he wished to give
himself up to justice, though his kinsmen told him that he could not
save James, and would merely share his fate; but, nevertheless, he
struggled so violently that his people mastered and bound him with
ropes, and laid him in a room still existing. Finally, it is said that
strange noises and knockings are still heard in that place, a
mysterious survival of strong human passions attested in other cases,
as on the supposed site of the murder of James I. of Scotland in
Perth.
Do I believe in this identification of _the other man_? I have marked
every trace of him in the documents, published or unpublished, and I
remain in doubt. But if Allan had an accessory in the crime, who was
seen at the place, an accomplice who, for example, supplied the gun,
perhaps fired the shot, while Allan fled to distract suspicion, that
accessory was probably the person named by legend. Though he was
certainly under suspicion, so were scores of other people. The crime
does not seem to me to have been the result of a conspiracy in Appin,
but the act of one hot-headed man or of two hot-headed men. I hope I
have kept the Celtic secret, and I defy anyone to discover _the other
man_ by aid of this narrative.
That James would have been quite safe with an Edinburgh jury was
proved by the almost contemporary case of the murder of the English
sergeant Davies. He was shot on the hillside, and the evidence against
the assassins was quite strong enough to convict them. But some of the
Highland witnesses averred that the phantasm of the sergeant had
appeared to them, and given information against the criminals, and
though there was testimony independent of the ghost's, his
interference threw ridicule over the affair. Moreover the Edinburgh
jury was in sympathy with Mr. Lockhart, the Jacobite advocate who
defended the accused. Though undeniably guilty, they were acquitted:
much more would James of the Glens have obtained a favourable verdict.
He was practically murdered under forms of law, and what was thought
of the Duke of Argyll's conduct on the bench is familiar to readers of
_Kidnapped_. I have never seen a copy of the pamphlet put forth after
the hanging by the Stewart party, and only know it through a reply in
the Campbell MSS.
The tragedy remains as fresh in the memories of the people of Appin
and Lochaber as if it were an affair of yesterday. The reason is that
the crime of cowardly assassination was very rare indeed among the
Highlanders. Their traditions were favourable to driving 'creaghs' of
cattle, and to clan raids and onfalls, but in the wildest regions the
traveller was far more safe than on Hounslow or Bagshot Heaths, and
shooting from behind a wall was regarded as dastardly.
V
_THE CARDINAL'S NECKLACE_
'Oh, Nature and Thackeray, which of you imitated the other?' One
inevitably thinks of the old question thus travestied, when one reads,
in the fifth edition, revised and augmented, of Monsieur
Funck-Brentano's _L'Affaire du Collier_,[10] the familiar story of
Jeanne de Valois, of Cardinal Rohan, and of the fatal diamond
necklace. Jeanne de Valois might have sat, though she probably did
not, for Becky Sharp. Her early poverty, her pride in the blood of
Valois, recall Becky's youth, and her boasts about 'the blood of the
Montmorencys.' Jeanne had her respectable friends, as Becky had the
Sedleys; like Becky, she imprudently married a heavy, unscrupulous
young officer; her expedients for living on nothing a year were
exactly those of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley; her personal charms, her fluent
tongue, her good nature, even, were those of that accomplished lady.
Finally she has her Marquis of Steyne in the wealthy, luxurious
Cardinal de Rohan; she robs him to a tune beyond the dreams of Becky,
and, incidentally, she drags to the dust the royal head of the fairest
and most unhappy of queens. Even now there seem to be people who
believe that Marie Antoinette was guilty, that she cajoled the
Cardinal, and robbed him of the diamonds, fateful as the jewels of
Eriphyle.
[Footnote 10: Hachette, Paris, 1903. The author has made valuable
additions and corrections.]
That theory is annihilated by M. Funck-Brentano. But the story is so
strangely complicated; the astuteness and the credulity of the
Cardinal are so oddly contrasted; a momentary folly of the Queen is so
astonishing and fatal; the general mismanagement of the Court is so
crazy, that, had we lived in Paris at the moment, perhaps we could
hardly have believed the Queen to be innocent. Even persons greatly
prejudiced in her favour might well have been deceived, and the people
'loveth to think the worst, and is hardly to be moved from that
opinion,' as was said of the Scottish public at the date of the Gowrie
conspiracy.
An infidelity of Henri II. of France to his wedded wife, Catherine de
Médicis, and the misplaced affection of Louis XV. for Madame du Barry,
were the remote but real causes that helped to ruin the House of
France. Without the amour of Henri II., there would have been no
Jeanne de Valois; without the hope that Louis XV. would stick at
nothing to please Madame du Barry, the diamond necklace would never
have been woven.
Henri II. loved, about 1550, a lady named Nicole de Savigny, and by
her had a son, Henri de Saint-Remy, whom he legitimated. Saint-Remy
was the great, great, great, great-grandfather of Jeanne de Valois,
the flower of minxes. Her father, a ruined man, dwelt in a corner of
the family _château_, a predacious, poaching, athletic, broken scion
of royalty, who drank and brawled with the peasants, and married his
mistress, a servant-girl. Jeanne was born at the _château_ of
Fontette, near Bar-sur-Aube, on April 22, 1756, and she and her
brother and little sister starved in their mouldering tower, kept
alive by the charity of the neighbours and of the _curé_, who begged
clothes for these descendants of kings. But their scutcheon was--and
Jeanne never forgot the fact--argent, three _fleurs de lys_ or, on a
fesse azure. The _noblesse_ of the family was later scrutinised by the
famous d'Hozier and pronounced authentic. Jeanne, with bare feet, and
straws in her hair, is said to have herded the cows, a discontented
indolent child, often beaten by her peasant mother. When her father
had eaten up his last acre, he and the family tramped to Paris in
1760. As Jeanne was then but four years old, I doubt if she ever
'drove the cattle home,' as M. Funck-Brentano finds recorded in the
MSS. of the advocate Target, who defended Jeanne's victim, Cardinal
Rohan.
The Valois crew lived in a village near Paris. Jeanne's mother turned
Jeanne's father out of doors, took a soldier in his place, and sent
the child to beg daily in the streets. 'Pity a poor orphan of the
blood of Valois,' she piped; 'alms, in God's name, for two orphans of
the blood of Valois!' When she brought home little she was cruelly
flogged, so she says, and occasionally she deviated into the truth. A
kind lady, the Marquise de Boulainvilliers, investigated her story,
found it true, and took up the Valois orphans. The wicked mother went
back to Bar-sur-Aube, which Jeanne was to dazzle with her opulence,
after she got possession of the diamonds.
By the age of twenty-one (1777), Jeanne was a pretty enchanting girl,
with a heart full of greed and envy; two years later she and her
sister fled from the convent where her protectress had placed them: a
merry society convent it was. A Madame de Surmont now gave them
shelter, at Bar-sur-Aube, and Jeanne married, very disreputably, her
heavy admirer, La Motte, calling himself Count, and to all appearance
a stupid young officer of the _gendarmerie_. The pair lived as such
people do, and again made prey of Madame de Boulainvilliers, in 1781,
at Strasbourg. The lady was here the guest of the sumptuous, vain,
credulous, but honourable Cardinal Rohan, by this time a man of fifty,
and the fanatical adorer of Cagliostro, with his philosopher's stone,
his crystal gazers, his seeresses, his Egyptian mysteries, and his
powers of healing diseases, and creating diamonds out of nothing.
Cagliostro doubtless lowered the Cardinal's moral and mental tone, but
it does not appear that he had any connection with the great final
swindle. In his supernormal gifts and graces the Cardinal did
steadfastly believe. Ten years earlier, Rohan had blessed Marie
Antoinette on her entry into France, and had been ambassador at the
Court of Maria Theresa, the Empress. A sportsman who once fired off
1,300 cartridges in a day (can this be true?), a splendid festive
churchman, who bewitched Vienna, and even the Emperor and Count
Kaunitz, by his lavish entertainments, Rohan made himself positively
loathed--for his corrupting luxury and his wicked wit--by the austere
Empress. She procured Rohan's recall, and so worked on her daughter,
Marie Antoinette, the young Queen of France, that the prelate, though
Grand Almoner, was socially boycotted by the Court, his letters of
piteous appeal to the Queen were not even opened, and his ambitions to
sway politics, like a Tencin or a Fleury, were ruined.
So here are Rohan, Cagliostro, and Jeanne all brought acquainted. The
Cardinal (and this is one of the oddest features in the affair) was to
come to believe that Jeanne was the Queen's most intimate friend, and
could and would make his fortune with her; while, at the same time, he
was actually relieving her by little tips of from two to five louis!
This he was doing, even after, confiding in Jeanne, he handed to her
the diamond necklace for the Queen, and, as he believed, had himself
a solitary midnight interview with her Majesty. If Jeanne was so great
with the Queen as Rohan supposed, how could Jeanne also be in need of
small charities? Rohan was a man of the world. His incredible
credulity seems a fact so impossible to accept that it was not
accepted by public opinion. The Queen, people could not but argue,
must have taken his enormous gifts, and then robbed and denounced him.
With the case before our eyes of Madame Humbert, who swindled scores
of hard-headed financiers by the flimsiest fables, we can no longer
deem the credulity of the Cardinal incredible, even though he
displayed on occasion a sharpness almost as miraculous as his
stupidity.