THE HEIR.
In 1765 Horace Walpole, mentioning the now-ascertained fact of the
Pretender's abjuration of Catholicism, informed his friend Mann that
a rumour was about that Charles Edward had declared his intention of
never marrying, in order that no more Stuarts should remain to embroil
England. This magnanimous resolution, which was a mere repetition of an
answer made years ago by the Pretender's father, did not hold good
against the temptations of the Cabinet of Versailles. There is something
particularly disgusting in the thought that, merely because the French
Government thought it convenient to keep a Stuart in reserve with whom,
if necessary, to trip up England, the once magnanimous Charles Edward
consented to marry in consideration of a certain pension from Versailles;
to make money out of any possible or probable son he might have. This,
however, was the plain state of the case; and Louise of Stolberg had
been selected, and married to a drunkard old enough to be her father,
merely that this honourable bargain between the man outraged in 1748,
and the Government which had outraged him, might be satisfactorily
fulfilled.
The Court of Versailles wasted its money: the officially-negotiated baby
was never born. Nay, Sir Horace Mann, the English Minister at Florence,
whose spies watched every movement of the Count and Countess of Albany,
was able to report to his Government, in answer to a vague rumour of the
coming of an heir, that the wife of Charles Edward Stuart had never, at
any moment, had any reasons for expecting to become a mother. And when,
in the first years of this century, Henry Benedict, Cardinal York, the
younger brother of Charles Edward, was buried where the two melancholy
genii of Canova keep watch in St. Peter's, opposite to the portrait of
Maria Clementina Sobieska in powder and paint and patches, a certain
solemn feeling came over most Englishmen with the thought that the race
of James II. was now extinct.
But the world had forgotten that the children of Edward IV. were
resuscitated; that the son of Louis XVI., whose poor little dead body
had been handled by the Commissary of the Republic, had returned to
earth in the shape of five or six perfectly distinct individuals,
Bruneau, Hervagault, Naundorff, whatever else their names; that King
Arthur is still living in the kingdom of Morgan le Fay; and Barbarossa
still asleep on the stone table, waiting till the rooks which circle
round the Kiefhäuser hill shall tell him to arise; and the world had,
therefore, to learn that a Stuart still existed. The legend runs as
follows.
In 1773, a certain Dr. Beaton, a staunch Jacobite, who had fought at
Culloden, was attracted, while travelling in Italy, by the knowledge
that his legitimate sovereigns were spending part of the summer at a
villa in the neighbourhood, to a vague place somewhere in the Apennines
between Parma and Lucca, distinguished by the extremely un-Tuscan name
of St. Rosalie. Here, while walking about "in the deep quiet shades,"
the doctor was one day startled by a "calash and four, with scarlet
liveries," which dashed past him and up an avenue. During the one moment
of its rapid passage, the Scotch physician recognised in the rather
apocalyptic gentleman wearing the garter and the cross of St. Andrew,
who sat by the side of a beautiful young woman, "the Bonnie Prince Charlie
of our faithful beau ideal, still the same eagle-featured, royal bird,
which I had seen on his own mountains, when he spread his wings towards
the south." Towards dusk of that same day, as Dr. Beaton was pacing up
and down the convent church of St. Rosalie, doubtless thinking over that
"eagle-featured royal bird," whom he had seen driving in the calash and
four, he was startled in his meditations by the jingle of spurs on the
pavement, and by the approach of a man "of superior appearance."
This person was dressed in a manner which was "a little equivocal,"
wore a broad hat and a thick moustache, which, joined with the sternness
of his pale cheek and the piercingness of his eye, must indeed have
suggested something extremely eerie to a well-shaven, three-corner hat,
respectable man of the eighteenth century; so that we are not at all
surprised to hear that the doctor's imagination was crossed by "a sudden
idea of the celebrated Torrifino," who, although his name sounds like a
sweetmeat, was probably one of the many mysterious Italians, brothers of
the Count of Udolpho and Spalatro and Zeluco, who haunted the readers of
the romances of the latter eighteenth century. This personage enquired
whether he was addressing "il Dottor Betoni Scozzere."
The physician having answered this question, asked, for no conceivable
reason, in bad Italian of a Scotchman by a Scotchman (for we learn that
the unknown was a Chevalier Graham), the mysterious moustached man
requested him to attend at once upon "one who stood in immediate need."
Dr. Beaton's enquiries as to the nature of the assistance and the person
who required it, having been answered with the solemn remark that "the
relief of the malady, and not the circumstances of the patient, is the
province of a physician," and the proposal being made that he should go
to the sick person blindfolded and in a shuttered carriage, the doctor's
prudence and the thought of the famous Torrifino dictated a flat refusal;
but the mysterious stranger would not let him off. "Signor," he exclaimed
(persistently talking bad Italian), "I respect your doubts; by one word
I could dispel them; but it is a secret which would be embarrassing to
the possessor. It concerns the interest and safety of one--the most
illustrious and unfortunate of the Scottish Jacobites." "What! Whom?"
exclaimed Dr. Beaton. "I can say no more," replied the stranger; "but if
you would venture any service for one who was once the dearest to your
country and your cause, follow me." "Let us go," cried Dr. Beaton, the
enthusiasm for Prince Charlie entirely getting the better of the thought
of the famous Torrifino; and so, blindfolded, he was conveyed, partly by
land and partly by water (what water, in those Apennine valleys where
there are no streams save torrents in which even a punt would be
impossible, it is difficult to understand), to a house standing in a
garden. That it did stand in a garden appears to have been a piece of
information volunteered by the mysterious Chevalier Graham, for Dr.
Beaton expressly states that it was not till the two had passed through
a "long range of apartments" that the bandage was removed from his eyes.
The doctor found himself in a "splendid saloon, hung with crimson
velvet, and blazing with mirrors which reached from the ceiling to the
floor. At the farther end a pair of folding doors stood open, and showed
the dim perspective of a long conservatory." The mysterious Chevalier
Graham rang a silver bell, which summoned a little page dressed in
scarlet, with whom he exchanged a few rapid words in German. The
communication appeared to agitate the Chevalier; and after dismissing
the page, he turned to the doctor. "Signor Dottore," he said, "the most
important part of your occasion is past. The lady whom you have been
unhappily called to attend, met with an alarming accident in her
carriage, not half an hour before I found you in the church, and the
unlucky absence of her physician leaves her entirely under your charge.
Her accouchement is over, apparently without any result more than
exhaustion; but of that you will be the judge."
It was only at the mention of the carriage and the accident that Dr.
Beaton, whose wits appear to have been wool-gathering, suddenly guessed
at a possible connection between these "most illustrious and unfortunate
of Scottish Jacobites," to whose house he had been thus mysteriously
introduced, and the lady and gentleman in whom he had that same afternoon
recognised Charles Edward and his wife. The page reappeared, and
conducted Dr. Beaton through another suite of splendid apartments, till
they came to an ante-room decorated with the portraits of no less
remarkable persons than the rebel Duke of Perth and King James VIII., a
fact which shows that the Stuarts must have carried their furniture with
them, from Rome to a Lucchese villa hired for a few months, with more
recklessness than one might have imagined likely in those days of
post-chaises. Out of this ante-room the physician was ushered into a
large and magnificent bed-room, lit with a single taper. From the side
of a crimson-draped bed stepped a lady, who saluted Dr. Beaton in
English, and led him up to the patient, while a female attendant nursed
an infant enveloped in a mantle. The lady drew aside the curtain, and by
the faint light the doctor was able to distinguish a pale, delicate
face, and a slender white arm and hand lying upon the blue velvet
counterpane. The lady in waiting said some words in German, in answer
to which the sick woman feebly attempted to stretch out her hand to
the physician. Having ascertained that the patient was in a dangerous
condition, Dr. Beaton asked for pen and paper to write out a prescription,
which, in that Apennine wilderness, would doubtless be made up with the
greatest exactness and rapidity. By the side of the writing-desk was a
dressing-table; and on what should the doctor's casual glance not rest
but a miniature, thrown carelessly among the scent bottles and jewels,
and in which he instantly recognised a portrait of Charles Edward such
as he had seen him riding on the field of Culloden! But in a moment,
when he glanced again from his writing to the toilet-table, the
miniature was no longer visible.
The lady having apparently recovered, Dr. Beaton was dismissed,
blindfolded as he had come, but only after having taken an oath upon the
crucifix "never to speak of what he had heard, or seen, or thought,
that night, except it should be in the service of King Charles," and
also to quit Tuscany immediately. He repaired, therefore, to the nearest
seaport, but was detained there three days before the departure of his
ship. One moonlight evening, as he was walking on the sands, he was
surprised by seeing an English man-of-war at anchor. In answer to his
enquiries, she proved to be the _Albina_, Commodore O'Haloran. While he
was lying in a sequestered corner, watching the frigate, he was startled
by the sudden appearance of a small closed carriage and of a horseman,
in whom, by the moonlight, he immediately recognised the moustached
stranger of St. Rosalie. The cavalcade stopped at the water's brink,
and the horseman blew a shrill whistle. Immediately a man-of-war's boat
shot from behind some rocks and pulled straight towards them. A man with
glimmering epaulettes sprang from the boat on to the beach, and helped
into it a lady, who had alighted from the carriage, and carried something
wrapped in a shawl. Dr. Beaton heard the cry of an infant, the soothing
voice of the lady; and, a moment later, after a word and shake of the
hand with the moustached man, the boat pulled off from shore. "For
more than a quarter of an hour the tall black figure of the cavalier
continued fixed upon the same spot, and in the same attitude; but
suddenly the broad gigantic shadow of the frigate swung round in the
moonshine, her sails filled to the breeze, and dimly brightening in the
light, she bore off slow and still and stately towards the west."
Such is the adventure of Dr. Beaton, and thus he is said to have related
it, in the year 1831, eighty-five years after the battle of Culloden,
where he had himself seen Charles Edward; whence it is presumable that
the doctor was considerably over a hundred when he made the disclosure.
This story of Doctor Beaton was published, not in a historical work, but
in a volume entitled _Tales of the Century; or Sketches of the Romance
of History between the years 1746 and 1846_, published at Edinburgh in
1847. But although this book might pass as a work of imagination, and
could, therefore, scarcely be impugned as a historical document, there
is every reason for supposing that, while not officially claiming to
reveal the existence of an heir of the Stuarts, it was deliberately
intended to convey information to that effect; and as such, an anonymous
writer (either Lockhart or Dennistoun) made short work of it in the
_Quarterly Review_ for June 1847, from which I have derived the greater
part of my knowledge of this curious "romance of history."
Nay, the _Tales of the Century_ were undoubtedly intended to insinuate a
further remarkable fact: not merely that there still existed heirs of
Stuarts in the direct male line, but that these heirs of the Stuarts were
no others but the joint authors of the book. The two brothers styling
themselves on the title-page John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward
Stuart, but whose legal names were respectively John Hay Allan and
Charles Stuart Allan, had been known for some years in the Highlands as
persons enveloped in a degree of romantic mystery, and claiming to be
something much more illustrious than what they were officially supposed
to be, the grandsons of an admiral in the service of George III.
According to the information collected by Baron von Reumont, the joint
authors of the _Tales of the Century_ had made themselves conspicuous by
their affectation of the Stuart tartan, to which, as Hay Allans, they
could have no right; by a certain Stuart make-up (by the help of a
Charles I. wig which was once found and mistaken for a bird's-nest by an
irreverent Highlander) on the part of the elder, and by a habit of
bowing to his brother whenever the King's health was drunk on the part
of the younger. Moreover the family circumstances of these gentlemen's
father coincided exactly with those of the hero of this book, of the
supposed son of Charles Edward Stuart and Louise of Stolberg. Their
father, Thomas Hay Allan, once a lieutenant in the navy, was known
before the law as the younger son of a certain Admiral Carter Allan, who
laid claims to the earldom of Errol; and the Jolair Dhearg (for such was
the Keltic appellation of the hero of the _Tales of the Century_) was
the reputed son of a certain Admiral O'Haloran, who laid claim to the
Earldom of Strathgowrie, to which curious parallel the writer in the
_Quarterly_ adds the additional point that Errol, being in the district
of Gowrie, the Earldom of Strathgowrie claimed by the imaginary Admiral
O'Haloran was evidently another name for the Earldom of Errol claimed by
the real Admiral Carter Allan, two names, by the way, O'Haloran and
Carter Allan, of which the first seems intended to reproduce in some
measure the sound of the other. The father of Messrs. John Hay and
Charles Stuart Allan, was married in 1792, and the hero of the _Tales of
the Century_ was married somewhere about 1791, both to ladies more
suited to the sons of an admiral than to the sons of the Pretender.
Taking all these circumstances into consideration it becomes obvious
that when the two brothers Hay Allan assumed respectively the names
of John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart, they distinctly, though
unofficially, identified themselves with the sons of the Jolair Dhearg
of their book, with the sons of that mysterious infant at whose birth
Dr. Beaton had been present, who had been conveyed by night on board the
_Albina_ and educated as the son of Admiral O'Haloran; in other words,
with the sons of the child, unknown to history, of the Count and
Countess of Albany.
Now, not only are we assured by Sir Horace Mann, whose spies surrounded
the Pretender and his wife, and included even their physicians, that
there never was the smallest or briefest expectation of an heir to the
Stuarts; but, added to this positive evidence, we have an enormous bulk
of even more convincing negative evidence by which it is completely
corroborated. This negative evidence consists of a heap of improbabilities
and impossibilities, of which even a few will serve to convince the
reader. The Pretender married, and was pensioned for marrying, merely
that the French Court might have another possible Pretender to use as a
weapon against England; is it likely, therefore, that such an heir would
be hid away so as to lose his identity, and be completely and utterly
forgotten? The Pretender, separated from his wife in consequence of
circumstances which will be related further on, called to him, as sole
companion of his old age, his illegitimate daughter by Miss Walkenshaw,
after neglecting and apparently forgetting both her and her mother for
twenty years; is it likely he would have done this had he possessed a
legitimate son? Cardinal York assumed the title of Henry IX. immediately
on the decease of his brother; is it likely that he, always indifferent
to royal honours, always faithful to his brother, and now almost dying,
would have done so had he known that his brother had left a son? The
Countess of Albany, who never relinquished her Stuart position, and who
was extremely devoted to children, left her fortune to the painter
Fabre; is it likely she would have done so had she been aware that she
possessed a child of her own? But there is yet further evidence--I
scarcely know whether I should say positive or negative, but in point of
fact perhaps both at once, since it is evidence that the word of one, at
least, of the joint authors of the _Tales of the Century_ cannot
outweigh the silence of all other authorities. Five years before the
brothers Allan, or Stuart, whichever they should be called, mysteriously
informed the world of the adventures of the Jolair Dhearg, the elder of
the two, once John Hay Allan, now John Sobieski Stuart, had brought out
a magnificent volume, price five guineas, entitled _Vestiarium
Scoticum_, and purporting to be a treatise on family tartans written
somewhere in the 16th century, and now edited for the first time. The
history of this work, as stated in the preface, was well-nigh as
complicated and as romantic as the history of the Jolair Dhearg. The
only reliable copy of three known by Mr. Sobieski Stuart, of which one
was said to exist in the library of the Monastery of St. Augustine at
Cadiz, and another had been obtained from an Edinburgh sword-player and
porter named John Ross, was in the possession of the learned editors,
and had been given by the fathers of the Scots College at Douay to
Prince Edward Stuart, from whom it had, in some unspecified but
doubtless extremely romantic manner (probably sewn in the swaddling
clothes in which the Jolair Dhearg was consigned to Admiral O'Haloran)
descended to Mr. John Sobieski Stuart. This venerable heraldic document
appears, if one may judge by the review in the _Quarterly_, to have
been well-deserving of publication, owing to the extremely new and
unexpected information which it contained upon Scottish archæology.
Among such information may be mentioned that it derived several clans
from other clans with which they were well known to have no possible
connection; that it extended the use of tartans to border-families who
had never heard of such a thing; that it contained many words and
expressions hitherto entirely unknown in the particular dialect in which
it was written; and, moreover, that it multiplied complicated and
recondite patterns of tartans in a manner so remarkable that Sir Walter
Scott, to whom part of Mr. Sobieski Stuart's transcript of the ancient
MS. was submitted, was led to suspect "that information as to its origin
might be obtained even in a less romantic site than the cabin of a
Cowgate porter (or the Scots College at Douay), even behind the counter
of one of the great clan-tartan warehouses which used to illuminate the
principal thoroughfare of Edinburgh."
This important and well-nigh unique document was apparently never
submitted in its original MS. to anyone; the copy from the Scots College
at Douay, and the copy from the old sword-player of Cowgate, remained
equally unknown to everyone save their fortunate possessor. But
transcripts of some portions of the work were submitted, at the request
of the Antiquarian Society, to Sir Walter Scott, and as he dismissed the
deputation which had met to hear his opinion upon the _Vestiarium
Scoticum_, the author of _Waverley_ was pleased to remark by way of
summing up: "Well, I think the _March_ of the next rising" (alluding to
the part of the Highlanders in the '45) "must be not 'Hey tuttie tattie,'
but 'The Devil among the Tailors.'"
However, perhaps the _Vestiarium Scoticum_ may have come out of the
Scots College at Douay, and perhaps also the son of Charles Edward
Stuart and of Louise of Stolberg may have been born in the room hung
with red brocade, and have been handed over to a British Admiral one
moonlight night, in the presence of the venerable Dr. Beaton, whom
Providence permitted to attain the unusual age of a hundred years or
more, in order that, with unimpaired faculties and unclouded memory, he
might transmit to posterity this strange romance of history.