THE TANGLED WEB UNWOVEN.
In these our days of haste and hurry, steam and telegraph, when all
men acknowledge that life seems far too short for what we seek to
cram into it, it must not seem incorrect or "a violation of the
unities," if we suddenly turn from Persia, and take another glance
homeward at the most beautiful, yet, perhaps, most provincial, of all
European capitals.
In Edinburgh the night was cold and gusty--the last of April--with
occasional blasts of rain and hail. Mr. Gainswood was seated alone
in his library; Dove was in the drawing-room, for father and daughter
were now more apart than they were wont to be. With something of
pleasure he heard her touching the piano. Poor Dove! Tortured and
despairing, she had been more than once on the point of yielding to
her father's matrimonial wishes, and she seldom thought of her music
now. Seldom, indeed, she opened the piano, and even then she was
running her pretty fingers over the keys in a wandering and
purposeless way; at one time it was a waltz, at another a national
melody that Gillian loved; then the lawyer would grind his teeth, as
it always ended in "Wild Joanna."
"Poor girl!" he muttered; "she always looks so pale--curse that
designing cousin! Her eyes have an expression so mournful and sad
that often I feel inclined to take her in my arms and kiss her--but
'tisn't my way. She casts the mercies from her! How like a
serpent's tooth it is----"
Then he paused, in doubt whether he was quoting Scripture or some
profane writer, to do which beseemed not a man of his religious
character.
Sunk back in softly stuffed easy chair, Mr. Gainswood abandoned
himself to the luxury of thinking over the riches he had amassed from
a very small and very sordid beginning. The lofty room was
brilliantly lighted, and its interior contrasted pleasantly with the
cold and stormy night without, where the tall trees with the old
rookery were swaying in the occasional blasts. Sweeping curtains of
rich maroon damask shrouded the windows, and from cornices of
walnut-wood, gilded, bearing the Gainswood crest (some cognizance to
heraldry unknown) fell on the rich carpet woven in the looms of
Aubusson, in the department of Creuse--a carpet wherein the florid
crimson roses, mellowed into the pink and yellow of other flowers.
It was a stately room, and everything around him betokened ease
combined with splendour.
In the low, deep chair he sat before the fire, his slippered feet
stretched out upon the fender of polished steel; and, while listening
with dreamy pleasure to the wailing of the wind and the gusts of the
storm that he was not exposed to, he thought over all he had amassed
(without caring how); of an address he was to make at a religious
meeting on the morrow; of cases pending before the Inner and Outer
Houses; and then, as the notes of the piano came idly from the
distant drawing-room, of Dove's rare beauty---a useless commodity as
yet, unless she yielded to him and Campsie; and anon, by the chain of
thought, a vision of a face came before him with painful
distinctness--the face of the wanderer, him whom he had expelled and
robbed of his inheritance--the face of Gillian as he had seen it last.
The war was over in Persia; a peace had been concluded so early as
the 4th of March, unknown to Sir James Outram; and the 78th
Highlanders, under Havelock, had gone to India, where new and
terrible complications were arising. Mr. Gainswood knew all this
from the public papers. Many rank and file had fallen in battle he
knew; he had gloated over their numbers hopefully. Had Gillian
escaped; and, if so, would he escape the greater perils that were to
come?
A sour smile gathered in his ferret-eyes, and the bull-dog jaw
assumed a set expression of defiance. It passed away, and the former
smile of indolent ease and of bland hypocrisy spread over his coarse
face, as he thought, and thought, and thought again, of how he "had
flourished even as the green bay-tree," till a loud ring of the front
door bell echoed through the stone staircase and corridors, after a
wheeled vehicle had stopped at the pillared portico without.
Mr. Gainswood glanced inquiringly at his library clock. Who could
his visitor be at such an unusual hour?
"A gentleman wishes to see you, sir," said the servant, ushering in a
person whom Mr. Gainswood saw to be a stranger, who had come thus
suddenly without the prelude of sending up his card. He was a tall,
thin man, of haughty and aristocratic bearing and undoubtedly
military aspect, bronzed and furrowed in face, with a densely thick
moustache that mingled with his flowing and silvery beard. Many
years had elapsed since Mr. Gainswood had seen Colonel Lamond, for he
it was; he was closely shaven in those days, with hair of a ruddy
brown, so he utterly failed to recognize him or even his voice now.
The Colonel threw open his Highland cloak, deposited his hat and
leather gloves with something of emphasis on the table, grasped
nervously a silver-mounted and heavy malacca cane, and, when asked to
"be seated," took a chair, with a keen and scrutinising expression in
his eyes that thoroughly roused Mr. Gainswood, who said:
"May I ask whom I have the honour to receive?"
"An extra aide-de-camp of General Sir James Outram," replied the
other, wishing to preserve his incognito for some time.
"Your name?"
"That you will have in good time. We have met before."
"Perhaps; but I have no recollection----"
"All the better."
"Your business, sir?"
"Is with you."
"Well?" said Mr. Gainswood sharply, as he decidedly thought his
client was a strange one, and felt restless under his keen, bright,
steady, and contemptuous glance.
"I have a message to you from Colonel Lachlan Lamond."
"My _late_ brother-in-law!" exclaimed Mr. Gainswood, now thoroughly
roused.
The Colonel smiled and twisted his heavy grey moustaches, as he saw
that Gainswood's face became livid, and that already drops of clammy
perspiration glittered about his temples; but he said:
"Poor old Lachlan! he was killed at Mora by the Bhoteas. Alas! in
the midst of life we are in death!"
"He left a son in your care, Mr. Gainswood."
"A profligate, who left me and went forth into the world--I know not
where. Were you in the campaign against the Hill Tribe?"
"I was."
"Then what was, or is, your message to me?"
"It concerns the will which Colonel Lamond entrusted to your
care--the will by which he bequeathed all he possessed to his son,
whom failing, to your daughter."
"I never heard of any such document, and, if it existed, it will, no
doubt, be recorded somewhere."
"It was not, so far as I know."
"Then there is no proof of its existence at all."
"Very probably," replied the Colonel, scornfully; "so we shall pass
that, and come to the fortune left by the Colonel, out of which you
brought up his son, as a species of half-drudge in your office, in
total ignorance that such a thing existed."
"A fortune!"
"Thirty thousand pounds and more, transmitted to you from India as a
portion of the money to re-purchase Avon-na-gillian."
"You have been dining or are dreaming, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Gainswood,
growing pale, but attempting to bully nevertheless, as he started to
his feet and approached a bell-handle.
"Sit down, sir, and listen to me, or, by Heaven, I shall stretch you
beside that fender!" cried the Colonel, grasping his heavy cane and
looking as if he meant to use it.
Mr. Gainswood re-seated himself and affected to listen, with the
half-amused and incredulous smile of one who has a lunatic to humour,
and lay back in his elbow-chair with the tips of his fingers placed
together; but, with all this assumed exterior, there flashed upon his
memory the old saying about giving even the tip of one's little
finger to Satan.
"Do you mean to deny the existence of this money, as well as that of
the will, or that you ever received it?" asked the Colonel, quietly.
"I do."
"Foul liar!"
"Calm yourself, my good sir--calm yourself. Your words, if heard,
are actionable; but there is a power above that rules us all and
guides us all," replied the lawyer, looking with an air of
resignation upward to the crystal gaselier that glittered overhead;
"you are labouring under some incomprehensible delusion. If the
money, those many thousands, were ever transmitted to me, or anyone
else, by my dear dead brother-in-law some vouchers of the fact must
be somewhere."
"They are so."
"Indeed; where?"
"In the hands of my banker," replied the other, with a calm smile.
For nearly a minute the two men regarded each other in silence. The
trembling lips and pallid cheeks of Gainswood had been the result of
his naturally bullying temper, but now they came of craven, abject
fear, for terror and alarm were curdling in his coward heart. The
malice of the devil was in it, and in his ferret eyes, yet his plight
and aspect were pitiable--most pitiable--and the Colonel, even with
all his scorn, felt it to be so.
"There are shades of guilt, Mr. Gainswood," said he.
"Shades, sir," stammered the lawyer.
"Yes, sir; shades."
"The All-seeing Eye can pierce all shades----."
"The less we have of this from such a worm as you the better, sir,"
interrupted his visitor, rising; "there are people of your infamous
stamp who think it less guilty to suppress evidence than to destroy
it; but that you have done, suppressed or destroyed the will left
with you, and other documents that concern the transmitted money; but
the proof of that transmission my vouchers can affirm."
"And you, sir," exclaimed the lawyer, fairly brought to bay at last,
"who are you?"
"Colonel Lachlan Lamond, of whose existence the Procurator-Fiscal
shall convince you to-morrow morning," replied the other sternly, as
he carefully drew on his gloves, and eyed with withering scorn the
lawyer, who, like a hunted creature, uttered a moan, not of sorrow,
but of mingled rage, hate, and baffled desire for defiance, as he
covered his face with his trembling hands, and thought perhaps,--
"O what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!"
Here was a turning of the tables with a vengeance. His shame and
disgrace, his committal and trial as a felon were in the hands of
Colonel Lamond, and judging by himself and his own nature, he felt
certain that the injured father would be merciless. He could have no
comfort in his religion, for religion had he none. Though ever on
his lips, he had about as much of it in his heart as a Zulu Kaffir,
or those Bhoteas, who, so unfortunately for him, had not made mince
meat of his brother-in-law.
The Colonel had ended buttoning his gloves and highland cloak, and
was about to assume his hat, when Mr. Gainswood, whose hands shook
like aspen, leaves, stretched them forth deprecatingly, and said:
"Lachlan, for the sake of our dead wives, for the sake of Dove, do
not, do not expose me!"
Something of sadness now mingled with the sour scorn that filled the
eyes of the old soldier, who, after a pause, said:
"Faithless and false-trickster as you have been, thief as you would
be, heartless and cruel though you proved to my poor boy, Gillian,
for the memory of those you name, and for the sake of the cousins who
have loved each other so well and tenderly, I shall forgive you; but
never, while the breath of Heaven is in your nostrils, ask Lachlan
Lamond to degrade himself by taking your hand in his!"
"And where is Gillian now?" asked Gideon Gainswood, after a pause.
"Within summons if you wish to see him."
And sooth to say, during all this exciting interview, Gillian, whom
we had last seen lying, to all appearances done nigh unto death, on
the deck of H.M.S. _Comet_, had been in the adjoining drawing-room,
with Dove's head pillowed upon his breast, and his arms around her.
Gillian, she thought, looked certainly haggard, pale, and hairy, and
there was an unwonted glitter in his eye that was born of the
sufferings he had undergone, but it was blended with the brightness
and triumph of his present joy.
Gillian alive, safe, and back home again! It required days to pass
ere Dove--in blissful ignorance of the dark and intricate springs on
which her fate had turned--would settle down into a calm and
delicious state of happiness subsequent to the return of the loved
one, so bitterly mourned as lost for ever, that their engagement was
permitted, and all barriers, monetary and otherwise, were dissipated
and removed.
How differently passed the days now since she knew that he was safe
and her own as before. Ah, how wearily they were wont to lag and
drag in the dreadful past time, when at dawn and noon she only longed
for night, though, when all were abed and asleep, she lay awake, with
her heart aching, and her poor little head full of all manner of
terrible imaginings, and knew that if she slept, she would, with
daylight only come back to a dull sense of all-pervading sorrow.
As for my Lord Campsie, who had been to her a species of
Frankenstein, she was relieved of his presence for ever, and with
more ease than he was ever likely to be of his monetary
embarrassments.
He has since espoused the fair one with the golden locks, thus
combining the establishment at St. John's Wood with his own. He has,
moreover, become a representative peer by the death of the old
viscount, and being chronically "hard up," will have no objection to
pocket the salary and figure yearly as H.M. Commissioner to the Kirk,
if it will have him, "though it is a doocid bore, don't you know, and
so demmed vulgaw." But then "the viscountess would have the upper
ten dozen of Edinburgh and their women folk" at her receptions in the
long gallery of the kings of Scotland, and there might be a little
satisfaction in that.
A FORGOTTEN PRINCE OF WALES.
In the following pages I propose to give the brief history of a
Prince of Wales who, had he lived long enough, might, by the
brilliance of his talents and the tenor of his character, have
changed the whole fate and annals of the British Isles after his own
time, in so far, that Cromwell and the great civil war, the Scottish
Covenant, the battles of Montrose and Claverhouse, the advents of
William and Mary, of Anne, and even the accession of the House of
Hanover, _would never have been heard of_.
At three in the morning of Tuesday, the 19th February, 1593, there
was born in the Castle of Stirling, Henry, afterwards Prince of
Wales, eldest son of James VI. of Scotland and I. of Great Britain,
by his queen, Anne, daughter of Frederick II., and sister of the
gallant sailor-king, Christian IV. of Denmark, in the fourth year of
their marriage. A discharge of twelve great guns announced the event
to the town; the king sent for the ministry, desiring that everywhere
the people should be called together, to have public thanksgiving;
and bale-fires were, as Calderwood records, set ablaze on all the
great mountains; and Moyse adds in his memoirs, that so great was the
joy of the nation, "that people in all parts appeared to be daft for
mirth."
The baptism was deferred for six months, says Dr. Birch, the king
having "thought proper to invite several foreign princes and states
to send their ambassadors to be present at that solemnity"; but
scarcely had that young prince--the future heir of all the British
Isles--seen the light ere faction, the old curse of the Scottish
nation, began to contemplate employing the unconscious infant for the
promotion of its base designs. By the conspirators it was proposed
to retain him in their hands as the means of strengthening their own
party. To the honour of Lord Zouch, however, to whom the offer was
made, he peremptorily declined all concurrence; so the despicable
expedient, which had been so successful in past times of Scottish
history, was abandoned. In the meantime Zouch, though strictly
watched, busied himself, in conformity with his infamous secret
instructions from Queen Elizabeth, to intrigue with all the Scottish
nobility who were opposed to James's temporising policy, and embroil
him with his people.
On the 27th of August the little prince was baptised in the Castle of
Stirling, amid unusual magnificence. He was borne from his own room
to the queen's chamber of presence, laid on a stately bed, in care of
the Countess of Mar and other ladies of rank, who delivered him to
Ludovic Stewart, Duke of Lennox, Admiral and Lord High Chamberlain of
Scotland, who presented him to the foreign ambassadors. Among these
was the representative of Elizabeth, the young Earl of Sussex, who
was connected with her by ties of blood, and who came attended with a
magnificent retinue, bearer of a letter from his royal mistress,
congratulating the king on the auspicious event, and abounding in
expressions of friendly feeling, in her own quaint manner; though at
that very time she was intriguing for the destruction and death of
Maitland, the Lords Home, Huntly, and others who were his most loyal
nobles. There too were the ambassadors of the Duke of Brunswick, the
States of Holland, the Duke of Mecklenburg, and other princes.
"Behind the Earl of Sussex," says Dr. Birch, "stood the Lord Wharton
and Sir Henry Bromley, Knight, no other Englishman being admitted
into the chapel royal."
Thither the child was borne by Sussex, preceded by Lord Home bearing
the ducal crown, Lord Livingstone the napkin, Lord Seaton the basin,
and Lord Semple the laver. Above their heads was a great canopy,
borne by the Lairds of Buccleuch, Cessford, Dudhope, and Traquair,
while the prince's train was held up by the Lords Sinclair and
Urquhart. Around was a guard of chosen young men of Edinburgh,
richly dressed and armed; and the trumpets sounded as the king seated
himself in a chair "adorned with the arms of France."
After a sermon "in the Scots tongue," by one of the king's chaplains,
David Cunninghame, Bishop of Aberdeen, preached in Latin on the
creed. The child was then baptised and knighted; the trumpets
sounded, again the cannon thundered over the Valley of the Forth,
while the Lyon King and his heralds from the gates and battlements
proclaimed the now-forgotten prince, by the name of "Frederick Henry,
Henry Frederick, by the grace of God Knight and Baron of Renfrew,
Lord of the Isles, Earl of Carrick, Duke of Rothesay, Prince and
Great Steward of Scotland" (Calderwood). Gifts were then presented
to the infant. Among these were a cupboard of plate worth £3,000
from Elizabeth; two massive gold chains from the King of Denmark; a
table enriched with diamonds from the Duke of Mecklenburg; two gold
cups from the States of Holland, worth 12,400 crowns, each weighing
400 ounces, and in one were 5,000 florins, the first of the prince's
annual donations from the conservator of Scottish privileges at
Campvere in Zealand.
History tells us that the pageants which succeeded this ceremony were
of the most costly and gorgeous description, "and much ingenuity was
expended by Mr. Fowler, Master of the Revels, as well as by the king
himself, in planning masks, shows, and triumphs, together with
curious and mysterious devices suited to the tastes of that age."
Soon after, the prince was committed to the care of John, Earl of
Mar, Governor of the Castle of Stirling and Chamberlain of Monteith,
&c.; and he was assisted in his charge by his mother, Annabella,
Countess Dowager of Mar, a daughter of the Lord Tullybardine.
For these two guardians the little prince, as boyhood crept on,
showed such affection that the queen became jealous of them, and
endeavoured to remove him into her own custody; but James wrote to
the earl, desiring him upon no account to give up the prince to his
mother; yet the charge of the old countess ended when, in his sixth
year, Adam Newton, a gentleman "learned in languages," was made his
tutor. Many attendants of rank were appointed; but chief of all
these was still the Earl of Mar. It was at this time, in 1599, that
the pedantic James composed for his use in Greek "His Majesty's
Instructions to his dearest son, Henry the Prince." In the preface
thereto were some passages that puzzled many; for by his bitterness
against the Puritans he gave grounds for doubting his Protestantism,
and in others he seemed to cherish some vindictiveness against
England, though the heir to its throne.
In 1600, when in his seventh year, the prince wrote in his own hand a
letter to the States-General, expressing gratitude to and regard for
them. This letter, which most probably was dictated by the "Scottish
Solomon," was taken to Holland by Sir David Murray. In the year
following the prince began to take great pleasure in all manly
exercises--in learning to ride, sing, dance, leap, to shoot with the
bow and to toss the pike; and in most of these things he became a
great proficient, under the care of Sir Richard Preston (of
Craigmillar), Constable of Dingwall, and afterwards Earl of Desmond
in Ireland. Of his progress in learning we have a proof in the
recorded fact that he wrote a letter on his ninth birthday to his
father, in which he mentions that "he had begun two years before to
write to his Majesty, in order to make him a judge of the proficiency
he had made in his studies; and that since his (James's) departure he
had read over Terence's _Hecyra_, the third book of Phædrus's
_Fables_, and two books of Cicero's _Select Epistles_."
On the death of Elizabeth, at Richmond, in 1603, James succeeded
peacefully to the English throne, and soon after took with him to
London his heir, still in the custody of the Earl of Mar; but the
latter had, for a time, to return to Scotland, where Queen Anne was
demanding from his custody her daughter, the Princess Elizabeth
(afterwards Queen of Bohemia), and her son, Prince Charles
(afterwards Charles I.); but the earl urged again the express
commands of the king on the subject, and it is said that the queen
never forgave him. Mar resumed his care of the prince, who, together
with the earl, when the feast of St. George was celebrated at
Windsor, on the 2nd of July, 1603, received the Order of the Garter;
and young Henry, now for the first time saluted as Prince of Wales,
"was highly commended by the Earl of Nottingham, in the hearing of
Edward Howes, our English chronicler of that age, for his quick witty
answers, princely carriage, and reverend obeisance to the altar" (Dr.
Birch).
Branishill, in Hampshire, was built as a residence for him. He was
the _first_ Prince of Wales who ever wore the _triple_ plume, and all
the traditions which assign it to the Black Prince and John of
Bohemia are totally unsupported by history. The latter at Cressy
wore an eagle's pinion in his helmet, and the seal of the former in
1370 shows him wearing a _single_ feather.
On New-year's-day, 1604, when in his eleventh year, he sent to his
father a short poem in Latin hexameters, as his first offering of
that kind. In the same year the prince, having already evinced a
great love for naval affairs, had a vessel specially built for his
amusement and instruction at Limehouse; and on the 14th of March it
was brought to anchor off the king's lodging in the Tower, where the
prince came and showed the lord high admiral and other nobles, with
much boyish delight, how he could handle this craft, which was gaily
furnished with ensigns and pendants. Anon we are told that it was
brought to anchor off Whitehall Stairs, when the prince again went on
board with the admiral, the Earl of Worcester, and other persons of
rank. The anchor was then weighed, and under her foresail and
topsail she dropped down the river to Paul's Wharf, where, with a
great bowl of wine, the prince baptised her by the name of the
Disdain.
The prince evinced a great love of arms, and was never weary of
handling the pike; and in Drayton's _Polyolbion_ we have a portrait
of him when about his seventeenth year thus engaged, and the drawing
depicts him as handsome in figure, regularly featured, with his hair
starting in spouts from an open forehead. He is dressed in rich
half-armour, with gauntlets, trunk hose, and the Garter on his left
leg. Already men of learning had begun to court him as their patron,
and he maintained a correspondence with such as were most eminent for
their talent; and he gave such promise of future greatness that
foreign princes solicited his friendship, and in a letter which the
French ambassador sent home he remarked to the king his master, "that
it would be a serious omission in policy to neglect a prince who
promised such great things. None of his pleasures savour the least
of childish pursuits. He is a particular lover of horses and what
belongs to them; but he is not fond of hunting, and when he goes to
it, it is rather for the pleasure of galloping than for that which
the dogs afford him. He plays willingly enough at tennis, and at
another Scots diversion very like mall [golf?], but always with
persons older than himself, as if he despised those of his own age.
He studies two hours a day, and employs the rest of his time in
tossing the pike, or leaping, throwing the bar, shooting with the
bow, vaulting, or some other exercise of that kind, for he is never
idle. He shows himself likewise very amicable to his dependents, and
supports their interests against all persons whatsoever, and pushes
what he undertakes for them with such zeal as procures success; and
by exerting his whole strength to compass what he desires, is already
feared by those who have the management of affairs."
The Duke de Sully tells us in his memoirs that the young prince
naturally hated Spain and favoured France, though there seems to have
been some strange proposal on foot for having him educated finally in
the former country. He also tells us that it was a favourite project
of Henri IV to marry his eldest daughter to the prince, to whom he
sent "a golden lance and helmet, enriched with diamonds, together
with a fencing-master and vaulter" (_Memoirs_, vol. iii.). With all
these gifts of mind and person we are told that he was less a
favourite with the queen than her second son, Charles, Duke of York
and Albany. The company of Merchant Taylors having requested the
king to become a member of their guild, he replied that he "was
already free of another company," referring to the similar
corporation in Edinburgh; but added that his son the prince would
avail himself of the honour, and that he would be present at the
ceremony. So the king came, and "with his highness was entertained
with vocal and instrumental musick--the musick of twelve lutes
equally divided, and placed by six and six in a window of the hall;
and in the area between them was a gallant ship triumphant, in which
were three men dressed like sailors, eminent for their voice and
skill, who were accompanied by the lutists."
In vol. i. Coke relates an anecdote which he heard from his father,
who about the time was of the prince's age. Being out hunting, a
butcher's dog chanced to kill the stag, and thus spoil the sport. As
Henry did not resent this, the courtiers, to incense him against the
butcher, said, that "if the king his father had been served thus, he
would have sworn so that no man could have endured it." "Away,"
replied the gentle prince; "all the pleasure in the world is not
worth one oath!"
In 1612 the cowardly and contemptible Elector Palatine came to London
to marry the Princess Elizabeth, whom the scarcely less pitiful James
had named after the woman who destroyed his unhappy mother. He was
received in London with profound respect, and the court was fully
occupied by brilliant entertainments, masques, and joyous diversions
in honour of the royal nuptials; but amid them a mortal illness
seized upon the promising young prince, who, not conceiving it
dangerous, continued to appear in public with the elector till he was
unable to leave his bed, on the 27th of October; and he died, between
seven and eight o'clock P.M., on the 6th of November. He expired at
St. James's Palace, and in the arms of the Earl of Mar.
Of what disease he died none now can say; but, as usual in those
days, ugly whispers were abroad.
"He was," says Rapin, combining the encomiums of Wilson, Coke, and
Osburn, "the most accomplished prince that ever was--I will not say
in all England, but in all Europe. He was sober, chaste, temperate,
religious, full of honour and probity. He was never heard to swear,
though the example of his father and of the whole court might have
been apt to corrupt him in that respect. He took great delight in
the conversation of men of honour, and those who were not reckoned as
such, were looked upon with a very ill eye at his court. He had
naturally a greatness of mind, with noble and generous thoughts, and
as much displeased with trifles as his father was fond of them. He
frequently said if ever he mounted the throne his first care should
be to try and reconcile the Puritans to the Church of England. As
this could not be done without concessions on each side, and as such
a condescension was directly contrary to the temper of the court and
clergy, he was suspected to countenance Puritanism. He was naturally
gentle and affable; but, however, in his carriage had a noble
stateliness, without affectation. He showed a warlike genius in his
passionate fondness for all martial exercises. In short, to say all
in a word, though he was only eighteen when he died, no historian has
ever taxed him with any vice."
Another annalist tells us that "neither the illusions of passion nor
of rank had ever seduced him into any irregular pleasures; business
and ambition alone engaged his heart and occupied his mind. Had he
lived to come to the throne he might probably have promoted the glory
more than the happiness of his people, his disposition being strongly
turned to war" (Russell).
Regarding this spirit, Coke tells us that on a French ambassador
coming one day to take leave of the prince he "found him tossing a
pike"; and on asking "what service he would commend him to the king
his master," "Tell him _what I am doing_," was the significant reply.
The weak king his father, on finding that Henry's court at St.
James's was more frequented than his own, is said to have exhibited
some jealousy on the subject, and was one day heard to ask "if his
son would bury him."
The disease of which he died puzzled his physicians so much that the
usual vulgar rumour, as I have said, went abroad that he had been
poisoned, and Burnet tells us that, without the slightest proof, many
actually accused Viscount Rochester of the crime; and thus a
post-mortem examination took place, in presence of many physicians
and surgeons, who declared on oath that they were unable to detect
the slightest symptoms of poison. Howes says that he died of a
malignant fever, which in that year "carried away a great many people
of all sorts and ages." Balfour calls it "a malignant purpuer fever."
It is somewhat remarkable that the king forbade all court mourning,
unless it can be explained that he was loth to cast a gloom over his
daughter's recent marriage; but the funeral, which took place in
Westminster Abbey on the 7th of December, was a stately one, and cost
£2000 of the money of that time (Howes).
Sir Robert Douglas states that, after the prince's death, the
faithful old Earl of Mar returned home, and, after being Lord High
Treasurer of Scotland, died at a green old age in 1634.
With regard to the well-known plume, perhaps he adopted three
feathers to signify the three kingdoms to which he was heir, or
because three feathers are the badge of a chief in Scotland; but,
whatever the cause, Henry Stuart, Prince of Wales, was the first who
gave that crest to the Principality.
The "Scots Magazine" for 1809, contains a copy of the doggrel
epitaph--perhaps penned by the pedantic king his father--which was
carved upon his tomb in Westminster Abbey.
Many of his letters are inserted in Disraeli's "Curiosities of
Literature;" and his magnificent suit of armour is still preserved in
the Tower of London.
THE STRANGE STORY OF THE
DUCHESS OF KINGSTON.
In the twenty-fifth year of the reign of George III. no _cause
célèbre_ made greater excitement than the trial of this person, whose
appearance at the bar of the House of Lords, on a charge of felony,
was long remembered in London.
Elizabeth Chudleigh was the daughter of a colonel in the army,
representative of an ancient Devonshire family, a member of which
fought valiantly at the defeat of the Armada. He died when Elizabeth
was very young, and the care of her education devolved upon her
mother, who had little more than her pension as an officer's widow,
to add to which she opened a fashionable boarding-house in London,
whither she would seem to have come, according to the statement of
the Attorney-General, in the year 1740, when her daughter was in the
bloom of her beauty, "distinguished for a brilliancy of repartee, and
for other qualities highly recommendatory, because extremely
pleasing." George II. was then residing at Leicester House, and his
son Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (who died in 1751), had, of
course, an establishment of his own elsewhere. To his princess,
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Miss Chudleigh was presented by the famous Mr.
Pulteney, who obtained for her, in her eighteenth year, the post of
one of her maids-of-honour.
Having secured for her this elevated position, Mr. Pulteney
endeavoured to cultivate her understanding, suggested to her a course
of reading, and they frequently corresponded on various subjects; but
we are told that "the extreme vivacity of her nature" precluded her
from acquiring much. Her personal attractions won her many admirers
at court, among others, John Duke of Hamilton, who afterwards married
Miss Gunning. Indeed they were formally engaged, and their marriage
was to take place after his grace, like all men of fashion in those
days, had made "the grand tour;" but during his absence distrust
ensued between them, and in the interim, at the house of an aunt,
whose name was Hanmer, at Laneston, in Hampshire, the Honourable John
Augustus Harvey, then a lieutenant in the navy, was introduced to
Miss Chudleigh, and fell deeply in love with her. To favour his
views, her aunt strangely and treacherously contrived to intercept
all the letters of the Duke of Hamilton. His supposed silence roused
the indignation of Elizabeth; her pride was easily worked upon, and
the attentions of a handsome and winning lover at such a crisis were
almost sure to meet with success. Piqued beyond endurance by what
she deemed the insulting silence of her betrothed, she agreed to
accept the hand of Mr. Harvey, and they were privately married by Mr.
Amus, the rector, on the 4th August, 1744, in a private chapel at
Laneston, adjoining the mansion of Mr. Merril; and the only surviving
witness of _four_, when the subsequent trial ensued, was an old
female servant of the family, named Anne Craddock.
The reason given for a _private marriage_ was, as stated by the
Attorney-General on that occasion, "that both their situations in
life rendered a public marriage very impracticable, as he on one side
depended on his friends for his future prospects, and she, on her
remaining a single woman, derived her chief rank and support; that
such being the situation of the parties, they agreed to marry
privately, without the knowledge or consent of their friends." They
soon after came to London, and lived privately in Conduit Street,
Hanover Square, but in a state of great unhappiness, owing to the
dissipated conduct of Harvey, for six months, till he joined his ship
in the East Indian Seas, under Sir John Danvers. Her position was
now a very painful and anomalous one--Miss Chudleigh and a
maid-of-honour in public, Mrs. Harvey and a wife in private! She was
still an attractive centre in the higher circles, and the Princess of
Wales was still her most particular friend; but she had many more;
and few women in London in those days made more conquests. The fame
of them reached Harvey, now a captain; and when he returned, at the
end of a year and a half, he insisted that she should live with him
again; though so great was her aversion of him, that she had resolved
never to subject herself to his cruelties again.
However, she would seem to have been prevailed upon, under terror of
his threats, to join him again at their house in Conduit Street. One
account says that she was lured thither, and had the doors locked
upon her, to secure her detention. The result of this union was a
boy. "Cæsar Hawkins became the professional confidant on this
occasion, and Miss Chudleigh (as the world knew her) removed to
Chelsea for change of air, but returned to Leicester House perfectly
recovered from her indisposition. The infant soon sank into the arms
of death, leaving only the tale of his existence to be related," and
his father joined his ship in the Mediterranean.
The year 1748 saw Miss Chudleigh the belle of Tunbridge Wells; and
she figures in an old engraving of the period, with the burly
Johnson, Cibber, simpering beau Nash, Mr. Pitt (Earl of Chatham), Mr.
Whiston, Richardson, and others about her--they in all the glory of
bag-wig and sword, high-heeled shoes, and point ruffles. In
Richardson's letter to Miss Westcomb he speaks of her as "the
triumphant toast," lively, sweetly tempered, and gay. "She moved not
without crowds after her; she smiled at every one; every one smiled
when they heard she was on the walk. She played, she lost, she won,
all with equal good-humour. But, alas! she went off before she was
wont to go off, and then the fellows' hearts were almost broken for a
new beauty."
It was about this time that, after a long residence abroad, the Duke
of Hamilton, who still loved her passionately, had an interview with
her, and then the whole Hanmer conspiracy was brought to light, when
too late. He again offered her his hand, but knew not why she dared
not accept it, and she was compelled to prohibit his visits; thus,
four years after, he married Miss Gunning, of Castle Coote. She also
refused to marry the Duke of Argyle (who espoused the latter lady in
her widowhood, in 1759) and several others. The world of fashion was
astonished, and her mother, who was kept in ignorance of her secret
marriage, reprehended what she deemed her folly in no measured terms.
To be rid of all this she left England, and went to Dresden and
Berlin; and her late position in our royal household secured her the
attention of the pedantic King of Prussia, who corresponded with her.
On her return, we are told that she "ran the course of pleasure,
enlivened the court circles, and each year became more ingratiated
with the mistress she served; led fashions, played whist with Lord
Chesterfield, and revelled with Lady Harrington and Miss Ashe." So
passed the days; but with night came reflection, and too often the
debauched Harvey, like an evil spirit crossing the path of her whose
life he had, to a great measure, blasted. Unable to claim her, in
dread of the resentful nature of his father the earl, he nevertheless
was exasperated to see her so admired and so immersed in gaiety; and
times there were that, in fits of rage, he threatened to disclose the
whole affair to the Princess of Wales. In this, however, she would
seem to have anticipated him. Her royal mistress heard and pitied
her, and continued her friend to the hour of her death. So plans
were proposed to rid her of Harvey. One was a divorce, on the plea
of his immoral habits; but this she shrank from, as involving many
disclosures; the other--a most unwise measure--was to destroy the
proofs of their marriage. The clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Amus, who
officiated at that ceremony, and many of the witnesses, were dead.
She visited the obscure little church at Laneston, where the
register-book chanced to be in careless hands. A small sum procured
an inspection of it, as if from curiosity, and while the custodian
was beguiled with some amusing story, she contrived to "tear out,"
says a print of the day, "to erase," says the Attorney-General,
"every memorial of her marriage with Mr. Harvey." Thus, in her
rashness or ignorance, passion or hate, believing she was now free,
she bade Harvey defiance; and, as it chanced that about this time he
had unaccountably and totally ceased to care for her, he gave her no
further inquietude, and ceased, as he was wont, to haunt every rout,
ridotto, or ball at which he was likely to find her.
And now her better angel influenced with love for her the heart of a
man whom an old magazine styles "the exemplar of amiability." This
was Evelyn Pierrepoint, Duke of Kingston, K.G., and Master of the
Staghounds north of the Trent, who raised a regiment of horse to act
against the Highlanders in 1745, and, when a lieutenant-general,
carried St. Edward's staff at the coronation of George III. in 1761.
At this time it appeared that very soon Captain Harvey would succeed
to the earldom of Bristol, his grandfather having died in 1751, and
his elder brother, who succeeded to the peerage, being unmarried and
unlikely to marry. Much as she disliked her husband, rank and
fortune were too tempting to Miss Chudleigh, and a very short period
before Harvey succeeded to these, she contrived once more to visit
Laneston, to procure a re-insertion of her marriage. To achieve this
she employed artifice, all the charms of which she was mistress, and
spent money with a liberal hand. The officiating clerk, little
supposing that his caligraphy would be tested by the legal and
critical acumen of the House of Lords, "doctored" the register to her
wishes; and from Mr. Merril's house she returned to London, rejoicing
that she had now two noble strings to her bow. We are told, "she
did, it is true, succeed, but it was laying the groundwork of that
very evidence which, in conjunction with oral testimony, operated
afterwards to her conviction and disgrace. Here was cunning
enveloping the possessor in a net of her own fabricating; and no
wonder, when her hour of degradation arrived, that she fell unpitied;
but re-married by her own stratagem, the participation of ducal
honours became legally impossible."
Ignorant of all this secret plotting, the Duke of Kingston, who had
been born in 1705, and was now not much past the prime of life,
became the most ardent of her lovers; yet, with the Bristol marriage
hanging over her, how was she to accept him? and while loving him she
still hoped to die Countess of Bristol. But Harvey's brother, the
second earl, lived longer than she anticipated, and she conducted her
intrigue--for, after all her brilliant offers, to an intrigue she
descended at last--with such care and decorum "that," as a writer
says of it, "although their intimacy was a moral, it was not an
evidenced, certainty." At last he who was really her husband became
third Earl of Bristol in 1775; but five years before this, on the 8th
of March, 1769, Elizabeth Chudleigh had been publicly espoused by the
Duke of Kingston.
Lord Bristol, ignorant of how the register had been tampered with,
and having fallen in love with a new flame, "the civilians were
consulted on the matter, a jactitation suit was instituted; _the
evidence_ which could prove the marriage _was kept back_." He failed
to substantiate the marriage that he might procure a divorce; and
raised now to the pinnacle of her fate, the (so-called) duchess
defied him, and paraded her new honours for some years in perfect
safety till the death of the duke by a stroke of palsy at Bath, on
the 23rd September, 1773; and he was "interred with a magnificence
becoming his dignity in the family vault at Holme-Pierrepoint in
Nottinghamshire" (_Ann. Reg._). It is now the property of Earl
Manvers, for Duke Evelyn was the last of his line. His will now
produced a fatal storm. It excluded from any benefit an elder nephew
and preferred a younger, thus giving rise to a public prosecution of
the duchess, which ended in her exile and the beggary of the nephew.
Two wills would seem to have been drawn, but only one signed--that by
which "the duke bequeathed the income of his estates to his relict
during her life, expressly under the condition of her continuing in a
state of _widowhood_"; but as this did not suit her ulterior views,
she strove in vain, with Mr. Field of the Temple, to have another
signed, that was more to her taste.
The moment the vault at Holme-Pierrepoint was closed the duchess
sailed for Rome, where Ganganelli, a Pope who bestowed always great
attention upon the English, treated her with marked favour and
honour. She now built a magnificent yacht--then a most uncommon
appendage to an English household--and giving the command of it to
Mr. Harding, a lieutenant of the navy, cruised about the
Mediterranean, all ignorant that a storm was gathering against her in
England, and that a Nemesis was hovering over her in the person of
old Anne Craddock, or that a motion was being moved in the Consistory
Court of London against "Elizabeth Countess of Bristol, calling
herself Duchess of Kingston."
Anne Craddock, being in reduced circumstances, had applied for
pecuniary relief to Mr. Field of the Temple, urging her distress and
the absence of the duchess, on whose purse she had a just claim as
the witness of her first marriage. Lawyer-like, he turned a deaf ear
to her, and the old woman, exposed to penury, gave herself up to the
task of vengeance and ruin. To the elder nephew of the late duke,
she gave all the information in her power, and he, assisted by legal
friends, had a bill of indictment for bigamy preferred against the
duchess, whom Mr. Field advised at once to return to Britain lest she
should be outlawed. The fashionable circles were filled with
astonishment by this sudden _exposé_. If there were fraud or
collusion, the Earl of Bristol must have acquiesced in both!
Evidence in support of the first marriage was fully gone into, and it
then came forth that if there was turpitude in the destruction of the
register of a marriage with him, there was something extremely
covetous in the attempt to restore it; and the latter act a woman
named Judith Philips proved beyond a doubt, and the birth of the
child was proved by Mr. Cæsar Hawkins.
The opponents of the duchess took every means to prevent her return
to England. With Mr. Jenkins, a banker in Rome, she had placed
securities for such sums as she might require; but when she requested
money to enable her to return home, he so sedulously avoided her,
that she at last lost all patience--fearing the sentence of
outlawry--and swore that Jenkins was in the interest of her enemies;
so, armed with a brace of pistols, she repaired to his house. The
usual answer was given her, that he was not at home.
"Here shall I remain a week, a month--yea, a year, till he returns!"
was her resolute rejoinder; and finding her inflexible, the banker at
last appeared, and a stormy interview ensued. She demanded her
money. He attempted to prevaricate; but the production of her
pistols ended that. Her cheques were cashed, and she instantly set
out on her return by way of the Alps. Excitement and anxiety--shame
perhaps at the sudden and terrible exposure about to be made--brought
on a fever, and caused an abscess in her side, compelling her to
travel in a litter instead of a carriage to Calais; thus after a
painful and tedious journey, which in her ignorance of law she feared
would end in a London prison, yet resolutely she travelled home, and
was joined by Colonel West, brother of John Earl of Delaware, and by
the famous Earl of Mansfield, who, from the post of Lord Chief
Justice, had been raised to the House of Lords. After her arrival at
Kingston House, he soothed her apprehensions, and her natural spirits
rose on finding that she had friends of such zeal and ability.
The Dukes of Ancaster, Portland, and Newcastle, Lord Mountstuart, and
others, became her warm adherents; and from the moment that
recognisances for the appearance of the duchess were entered into,
public excitement rose to fever heat, but pending the trial, she
suddenly found a new and rather unexpected enemy in the person of
Samuel Foote, the famous player. This gentleman was perfectly
intimate with the leading features of the duchess's life, and some of
the more private matters thereof he obtained from a Miss Penrose.
All these he wove up in a piece called _A Trip to Calais_, in which
the character of the duchess was humorously and admirably, but
disadvantageously, drawn. For its suppression, and before it could
appear at the Haymarket, he was mean enough to expect a handsome sum
from her, and he had the effrontery, when visiting her, to read at
her request those scenes in which she figured as "My Lady Kitty
Crocodile." She started up, inflamed with passion.
"Mr. Foote," she exclaimed; "what a wretch you make me!"
"This is not designed for your grace--it is not you," he urged, but
in vain.
A long and angry correspondence (which will be found in the
"Westminster Magazine" of 1776) ensued between them; and for the
suppression of the farce Foote would seem to have demanded £2,000.
She proffered him a cheque on Drummond for £1,600. The time for her
was most critical, and she felt acutely that, at this crisis of her
affair, with a trial impending before the Upper House, the production
of this farce might destroy her. Foote held out for the original
sum, but was baffled, as he deserved to be, in the end, as the Lord
Chamberlain would not permit the _Trip to Calais_ to be acted.
At last the day of trial came inexorably, and on the 15th of April,
1776, she was arraigned at the bar in Westminster Hall, and charged
with bigamy and felony. The commission to try her was read. The
judges were in their robes, the masters in Chancery in their gowns.
The Lord High Steward asked their lordships if it was their pleasure
that the judges should be covered; and on an answer being given in
the affirmative, the sergeant-at-arms called aloud,
"Elizabeth Duchess of Kingston, come forth and save yourself and your
bail, or forfeit your recognisance."
On this the duchess, attended by Mr. Egerton of the Bridgewater
family, Mrs. Barrington, widow of the general of that name, Drs.
Isaac Schomberg and Warren, entered the court, preceded by the Yeoman
Usher of the Black Rod, and was desired to seat herself. We are told
that she "was dressed in a black polonaise, with a black gauze cap".
She seemed cheerful and composed after the first shock. While she
was reading the paper delivered in to the lords, she appeared to be
strongly agitated and very sensibly affected. The business of her
alleged crimes was then fully gone into; many witnesses were
examined; and the trial, which excited the whole country, lasted five
days. Anne Craddock's evidence, that of Judith Philips, and others,
was fatally conclusive; and after the court adjourned to the chamber
of parliament, Lord Mansfield asked each peer in succession whether
the prisoner was or was not guilty; and all in succession replied,
"Guilty, upon my honour," save the Duke of Newcastle, who added,
"_erroneously_, but not intentionally."
On this being announced to her, she claimed "the benefit of the
peerage applicable to the statute." She was then discharged on
paying her fees; but on learning that, as Countess of Bristol, the
prosecutors were preparing a writ of _ne exeat regno_, to prevent her
quitting England and to deprive her of her property, she resolved to
give them "the slip." She ordered her carriage to be driven about
the public thoroughfares, and invited a select party to dine at
Kingston; and while they were assembling she was travelling in all
haste to Dover, where Harding, the captain of her yacht, met her, and
in an open boat conveyed her safely to Calais.
And now began her life of aimless wandering. She repaired to Rome,
where she found the palace she had rented there, and in which she had
left much property, had been stripped by thieves in her absence;
while at home every means were taken to set aside the will of the
Duke of Kingston. In a handsome vessel, built at her own expense,
and in which "there was a drawing-room, a dining-parlour, and other
conveniences," and on board of which she put several of the late
duke's most valuable pictures, as a present for the Empress of
Russia, she sailed for St. Petersburg, where the novelty of an
English lady "braving the billows of the Baltic" excited considerable
interest, and a handsome mansion was assigned her. The empress
treated her with great distinction, but our ambassador had to keep
aloof from her in public. She purchased an estate near St.
Petersburg for £12,000, and named it Chudleigh, and thereon she
erected a distillery for making brandy! Leaving an Englishman in
charge, she again returned to Calais, accompanied by a Russian
colonel with his wife and children. The former, says an old
_Edinburgh Magazine_, _en route_ "took French leave of the duchess,
borrowing one of her watches, merely that he might not be at a loss
as to the hour of the day, and taking a couple of rings, the
brilliance of which would remind him of the charms of the real
owner." Repairing to Paris, she bought a residence at Montmartre,
with much land about it, and thence she sent much game to the
markets; so the people in London alleged that she had become a
Russian distiller and a French rabbit-merchant. In the latter affair
she had a legal dispute.
In the August of the following year, when she was at dinner, it was
announced that a decision had been given against her concerning the
French property. She became greatly agitated, and burst a
blood-vessel internally. She appeared to recover; but a few days
afterwards, on the 26th of the month, when about to rise from bed,
she complained of weakness, had some medicine given her, and was
conducted to a couch.
"I shall lie here," she said; "I can sleep, and after a sleep I shall
be entirely recovered."
She sank gradually back into a profound sleep, and from that slumber
she never awakened.
STORY OF A HUSSAR OF THE REGENCY.
Sir Bernard Burke in recording the name of the _last_ baronet of the
old line of Craigie in Ayrshire--the parent stock from which the
Scottish patriot sprang--Sir Thomas Wallace, says, that he married a
daughter of Agnew Lochryan, "by whom he had one son, a captain of the
Guards, who pre-deceased him."
This is all the clue that Sir Bernard gives to one of the most
extraordinary and wasted, miserable and wandering, lives that ever
existed; for this Captain William Wallace (who was never in the
Household troops), early in his career, became embroiled--through the
famous Mrs. Mary Anne Clark--with those in high places at Court, and
with the Horse Guards, most singularly and fatally for himself; but
whether in the future, he was in guilt or error personally, or the
victim of a most remarkable plot, it is difficult now to tell. Any
way, our ambassador at Paris, Sir Charles Stuart, in writing of his
affairs in 1819, asserts that "he considers him to have been the
victim of a most unfounded and unprecedented persecution."
In the early part of the present century, there was published by a
respectable firm in Stationers' Court, a volume of his memoirs, now
out of print, or long since bought up for cogent reasons, and from it
this paper is chiefly made out, with constructive evidence of his
assertions from other sources.
Born in 1788, this heir of an old and honourable line began his
military career in 1802, when he joined the army in India, and served
in most of the operations of that war, so successfully waged by
Wellington (then General Wellesley), against the Mahrattas, and when
we were so signally triumphant on the plains of Assaye; and during
that time, young Wallace would seem to have won the affection of his
brother officers, and the esteem of his superiors. When the power of
Scindiah was broken, and the strife was over, he came home for the
recovery of his health, which had been seriously injured by service
in India. In his eighteenth year, he was on leave of absence in
London, at that time when "H.R.H. the Prince Regent," was the source
of so much gossip, and the Pavilion at Brighton was the centre of
rank and dissipation; when gloomy Old Bond Street was still in its
glory as a fashionable lounge, though rivalled by the New and
Piccadilly; when the Life Guards still wore Kevenhüller hats, and the
Line rejoiced in their pigtails and pipe-clayed breeches.
Habituated to Oriental splendour and profusion, new to the gay world
in which he found himself, by nature warm and impetuous, and, as an
only son, too liberally supplied with means, young Wallace fell
readily, for some time, into the perpetration of many follies, in the
midst of which he was appointed to the 15th Hussars, then commanded
by the Duke of Cumberland, and noted as one of the most expensive
regiments in the service. Soon after, he found himself engaged to
marry one of the richest heiresses in England, and, at this period,
in the brilliancy of his expectations, with his natural vivacity, and
the example of his wealthy and reckless comrades, he plunged into the
most prodigal extravagance, incumbering himself with horses,
carriages, and dogs to a useless extent.
In vain did his father, the old baronet, remonstrate with him. His
love of adventure and impetuous character, led him into many
_intrigues d'amour_, and frequent duels, for every regiment and
circle had then its "triers and provers" of a young fellow's courage;
but by horsewhipping publicly the Marquis of H---- in Hyde Park, and
thrashing a gentleman in the Round Room of the Opera House, with
several similar offences, won him many enemies. This wild career
caused his marriage to be broken off, and as he had calculated upon
it, as a means of paying those debts which he had contracted with the
profusion of a Timon, a phalanx of creditors took the field against
him.
He asserts in his vindication of himself, that his Colonel, the Duke
of Cumberland, assumed a haughty right of interference in his private
affairs. Perhaps the Royal Duke was only giving him sound advice;
but as he could no longer remain in the 15th Hussars, he begged
permission to exchange into the 2nd Life Guards with a Mr.
Barrington; but the Duke objected to the personal appearance of the
latter, while, on the other hand, if we are to believe the portrait
of Captain Wallace, engraved by W. Woolnoth in 1821, the latter was a
handsome young man, with regular features, pensive eyes, a
well-formed mouth and chin, a slight moustache, and hair shorn very
short for the days of the Regency.
He then applied to the Duke for permission to exchange into the 10th
Hussars; but the prince, offended by his determination to leave his
regiment, gave him a peremptory order to rejoin the 15th Hussars,
thus arbitrarily cancelling sick leave of absence which he had
obtained from the Commander-in-Chief. Conceiving the Colonel's order
illegal, he delayed obeying it, and found himself _superseded_, just
about the time he was wounded in a duel with a Captain Ross.
The moment he recovered, he laid the case before the kind Duke of
York, through the influence of that fine old soldier the Earl of
Cathcart, and was restored to rank and pay; but by being gazetted to
the 17th Light Dragoons, then under orders for India, the climate of
which he dared not face again in consequence of his broken health, he
applied for any cavalry corps in the Peninsula, where Moore was then
combating Soult, but memorials were in vain, and at this juncture,
his evil star gave him an introduction to--Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke.
This lady took the young dragoon so much into her confidence, as
rashly to intrust him with a very remarkable correspondence, which,
in kinder days, had passed between her, the Duke of York, and Colonel
McMahon, and was now to be of vast service to her in the measures she
was about to institute against the former.
Wallace was rash enough to boast of possessing these formidable
letters; rumour soon reached those in power of the startling fact,
and the most strenuous efforts were made to induce their surrender.
He thus drew upon himself the indignation of those whose favours he
was at that very time soliciting, and whom it was his interest to
have conciliated. About this time, he dined, he states, with the
Duke of Sussex and other officers at the Neapolitan Club, where he
drank freely, as all men did in those days, and losing all caution,
was persuaded, by one who accompanied him home, to destroy those
letters, on the publicity of which so much depended. This person, he
asserts, was Charles Viscount Falkland, who fell in a duel in 1809.
Wallace flung them in the fire. The whole merit of their destruction
was attributed to the Viscount; and from that hour his entreaties
were vain, and the only answer he received from the Horse Guards was
a peremptory order to join his regiment.
Again he urged his health in India, and the injuries he had received
by his horse falling back upon him when rearing--injuries so severe,
that he was borne to the nearest house, that of the Duchess of
Roxburghe; again he urged his services in the Mahratta war, and
enclosed medical certificates from Drs. Bailey and Heaviside. We
have only his own word for the tenor of this correspondence, which
ended, however, by the appearance of his name in the Gazette as
having _resigned_ His Majesty's Commission.
"It is impossible for me to attribute this unprecedented treatment,"
he wrote; "to H.R.H. the Commander-in-Chief, whose well-known
liberality and kindness to the army in general, I had formerly
experienced in the most marked manner myself; but to a false and
malicious representation of the transaction itself."
All hope in the Horse Guards seemed over now, yet, in the ardour of
his temperament, young Wallace conceived the romantic idea of all-but
wresting back his commission, by quitting his sick-room, and joining
our army in the Peninsula, as a cavalry volunteer; but his then evil
genius preceded him, and by the malice of certain persons never
known, his project was nearly defeated on his arrival in Portugal.
His appearance in the ranks, divested of all the insignia of an
officer, made him the subject of much, and not always friendly
conversation; thus at the dinner-table of Sir Charles Stuart, then
our Ambassador at Lisbon, he became embroiled with a Captain Fenwick
and a Colonel Mackinnon, the former asserting that he had seen him
behaving improperly at Plymouth, and the latter that he held certain
of his acceptances. To these officers he sent challenges by the
Honourable Dudley Carlton (who died in 1820), and received apologies
for the assertions, but a prejudice against him remained in the mind
of Sir Arthur Wellesley.
As a volunteer trooper, risking every privation and danger, his
bravery with the advanced guard at the Lines of Torres Vedras won him
the notice, perhaps the pity, of General Sir William Erskine, who
took him out of the ranks and placed him in a temporary situation
near his person. On every occasion, reconnoitering, foraging, or
harassing the enemy, his peculiar position compelled him to be
prominent; but the night-guards, without shelter from the cold or
rain, brought back his Indian fever, and the once gay Hussar was
reduced to the verge of the grave. A return home was necessary, and
furnished with such testimonials as he hoped would restore to him the
commission he prized so much, and charged with private despatches
from Sir William Erskine, he returned to London, where, while his
name was placed on the list at the Horse Guards for reappointment (as
the Records show, on the 17th December, 1814), he was assailed by a
host of creditors, whose attacks were worse than those of the French,
so to avoid them he retired into Scotland.
After a time of gloom, disappointment, and useless regret, he
effected a compromise with his creditors, but returned to town only
to fall into fresh scrapes, and he became, for a time, the victim and
slave of one of the famous and fascinating, beautiful and extravagant
of the _demi-monde_, whose name it is useless to record; but who had
recently come to the metropolis after queening it at Brighton.
Having gone to visit his father, Sir Thomas Wallace, who, after being
long a prisoner of war in France, was released by the Treaty of
Paris, to his rage and mortification, the fair one on whom he had
lavished all, eloped with one of his friends; but such was the
weakness of his character, that some time after, on going to a masked
ball at the Argyll Rooms, accompanied by Colonel Brown, Captain Moore
of the Life-Guards, and two other officers, a lady near him, "either
fainted, or affected to faint, and fell into the arms of the
bystanders." Her mask was removed, and in all her wonderful beauty
he saw the woman he had loved and lost! Pity seized him now; he was
silly enough to bear her to her carriage, which drove her and his
friends to her house, No. 3, Crawford Street, where a mad night of
champagne and deep play ensued, and the losses of Wallace were
enormous. Other gambling transactions followed with reckless spirits
of the Guards, and many of those military idlers whom the Peace had
cast upon the town. In one of these a Mr. Bradburne lost so much
that he shot himself, and a paragraph in "The Day" announced that he
had been "decoyed (to gamble) by Captain W---- and a Mr. A.," and had
put a period to his existence in consequence. Action was taken
against the Editor, but too late; the story spread with a thousand
additions. Wallace certainly held Bradburne's acceptances for
£2,200, which he had fairly won in the attempt of the latter to win
_his_ money; yet after receiving a promissory note for the amount on
Hoare and Co., he threw it into the fire; but his rash career in
London had gained him such a host of enemies, that society viewed him
coldly, and accompanied by a friend, named Andrews, he left it. "We
determined to proceed to the nearest sea-port town," he states, "and
there await the favourable moment at which it was agreed we were to
be recalled by our friends, to meet the charges and defeat the
machinations of our prosecutors. With this view we departed for
Calais."
But his friends failed to recall him, for now began the most
extraordinary portion of his misfortunes and adventures.
On the 7th March, 1816, they put up at the Hôtel de Bourbon, Rue de
la Paix, Paris, waiting news from London, and then, the maître
d'hôtel, Monsieur de Marcel, urged him to go to the Hôtel de Valois,
which he kept in the Rue de Richelieu, promising to afford better
service and accommodation. "There was an eagerness in the manner of
this fellow--an importunity beyond all bounds--that struck me with
suspicion of some further motive," says Wallace; "I coldly declined
his solicitations, but it did not discourage him; he came almost
daily and besieged me with entreaties, and bore repulses with a
patience that would have astonished me in any one but a Frenchman."
Eventually the friends removed to his other hotel on the 19th of
March, and Wallace had soon reason to suspect that his escritoire had
been opened and his papers examined, by Marcel and some
suspicious-looking men, whom he once surprised in his rooms; but they
were partly in their host's power by that time, as Mr. Andrews was
1,040 francs in his debt. For this he gave bills upon his mother and
Lord Wallscourt, and then left for Madrid with the Count de Gadez;
while Wallace, finding that the bad impression against him in London
had passed away, set out for England by the way of Brussels, where he
was well received by the many English tourists to whom the continent
was now open. Unfortunately a friend induced him to revisit Paris,
where more than once he saw his former host, Marcel, who always
saluted him with marked respect. He then went to Boulogne, and one
evening when he was dining with some friends at the Hôtel
Charpentier, a party of gendarmes broke into the room and roughly
arrested him, at the instance of Marcel, for a debt of 4,000 francs.
He was conducted to prison, where, resolving to resist this infamous
attempt to extort money, he employed MM. Lessis and Deslandes, an
advocate and attorney, to defend him before the _Tribunal de Première
Instance Civile_, which--as Marcel was unable to prove his claim--set
Wallace at liberty, and awarded him damages for the insult, the
motive for which seemed inexplicable to all.
Reflection showed that Marcel had some secret inducement, and that he
was the paid agent of powerful enemies elsewhere. This Marcel had
been notorious during the Reign of Terror, and only escaped death by
having a friend, whose name was _Martel_, executed, by a strange
trick, in his place. He became a member of the secret police, and by
his denunciations had long "kept the guillotine in the south of
France in continual motion, and Bordeaux in perpetual mourning."
Such was the agent of the enemies of Wallace, who states, that when
leaving the debtor's prison in accordance with the sentence of the
Court, he was, to his rage and astonishment, arrested by the
_concierge_ on a charge of _robbery_, and was conducted with a
"brigade of convicts," under an armed guard, to Paris--everywhere, as
an Englishman--taunted and reviled, for Waterloo was fresh in every
Frenchman's mind. He had, however, the use of a cabriolet, which
deposited him at the prison of La Force, after being insolently
treated by the _Procureur du Roi_, and coldly answered by our
ambassador; and then his spirit would have sunk but for the kindness
of a young Belgian girl, to whom he had become attached, and who had
followed him from Brussels. Of this influence he was soon deprived,
by being thrust into a cell with nine _galériens_, who robbed him of
money supplied to him by kind Deslandes, the advocate, to pay "the
right of entry." His valet was denied access to him, and all his
letters were intercepted. Then, surrounded by bolts and bars, the
dust and dirt of years, and among such ruffians as France can alone
produce, he remained in an agony of perplexity till, on the absurd
charge of stealing from the Hôtel de Valois three towels and a
shoebrush, the property of M. Marcel, eighteen months before, he was
arraigned at the _Palais de Justice_, where Marcel appeared in the
double capacity of prosecutor and witness; and though "all were
anxious to hear the accusation that would banish an Englishman to the
galleys," he totally failed to prove it, and once more Wallace was
set at liberty.
Boiling with rage, he hastened into the street, resolving to demand
redress from our ambassador, Sir Charles Stuart, when he was seized
by an armed party, and beaten by them so severely that he would have
been killed but for the intervention of an Irish soldier in the
French service. He was then dragged back to La Force, into which he
was thrown on a new charge--forgery! A few days after, he was
thumbscrewed, and brought under escort, before M. Meslin, the _Juge
d'Instruction_, for examination; he was denied the use of an
interpreter, and no one was suffered to be present but the
_greffier_, an intimate friend of Marcel.
He was told that his name was Philip, not William; that he was a
Russian, not a Scotsman, and the _Juge_ alluded to many mysterious
events to which William was a total stranger. He was declared
incorrigible. "_Gendarmes, remenez-le à La Force!_" was the order,
and he was marched back to prison. Eventually he was ordered to be
released, when his advocate, the Chevalier Duplessis, discovered
through Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian ambassador, that he had been
arrested in mistake for another person who had forged a draft upon
His Excellency. On Wallace appealing to M. Meslin for some
satisfaction for all he had undergone, that official only laughed,
and ordered him again to La Force, saying there was a new and more
serious charge against him! This was an accusation of swindling. He
was flung into the dreadful _Bâtiment-neuf_, where his sufferings,
like the horrible scenes he witnessed, are beyond all description.
The charge was made at the instance of the inevitable and inexorable
Marcel! He based it on the old claim of debt. Duplessis treated the
prosecution as a nullity; but Marcel procured a judgment against him
by default, and he was tried by the _Cour de Premiere Instance_, on
the charge of having obtained credit from Marcel through a bill drawn
on a _Lord Wallace_. The bill drawn by Mr. Andrews on Lord
_Wallscourt_, and on which the name of Wallace did not appear "either
as drawer, or acceptor or indorser," was adduced in evidence against
him. The charge fell to the ground. Even the _Procureur du Roi_ was
warmly in his favour. He was acquitted, and left the court overjoyed.
As he went forth, he was again arrested in virtue of the judgment
obtained by Marcel, through default, and thrown into Ste. Pélagie,
the King's Bench of Paris, where his place of confinement was so
horrible, that he longed to be back again in La Force. He was now
almost heart-broken; but as the wretch who persecuted, failed to
aliment him, he was released on the 27th January, 1818; but at the
gate he was again arrested by order of the Comte d'Angles, the
Prefect of Police, in virtue of a _private letter_, and confined "_au
secret!_" No human being could have access to him now, and all
intercourse with the outer world was denied. His situation was now
harrowing in the extreme. "I felt," he says, "all the difference
between the misery that has hope to dwell upon, and that which has
none." Without a pretext, his captivity would be without an end, it
seemed.
But, on the 28th January, 1818, the _concierge_ abruptly announced an
order to set him free; and added that M. Marcel was without with a
party of gendarmes. He begged permission to remain till sunset; but
the agent of the Secret Police, finding that he did not come forth,
entered and dragged him out; and along the quays and bridges he was
torn by twelve armed men, followed by a vast unpitying multitude,
with a handkerchief thrust into his mouth, and then retaken to Ste.
Pélagie, on three charges of murder--for assassinating a British
General at Valenciennes, and two bankers in Paris!
On these outrageous charges he pined in prison for eighteen months
longer, till consumption began to waste him, and all spirit and all
desire for life were gone; for though no attempt was made to
substantiate them, the _Cour de Premiere Instance_ had reconfirmed to
Marcel the power of detaining him as a debtor for life in Ste.
Pélagie. Fortunately, about this time he was discovered by an old
English friend, who, by ample bribery, prevailed upon that remarkable
scoundrel (who thought his victim was dying) to sign a document,
relinquishing all claim, if Wallace would abandon all right of
counter prosecution. He also added an invitation to take up a
residence in _his house_!
On the 6th October, wasted, worn, penniless, and every way destitute,
he quitted Ste. Pélagie, and was conveyed to the humble lodging of
his faithful valet in the Faubourg St. Marceau, when on the verge of
death. In the solitude of his various prisons, how often must this
son of luxury, this butterfly of fashion, who, though brave in
battle, was but a Bond Street lounger when at home, have felt
bitterly that the shaping of his life had gone beyond him now, ere
youth was well-nigh past; and that its illusions, hopes, and
enthusiasm had also gone for ever.
Nursed by his old valet he gradually recovered strength, and on
receiving an affectionate letter from his father urging that the air
of his native country would completely restore him, he gladly turned
his back on Paris, and its hated police power.
But he would seem never to have got over the shock of all these
accusations, as he sank into a premature grave, thus leaving old Sir
Thomas Wallace the last of his line, and without an heir to his
baronetcy, which was created in 1669.
A WEIRD STORY OF BRUGES.
Six months ago, when in Bruges, that "quaint old town of art and
song," as Longfellow styles it--a town all unchanged since the
ancient days of Flanders--I became cognisant of the following events,
by happening to be present at the examination of the chief actor in
them, before one of the two burgomasters who govern the city.
With a Belgian friend, I had been lounging in a window of the
club-house that overlooks the spacious square known as the Grande
Place (above which towers the wonderful belfry, from whence one may
look down on the frontiers of Holland as on a map, and from whence,
it is said, the mouth of the Thames may be seen on a clear day), when
a police escort, with swords drawn, conducted a prisoner past,
towards the Palais de Justice. He was a young man of the better
class, apparently, very pale, very sad, and depressed in aspect, very
handsome in face, graceful in bearing, and most unlike a criminal.
His hands, however, were manacled, and a crowd of workmen and
children clattered noisily around him in their wooden sabots.
As the rumour spread that a terrible assassination had just been
committed, we followed the escort to the magnificent old hall in that
edifice, which was whilom the Palais du Franc de Bruges, and which
contains a chimney-piece occupying one entire side of it, with
gigantic statues carved in wood, and marble bas-reliefs representing
chastely the story of Susannah and the Elders, as the reader may find
in his "John Murray."
From that which transpired at the examination of the prisoner, and
what I read in a few subsequent numbers of the little local paper
named _La Patrie_, I gleaned the substance of the following story,
which, in some of its features, reminds one of the case of Oriental
metempsychosis mentioned in the _Spectator_--the passing of the soul
from body to body, including the influences of mesmeric, crystalline,
and magnetic forces, though I do not pretend to know anything of the
learned and mysterious jargon concerning those matters; but much of
which I heard that day referred to in the Palais de Justice.
A mile or so on the level highway beyond the beautiful round towers
of the loopholed and embattled Porte St. Croix, one of the still
remaining barriers of the old fortifications, there stands at a
little distance from the road, a quaint old Flemish dwelling-house,
built of red brick, and almost hidden among chestnut and apple-trees.
If we are to believe the "Chronyke Van Vlanderen," it was once a
shooting-box of Charles the Bold, and near it Mary of Burgundy
received the fall from her horse which proved so fatal. Be all this
as it may, it is a house with many pointed gables, strange outshots
and beams of quaintly-carved oak; and therein, with his nephew,
Hendrik, and an old housekeeper, resided Dr. Van Gansendonck, called
Doctor, not from his profession, but for his learning, as he enjoyed
the reputation of understanding all languages, living and dead, and
being master of every science, human and divine; and was regarded by
the simple and religious Brugois, as altogether a miracle of a man in
some respects.
Some there were who deemed him a dangerous dupe to his own powers,
and these were the clergy especially who, with something of
repugnance, drew their black cloaks closer about them when "the
doctor" passed them, on the highway or in the narrow unpaved streets
as it was notorious that he never crossed the threshold of a church,
or was known to lift his hat either to them or to the numerous
Madonnas that decorate every street corner, and many a doorway too,
in Bruges.
The Herr Doctor, now past his sixtieth year, had, in some respects,
decidedly a bad reputation, and a hundred and fifty years ago or so,
might have ended his studies amid a blaze of tar-barrels in the
Grande Place as a wizard, but in this our age of steam and telegraphy
he was viewed as simply a learned eccentric, and as a dabbler in
mesmerism, clairvoyance, the odic light, and second sight; but these
occult mysteries, which the church condemns, he would seem to have
carried to a length that seems strangely out of place in these days
of hard facts and practical common-sense.
A forehead high and bald, a head tonsured round by a fringe of
silvery hair, eyes keen and quick as those of a rattlesnake--eyes
that seemed to glare through his gold-rimmed glasses, made the face
of Herr Van Gansendonck so remarkable, that those who saw it never
failed to be impressed by its strange expression of intellectual
power, tinged with somewhat of insanity; but his visitors were few.
His time was chiefly spent in his library; and as he was rich, being
proprietor of more than one of those gigantic mills, the sails of
which overshadow the grassy ramparts, he could afford to please
himself by living as he chose, and seclusion was his choice. He
seemed to have but one favourite only--Hendrik--a brother's orphan
son, whom he had adopted, educated, and who was to be his heir.
Hendrik was now in his twentieth year, decidedly handsome, but with
dreamy blue eyes that had an expression in them one could not easily
forget; yet the lad's temperament was poetic and enthusiastic, and
now he had but recently returned to Bruges, after undergoing a course
of study, and attending those lectures which are given on science,
literature, and art at the library of the Museum in Brussels.
The grim old student hailed the return of the younger one with a
pleasure that he did not conceal, and there was at least one more in
Bruges that did so with joy.
This was Lenora, the daughter of Madame Van Eyck, a widow lady,
residing in one of those quaint old houses at the Quai Espagnol. To
her he had been betrothed, and the monetary plans of his uncle alone
were awaited for their marriage, young though Hendrik was.
Bruges, according to an old monkish rhyme, has ever been celebrated
for its pretty girls, but Lenora Van Eyck, a bright blonde of
eighteen, was more than pretty--she was charming, with that wonderful
bloom of complexion which is so truly Belgian; light, laughing, hazel
eyes that were full of merriment, and all her ways and modes of
expression piquant and attractive.
She had been one of the six young ladies who, clothed and veiled in
white, were selected on the last Corpus Christi day to bear the gilt
Madonna through the streets before the bishop. Lenora had been with
her family at Blankenburg--the little Brighton of the Brugois--for
several weeks after the return of Hendrik to the house of his uncle;
and when again they met at their favourite trysting place, the long
walk of stately poplars by the canal near the Porte St. Croix, she
soon became conscious of a strange and painful change in the bearing,
the manner, and the eyes of her lover. Languor seemed to pervade
every action; his face had become pale, his eyes more dreamy than
ever, and he was unusually taciturn and abstracted.
Why was this? Lenora asked of herself, while she watched him with
that keenness of eye and anxiety of heart that are born of love and
tenderness, for there was a singular mystery now about the once happy
Hendrik that filled her with grave perplexity. Had his love for her
changed? His eyes, though sad, were loving in expression as ever,
when they met hers--yet even his smile was sad--so very sad!
Again and again, in her most winning way, she would implore Hendrik
to reveal to her any secret that weighed upon his mind, but in vain.
Why was it, she asked, that he, whom she had left so lively in
bearing and happy in spirit, had now become so moody? and why was it
that there were times when he seemed to feel himself compelled, as it
were, to leave her suddenly and in haste, without a word of
explanation, apology, or excuse? She pleaded without avail; Hendrik
could but avert his pallid face, or cover his eyes with his hand, as
if to shut out some painful vision or crush some worrying thought.
He dared not tell her--lest she should deem him mad, and so shrink
from him--that his uncle, the Herr Van Gansendonck, had,
mesmerically, acquired a mysterious and terrible influence over him,
and that by the mere power of will he could summon him to his
presence at all times, wherever he might be, or with whomsoever he
was engaged--even with herself; and that he, Hendrik, found himself
totally powerless and incapable of effecting his emancipation from
the bodily and mental thraldom under which he writhed!
He dared not tell her all this, or, further, that Herr Van
Gansendonck had the power to set him asleep on a chair in his
library, and then to cause his spirit (for this was alleged in the
Palais de Justice) to disengage itself from the body, and go on
distant missions through the air for thousands of miles in the course
of a few minutes, or that when thus put to sleep, the Herr, by
exciting his organ of ideality, could obtain such information as he
wished on strange and abstruse subjects.
That he had become a helpless and nerve-shattered mesmeric medium, he
thought at times he might confide to her; but even in this his
courage failed him, for other and more terrifying convictions were
creeping upon him; thus he shrank from telling the girl who loved him
so dearly, that when his spiritual essence was despatched to distant
lands, the Herr, by the same power, permitted other spirits to enter
his body and use its members for purposes of their own. The horror
of this idea, it was alleged, made the youth's life insupportable,
for on awaking from these strange and involuntary trances, he would
at times find on his person cuts and bruises he was all unconscious
of receiving; sometimes his purse would be gone, or in its place
might be found strange money and letters to and from individuals of
whose existence he knew nothing.
All this was done by one whose power he could neither repel nor defy;
and now he had the natural dread that if his body was made to obey
the behests of these spiritual intruders, he might be led into some
horrible predicament--the committal of a dreadful crime. Another
might even come in his place and meet Lenora!
One evening as they sat on the grassy rampart that overlooked the
great canal, the girl strove to rouse or soothe him by singing with
great sweetness one of Jan Van Beer's Flemish songs; but the music of
her voice and the poetry of the author of "Zeik Jongeling" fell on
Hendrik's ear in vain. When she paused,
"I dreamt of you last night, darling Lenora," said the young man,
looking at her with inexpressible tenderness; "but such dreams are so
tantalising, even more so than the dreams one has by day."
"All your life seems one hazy dream now, Hendrik," said Lenora
somewhat petulantly.
"Forgive me, dearest, you know not what you talk of. My mind, I
grant you, is a chaos, full of strange terrors, perplexity, and
confusion; and times there are when I fear for my reason," he added
wildly, passing a hand over his forehead, and looking aside.
"Dear Hendrik, do not speak thus, I implore you."
"I must--in whom can I confide, if not in you? And yet I dare not--I
dare not!"
After a pause he spoke again, but with his eyes fixed, not on her,
but on the still, deep water of the shining canal.
"This much I will tell you, Lenora. Yesterday, my uncle sent me on
some business of his to the house of an advocate, Père Baas, near the
Béguinage, a house in which I had never been before, and I was shown
into a room to wait. On looking round, to my astonishment, every
article in it--and the room itself--the ceiling, the stove, the
windows, and the paintings--especially one by Hans Hemling--were all
familiar to me, and I seemed to recognise every object there. 'I was
never here before,' thought I; 'and yet I must have been--but when?
If so, there is a little window behind this picture, which opens to
the garden of the Béguinage.' I turned the picture, and lo! there
was the little window in question; I saw through it the garden with
all its cherry-trees and two or three béguines flitting about. Oh,
Lenora, there is indeed some power beyond matter, proving that the
soul is independent of the body!"
"It must have been a dream."
"It was no dream," replied Hendrik gloomily.
"But how do you account for the strange fancy?"
"My disembodied spirit must have been there, sent on some accursed
errand by my uncle!"
"But you would die, Hendrik."
"Not if another tenant were at hand," replied Hendrik, gnashing his
teeth.
Then the girl wept to hear him, as she naturally deemed it, raving
thus.
"Such things cannot be," said she, sobbing.
"My uncle says they may; and the theory is as old as the days of
Pythagoras."
"I know nothing of Herr Pythagoras; but this I know, that the Herr
Van Ganseudonck is a strange and bad man. Pardon me, dear Hendrik;
but he never enters a church door, nor has he been to mass or
confession for years. Leave him, and Bruges too, rather than become
the victim of such dreadful delusions."
"To do either is to leave and to lose you! I am his heir; and we
have but to wait his pleasure--or, it may be, his death, to be so
happy," replied Hendrik, sadly: and then they relapsed into silence.
With Lenora it was silence induced by sorrow and alarm, while her
lover seemed to let his thoughts slip away into dreamland. The
sultry summer evening breeze rustled the leaves near them; the
honey-bees buzzed and hummed among the wild flowers and buttercups
that grew on the old rampart; and far away could be heard the
ceaseless chirping of the crickets.
Lenora's head rested on Hendrik's shoulder, and he was lost in
thought, though mechanically toying with her hair, which shone like
ripples of gold in the light of the setting sun.
He was aware that Lenora had begun to speak to him again; her voice
seemed to mingle with the drowsy hum of the bees and the evening
chimes or carillons in the distant spires; but he heard as if he
heard her not; till suddenly a thrill seemed to pass over him, as a
secret and intuitive sense or knowledge that his terrible relation
required his immediate presence, made him start from the grassy bank,
snatch a hasty kiss, and hurry away by the arch of the Porte St.
Croix, leaving Lenora mortified, sorrowful, and utterly bewildered by
the abruptness of his departure.
"Oh, how changed he is!" thought she, as she proceeded slowly in the
other direction towards her home on the Quai Espagnol.
On two or three occasions the unhappy Hendrik had, what he conceived
to be, undoubted proof of his body having been, in the intervals of
mesmeric trances, tenanted by another spirit than his own; and this
strange and wild conviction caused such intense horror and loathing
of his uncle that the expressions to which he gave utterance to more
than one of his friends--more than all to Lenora--were recalled, most
fatally for himself, at a future time.
One day, in the Rue des Augustines, he was accosted by brother
Eusebius, a Capuchin.
"Friend Hendrik," said he, severely and gravely, "was it becoming in
you to be roystering as you were yesterday at the low estaminet in
the market-place, and with such companions--fellows in blouses and
sabots?"
"Impossible, Brother Eusebius; I was not there," faltered Hendrik, as
the usual fear crept over him.
"I myself saw you. And, moreover, you looked at me."
"When--at what hour?"
"Six in the evening."
"Six!"
Hendrik felt himself grow pale. He remembered that at that identical
time he was under the hands of his uncle. He groaned in sore and
dire perplexity, and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, while
the Capuchin continued to address him in tones of rebuke and earnest
remonstrance.
"Have I a double-ganger, or am I becoming crazed?" urged Hendrik.
"Believe me, Brother Eusebius, I was not there!" he added, piteously
and earnestly.
"At the hour of six?" persisted the unbelieving Capuchin.
"I swear to you that at the hour of six I was, and had been for some
time, in one of those unaccountable trances in which my uncle has the
power to cast me--one of those hours of bodily torpor that have come
upon me," he added, while the perspiration poured in bead-drops from
his pallid brow. "I awoke about eight. I heard the chimes ringing
in the church of St. Giles, and near me sat my uncle, pen in hand, as
if in the act of questioning me and committing to paper that which I
had been revealing in my magnetic slumber. Oh! am I the victim of
necromancy?"
"Scarcely, in this age of the world," replied the Capuchin, but now
with more of pity than rebuke in his manner.
"I swear to you by the Holy Blood that I speak the truth!" continued
Hendrik, referring to the famous relique of the Brugois in the little
chapel near the Hôtel de Ville. "I last remember hearing the voice
of my uncle as I sank into sleep; my arms fell powerless by my side;
my eyes closed; waves of magnetic fluid or air seemed to flow over
me; and my spirit passed away, at his behest, to other lands."
"What madness--what raving is this, Hendrik?" said the sandalled
friar, with sadness and severity. "Do you mean to tell me that your
uncle is another Cagliostro--a veritable Balsamo?"
"I fear it--I fear it," said Hendrik, with clasped hands.
"Learn first to fear the potations of the estaminet," replied the
Capuchin, as he turned coldly and bluntly away, believing that the
young man was intoxicated.
On another occasion Hendrik failed to keep an appointment with Lenora
Van Eyck, who waited for him anxiously till long past the time named,
and then proceeded pensively homeward. As she approached the steep
and antique bridge that leads from the Rue des Augustines to the Quai
Espagnol she saw Hendrik cross it, and look at her calmly and
deliberately the while, but without a glance or smile of recognition.
Her heart, which at first had beat happily, now became perplexed as
he turned abruptly up the opposite bank of the canal, and dropped
into a little skiff, which he proceeded to unmoor, and, in doing so,
cut his right hand severely.
"Hendrik! Hendrik!" she called aloud; but he heard her not, and,
shipping a pair of sculls, pulled swiftly out of sight.
When next they met, and she upbraided him with this strange conduct,
the same emotion of fear that had come over him when confronted by
the Capuchin again filled his heart, and he called Heaven to witness
that it was not he whom she had seen.
"But here, Hendrik, love, is the wound on your hand," urged the
astonished girl.
"I know not how I received it," he moaned, "though aware that a wound
is there."
"This passes all comprehension!" said Lenora mournfully. "Oh!
Hendrik, I thought a love like ours would never die; yet doubt and
terror are destroying it now."
Something like a sob came into Hendrik's throat, and through his
clenched teeth he muttered hoarsely and fiercely--
"This kind of life--a double life, it would seem--cannot last for
ever. Nothing does last for ever, and the end will come anon." And
as he spoke he fixed his moist and now hollow eyes as if on some
distant horizon which he alone could see.
"Hendrik!--dearest Hendrik!" urged the girl soothingly, as she
caressed his face between her soft and pretty hands, for her heart
was full of alarm as well as love; it was a conviction so dreadful,
the fear that he was perhaps becoming insane.
"Can over-study at Brussels have made the poor boy ill," thought
Lenora, in the solitude of her chamber that night. "Oh! must I give
him up after all--after all? Dare I go through life as the wife of
one so strange, so wayward, and so moody? No; better be a béguine
like Aunt Truey. I am so happy at home. Why do girls marry? and for
what do I want to marry?" And as she pondered thus, she sat looking
at her white hands, and changing Hendrik's betrothal ring--an opal
set with diamonds--from one finger to another, till it slipped from
her and rolled away on the varnished floor, whence she snatched it up
with a little cry of alarm, for the event seemed ominous of evil.
"Oh, I must indeed consult Brother Eusebius about this matter," was
her concluding thought, more especially as the Capuchin had told her
that 'opals were unlucky.'
And when he dropped in for his post-prandial cup of coffee with her
mother that evening, Lenora did take him into her confidence; but the
friar only imbibed pinch after pinch of snuff from the huge wooden
box which he carried in the sleeve pocket of his brown frock; hinted
of what he had seen at the estaminet, and shook his shaven head,
adding that "Hendrik Van Gansendonck came of a bad stock, and should
be avoided." So the Capuchin was consulted no more on the subject.
Hendrik now broke many appointments made with Lenora. He seemed to
be no longer the master of his own actions, and he was so frequently
reproached by her for his inattention and unkindness, that he feared
to make a promise to her at all, and two entire days passed without
their meeting.
Could he tell her that which he now confidently believed to be the
case; that Herr Van Gansendonck had cast him into a mesmeric trance,
leaving him in that condition, and intending to come back in an hour
or so; but, having been summoned away on business, had left him, to
all appearance spell-bound and helpless, to the terror of the old
housekeeper at the château?
On the third day he met her coming from vespers in the church of the
Béguinage, where she had been to visit her Aunt Truey.
Lenora was very pale; her eyes were full of tears, and, as Hendrik
could perceive, they were sparkling with resentment. She was in the
very summer of her beauty--that age when all girls seem pretty.
Hendrik gazed upon her carelessly, and would have kissed her, but the
walk was a public one, and the _blanchisseurs_ were busy amid the
Minnewater. Lenora was so prettily dressed, too: and most suitably
did her silver-grey costume, trimmed with rose-coloured ribbon,
become her blonde beauty, her purity of complexion, and fair shining
tresses. Fresh, young, and graceful, there was a delicacy and
softness in all her air and person, yet anger was apparent in her
eyes; and those of Lenora were what a writer has described, as
"wonderful golden eyes--eyes which painters dare not imitate, because
the colour is so subtle, and the light in them so living--eyes that
are called hazel, but are not hazel."
"I now know the reason of your avoiding me in the Rue des Augustines,
and also where you were going on that evening in the skiff," said she.
"Lenora, have I not already said----"
"Hendrik," interrupted the girl, with severity, "I have for some time
feared that you were crazed; now I find that you are wicked, and that
Brother Eusebius was right after all."
"Wicked--my darling!"
"Do not speak to me thus; I have good reason to be most indignant
with you," she continued, stamping her little foot on the ground.
"For what, dearest?" asked Hendrik, whose heart was sinking with
vague apprehension as usual.
"Cease to twist your moustache, and answer me this: was it right or
proper of you to be drinking with soldiers at the Rampart de Caserne
last evening?--and worse still, to be toying with and caressing
little Mademoiselle Dentelle, the lace-maker, who lives there--toying
with her actually in the open street, while mamma and I passed you?"
added Lenora, whose eyes were flashing through their tears, though
her cheek was pale, as Hendrik's now became.
He was voiceless, and could make neither response nor reply, for he
knew that at the time to which he referred he had been, as he simply
phrased it, "put to sleep in his kinsman's study," and that on
awaking he had found himself not there, but lying on the grassy bank
near the Rampart de Caserne, and that, instead of his hat, he found
on his head the kepi of a soldier of the 2nd Regiment, then quartered
in Bruges, and a pipe, of which he knew nothing, dangling from a
button of his coat! The stars were shining, and the dew was on the
grass, but how long he had been there, or how he came to be there,
were alike mysteries to him.
He felt bitterly the utter hopelessness of urging more to Lenora; yet
he attempted to falter out some explanation.
"This is juggling, Hendrik," replied the girl passionately; "another
face--another love has come between us, otherwise you would not dare
to treat me thus?"
"Your suspicion is false, dearest Lenora," said he. "Oh, pardon me,
sweet one! but I feel as if I were in a dream--as if I were some one
else, and not myself!"
"Again, dreams!" said Lenora scornfully, as she drew his betrothal
ring from her finger, dashed it at his feet, and left him. Night
after night had Lenora lain awake, brooding over the change that had
come upon Hendrik, weeping the while, with wide-open eyes in the
darkness, and now she had come to the firm resolution to dismiss him
for ever; but when she left him, silent, stunned, and confounded by
the Minnewater, her heart yearned for him again, and she repented her
severity, lest his mind might be, as she too justly feared, affected.
And now he, while gazing wistfully after her retiring figure, thought
with loathing and horror of the keen visage, the hawk-like nose, the
cold, yet clear glittering eyes and gold spectacles of that odious
relative to whom he was unhappily indebted even for food and raiment,
for his past education, and all his future prospects in life--Lenora
included; but who seemed to possess over him a power so
unaccountable, so terrible and diabolical! Much of this he said to
one or two friends whom he met on his way homeward, and the
expressions were also remembered against him in the time that was to
come.
Soon after he found himself secretly and imperatively summoned to the
presence of the Herr, who--as he afterwards told the Burgomaster in
the Palais de Justice--"bade him go sleep," and sent his spirit on
some mysterious errand, hundreds of miles away. What happened in the
library of that lonely little château outside the Porte St. Croix,
while his spiritual essence was thus absent, the unhappy Hendrik
never could know; but when it re-entered his body--or when he
awoke--he was horrified to find his learned uncle lying dead on the
floor amid a pool of blood, his face and throat gashed by dreadful
wounds, which had evidently been inflicted by a blood-spotted knife
which Hendrik found clutched in his own right hand! Blood gouts were
over all his clothes, the pockets of which were found to be stuffed
with money, jewels, end other valuables taken from a bureau and desk,
which had been burst open and ransacked.
The soul of Hendrik died within him! Even if he had committed this
crime in frenzy--and he felt certain that he did not do so--why
should he have sought to rob his uncle? He then thought of Lenora,
and of the sorrow and shame that would come upon her now; he reeled
and fell senseless on the floor. The cries of the old housekeeper
speedily brought aid; Hendrik was arrested, charged with
assassination and robbery, and was at once consigned, as already
described, to the Palais de Justice, where all the weird story came
to light. The hatred and horror he had expressed of his dead uncle
were now remembered fatally by all who had heard them; but the knife
he had in his hand was, singularly enough, found to be the property
of a soldier of the 2nd Belgian Infantry.
To the last Hendrik asserted his innocence, when tried and convicted
for that which was, not unnaturally, deemed a most cruel and
ungrateful crime; and his advocate, Père Baas, who, singularly
enough, was also a dabbler in mesmerism, laboured hard in his cause,
but in vain. When brought to the scaffold in the Grande Place,
Hendrik, attended by Brother Eusebius, had all the bearing of a
martyr, as he fully believed that the crime committed, if by his
hand, was at least by the dictate of another spirit.
Lenora visited him in the dreary cell the night before he died, and,
according to "La Patrie," as they parted, Hendrik said:
"Death, even on the scaffold, has no terror for me now. I know where
my spirit will go, and that none on earth can recall it. You will
come to me, beloved Lenora," he added, pointing upwards; "you will
come to me there in heaven, where there can be no parting, no death,
and no sorrow."
And, with one long embrace, they parted for ever.
The editor of "La Patrie," writing of these things next day, said,
not without truth, "Hendrik Van Gansendonck was, too probably,
crazed; and if so, should not have been executed."
AGNES SOREL, "THE LADY OF BEAUTY."
This celebrated favourite of Charles VII. of France--one who has
inherited from her own time to ours, after a lapse of more than four
centuries, the distinctive sobriquet of "the beautiful Agnes"--was
the daughter of M. Soreau (vulgarly called Sorel, according to De
Mezerai), the Seigneur de St. Geran, a noble gentleman of Touraine,
and not the child of a humble house, _de petite basse maison_, as
George Chastelain, her personal enemy, would have us to believe in
his "Chronique des Ducs de Bourgogne."
She was born in 1409, and in 1431, when in her two-and-twentieth
year, received the appointment of attendant or lady of honour to
Isabella, queen of Naples and Sicily, from whose court and service
she passed into that of Mary, daughter of Louis II., Duke of Anjou,
afterwards queen of Charles VII., where her rank, education, and more
than these, her marvellous beauty, all conspired to win her the
perilous attention of a king who was younger than herself. Agnes was
_not_ seventeen, as the fair authoress of the "Histoire des
Favorites," asserts she was, at this time; but had attained the more
mature age of at least twenty-eight--perhaps thirty, as Oliver de la
Marche, a contemporary, when recording some event which took place in
1444, tells us that "the king had just then elevated a poor lady, a
pretty woman, called Agnes Sorel, and placed her in such triumph and
power that her state was comparable to that of the greatest princess
of the realm."
Her features were beautiful, and expressive of extreme gentleness;
her skin has been described as being of the hue of alabaster, and her
hair was marvellously golden in its brightness. She was then in the
full bloom and beauty of womanhood, and possessed a vivacity of
manner which "spread an air full of charm on the least of her
actions, so that the most insensible souls could not resist her"
("Histoire des Favorites"). "Heaven," says this authoress, "had not
only endowed Agnes with the charms of face; she had an air full of
grace, an admirable figure, more wit than any other woman in the
world, and the most delicate and finely turned, with a certain
greatness of soul which led her naturally to generosity; all her
inclinations were noble; she was attentive, compassionate, ardent in
friendship, discreet, sincere, and, in short, altogether fitted to
make herself beloved to distraction" (p. 102).
De Mezerai writes of her as "a very agreeable and generous lady, who,
by setting herself up as the equal of the greatest princesses, became
the envy of the court and the scandal of France." With all her
errors, Agnes was admitted to be lavish to the poor, to be pious,
generally humble, and always patriotic and full of public spirit.
The majority of historians have written most favourably of her, and
never did the mistress of a king--especially a king who was her
junior--make so wise a use of her perilous power, which she ever
employed only for the good of others. Pride, and an extreme love of
dress, are the chief errors alleged against her; but to her influence
over Charles VII. must be attributed all the good that ever appeared
in him, and the effort to which he was roused--that essay by which,
at last, the invading English were driven from the soil of France;
for he had been a lover of pleasure, "and of the fair sex, which
never can be a vice," adds Voltaire, "save when it leads to vicious
actions."
Charles was neither a warlike nor a high-spirited king. The
influence of England in France after the death of its conqueror,
Henry V., was so nobly sustained by his brother, the Duke of Bedford,
that after the demise of Charles VI., his successor had been crowned
at Poictiers, Rheims being then in possession of the foe; and he was
but the monarch of a nominal kingdom, France having greatly aided the
English invaders, as she was rent by two rival factions, one led by
the Duke of Burgundy and the other by the Duke of Orleans. Charles
VI. had been alternately the prisoner of each, and the dauphin was
the scoff of both--often a fugitive, and always in danger of
destruction.
When the latter became Charles VII., aided by an alliance with
Scotland--the usual "cat's-paw" of the French in their English
wars--and by a body of Scottish troops under the Earl of Buchan, who
was constable of France, he made some show of resistance, when all
hope seemed at an end, and to this unwonted activity he was roused by
Agnes Sorel.
He had already conceived the feeble idea of retiring into Languedoc
or Dauphiny, and contenting himself with the defence of these minor
provinces, which must, eventually, have been wrested from him. Mary
of Anjou, a princess of great prudence and merit, vehemently opposed
this measure, which she saw would lead to a general desertion of his
cause by the French people.
"The fair Agnes Sorel," says Hume, "who lived in entire amity with
the queen, seconded all her remonstrances, and threatened that if he
(Charles) thus pusillanimously threw away the sceptre of France, she
would seek at the court of England a fortune that was correspondent
to her wishes." Thus, the love of her on one hand, and dread of
losing her on the other, roused in the breast of Charles VII. a glow
of courage which neither just ambition, nor pure patriotism, could
kindle, and he resolved to dispute every inch of French soil with his
imperious enemies, rather than yield ingloriously to an evil fortune,
and to the loss of his crown and mistress. And thus, in urging him
to the field, Mary of Anjou was forced to seek the assistance of that
fair rival who had supplanted her; and she seems at all times to have
borne with singular sweetness of temper--with a resignation that some
might think savoured of indifference or stupidity--the alienation of
the king's love for herself; and neither by action or word does she
seem ever to have reproached the reigning favourite.
But now a new ally came, in the person of Joan of Arc; victory
attended her banners, and in two months Charles VII. was crowned
again, a step considered necessary after the double coronation of
young Henry of England at Westminster and Paris. The loss of the
latter city soon followed. The maid of Orleans perished at the
stake, but her mission was accomplished: France was free, and England
was glad to sign the treaty of Arras.
After this consummation, Charles abandoned himself entirely to the
society of Agnes Sorel; "ease and prosperity," according to De
Mezerai, "plunged him into dalliance and effeminate softness." She
was his greatest passion, states Duclos, and was the most worthy of
it; she loved Charles tenderly for himself, and had no other object
in her conduct than the glory of her somewhat soft lover and the good
of the state. Agnes Sorel, he adds, distinguished herself by
qualities preferable to those which are usually found in her sex--a
rather obscure phrase. But, despite what some allege of her
humility, ostentation and a love of splendour are said by others to
have been among her weaknesses; but such are pardonable enough in a
beautiful woman.
At court she appeared in all the state of a royal princess; her
apartments were more expensively decorated with hangings of silk and
taffeta, with furniture and tapestries, than those of the queen, Mary
of Anjou; she had a larger and more splendid retinue of servants than
her royal mistress, and had quite as much reverence shown her. Her
couches, her linen, her vessels of gold and silver, her rings and
other jewelry, all surpassed in beauty and in value those of the
queen. Even her kitchen surpassed that of the neglected wife; "for
with this woman, called Agnes, whom I have seen and known," says the
author of the "Chronique des Ducs de Bourgogne," "the king was
terribly besotted."